Arguably the penultimate goal in designing a game is to create one that gets its players into a state of "game flow" — that sweet, sweet feeling of total immersion in a virtual world. But how do you get there? Well, by following some simple rules of thumb that come courtesy of that old thing called psychology.
Achieving game flow should be at the 🌞top of the list in game design, forming an integral part of the process from the very beginning. It's the thing that will determine, to a massive extent, whether or not players will keep comin𓆏g back to the game you just spent a crazy amount of time making.
"♋Flow" refers to the experience of complete immersion in a t🐈ask that you're motivated to carry out simply for the sake of carrying it out. It comes with that feeling of losing track of time when you have your attention entirely focused on an activity.
A psychologist with the unpronounceably cool name of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims because it comes with a sense of optimal, meaningful experience. So sꦓomething that incites a sense of flow is going to draw people back to it, and of course games are no exception.
There are that, when satisfied, result in the experience of game flow. Each requires more exploration than this post will allow (you could write reams of pa🤡ges on each component and still not cover it all). But here's a brief summary:
- Clear Goals: The game's objectives should not only be made clear, but should also convey meaning at the time they pop up. Players must know where to go and what they should be doing, but also why they should bother doing it. "How will doing x get me further towards mastering the game?"
- Challenge: There should be a sweet spot between too easy and too difficult: a game should be .
- Control: This refers to the actual system controls which should feel natural, as well as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the sense of autonomy that players should be allowed to feel in the game world.
- Feedback: All actions made in-game should have immediate and appropriate feedback. Think of how quickly immersion breaks when there's even the slightest lag between your keyboard or mouse manipulations and their on-screen reflection.
- Player Skills: Although it should be difficult to master, the game should still support the ability to master it. Players should also be duly rewarded for any progress they make.
- Concentration: It's all very well grabbing a player's attention, but being able to keep their attention can be trickier. Again, a sweet spot between too little going on and an information overload is ideal.
- Social: Players should feel 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a sense of relatedness to fellow players (if in a multiplayer context) or the game's NPCs (if there are any).
- Immersion: This is that deep but effortless involvement in a game. Players should feel so enthralled that they lose track of time, their location, and - best of all - their worries.
There are of course an infinite number of ways of incorporating these into a game's design process. Thatgamecompany's and Journey are textbook examples of this theory in practice, but a game like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Silent Hill 2, let's say, is incredibly jarring yet still man🐬age൩s to suspend the player in a state of flow.
Regardless o﷽f the genre and overall vibe of the game in question, if you strip away all the excesses and focus on these eight simple, psychologically-founded components, chances are your players will end up being all like, "where did ꦇthe last 3 hours of my life just disappear to?"
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