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[s0]

This was interesting because "flow" sounds like telling people busy work is fun. Of course telling people what is fun is flawed.

i actually had an entire paragraph in my post that i edited out about how game designers shouldn't be so preoccupied with manipulating players into doing or feeling things and let them have their own reactions. but then i didn't feel like arguing it so i deleted it lol.

im not necessarily against so-called "busywork" however.

[mks]

Also: Ian Bogost

[s0]

u could almost say flow is.....

bogust


BADUM TISH

[s0]

btw for completeness' sake, here is bogost's article he mentions in of these tweets: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-game-studio/254494/

seems like his problem is less with the concept of flow itself but more with misinterpretation of the concept.

[Dragonmaw]

i started writing a piece on flow for simplikation.com

im trash

[Pfotegeist]

btw for completeness' sake, here is bogost's article he mentions in of these tweets: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-game-studio/254494/

seems like his problem is less with the concept of flow itself but more with misinterpretation of the concept.

Instead of calling it flow I would call it "Letting the player do what they want, where each action progress or advances them in some way skillfully or in the game." It makes more sense than one word.

[gimymblert]

flow is well defined who ever say it's not i dunno

However it's reductionist, and my personal hypothesis is that it is incomplete, I replace challenge by stimulation (challenge being a kind of stimulation), many activity are flow inducing without skills but still operate on the slow ramp up. Story can be stupidly simple and yet capture you with the right pacing. Thing is that flow is also deeply personal you cannot nailed for everyone.

I think it is still an important concept, but people tend to make it the be all of design.

[FK in the Coffee]

http://bogost.com/books/how-to-talk-about-videogames/

Ooo, this looks promising.

[Dragonmaw]

flow is well defined who ever say it's not i dunno

However it's reductionist, and my personal hypothesis is that it is incomplete, I replace challenge by stimulation (challenge being a kind of stimulation), many activity are flow inducing without skills but still operate on the slow ramp up. Story can be stupidly simple and yet capture you with the right pacing. Thing is that flow is also deeply personal you cannot nailed for everyone.

I think it is still an important concept, but people tend to make it the be all of design.

this is basically what lana says in her piece http://sufficientlyhuman.com/archives/995 and what i'm saying in mine, although we come to different conclusions

flow is really just a buzzword, like "gameplay", imo. it has a definition but it's super handwavey in use.

http://bogost.com/books/how-to-talk-about-videogames/

Ooo, this looks promising.

  Bogost is legit great.

[gimymblert]

I think buzzword start to becoming an anti intellectualism buzzword to kill any discussion, very like the buzzword it try to mock. I hope it doesn't became a political tool for power over game criticism. I mean calling something a buzzword does not invalidate that thing aside from exerting a kind of social pressure by negative cultural association to the word.

I mean plenty of thing are buzzworthy just because it's the natural process of integrating new thing into a social corpus. What should be attacked is not the buzzword like nature of the thing but the actual misuse of the word on ground express by the context of the misused.

[Drof]

I haven't encountered Flow to be too much of a buzzword. It's being taken very seriously by all the academics I know. A friend of mine is looking into biometric readings on flow, and I'm excited to see how that turns out.

I feel personally, I just define flow as a series of actions which neatly fit into the same mindset at manageable intervals. As a state, it's just a certain degree of focus which comes naturally from the player, and focus is engaging, which is a more useful word than 'fun'.

For instance, Super Meat Boy would ruin it's flow if the death screens were longer. That's because you need to keep up that metronome beat of jumps and sprints. Dark Souls 'ruins' it's flow through deaths, but it does so for a very deliberate point - as a punishment. Not to mention it's pacing is on a whole other scale.

It's useful to wonder if in certain situations something is calling the player to switch gears in a drastic way. That's not always a bad thing, but sometimes all it takes to design a game better is to just be aware of all the pulls on the player.

I really don't think any game design theories are worth throwing away. Don't listen to anyone when they say you have to do things, but definitely don't listen to people who say you can't.

[Dragonmaw]

I haven't encountered Flow to be too much of a buzzword. It's being taken very seriously by all the academics I know. A friend of mine is looking into biometric readings on flow, and I'm excited to see how that turns out.

It's taken pretty seriously in academia, which is good. It's used very buzzword-y outside of it by people who aren't aware of the origins with regard to game design.

I feel personally, I just define flow as a series of actions which neatly fit into the same mindset at manageable intervals. As a state, it's just a certain degree of focus which comes naturally from the player, and focus is engaging, which is a more useful word than 'fun'.

For instance, Super Meat Boy would ruin it's flow if the death screens were longer. That's because you need to keep up that metronome beat of jumps and sprints. Dark Souls 'ruins' it's flow through deaths, but it does so for a very deliberate point - as a punishment. Not to mention it's pacing is on a whole other scale.

It's useful to wonder if in certain situations something is calling the player to switch gears in a drastic way. That's not always a bad thing, but sometimes all it takes to design a game better is to just be aware of all the pulls on the player.

I 100% agree with you, and my article I'm writing says as much, but what you're referring to here is generally referred to as pace, not flow. Flow is the state of being "in ecstasy" or otherwise with your full attention focused on a single task (aka "in the zone").

While a discrete definition, and certainly usable, I don't think it's wide enough, and I happen to share your opinion that pace should be rolled into flow (and, conversely, that we should consider mechanical pace as well as narrative pace.)

I really don't think any game design theories are worth throwing away. Don't listen to anyone when they say you have to do things, but definitely don't listen to people who say you can't.

Yeah. I wrote a big thing about this for an academic conference, but it boils down to "design the way you want to, based on the people you are trying to reach."

[s0]

I think buzzword start to becoming an anti intellectualism buzzword to kill any discussion, very like the buzzword it try to mock. I hope it doesn't became a political tool for power over game criticism. I mean calling something a buzzword does not invalidate that thing aside from exerting a kind of social pressure by negative cultural association to the word.

I mean plenty of thing are buzzworthy just because it's the natural process of integrating new thing into a social corpus. What should be attacked is not the buzzword like nature of the thing but the actual misuse of the word on ground express by the context of the misused.

DISCLAIMER: i dont think flow is a buzzword, at least not yet.

you're right BUT the same applies to the word buzzword itself. just because a lot of people use the word inappropriately or in bad faith doesn't mean the original idea behind it is worthless. calling something out as a buzzword can be a powerful tool to question shallow and dogmatic thinking. and buzzwords themselves can have a LOT of political power too due to their "viral" nature. think about how the term "free market" is used today for instance.

tldr robbing ourselves of tools to separate legitimate ideas from bullshit just because we're sometimes wrong about what's bullshit is a bad idea.

[Dragonmaw]

Also I think you should always strive to use the minimum required knowledge to explain things to somebody. Journalism puts this as "write like you're writing to a 9th grader", and while that's not always desirable, it's certainly the best way to be readable in discussions on the internet.

"Buzzwords" to me are any words you use that could be explained using either another well-used word or a small phrase. Words that can be simplified without losing their meaning.

(Also I think that you learn a lot about what you are saying by simplifying concepts to be understandable to people that aren't as educated as you)

[gimymblert]

 novlang so

[Dragonmaw]

yeah, because "writing so that anybody can understand you, primarily by using everyday language" is totally orwellian, instead of, you know, the complete opposite

[gimymblert]

Well I know in america broadcast has a rule to not use word that has more than 3 syllable. I was thinking about that and put that jokingly.

But word can be explain, also lifting vocabulary by explaining words also help to bring nuanced thought as you have label to sort out complex .

Also using specific word in specific context is not a seen. Should photogrammetry not be used in a discussion about itself? Just because the word is buzzing now? Shuld retopology not be used in a context in which you talk about minute details of modeling?

Also I agree, I tend to kill all english word that I commonly used in a french context because most people aren't familiar with the nuance. Although game designer is much more specific in concept than "concepteur de jeu", but nobody outside the field can understand the nuance anyway ("do you do graphics?" doesn't help I'm a jack of all trade master of none, just average)

[Dragonmaw]

the difference is that to use complicated language is to obscure the discussion for anybody who isn't intimately familiar with the background. it's essentially a smokescreen in 95% of cases, except when used in specific academic contexts, where it becomes a sort of constructed language.

in other words, you add nothing to a discussion by using words you learned by reading somebody else's work. you add everything to a discussion by reorganizing those words into simpler, easier to understand forms. even the most widely-regarded philosophers seek to explain the world in simple, everyday language, even if they drift into the academic sometimes.

i mean there are some contexts you simply can't do this in, like theoretical mathematics. but game design is not a field you need to use complicated language to explain.

[gimymblert]

There is complicated language and plain use of available the vocabulary. I dunno, I agree with you but you seem to swing the pendulum a bit further that I'm comfortable with, maybe it's my perception that is over exaggerated of what you are saying, so let's dig a bit the analysis with a another more or less subjective angle. Maybe I'll be proved wrong or not accurate, but I hope it won't be in a hurry to bring me down and more with a constructive counter argument.

There is something like stupidly complicated language, but it's not using a singular word in isolation in the right context. I mean am I using complicated word here? I know I'm not the right metric as I have my own quirk and a lack of utmost mastery in english. I can be thick at time too. But I have been careful recently.

To take concrete example: I like in english there is word for play and game, make thinking about game easier, it's more word that describe some nuances where french have only one overloaded word (jeu), in term of design I prefer thinking in english.

On top of that I speak martinique's creole, concept like "chabin" (~white skin, black features) or "drivé" (~wander) have people shaking their head because they don't even understand why those concept exist because it does not make sense outside of the culture. In fact using simpler word make the conversation more complicated, there is a loss of information, or you need to fill it with description that over bloat the phrasing and break the flow, making it more confusing.

However talking about hair, especially afro hair is a nightmare in english, and people BSOD on me because they don't get what i'm talking, the nuances, they just don't understand that there is a difference between "bouclé, frisé, crépu" because there is literally only one english word "curly hair" (and even hair itself have many word for different concept like "cheveux, poil, pelage", which is super confusing to me to not be able to express simply in english) and it even lack the necessary nuances to cover the basic requirement to describe curly hair as I conceptualize in french.

Hair is just confusing in english and it seem people don't even see the concept I'm trying to point at, even with a description, they are not use to "see them" or to conceptualize them. Working on afro hair makes me realize that in many magnitude of order as I try to capture (in a stylistic way that match the expression of the work I'm working on) visually those nuances. Apparently using the nomenclature that afro american use (a classification that involve a scale from 1A for straight hair to 4C "crépu" afro hair) make people (who don't know much about it) even more infuriated. Somewhat caring about hair texture is just frown on   no matter I break it down to simple word, people just don't want to listen, for them nuances just don't exist i'm making up shit and insulting them with caring and trying to explain the nuances.

Instead of assuming the other is stupid I just use the word and let the other signal any difficulties, it would be insulting to presuppose he is stupid and it is leaner, more compact, in easily digestible chunk. Acronym talk,popular on internet, can be ridiculous extant of that lol I don't see people being too careful about sending "ikr" I had never seen or understand for a long time. I just look it up or ask, it does make understanding more complicate, I can deal with that.

When I first got on TIG my english vocabulary was more limited which lead to wall of text to describe simple concepts, I wasn't more efficient at communicating.

There is also a huge political and social dynamics at play and I'm not playing the social game right, I don't "prove" myself enough, it open people for assumption, I don't know if I care enough for that, I know what I'm doing and WHY. Who ever care will listen, other can try to insult though.

[Drof]

I 100% agree with you, and my article I'm writing says as much, but what you're referring to here is generally referred to as pace, not flow. Flow is the state of being "in ecstasy" or otherwise with your full attention focused on a single task (aka "in the zone").

Ah, I see what you mean. Is pace the same as pacing? I sort of see pacing as the regular interval of actions, which is just one possible ingredient to incite Flow.

the difference is that to use complicated language is to obscure the discussion for anybody who isn't intimately familiar with the background. it's essentially a smokescreen in 95% of cases, except when used in specific academic contexts, where it becomes a sort of constructed language.

This all the way.

But at the same time, I think a big issue with game design is it's lack of well defined terms. While 'ludology' and 'kinaesthetics' sound pretty pretentious, I like them a lot more than 'theory of play' and 'game feel'.

Although on the other hand, one thing I love about game design is that players can jump in to the discussion without facing a wall of vernacular. Perhaps a balance is in order?

There is complicated language and plain use of available the vocabulary.

I generally having nothing wrong with using big words when talking about things intellectually, but it can't be to lock people out. English has got a lot of functionally pointless words. For instance, "utilise" I think is a word which is only utilised used by people who want to appear smart.

I probably wouldn't use super obscure words, but in an age of google, if something is, say, deterministic, I'm ok with using that word, because as you said, it'd take way too much time to establish what deterministic means, so I'd prefer to just use it and then have them ask me afterwards if I need to explain.

It just get's everyone's goat when someone is flipping through a thesaurus for every word they say.