March 15, 2007

Flow/flOw.

A video game based on the theory in one of my favorite books, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow."
A deceptively simple video game called "flOw," in which players control the feeding and evolution of an aquatic organism, is making waves in the $30 billion market better known for fictional blood and bullets.

The game forsakes typical testosterone-fueled activities of killing, racing and blowing stuff up. Inspired by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory, which holds that people are happy and fulfilled when they are fully immersed in what they are doing, "flOw" is pure Zen.
Let's get a better description of flow than happy/fulfilled/immersed/Zen. In his book -- at page 49 of the 1991 Harper Perennial edition -- Csikszentmihalyi describes flow in terms of 8 components:
First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.
(I originally typed that out to use in this article, which I wrote for the "Bloggership" conference. I say that that blogging is a flow experience for me. But this post isn't about that.)

Now, looking at that description of flow, I think you can see that all good video games produce flow, whether they are called "flow" or "flOw" or "fLoW" or whatever. The real question -- assuming you decide you want to live in flow -- is whether you should be finding your flow in games that have been manufactured to produce a flow experience. You can see that part of flow is becoming absorbed for long periods of time in something of a trancelike state. The book highlights individuals who find flow doing productive or healthy things like surgery and rock climbing. If you're finding your flow in something that is sedentary, uncreative, and nonlucrative, well, it might be okay. But maybe it's a problem. And I say that as someone who used to throw away a stupid amount of time playing games like Tetris.

10 comments:

bluethedog said...

I'll check out the book, literally, from the library. What a last name! Makes it easy to find in linkcat. I love stuff like this for sports.

Ann Althouse said...

It's easy to remember how to pronounce it though: Chick sent me high.

bluethedog said...

You certainly do!

George M. Spencer said...

"Soon stunted pines disappear entirely and we’re in alpine meadows. There’s not a tree anywhere, only grass everywhere filled with little pink and blue and white dots of intense color. Wild flowers, everywhere! These and grasses and mosses and lichens are all that can live here, now. We’ve reached the high country, above the timberline. I look over my shoulder for one last view of the gorge. Like looking down at the bottom of the ocean. People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists."
--Robert Pirsig
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Unknown said...

Surgery, sailing, and freecell do it for me.

Joe said...

Flow, the game, isn't making waves anywhere except in the mind of the publisher. I'm an avid, though not hardcore, computer gamer and I never heard of this game. Looked it up on game sites and the general response is a giant yawn.

TMink said...

A really great book, I recommend it all the time.

I wonder if the hyperfocus that ADD folks get into is a version of flow.

Trey

Ruth Anne Adams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Revenant said...

The book highlights individuals who find flow doing productive or healthy things like surgery and rock climbing. If you're finding your flow in something that is sedentary, uncreative, and nonlucrative, well, it might be okay. But maybe it's a problem.

Videogames stimulate the mind while rock climbing stimulates the muscles. Both activities are uncreative (aside from the minority of videogames support user creativity as part of play) and nonlucrative.

So it is far from clear to me why rock climbing is "good flow" and videogames "may be a problem", unless there's some underlying presumption that exercising your body is better than exercising your mind.

Ann Althouse said...

Rock climbing involves the mind too. And you forgot "sedentary."