作者：Ara Shirinian

【“重复性”通常是个坏词——在游戏中，往往与“刷任务”（比如“刷怪”、“打金”等重复性活动）相联系。如果恰当地使用“重复性”，是否能给玩家带来更多好处？】

普遍的特征

一些电子游戏的特征，如图像质量，似乎本来就应该很好。无论衡量标准是什么，除了一些先锋派人士的恶意中伤，没人会批评游戏“太好看”。图像是否等同于游戏的第二身份尚有争议，但确实普遍受到赞赏，特别是做得比以往任何时候都好的时候。确实，当下许多流行的游戏并不算新游戏，只是老游戏穿上漂亮的新外套。

重玩性是另一个公认的特征。如果你第一次玩某款游戏时，你觉得它“好玩”，那么当你忍不住再玩它，你就会认为它“更好玩”，对吧？

不包括利益相关方在内，从发行人到刚刚具有鉴别能力的毛孩子，肯定希望游戏更漂亮，更好玩。就像钱，总是越多越好，至少从表面价值来说。

第三个特征是多样化。让我们特别感兴趣的是活动的多样化。这种多样化是增加游戏重玩性的方法之一。事实上，保证游戏有“足够”的新鲜体验挽留大量玩家、各种水平的玩家和各种偏好的玩家，活动多样化也是最明显、最简单的方式。

如果你的游戏系统或活动有缺陷，特别是当它的效力受到普遍质疑时，你可以选择彻底抛弃它，或者投入更多精力完善它，又或者保持原样但开发出其他起补充作用的游戏活动，以供厌烦了第一个活动的玩家选择。

在商业上大获成功的游戏中存在丰富多彩的活动，以最大化新意，这是不可否认的。证据就是，所谓的“沙盒”或“开放世界”游戏（游戏邦注：“沙盒”和“开放世界”都是指一种电子游戏的关卡设计类型，玩家在游戏的虚拟世界里可以自由地选择以何种方式、何时达到目标）的爆炸性流行。这类设计始于《侠盗猎车手3》及随后而来作品，如《天际》和《魔兽世界》。

相反地，游戏中的重复性几乎普遍受到鄙视。没有哪个游戏商家会以重复性作为卖点。就表层价值而言，这是完全有道理的。重复性有什么好处？我们要找的是新意，无论是游戏、消费品还是生活。

然而，重复性可能具有某些内在的价值和益处。重复性遭到唾弃的原因可能是，它的优点实在是不如缺点那么突出。我们说到重复的时候，往往看到的是它的坏处，而不是它的好处。

多样化的吸引力

相比于这类花样百出的“沙盒”游戏模式，传统游戏模式更像一头只知道踢后腿的黔驴。

在传统的游戏中，有许多情况会迫使玩家放弃。比如，游戏越来越难，越来越千篇一律，越来越无聊，越来越不公平，越来越让人讨厌。无论是多么随意和个人化的理由，任何游戏都会有变得非常没有吸引力的时候，让玩家再也不想玩下去。

当体验到达这个程度时，在传统的游戏中，玩家唯一的选择就是停止游戏。这可能是指今天不玩了，但明天精神振作了又继续玩；或者，放弃这款游戏，永远不玩了。

而沙盒游戏却给了玩家其他选择。如果某个任务太难了，玩家可以放弃它，尝试其他的任务。如果玩家彻底厌烦了所有任务，还可以偷一部出租车开开——在合法的游戏结构下，玩家不只是在装模作样。如果开车也觉得烦了，玩家可以来个城中探险，在昏暗的小巷中和高耸的大楼上寻找隐藏的宝物。如果在城市中漫无目的的搜寻也无聊了，仍然有其他不同的活动等着玩家尝试。

因为游戏要求表现，所以成就不足（无论表现的评价来自游戏还是玩家）可能是让玩家产生放弃念头的罪魁祸首。事实上，游戏实际的可选择范围对任何玩家来说都是必定有限的。

就可选择的活动比以前大大增多这一特点而言，始于《侠盗猎车手3》的结构开放表明，单纯的多样性可以有效地利用玩家求新求异的本性和广阔的玩家能力层次。

因为游戏产业的首要目标是创收盈利，所以唯一的选择就是千方百计营销和设计能吸引到大量用户的产品。电子游戏必须提供新东西来吸引庞大的消费群体，而这些新东西不应该只是挑战、难度和深度，因为早在80年代，追求挑战、难度和深度的消费者已经是活络市场的主力了。那么如何在新时代里增加收益？游戏产业的答案是，增加娱乐价值，同时尽可能降低所有用户玩游戏的门槛。

这一行业不仅要盈利，而且要以最廉价最简单的方式盈利：

*通过提供更好的影音设备和增加游戏活动或设定的表面上的多样化，来增加游戏的娱乐价值。

*通过生产对玩家要求越来越低的产品来降低他们玩游戏的门槛。

总的来说，产业的做法并没有增加玩法的深度，而是降低各方面的难度，使用户更容易接触和上手游戏。虽然这种做法是可行的，甚至引领了游戏设计的潮流，但事实上，这种开发方式更具难度，更费成本，并且具备必要技能和了解玩家心理的设计师和团队又很匮乏。另外，与其他方法相比，采用这种方法可以提高多少销售额也不明确。

总之，增加更多、更好看的内容并不难；用最廉价的方法让更多玩家体验到最多的内容，同时只需要他们具备最低层次的游戏水平，这也很容易。

从当今最大最热门的游戏中，我们看到了这种开发方法带来的结果。然而，这些大热游戏令人不满的地度还有很多，一定程度上，当与几年前的游戏相比较时，甚至更令人不满。

近年也可以以从媒体报导上看到对这种现象的正反两面的评价。比如，Christian Nutt最近写的关于《战神》的战斗设计的评论，和关于Sony Santa Monica的“多样性超过深度”的理念的玩家评论。

解构重复性体验

甚至是在电子游戏世界之外，也存在着大量受欢迎的重复性活动。这类活动极少被形容为“重复的”，更别说用上更消极的形容词了。运动基本上可以归为这一类。

有谁说过灌篮“太重复”？虽然这项活动本来就是在重复某个最基本的机制，但人们会称之为“有趣”、“好玩”、“有难度”等，而不是“重复”。

在电子游戏世界中，高度重复的的活动比比皆是，然而，每一次尝试产生的感觉同样有吸引力，并不让人觉得重复。

现代流行游戏也不乏结构上高度重复的例子，如《摇滚乐队》、《益智之谜》和《特技摩托》等。然而这些重复性结构近乎强迫般地吸引着成千上万的玩家在游戏世界中流连。

另一方面，我们还有臭名昭著的“刷”活动。“刷”这个字眼形容的是一种重复的、无趣的、缺少技术含量的活动或行为。因为普及程度太高了，所以要找出一个最突出的例子还真难（《勇者斗恶龙》是“刷”活动的先驱）。

现实中的例子有烫衣服、洗碗盘等“冗长乏味的日常活动”。这些也基本上是重复的、无趣的、无难度的、无意义的——至少本质上是无意义的。

所以，我们有两种截然不同的活动，二者其实都是重复的。显然，“重复”这个词还不足以形容二者有多么不同，所以我们要解构一下这些例子。

当你投篮、在《特技摩托》中闯关或在《摇滚乐队》中玩吉他时，从表面上看，你只是在重复某个动作。投篮时，你必须面朝篮架，捡起球，然后瞄准篮筐投球。假设你每一次做的都是相同的动作，那么，投篮本质上是一种持续几秒钟的循环活动。

一旦你投出球，你又要跑回去把球捡回来再接着投。在《摇滚乐队》中，虽然一首歌可能播上几分钟，但每首歌本身是由重复的序列组成的。玩家在几个小时的时间内一直练习同一首歌，这种现象很普遍。在《特技摩托》中，玩家试图通过某个障碍，常常要重复这个过程几分钟。至于其他活动，玩家通常要花上20或30分钟的时间重复相同的过程，直到失去兴趣，当然这是暂时的。

这些“重复而有趣”的活动的显著特征之一是，它们并非无足轻重。打篮球时，你不可能每一次都投篮成功。在《摇滚乐队》中，你不可能每一次都弹得尽善尽美，每一次都得最高分。在《特技摩托》中，你不可能每一次都不失误。

相比于相对无意义的活动，即我们所谓的“重复且无趣”的“刷”活动：在烫衣服时，你可能烫得好，也可能烫得不好，但一旦你熟悉了整个流程，烫衣服很大程度上就变成了一件只需要动动手至到完成的事。这其中并没有太多表现可言。

电子游戏的“刷”活动与此类似。在游戏中，玩家通过积累某些虚拟数值而使角色的能力变强或经验增多。因为“刷”活动太过无聊，玩家甚至想到把操作设备用胶带固定到某个位置上，使游戏中的角色在无人照看的情况下自动进行“刷”活动。

所以，这说明了如果活动具有充实的表现成分，那么这项活动即使重复，也会很吸引人。

当你的活动中有一个表现成分时，这意味着你可以达到不同程度的表现。打篮球时，你可以来个大满灌，你的球可以碰到篮筐，或你也可以完全射偏了。玩《特技摩托》时，你可以在50秒内通关，你也可以在120秒内通关，等等。结果可以变化不定，这才是好玩的地方，比烫衣服或RPG的“刷”活动的结果有趣多了。

不只是结果的多样性是必要元素，还有，玩家对结果具有控制力，或进一步说，玩家有希望且有能力在每一次重复中提高表现。在各次尝试之间，或甚至就在尝试之中，玩家始终在学习。

重复和学习

学习使人进步，重复本身就是学习的必要组成部分。你可能在一次尝试中学到一些东西，但如果不重复尝试，你就无法学会更多东西，你的能力就被人为地限制了。

再说上文提到的“重复而无趣”的例子，确实，烫衣服、在你最喜欢的最浪费时间的游戏中练级，这些活动都与学习有关。但是，这种学习是很肤浅的，很容易就达到极限。当你烫了上百次衣服或刷了三个多小时的怪终于升了一级，你其实并没有学到任何新东西。

学习也是一件令人愉快的事。它让我们感到自己有能力，激励我们达到自己的极限，特别是在操作性、互动性的活动中。它拓宽了我们的眼界，让我们意识到自己的进步空间还很大。它是一种不可预测的探索和发现的过程，不是一种带有实体空间的过程，而是一种机械的、系统的过程（至少在动作游戏中）。

这种探索比实体或事实空间的探索更强大，更有吸引力。James Paul Gee主张电子游戏是一种极好的学习工具，声称“学习是人类的深层需要，就像繁殖和摄食等，能给人类带来深层次的愉悦感。”

学习+重复*10000=精通

精通来不断的重复。事实上，许多类型的精通只有通过不断的重复才能达到。这是永恒的真理。没有重复的练习，你不能成为象棋大师、灌篮高手、《摇滚乐队》和《特技摩托》的专家级玩家。同时，精通的体验伴随着一种独特的情绪高潮，只有那些坚持不懈、不惧困难的人才能感觉得到。

当Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi(游戏邦注：此人是美国克莱尔蒙特研究大学的心理学家）于70年代开展关于他所谓的“流”的研究时（游戏邦注：这里的“流”，原文为“flow”，是一个抽象概念，指当一个人的技能正好刚好能够应对挑战时，以及在接受目标清晰、反馈及时的任务时，就会达到一种“心流状态”，可以理解为一种“高潮状态”）他访问了各个领域的许多专家，这些人都在各自的行业中达到一定程度的精通。他提到，“我们的调查者，无论是下象棋的，跳舞的，攀岩的，还是做手术的，都称当他们从事自己精通的活动时，会感到一种令自己愉快、觉得自己有力量的感觉；同时，他们说这种欣慰的感觉是比他们本身还更大的东西的一部分。”

复杂的表现活动，如象棋、攀岩和做手术被Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 归类为“深流”活动。我们谈到的游戏例子《摇滚乐队》和《特技摩托》，和其他需要高度表现的游戏如《街头霸王》或《GT赛车》当然也能模拟出深流体验。精通《特技摩托》或《街头霸王》的感觉与精通做手术的感觉有多相似呢？在一名外科医生的采访中，他是这么描述的：“在一次好的手术当中，你做的任何事都是必不可少的，任何一个动作都是完美的，高雅的，必要的；病人流血最少，创口最小……”

最近，由Richard Ryan指导的电子游戏研究，一定程度上证实了这一点：“在游戏中，感到自己有自主感、有能力的人会做出更好的表现，这再一次解释了为什么游戏会帮助某些人快乐起来和重振精神。”值得注意的是，Ryan的测试对象不是专家级玩家，而是以低级到一般水平的玩家作为样本。注意，Csikszentmihalyi也认为是“自主感”和“有能力”导致了流体验。

Ryan进一步指出，“我们的论点在于，游戏产生的心理拉力很大程度上是因为他们有能力造成自主感、有能力和关联性，”玩电子游戏“也可以增强心理健康，至少短期上是如此。”

当玩家在游戏中达到流状态时，Ryan的报告自主感、有能力和关联性是否能产生，以及“游戏的心理牵引”事实上牵引的是游戏状态本身，而表现游戏的重复性结构是否是达到深流的最佳方法？快速学习、重复和流状态似乎具有密切联系。

虽然在任何现实中熟练的活动中都可能达到精通，但电子游戏是例外，因为它们只是让我们用一种（可能）极为简单、有效的方式达到表现的精通。在游戏中，灌篮以后，你不必浪费时间去捡球；你不必因为身体下的疲劳（在大多数时候）而停下来。学习的重复循环可以压缩成最紧实的过程。材料和反馈可以用最有效的方式展示给玩家，匹配玩家的能力，这就最大化了学习限度，进而最大化满意度。而其他媒体是做不到这点的。

娱乐之上

并非所有电子游戏都必须或甚至应该是时刻带给玩家挑战，让玩家不断拓展自身能力的极限。然而，电子游戏也不是纯粹的娱乐工具。它们固然有教导我们、提升我们、激励我们的强大力量，在一定程度上，这是其他媒体所不具备的。

我们最终会如何利用游戏，利用的程度，历史对游戏的评价，取决于我们‘发行商、开发者、玩家。你会选择出售、制作或玩唯一的功能就是占用时间的游戏吗？以任何娱乐的方式？或这种游戏还能发挥更大的作用吗？（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Value of Repetition

by  Ara Shirinian

["Repetition" is usually a bad word -- and in games, often associated with grinding. Can it be the path to unlocking something more rewarding for players when properly utilized? Designer Ara Shirinian considers.]

Universal Goods

Some traits of video games, like graphical quality, seem to be inherently laudable. Whatever the metric is, outside of avant-garde subversions, nobody ever criticizes a game for “looking too good”. Graphics, while arguably secondary to (yet inexorably enmeshed with) the authorship of games, are universally appreciated, especially when done better than ever before. Indeed, many popular games today are not new games; they are old games with greatly improved looks.

Replayability is another universally regarded quality. If a game was “good” the first time you played it, then it would be considered even “better” if you felt compelled to play it again, right?

No interested party, from the publishing executive to the child who is just beginning to develop discriminating taste, will be found free from the want of better graphics or more replayability. Like money, these are qualities for which more is always better, at least at face value.

A third quality that appears to belong to this set of universal positives is variety. Of particular interest to us is the variety of activity. This kind of variety is one way to increase the replayability of a game. In fact, it could be the most obvious and easiest way, in terms of planning, to ensure there is “sufficient” novelty of experience to keep the largest number of players across the gamut of skill and preference engaged.

For any imperfect system or activity of gameplay you may have developed, particularly when there are substantial doubts about its efficacy, you can choose to scrap it altogether, devote additional development effort to improving it, or leave it as-is and develop some other complementary gameplay activity as an alternative for those who tire of the first activity.

It is difficult to deny the great commercial success of games that have maximized novelty by implementing myriad disparate activities, as evidenced by the explosive popularity of so-called “sandbox” or “open world” games, which started with Grand Theft Auto III and continues with products like Skyrim or World of Warcraft.

Conversely, repetition in games is almost universally viewed with disdain. No marketer in his or her right mind would try to sell anyone on the promise of repetition. At face value, this makes perfect sense. What could ever be good about repetition? It’s novelty we seek — in games, consumer products, and life in general.

However, there can exist valuable and intrinsically good things about repetition. The reason repetition has such a bad rap may be that the good things about it are far less salient than the bad ones. We notice repetition far more often when it is bad, compared to when it’s good.

Increasing Appeal By Increasing Variety: The Multiple-Trick Pony

Consider a surface comparison of this “sandbox” format, with its wide and vast repertoire of activities, against the traditional game format, which is like a pony who only knows one trick.

In the traditional game, there are lots of situations that can compel a player to give up. The game can become too hard, it can become too repetitive, it can become too boring, it can become too unfair, it can become too annoying. However arbitrary and personal the reason, any game can become unappealing to the point that the player doesn’t want to play anymore.

When the experience wears thin to this point for the player, in the traditional game, the only choice is to stop playing. It could mean you give up today, but tomorrow you’re reinvigorated to try again. Or, it could mean that you give up playing that game forever.

On the other hand, the sandbox game leaves you with other options. If a particular mission is too hard, you can give up on that and try a different mission. If you’re tired of the mission format altogether, you can steal a taxicab and play as a taxi drive — with a legitimate game structure wrapped around it so you’re not just playing pretend. If the driving becomes too repetitive, you can explore the city and try to find hidden things in dark alleys and atop buildings. If searching aimlessly through the city becomes boring, there’s still yet another activity different from all the rest waiting for you.

Because games demand performance, inadequate achievement is perhaps the most significant reason a player would want to give up (regardless of whether that evaluation of performance comes from the game or from the player). In fact, the actual scope of game choices available to any player are necessarily limited to those they feel they can play, or perform with some level of competence.

Considering that the available options of what to play are greater than ever before, the structural craze that started with GTA III showed just how effectively the sheer availability of variety can take advantage of the whimsical nature of consumers — as well as the vast range of competency among them.

The industry, with its primary goal of accelerated profit-seeking, had no choice but to devise a way to market and design its products to attract larger and larger groups of consumers. Video games needed to offer something new to attract these big groups, something other than challenge, difficulty and depth, because in the ’80s, consumers seeking challenge, difficulty and depth were all already active purchasers in the market. The industry’s answer was to increase the entertainment value while decreasing the barrier to entry for all consumers as much as possible.

The industry, being an economically efficient vehicle, also sought to do these things in the cheapest and easiest way it knew how:

It increased entertainment value by offering better and better audiovisuals, and by increasing the prima facie variety of features or activities in a game.

It decreased the barrier to entry by producing games that placed fewer and fewer demands on the player.

It did not, by and large, increase or cultivate depth in gameplay while improving accessibility at the same time. While such a thing is feasible, and even heralded as a best practice of game design, in reality developing in this way is more challenging, can be more costly, and designers and teams with the requisite skill and knowledge of player psychology are rare. It was also less apparent how following such a best practice could improve sales, compared to the other methods.

In short, it was just easier to add more, better-looking content and utilize the cheapest methods that would allow more players to experience the most amount of that content, while demanding the least amount of performance from them.

We can see the consequences reflected in the biggest, most popular games of our day. However, many are left unsatisfied, and in some ways even less satisfied when compared to the games they played years ago.

We can see both sides of this very phenomenon reflected recently in the press. Consider Christian Nutt’s recent interview with God of War’s combat lead, as well as some of the user comments about Sony Santa Monica’s philosophy of variety over depth.

Deconstructing The Repetitive Experience

There exist plenty of popular and repetitive activities, even outside of the video game world that are hardly ever described as repetitive, much less in more negative terms. Sports in general fit into this category.

After all, who has ever complained that shooting a basketball is “too repetitive”? While this activity is inherently repetitive at the most basic mechanical level, people will call it “fun”, “interesting”, “challenging”, and even “rewarding” before they ever describe it as repetitive.

Inside the video game world it’s easy to find examples of games that are highly repetitive on initial inspection, and yet produce similarly compelling, non-repetitive feelings each time.

Rock Band, Puzzle Quest, and Trials HD are just a few modern examples of popular games which feature extremely high degrees of structural repetition, like shooting a basketball. Yet these repetitive structures compel thousands to remain engaged over quite substantial periods of time.

On the other hand, we also have things like the infamous video game grind, a term typically assigned to an activity that is repetitive, uninteresting, and lacking a skill component. It’s so pervasive across so many products that it’s difficult to name a singular standout example (although Dragon Warrior was a seminal early example).

Real-life analogues of this include activities like ironing your clothes, washing dishes, and for many, “the tedious pattern of daily work” a.k.a. the daily grind. (1) These too, are fundamentally repetitive, uninteresting, unchallenging, and unrewarding — at least intrinsically.

So, we have two very different-feeling classes of activities, both of which are in fact repetitive. Clearly the word repetitive is insufficient to describe how they are different, so let’s deconstruct what is happening in each of these cases.

When you are shooting a basketball, or playing a level in Trials, or rocking the plastic guitar in Rock Band, on a surface level you are performing a repetitive action. Shooting the basketball requires you to face the basket, pick up the ball, and throw it with the aim of sinking the ball in the basket. Assuming that you’re not trying to do it differently every time, this is essentially a loop of activity on the scale of several seconds.

Once you shoot the ball, you go pick it up and shoot again and again. In Rock Band, while a song may last for several minutes, each song itself is composed of repetitions of sequences. It’s not uncommon for players to practice the same song over and over for hours. In Trials, you attempt to negotiate an obstacle course with your bike, and frequently these courses last for roughly a minute or so. As with the others, players routinely engage in repeating the same course 20 or 30 times in a session before losing interest, at least temporarily.

One distinguishing element of all of these “repetitive and interesting” activities is that they are non-trivial. You can’t sink the ball in the basket every single time. You can’t play the Rock Band song perfectly and with the highest score. You can’t perform a flawless run in Trials and get the best possible time.

Compare this to the relative triviality of our “repetitive and uninteresting” grind activities. You could do a “bad job” or a “good job” ironing your clothes, but once you know the process, it is largely a matter of just going through the required motions to reach completion. There isn’t much of a performance component.

The same is with grinding in video games, which players voluntarily suffer for the reward of accumulating some virtual statistic that in turn increases your character’s power or agency in the game. It’s a testament to the abject boredom involved in grinds that in many cases players devise ways of taping and rubber-banding their control devices into certain positions to allow the in-game character to perform the grind without even human intervention or attention.

So, this indicates that if there is a substantial performance component to an activity, it can be compelling and repetitive at the same time. But there is more happening here.

When there is a performance component to your activity, the implication is that you can achieve different levels of performance. You can sink the ball perfectly — nothing but net as they say, or you can sink it in sloppy fashion, or you can miss completely. You can complete the Trials course in 50 seconds, or 120 seconds, or anywhere in between or beyond. The outcomes can vary, which is pretty interesting, and more interesting than the possible outcomes of your ironing session or RPG grind.

It is not just the variation of outcome that’s the essential factor, however — it’s the fact that the player has control over the outcome, and further, that the player has the desire and capability to improve the outcome with each repetition. In between each attempt, and maybe even during, the player is learning.

Repetition and Learning

Learning enables one to improve their performance in any activity and repetition itself is an absolutely necessary component to continued learning. If you attempt an activity only once, it is possible to have learned something from it, but you are artificially restricting your ability to learn anything more about it by limiting your repetition.

To return to our “repetitive and uninteresting” examples for a moment, it is true that learning is involved in ironing your clothes, or grinding a character in your favorite time-wasting game. But, the depth of that learning is shallow, and its limit is quickly reached. You are simply not learning anything new when you are ironing for the hundredth time or grinding your character for three more hours to reach the next level.

Learning is satisfying, too. It empowers us; it galvanizes us to see what else we can accomplish, particularly in an operational, interactive context. It expands the breadth of what you know, as well as your awareness of what you don’t know. It’s a process of unpredictable exploration and discovery (and even novelty), not of a physical space, but of a mechanical, systematic one (at least in action games).

This kind of exploration is more powerful and more compelling than the exploration of physical or factual spaces. James Paul Gee, known for his advocacy of video games as superb vehicles for learning, has stated, “Learning is a deep human need, like mating and eating, and like all such needs it is meant to be deeply pleasurable to human beings.” (2)

Learning + Repetition x 10,000 = Mastery

With extreme repetition comes deep knowledge as well. In fact, there are many types of deep knowledge that are only accessible through extreme repetition — we call this mastery. This is really an immutable reality with no short cuts. You cannot become a master at chess, basketball, Rock Band or Trials without extreme practice, repetition. At the same time, the experience of performing with mastery is a uniquely sublime emotional experience par excellence, unlocked only for those who are willing to put forth the time and trouble.

When Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi performed his research on what he named “flow” in the early 1970s, he interviewed a series of experts in various performance activity fields, those who had attained some level of mastery of their practice, saying, “Our respondents, whether they play chess, or dance, or climb rocks, or perform surgery, reported an exhilarating feeling of power while involved in the activity; at the same time, they spoke of the soothing sense of being part of something larger than themselves.” (3)

Complex performance activities like chess, climbing, and surgery are what Csikszentmihalyi categorizes as “deep flow” activities. Our game examples of Rock Band and Trials, and other high-performance games like Street Fighter or Gran Turismo are certainly exemplary conduits of the deep flow experience. Consider this account of one surgeon’s interview, and how similar it is to describing a masterful Trials run or Street Fighter match: “In good surgery everything you do is essential, every move is excellent and necessary; there is elegance, little blood loss, and a minimum of trauma…” (3)

More recently, direct video game play research by Richard Ryan et. al. appears to corroborate this on some level: “People who experienced autonomy and competence in playing showed more positive outcomes, helping again to explain why, for some people, games may provide a source of pleasure and perhaps restoration.” (4) It’s important to note here that Ryan’s test subjects were not masters at games, but rather a sample of low to average-skill players. Note that words like “autonomy” and “competence” are precisely the same terms Csikszentmihalyi uses to identify markers of the flow experience.

Ryan went on further to say that, “It’s our contention that the psychological ‘pull’ of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness,” and that playing video games “also can be experienced as enhancing psychological wellness, at least short-term.”

Could it be that Ryan’s reports of such feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as experienced in games occur as players reach a flow state, and that the “psychological pull of games” is in fact the pull of the flow state itself, and that the repetitive structure of performance games is an optimal means of achieving deep flow? It would seem that rapid learning, repetition, and the flow state all go hand in hand.

While mastery is possible to achieve in any real-life skilled endeavor, video games are exceptional because they give us the tools to achieve mastery of performance in a (potentially) supremely accessible, efficient way. You don’t have to waste time going after your ball after you’ve thrown it. You don’t have to stop because you’re physically exhausted (in most cases). The repetition loop of learning can be compressed into the tightest space possible without compromise. The material and feedback can be presented to the player in the most cognitively efficient way possible, to match the player’s abilities, which maximizes learning and in turn satisfaction. No other medium is capable of this.

Beyond Entertainment

Not every video game experience must or even should be of the kind that challenges you to constantly stretch the boundaries of your own abilities from second to second. However, video games are not just a vehicle for sheer entertainment either. They have within them a tremendous power to teach us, to improve ourselves, to light an emotional, motivational spark in us in a way no other medium can.

How games are ultimately employed, in what proportions, and what history will think of them is left up to us, the publishers, the developers, the players. Will you choose to sell or craft or play something that functions only to occupy time, in whatever entertaining manner? Or will it do something more?(source:gamasutra)