Experience Flow In Video Games Essay

Improved Essays
How Players Experience Flow in Video Games

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi flow is explained as the satisfaction the person gets when they concentrate on performing a task. However these activities must not be part of the person 's daily routine. Also ever person will experience flow depending on their preferences in activities (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2008, p. 3757). There are seven elements that characterizes flow, which are: a challenging activity, merging of action and awareness, clear goals and feedback, concentration on the task at hand, the paradox of control, loss of self-consciousness, and the transformation of time. According to Csikszentmihalyi, in order to enter the state of flow the activity must not be part of the person 's daily routine (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca,
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The goal of gaining the experience is to be able to show off to my friends at how good I am at Street Fighter so that I can feel that I accomplished something. I think people in general need social interaction and connection with one another to survive in this world. Video games are a medium for social connection. I remember playing video games with my roommates and building close bonds. Even though we live far away from each other we still keep in touch and visit each other. Video games helped us build the important social connections. The craving for meaning is about being part of something big and having impact. I personally do not have an example of a experience when playing video games, but in the TED Talks Jane McGonigal talks about World of Warcraft players adding information to the WoW Wikipedia. This is something bigger than a single person and is collaborative task among the WoW community that benefits all player of WoW with information about the game (Ted Talks,

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