# What is Flow?
- Flow is an experience “so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult or dangerous”

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- In order to maintain a person’s Flow experience, the activity needs to reach a balance between the challenges of the activity and the abilities of the participant. If the challenge is higher than the ability, the activity becomes overwhelming and generates anxiety. If the challenge is lower than the ability, it provokes boredom.

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- Due to the special relationship between challenge and ability, Flow has been used in fields like sports and tutoring.

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# How does Flow work?

- Immersion
- deep but effortless involvement

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- loss of concern for self
- devoting entire nights or weekends to playing games
- high level of emotional investment in games due to the time, effort, and attention
- emotions are directly affected by the game
- should transport the player into a level of personal involvement emotionally and viscerally

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### Elements of Flow
1. Complete concentration on the task;
2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;
3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
5. Effortlessness and ease;
6. There is a balance between challenge and skills;
7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
8. There is a feeling of control over the task.

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# psychic entropies
- boredom (skill > challenge)
- anxiety/frustration (skill < challenge)

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- 

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# GameFlow Model
- 

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- game must keep players attention through high workload without being draining
- challenging enough to be enjoyable
- skill high enough for challenge
- clear goals on tasks/challenges
- feedback on progress on tasks
- Dive into GameFlow Model

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### Concentration
- more concentration (attention and workload) -> more absorbing
- when all relevant skills are needed for activity, no excess energy left to process anything other then the activity
- should grab attention quickly and indefinitely

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- deliver something worth attending to (Detailed Game World, Captivating story, etc.)
- keep workload leveled to players mental limits
- no unimportant tasks
- reduce non-game related interactions (menu, interface, etc.)

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### Challenge
- Keep appropriate pace throughout game (vary difficulty)
- balance between skill of the player and challenge associated with an activity
- skill > challenge = apathy
- skill < challenge = anxiety
- create enjoyment through taxing limits of player

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- alternating challenges
- Satisfaction comes from:
- accomplishing difficult tasks
- challenging and overcoming opponents
- testing and mastering skills
- reaching desired goal
- suspensefully coping with danger

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- overcoming challenge is its own reward
- feelings of personal triumph
- able to choose difficulty based on prior experience
- DDA (AI Director, Left 4 Dead 2)
- Pacing, slow but steady introduction of new mechanics

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### Player Skill
- support player skill development
- perceived skill must match challenge
- player must learn skills while playing
- how skills are taught by the game is crucial
- not overwhelming the player with every mechanic at once

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- either through interesting tutorials or learn as they play
- In-game tutorial feedback can be used to allow quick progression in learning the basic mechanisms for playing
- learning as they play, players learn and practice skills as part of accomplishing things they need and want to do

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- players should be rewarded for playing
- reward should be appropriate for investment
- should have enough information for playing the game upon turning it on
- should not need to read a manual
- adhering to platform conventions and following trends can reduce learning curve

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### Control
- sense of control over their actions
- should be able to translate their intentions into actions
- should feel sense of control over the interface and game controls
- should be able to customize control
- should be able to customize gameplay to fit their style

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- Errors can break sense of control
- should not be able to make mistakes that hinders progress
- game should help negating errors
- perceive sense of impact onto the game world
- should have the feeling actions and decisions co-create the world
- players decisions should shape the world and gameplay

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- game shouldn't force the player to make unimportant decisions
- game world should react to player and remember passage through it
- changes player makes should be persistent
- games should hide that they are linear
- let the player feel they are in control what happens next
- should be able to solve problems the way they want
- no single optimal winning strategy (multiple instead)

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### Clear Goals
- overarching goal at beginning of game (most of the time intro scene)
- clear goals at appropriate times
- subgoals for each level
- flow is possible through immediate feedback
- frequent feedback for progression
- if they loose, feedback on why or how

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- give players scores to rank them selves and push for mastery
- always be able to identify score and status

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### Feedback
- interface and sound can be able to deliver feedback

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### Immersion
- the interface becomes invisible or unnoticed by the player
- affect their senses through elements such as audio and narrative
- storyline and background, telling them who their characters are and what is happening, which makes the players feel they are part of the story

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### Social Interaction
- not an element of flow
- can break immersion
- people usually don't roleplay
- reminder of real world
- still strong factor in enjoyment of games
- some people play games for social interaction

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## Dynamic Difficult Adjustment
- difficulty should change based on performance of the player
- not trivial implementing
- takes control from game designer which can cause more problems than designed difficulty
- very few shipped DDA games
- supportive element of flow, can't achieve it alone

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### example by Left 4 Dead:
- AI Director
- can alter difficulty by dropping hordes or special infected based on performance

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- good performance:
- progresses is fast, throws in SI (Special Infected) or hordes of Zombies to slow down
- Helping teammates (eg. sharing items) throws in extra items or needed items

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- bad performance:
- griefing (eg. Team killing) throws in SI or Tanks to break up the team
- progressing to slow, stretches out Hordes and fewer SI

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- Behavior changes as well based on chosen Difficulty
- more forgiving on easy than on Hard
- punishes more then rewarding on Hard etc.
- goes through phases, Build up; Peak; Relaxation
- keeps players engaged, pushes player to their limits and gives them breaks afterwards

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# Design Flow in Games

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### Passive Flow Adjustment
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- system oriented DDA
- iterative adjusting loop
- system should react based on collected data

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- still some problems
- Games don't read what players think, only input data are controls
- can't sense if the player is in flow or not
- performance doesn't mirror flow
- changes are based on rigid design
- different players enjoy different play styles or just fooling around --> System can't detect that

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### Active Flow Adjustment

- player feel a sense of control over the game
- offer players different activities (choices)
- different activities are more or less demanding
- different choices, different paces and difficulties
- choices must appear in high frequency

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- 

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- becomes potential interrupts of the game

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//TODO
### Example of Flow in a game
- Dwarf Fortress als gegenbeispiel für einfacher zugang
- Steuerung
- Grafik
- Kein Tutorial
- hohe learning curve

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https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of-human-computer-interaction/artifact
https://positivepsychology.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=147309463
https://left4dead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Director
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2009/ai_systems_of_l4d_mike_booth.pdf
https://aiandgames.com/in-the-directors-chair-left-4-dead/
https://www.flowskills.com/die-8-elemente-des-flow.html