Contextualizing Flow in Games

Flow, the concept developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi over the last forty years or so (see Csikszentmihalyi 1975) has been invoked quite often with respect to the way players engage with digital games (e.g. Baron 2012; Cowley et al. 2008; Sweetser and Wyeth 2005; Brathwaite & Schreiber, 2009; Fullerton, Swain, & Hoffman, 2008; Schell, 2008). However Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi (2002) argue that ‘video games’ are in fact likely to promote undesirable experiences of a kind Csikszentmihalyi refers to as ‘entropy’ or unstructured and unsatisfying life experiences. This presentation explores Csikszentmihalyi’s greater thesis and examines how a broader reading of Flow theory can potentially help us understand Flow like engagements beyond the simple mechanistic view of challenge and reward sometimes encountered in the literature. The main thrust of the argument made here is to explicitly introduce personally expressed cultural values into the conditions of Flow. By doing so we can then provide a value centric analysis and design approach, similar to that of Cockton’s (2004; 2012) proposal to include values into general software design. That is the very nature of challenges and rewards needs to be considered in order to investigate how overcoming or receiving such would be positively or negatively perceived by individuals from particular cultures holding particular values. Thus we hope that we have dealt with the apparent contradiction in using Csikszentmihalyi’s concept in the study of games despite his criticism of such, and have provided some indication of how we can deal with unspecified rewards and the differential perception and engagement with potentially equivalent challenges while still supporting the accepted thesis of Flow

Video games as meaningful entertainment experiences

We conducted an experiment to examine individuals’ perceptions of enjoyable and meaningful video games and the game characteristics and dimensions of need satisfaction associated with enjoyment and appreciation. Participants (N = 512) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that asked them to recall a game that they found either particularly fun or particularly meaningful, and to then rate their perceptions of the game that they recalled. Enjoyment was high for both groups, though appreciation was higher in the meaningful- than fun-game condition. Further, enjoyment was most strongly associated with gameplay characteristics and satisfaction of needs related to competency and autonomy, whereas appreciation was most strongly associated with story characteristics and satisfaction of needs related to insight and relatedness

Investing in Impact: Media Summits Reveal Pressing Needs, Tools for Evaluating Public Interest Media

Outlines the case for assessing the impact of public interest media projects, impact evaluation needs, and five new assessment tools, including a unified social media dashboard, model formats and processes to communicate outcomes, and common survey tools

The Viral Concept: the Winning Ticket of the Romanian Online Advertising Industry

The connection between the steady development of the Internet in Romania in the last five years, as channel of transmitting the marketing message, and the viral concept, as method of transmitting the message, may become the winning ticket for the Romanian online advertising market. Thus, in the current socio-economic context, any company who wishes to be successful in the virtual space cannot ignore the viral marketing techniques for several reasons. Firstly, we are talking about the profile of Internet users who tend to constitute a new social group. Secondly, we are talking about the thirst for information. And, last but not least, we are talking about the appetite for online chatting, statistics showing that 62% of the Roma-nian Internet users consider it a very "savory" information channel. This article tries to explain, in brief, what viral marketing is, which are its peculiarities, advantages, risks, as well as the limitations of its use, and which the strategies of a viral marketing campaign are. We will illustrate by giving successful examples from the Romanian online market.viral marketing, Internet, promotion, campaign.

Game On? Smoking Cessation Through the Gamification of mHealth: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study

BACKGROUND: Finding ways to increase and sustain engagement with mHealth interventions has become a challenge during application development. While gamification shows promise and has proven effective in many fields, critical questions remain concerning how to use gamification to modify health behavior. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to investigate how the gamification of mHealth interventions leads to a change in health behavior, specifically with respect to smoking cessation. METHODS: We conducted a qualitative longitudinal study using a sample of 16 smokers divided into 2 cohorts (one used a gamified intervention and the other used a nongamified intervention). Each participant underwent 4 semistructured interviews over a period of 5 weeks. Semistructured interviews were also conducted with 4 experts in gamification, mHealth, and smoking cessation. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematic analysis undertaken. RESULTS: Results indicated perceived behavioral control and intrinsic motivation acted as positive drivers to game engagement and consequently positive health behavior. Importantly, external social influences exerted a negative effect. We identified 3 critical factors, whose presence was necessary for game engagement: purpose (explicit purpose known by the user), user alignment (congruency of game and user objectives), and functional utility (a well-designed game). We summarize these findings in a framework to guide the future development of gamified mHealth interventions. CONCLUSIONS: Gamification holds the potential for a low-cost, highly effective mHealth solution that may replace or supplement the behavioral support component found in current smoking cessation programs. The framework reported here has been built on evidence specific to smoking cessation, however it can be adapted to health interventions in other disease categories. Future research is required to evaluate the generalizability and effectiveness of the framework, directly against current behavioral support therapy interventions in smoking cessation and beyond

Points of Reflection: A Case for Moral Engagement Across Video Game Time and Space

In the field of video game studies, meaningful action and flow are upheld as primary targets of game design, and key factors in many ontological definitions of what games can and should be. Yet, games are not all action. Within most games one encounters numerous pauses and interruptions of various kinds, including the much-maligned “cut-scenes” that lead or force the player out of an active role at certain moments. Furthermore, not all actions are goal-directed. If they are, they are not necessarily pragmatic. These pauses, interruptions, and nuanced goals are often overlooked, if not actively derided, in the field of game studies. In short, ideas about how players stop and reflect, how their goals and experiences take on emotional and/or moral valences, are under-represented. My work argues that moral reflection does occur even in mainstream games, and that it tends to happen in connection with the very moments game scholars often overlook—in the pauses before or after actions, in the moments of awe or realization, when the controller has been set down or the keyboard pushed away, and yes, even during cut-scenes. Such moments may invite the player into a state of moral reflection, but for this state of moral reflection to be poignant and memorable to the player these moments must also involve a consideration of differing values. Finally, how a game structures the player’s experience of time, from receiving quests to setting out into the game world, from pauses to demanding challenges, and even through the layout of video game spaces lends these points of reflection their crucial impact

An Experiential Comparative Tool for Board Games

In the field of game studies, contemporary board games have until now remained relatively unexplored. The recent years have allowed us to witness the emergence of the occasional academic texts focusing on board games – such as Eurogames (Woods, 2012), Characteristics of Games (Elias et al. 2013), and most recently Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games (Booth, 2015). The mentioned authors all explore board games from diverse viewpoints but none of these authors present a viable and practical analytical tool to allow us to examine and differentiate one board game from another. In this vein, this paper seeks to present an analytical comparative tool intended specifically for board games. The tool builds upon previous works (Aarseth et al. 2003; Elias et al. 2012; and Woods 2012) to show how four categories – rules, luck, interaction and theme – can interact on different levels to generate diverse gameplay experiences. Such a tool allows to score games objectively and separately in each of the categories to create a combined gameplay experience profile for each board game. Following this, the paper proceeds to present numerous practical examples of contemporary board games and how it can be used from a design perspective and an analytical perspective alike