Paper Info
Title
Reconciling Csikszentmihalyi’s Broader Flow Theory: With Meaning and Value in Digital Games
Abstract
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 u0026 Schreiber, 2009; Fullerton, Swain, u0026 Hoffman, 2008; Schell, 2008). However, Kubey u0026 Csikszentmihalyi (2002) have argued 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 paper 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 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 in 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 challenges 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 a move, 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.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.26503/todigra.v2i2.34
Trans. Digit. Games Res. Assoc.
DocType
Volume
Issue
Journal
2
2
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
John Hamon Salisbury100.34
Penda Tomlinson200.34