Call Of Duty 9: Digital Blogging-fare

  In this week’s blog I am going to talk about the concept of flow and how it is effective in playing video games.  As usual in my blogs I’ll start of by explaining what the main topic is of the week is. The concept of flow is ‘the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of activity.’- Reference from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology). The concept is further explained as being ‘In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields’.  

The concept of flow easily falls into place when talking about the use of video games and the effect it has on the players whilst playing. I find it that people necessarily like to be challenged but also want to enjoy themselves at the same time too so, the perfect incision to missing spot is video games. We go through a lot of different emotions and moods when playing games and, we most often take the outcome seriously even though we know it is just a game.  Like Gavin Stewart pointed out ‘Whilst playing a game of FIFA we tend to say we or I scored a goal. But when a chance is missed in the game, we straight away single out the player to distance ourselves away from that player, although we are still in control’.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is a Hungarian psychology professor, who moved to the United States when he was 22 years old. He is the man behind the concept and expresses the idea fully in a video on www.ted.com.  

The video is great as Mihaly himself explains exactly what he means from his own mouth so you have a greater understanding of the concept of flow rather, than just reading it from a book. The diagram representation of the flow, gives a clear interpretation on exactly what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi means. I also found more information on the subject on the internet where Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura, go into detail about the concept of flow and supports the claims with some analysis: http://myweb.stedwards.edu/michaelo/2349/paper1/ConceptOfFlow.pdf