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Mission Statement

Flow Theory has been established since 1980s, it has been applied to various fields for designing better human experiences. One of its biggest achievements is the defination of Flow Zone:

In order to maintain the Flow experience, people need to adjust their experience, balance the challenges to their abilities, keep themselves in a safe zone where pyschic entropies like anxiety and boredom would not occur.

flow zone

Due to the special relationship between challenge and abilities, Flow has been used in fields like sports and tutoring. Today it is also used in evaluating video game experiences.

However, there is only a few Flow researches out there that deal with the actual implementating of Flow inside video games. Methodologies that help game designers realize and maintain players' Flow experiences are not well defined.

The goal for this site and Jenova Chen's MFA thesis research is to explore and develop different design techniques to enhance the Flow experience in video games. It includes genetic Flow design theories & processes, analysis of the existing games' Flow system and examples of how to implement Flow with these techniques.

To read the full thesis paper, click here.

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