Edited by author 10-23-2005 02:47 PM
Motivational Analysis Exercise: Snood (Csikszentmihalyi Flow)

The player was a twenty-five year old male that is interested in all types of games, but especially video games. With that in mind, he was already accustomed to general principles regarding software games and not afraid to try it out.

We reviewed the different responses on the matrix and made sure that he had a chance to ask questions on any of them. His initial response before starting the game was “uncertain” as this was a game that was new to him and did not know the basic goal behind the game. The following are the rest of the responses:

0 Uncertain (not sure what game is going to be like)
2 Uncertain (determined a couple of “rules” for play)
4 Content (rules seem to be working)
6 Annoyed (some unexpected things happened)
8 Frustrated (can’t figure out what brings wall down)
10 Engaged (starting to figure out combinations)
12 Excited (got to within 2 rows of monsters at the top)
14 Pleased (figured out how to drop multiple monsters by connecting above them in pattern)
16 Engaged (ready to play next round and beat last score)
18 Excited (beat last score)
20 Excited (beat last score by a bunch)

After debriefing with the player, I referred to the Csikszentmihalyi article (my assigned theorist) for analysis of the process and responses. The player was uncertain for the first few rounds what the object of the game was. He identified that you were supposed to shoot things and that combinations of 3 eliminated all of them, however, the objectives were not clear from just playing around with the game. It was frustrating as an observer to not be able to go to the help menu to find out more about the game. The player did not seem to be interested in getting “help” even though he voiced frustration and annoyance at least one time each.

The player did seem to reach flow about 12 minutes into the process. When I asked him to stop and respond at the 12-minute mark, it took a couple of times before he actually heard me and could comment. It seemed that at this point, the level of difficulty and the information he knew thus far about the strategy matched perfectly and put him into the “flow.” He did tend to come in and out of flow as there were occasional kinks in the “rules” that he had determined that threw him for a loop. At those moments, he experienced annoyance or frustration and the difficulty level threw him into the A3 section outside of the flow channel. It didn’t last for long, though and he was back in the flow or approaching it. He moved in and out of the flow more frequently at the beginning and then less so towards the end of the 20 minute session.

After the 20 minutes were completed, he continued to play for another half hour and became “addicted” as he put it. He is ready to move on to the next level of challenge.