Learning, Doing, Flow, and Fun: Understanding Relationships Between Difficulty, Enjoyment and Skill Development in Games

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Poster Session: Game Studies Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This paper seeks to use the properties of games as an experimental workshop to gain insight and empirical validation of psychological processes connecting difficulty, learning and enjoyment. In particular, this paper will investigate potential alignment between Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) Flow theory, which suggests that enjoyment occurs when challenge and skill matches, and Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development, the gap between which can be done alone and which cannot be done at all.

In doing this, this paper reconceptualizes Flow as an ideal state where difficulty and skill match, with learning (the Zone of Proximal Development) as the state where difficulty slightly exceeds skill and doing as the state where skill slightly exceeds difficulty. To test this, this paper proposes a pretest-posttest quasi-experiment design using Super Mario World as a stimulus.

Authors

• Blake Wertz, Boston University

• Qiankun Zhong, Boston University