The author talks a lot about the addictiveness of the flow state, and how most players try to achieve thjs state to just stop thinking for a while. I found it interesting what the author said about the teacher trying to get their students to recognize the feeling of games, because that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do lately to counteract that state of not really taking things in and just passing through the game.
There’s a youtuber named “Any Austin” who really opened my eyes up to this. Now instead of doing the quests and advancing the game, I take my time with games. I actively get annoyed when games don’t give me some quiet time to not play the game, and I really appreciate the beauty of games beyind the gameplay.
I highly recommend everyone to try this out: pick your favourite game, preferably one with an actual game world you can move around in, rather than just a board like balatro, and just sit. Don’t play the game, just find something interesting and stare at it. Think about how it was made, and what purpose does it serve in the game. Keep doing this, just walk around your world and try to appreciate its existence. Stare at the skybox, the grass, the buildings, the mountains.
This has given me both a new appreciation for games, and a way to break free from the endless treadmill of going from one experience to the next, with no thought put into the inbetween. It’s a sort of mindfulness in a way, and something I feel has actively improved my real life rather than just distracted me from it. Now I find myself able to appreciate these small beauties and curiosities everywhere I go.
It’s hilarious that you say that because I literally just finished 100%ing Control the other day haha! I found it to be the perfect game for stopping and staring because of all the thought put into everything, and how many cool little details and experiences you can have by taking things slowly! I do 100% agree with you though, I wish they were way less aggressive with the enemies spawning. Thankfully when you get tired of it you can just turn on god mode and blast through them, but it’s certainly not an ideal solution.
Unfortunately, it’s an intentional design choice. You can see it in many, many other games too. Fact of the matter is, most players need constant stimulation or they drop off quick, so game designers specifically design their games so you never go without a new event for more than 5 minutes. You can see it especially well in games like Tears of the Kingdom, another game I love that has a godawful encounter system where you can’t go five steps without another enemy ambushing you!
It’s sadly something you aren’t going to escape from as long as you’re playing big budget games, which is doubly sad because big budget game worlds are usually extra fun to explore because they can afford to really flesh out their worlds! That’s why I appreciate games like Monster Hunter (specifically World and Wilds) which solve the issue by giving you those constanr encounters (back to back quests, running into monsters constantly out in the maps) but make it incredibly easy to just not engage and completely ignore them (most monsters not being instantly aggressive, ghillie mantle and skills that make monsters ignore you completely). This at least gives me hope that we can compromise between the stimulation bombardment and the tranquil admiration.