flOw stalled until 2007

I was very surprised to see Sony pick out such a desirable title. The once-university-thesis-turned-game-phenom really is a cool little game, and I'd gladly pay out the dollars for it.

Alas, it's going to take a lot more than a good arcade game to make the PS3 Hub a success.

You forgot the quotes around the last paragraph, since it's obviously from a press release.

I won't mind waiting. I played the PC flash version and it was pretty relaxing a fun. The addition of multiplayer would be very interesting.

Hey, it's the PS3. What's one more delay associated with it?

just played the flash version... pretty interesting and simple game, a game i will probably play just to relax, but will probably lose track of time playing

the concept kinda reminds me of Spore.

DAmn! it was the one downloadable game i wanted real bad. I just got mine yesterday and i went download crazy.

So this is some kind of Geometry Wars-inspired high-tech arcade game, right?

Number 7-

Not at all. And actually flOw was created before Geometry wars, as a flash game, which came from a scientific thesis:P There is no shooting involved in the game, but there is the same kind of movemonet and a pick up and play feel of diving deeper and deeper into the digital sea the flOw bug or creature or whatever it is gets larger and larger

Actually, Geometry Wars has been created way back in 2003. Not that it matters because flOw is a completely different game.

look i know this is slightly off topic but does anyone know if there will be any original content on the Wii for download? Old games are all well and good but I love stuff like flOw and geometry wars and would be nice to know that Nintendo are doing something similar

@Ben: So long as the stuff they are offering now sells, nothing new will show up.

"Instead of coming out in December, as initially planned, the title will now be released in early January 2007."

That's SonySpeak for, it will now be released sometime around May or July - or whenever we really feel like it, because it's not like we know how to hit our originally planned release dates anyway.

And of course, if you're in Europe, since you're not part of the world, it'll be released 6 months later.

Why is my tongue so firmly in cheek? Because I've been in stores this past week that had PS3s sitting on the shelves, unsold - while people were walking in asking for Wiis, and when it was pointed out that they had PS3s in stock, the customers - to a person - all said No thanks, it's not worth it.

Think about it for a second. Joe Wal-Mart - the average American consumer, not the gamer fanatic that you see on here - says that your product is not worth it. I hear comments on price all the time, because I have to explain green box / white box, and why the $399 system for playing games is worth it. I've helped sell many, many consoles this holiday season - but it's just sad to see the PS3 (3 of them, actually) sitting in the case at Wal-Mart - and they've been there ALL WEEK.

@12 Rep

That never actually happened, did it?

I don't doubt people were looking for the Wii, but there were no unsold PS3s. C'mon.

> but it's just sad to see the PS3 (3 of them, actually) sitting in the case at Wal-Mart - and they've been there ALL WEEK.

I'm still wondering what this has to do at all with flOw.

HAHA Wait another PS3 game is delayed?! Tell me exactly why i would buy this doorstop?! It does play games right? Wait a sec...are there any games out for it yet?!

HAHA! Nice work Fony...oh yeah if you haven't heard your PS3 is Time Mag's BUST OF THE YEAR!! HAHAHA!

This week my boss just picked up a PS3 and yesterday he got a second one for his son.
So yeah @14, they are on the shelves.

i didnt think the flash game was anything special at all.

thesis? lol

its friggin snake with new graphics.

It's just not challenging making fun of Sony anymore. They make it too easy! I love that they keep punishing their fanboys with release date antics. It's almost a comedy skit at this point. Just like dogs, they run to the master that beats them the hardest.

FlOw huh? * yawn * I'm still trying to figure out why I would ever want to play a "relaxing" video game.

I hope they will be using the delay to make the game fun.

Okay...I know this is easy fodder to jump on in terms of delays and PS3 criticisms, but I'd like to chime in on what this game is and why it's not just a "relaxing" Snake clone. To call it as such means either you haven't played the Flash game, or as you'll see in a second, you weren't experiencing "flow".

Here's a fun name. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (sounds like cheek-sent-me-high) developed the theory of flow to explain the behaviors and characteristics of someone engrossed in an activity. Read the next eight qualities of a flow experience and you'll see why this game was used as a THESIS for designing flow and dynamic difficulty adjustment into a video game.

1. A challenge activity that requires skills
2. The merging of action and awareness
3. Clear goals
4. Direct feedback
5. Concentration on the task at hand
6. The sense of control
7. The loss of self-consciousness
8. The transformation of time

Want to play slow? Go for it if it's the challenge that's right for you. Too easy? Play faster and fight the more difficult enemies. Simple concept, and done correctly, a lot of fun. The whole point of the flow theory (and the flOw game) is trying to find the sweet spot, literally the "Flow Zone" where you are not too stressed by the game and not too bored by the activity. The important distinction is that you lose yourself in the activity, ignoring time, external thought, etc.

The guy's website is actually interesting reading: http://www.jenovachen.com/flowingames/

Flow Theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

flow bored me no matter how i played.

its still just snake that lets you change levels on a whim.

I agree with notsonic (21), and I have to say that wakusei (19) is biting the bullshit bullet pretty hard.

flOw is an incredibly boring "game" that masquerades as an experiment in human-digital interaction theory. I just graduated from a similar program, and I can honestly tell you that 95% of art, theory, and design grad programs are utter horse-shit.

Those "eight qualities of a flow experience" are fucking retarded. Guess what? That's EVERY FUCKING VIDEO GAME EVER MADE. It also applies to most jobs, and in some respect to any engaging media experience. Call me an anti-intellectial if you want, but this sort of annoying over-analyzation of simple, everyday events is useless in every respect. Yes, theoretically this sort of theory can lead us to a better understanding of the things we do, and thus theoretically help us find better/more fulfilling ways to do them, but that is almost never the case. And flOw is a perfect example, in that the average gamer/player finds it boring as hell, and the only people who enjoy it are elitists and those who know the theory behind it in advance.

This is just a crappy version the first level of SPORE, people.

Shore -
"I don't doubt people were looking for the Wii, but there were no unsold PS3s. C'mon."

Yep. I could've had two 20GB and one 60GB PS3 if I'd wanted them - they were just sitting in the game case.

The problem is that, once you get outside of the larger communities, into the more rural parts of America - there's just not the gamer population to support the spending. So, to pick a town at randon, while the 9 Wal-Marts that are within the 435 Beltway around Kansas City may be sold out - you may find that the stores in Olathe, Gardner, or Paola were restocked like all stores were - and haven't sold out. (I'm picking those stores at random simply because I'm NOT telling you where the stores I service are - some of my posts here in the past have stretched my NDA a bit.)

22

Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling it the greatest game ever made. The "bullet" that I am biting is the ideas behind the theory. If you read the creator's webpage he's trying to make something that non-gamers can pick up and experience some level of immersion with. The whole point is that you are engrossed in it...so if you don't like the game or any other activity it isn't flow. And you're absolutely right, technically "EVERY FUCKING VIDEO GAME EVER MADE" benefits from flow theory, but not "EVERY FUCKING VIDEO GAME EVER MADE" is designed with it in mind.

It's interesting to see someone put that kind of thought into their game design. You call it over-analyzation but you can't deny that you have some interest, some hobby or whatever that you lose yourself in. But someone criticizing elitism and then declaring that 95% of art, theory, and design grad programs are utter horse-shit is probably reliable for some quality hyperbole in the first place.

Wakusei, you kind of had me for a minute there, until your post just fell apart at the end. I think you meant to say "responsible" rather than "reliable" but it's difficult to tell. Alas!

I've read the creator's website, and I think he fails at what he's trying to do, which suggests to me that his theories are deeply flawed. What flOw lacks is the emotional grab that gets a player engaged with the object they see on the screen - that makes them feel like what they do in the game *matters* and makes them feel that the avatar is a part of them. Since - in its attempt at universality - flOw deliberately lacks any form of narrative outside of that generated by the user (basically it doesn't have a "story") it has no built-in hook to pull a casual non-gamer into its world. The hook in this case is the thesis & theory, which obviously a casual non-gamer will have no interest in. FlOw is interesting in the context of a museum setting, a theory book, or a thesis (something that is particularly obvious when you consider the very design-world trendy graphics), but not as a tool for pulling non-gamers into gaming.

If you want to stick with story-less games, TETRIS has more engagement for a casual gamer than flOw does, and can keep people interested for far longer. And guess what? It wasn't designed with flow theory in mind.

For non-gamers in particular, they need to feel that they have a *reason* to pick up the controls of a game and start playing.
What's the reason to start playing flOw? Why should a player care about the outcome?

Unfortunately – in the early thesis-related version of flOw – there isn't one. And they shouldn't.

Say, doesn't the Wii Opera browser (slated to drop in ~3 days) support Flash? Is there any theoretical reason I can't be playing Fl0w this weekend on my Wii?


Hrm, must go start schemeing...

Release it for Wii you idiots!!

"For non-gamers in particular, they need to feel that they have a *reason* to pick up the controls of a game and start playing.
What's the reason to start playing flOw? Why should a player care about the outcome?"

And yet you cite Tetris in the paragraph preceeding it. wow.

You just sound like someone with an axe to grind. I like flow, it's not the greatest game in the world, but it was an interesting diversion in my subjective opinion. You don't, and you're just reaching for reasons that don't necessarily apply.