Pacing & Progression

Guide info#

Tiny: 2-4 minutes

• Summary

• • Pacing refers to the manner in which the player’s attention is grabbed and maintained. Closely related to pacing is the flow state which refers to the state of extreme concentration maintained on one task.

• • Important aspects to induce flow are; Having Clear Goals and Rewards; Rapid Feedback; and Adequate Challenges.

• • Micro flow is the short-term version of flow, occurring on a second basis in gameplay. Important factors to creating good micro flow are Rhythm, Encouragement, and Positive Feedback.

1: The Flow State

When we describe Pacing, another term correlated to it is the Flow State. The Flow State is a mental state where you put intense concentration into one task and lose focus on everything else. You’ve probably heard this called “the zone” before.

In terms of gameplay, it’s very effective in making the player enjoy your level. Research suggests that when you’re in the zone, you’re more persistent at what you’re doing and have higher dopamine levels. This persistence and willingness to engage with the level are exactly what we want our pacing to accomplish.

When making the gameplay, you’ll find that pacing is critical to induce flow and get a player’s attention. There are three factors that are crucial for flow that you need to know:

• Clear Goals & Rewards: When playing a level, you should have a good understanding of what to do to complete it, and those tasks should feel approachable instead of daunting. You should also get rewarded for making progress towards that goal.

• Rapid Feedback: You should know immediately if your actions will have a good effect or a bad one. This helps a lot with learning what to do and what to avoid.

• Adequate Challenge: There should be a good balance between your skill and the level’s difficulty. This helps prevent it from being too boring or too stressful.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the first application of flow: capturing the player’s attention.

2: Micro Flow

Micro flow is a form of short-term flow that occurs from one second to the next as you play. It’s the main consideration when you’re building your gameplay.

As you may expect, the prior factors – clear goals, rapid feedback, and adequate challenge – are important to develop good pacing at this stage. However, there are some other factors that are important for micro flow.

• Rhythm: Try to design the level’s clicks to fit a pattern. Repetition is a powerful tool that makes the brain more responsive to flow. It’s also part of why sync is so effective, but that’s a discussion for the Sync & Rhythm guide.

• Encouragement: Your level should give the feeling whatever is done makes a sense of progression. This means that as the level creator, you can sometimes cheat the player a little bit and give them more room for error. This will be discussed more in the Fairness guide.

• Positive Feedback: Making the player feel good will keep them coming back in the short term. In your level, you can use visuals like decorations that respond to the player and encourage them. This will once again be discussed in-depth in the future.

**Research **and Examples

@koma5

Proofreading

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Sources

• https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-flow-applied-to-game-design • https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs/rational-design-part-1---the-player • https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/flow-state#effects-on-brain

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