Unlocking a new gameplay mode for yourself
by Graham Walker; Professional Psychotherapist and Video Game Lover
Tags: Psychology/ emotions/ mindfulness/ gaming
Spoilers for the tutorial area of Arranger, tiny spoilers for Outer Wilds
I'm playing the game 'Arranger' on my mobile phone. I move my character through a dungeon and come up to two bells. There is third bell which appears broken and my character says I need to have all three. I go out of a back door and someone says something about a cat and I move down. A cat is blocked by a monster which I hit with a sword which destroys it. I take the cat to the dungeon and can ring the two bells with the cat bell unlocking the next area. "Cute", I think for a moment, before swiftly moving on to the next area.
Wait, this isn't right... Let's go back and do that again.
I'm playing the game 'Arranger' on my mobile. It's a game where you don't move the character but instead move the tiles of the world- whenever you swipe up, down, left or right the whole row or column of world tiles slides up, down, left or right with you. As you swipe the objects of the world tilt as you literally shift the ground under their feet.
I’m in an underground area. It is dark but not foreboding; I feel no sense to rush or get out. And a good thing too as there’s a puzzle to solve. I see two bells and a third broken bell. I slide my character over to one of the bells; I move it and it lets out a pleasant jingle; a large and strange door also cracks open as I do this before slamming shut again. I jingle the bell again; I see that a third of the door opens. 2 bells and a broken one. Looks like I need a third bell.
I slide out a side door and back to an over-world. It is bright and peaceful. A trio of guitars play in the background. They come with squeaks as the guitarist is heard sliding their hand along the fretboard. A nice touch which could easily have been removed but feels well placed in a game about sliding through the world.
Clouds float slowly overhead and leaves lazily fall through the air. Gorgeously hand-painted images sprawl across the background, not only adding to the beauty of the world but also the lore with environmental details like showing a wall around the city and an ominous tower in the distance with clouds or smoke swirling around its peak.
I move across to talk to an NPC*. Their character design is fun and interesting; a squat, jolly chap with a beaming smile.
As we talk speech bubbles wiggle playfully as they hang in the air, disappearing with a pleasing "boink" sound. I see a small cat who I had met previously. It has a bell on its collar that jingles as you push it around the world. My third bell, perhaps, but it is guarded by a monster; a sort of ugly, purple Chinese Dragon. A few items in the game I have seen so far are purple and don’t shift around the world like everything else.
There's a sword near it, which I can't equip but that I can shift around the world as I move the tiles around. A bit of light Rubiks cube re-arranging of the ground later and the sword vanquishes the monster and I take my prized cat back to the dungeon with the two bells. A bit more jiggery work to get everything in position and I move the world to simultaneously ring the three bells and voilà the door opens!
Before I move on to the next area I pause for a moment and reflect back on my journey so far- I feel sense of satisfaction in solving the puzzle and a small feeling of intrigue from using an over-world object to solve an underworld puzzle; the use of the cat was a cute, playful touch too. I’m enjoying my time with the game and feel motivated to play more.
So, what’s the difference between these two summaries of the same section of the same game? Yes, one is obviously longer and more detailed but what is happening for the players who can have these two perfectly valid experiences of the same thing?
I would argue that the second person is what I would call playing the game mindfully, an idea I think is vital to understand in getting the most out of playing games; to wring them of all the goodness the developers put in there for us, and to hopefully appreciate as well as enjoy the experience even more ourselves. But what do I mean by gaming ‘mindfully’?
Mindfulness is an approach that readers of this may or may not be familiar with, but to take it from its basics, it can be defined as:
“The awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to things as they are” (Williams, Segal, & Kabat-Zinn, 2007).
Now let’s break down some of the core ideas in this further to help us more fully understand:
- Focus on the present (as in choosing not to think about the past or present, but our moment-to-moment experiences)
- To do this on purpose (meaning we are intending to do it, and we are choosing to paying attention to what our senses are receiving at this time; sights, sounds, smells, tastes, emotions and our thoughts).
- Without judgment (without criticising the experience, either positively or negatively; just accepting it for what it is).
John Kabat-Zinn is seen as the father of the mindfulness movement
So what this is getting at is that by truly focussing on our moment-to-moment experiences we can enter a mode of awareness that is truly attentive to what is going on. This is something akin to how people may describe the concept of ‘clearing your mind’ during meditation.
As an approach to take to various aspects of life research suggests that mindfulness can be truly beneficial. It has bee shown to- among other things- help manage stress, improve our quality of life, make better decisions, and even improve our immune function. For gaming, it can literally open up new ways of playing.
Think of a stressful situation at work; how much does focussing on our feelings of frustration, how uncomfortably tense we are, and our thoughts of how awful the situation is benefit in staying level-headed and making decisions. How much does sitting in our heads and worrying about what we have to do the next day and if we make a mistake what will people think of us help us to enjoy and appreciate the walk we are on while thinking all that?
What does this mean for gaming? Well first of all, reflecting back of my two summaries of a journey through Arranger’s tutorial area outlined at the start of this article if I asked which of these appeared more enjoyable and engaging you would obviously say the second one.
As I reflect on my own personal experiences in gaming I can see a number of times where being more mindful would have made me enjoy a game more but also likely make me a better gamer.
I remember playing ‘Inscryption’ recently. It’s a great game; I loved it. However, I hadn’t realised that it was a game split into three distinct acts. When I got to the end of act one I thought I had completed the game and my head started thinking about which game on my backlog I was going to play next. Then as the next act began suddenly a switch flicked in my head and all I could think about was how much longer the game was and when I would be able to move on to the next game I had mentally chosen to play. The final two acts were still enjoyable but they became somewhat of a slog and a barrier to getting to the next thing. Stepping back, I can see that sometimes I'm in such a rush to complete a game I forget to stop and actually play the game- to notice the aesthetics, what I am doing, the process, all the wonderful touches the developers added that enhance the experience.
Another game that I have been playing recently is Balatro (I guess I am going through my deck-building rogue-like phase…). Again, I had a great time with this game but realise there were periods I would just be playing without paying any attention at all to what I was doing. Instead, I would be thinking about what else I had to do, or what was for dinner… or just nothing. I see now that sometimes I just play games so totally mindlessly, consuming them like some junk food with little thought about the experience. These games are not junk food and a disservice is being done to the experience of them by treating them so. Really, it’s also a disservice to myself and how I am using my limited time on this earth!
On the other hand, I can think of how being mindful in my gaming literally made the experience better. Another game I played this year was Outer Wilds, or at least the DLC. At one point of the game I remember feeling stumped and not knowing how to move forward. I could feel frustration rise inside me but then mentally stepped back and told myself to slow down and pay attention to what I was doing. I spent time really exploring the nooks and crannies and examining the world’s geometry* and that’s when I finally noticed something that I had been over-looking the whole time; a corridor hidden from plain sight that gave me my path forward in the game. Undoubtedly I only noticed this because of my choice to pay attention to the game and the experience, and not be sucked into my emotional response.
Really we see mindful gaming all the time, it’s just no one calls it that. Every time we see someone on Twitch die to a boss during a stream of Elden Ring and react passively; no getting angry, instead just getting ready for their next attempt. Here they are observing their play without judgment (or very little). Compare this to someone who rage quits and throws their controller across the room. One of these might be more fun to view, but what is the better way to play; the more enjoyable; the less stress-inducing?
Looking at Elden Ring again, I remember the recent review on Eurogamer for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. As I read through the great review from Alexis Ong* I could clearly see that this was someone who had truly paid attention to the game and soaked in the world and all it had to offer. That focus on her experience of the game clearly enhanced her enjoyment and brought the review to life for me reading it!
As a final example, I would point to a YouTuber like Razbuten; a video essayist for video games. I think about his video on Outer Wilds where he shared his experiences of tracking a satellite through space. It’s a wonderful poignant video that is well worth your time. The main thing I took from his essay was how he really allowed himself to become immersed in a tiny moment of the game; doing this not only allowed him to develop a greater appreciation for the game but helped him reflect on his own thoughts and feelings in that moment in a way that deepened his own understanding of himself. That moment for him was a tiny window of time that could so easily have been brushed past and ignored, but he took that time, noticed his feelings and felt like a better person because of it.
You have likely been playing videogames wrong all this time; enjoying the games, but blasting through them and moving on to the next thing without much though.
Slow down. Take notice. Pay attention to the moment and unlock a new gameplay mode for yourself.
That’s how I feel about this. You might feel different and that is OK.
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Notes
NPC is a non-playable character; another character in the world who you can't directly control
'Geometry' refers to the shape of the level, particularly within 3D games; it is the areas of the game you walk on and around, like the ground and the buildings.
Some corners of the internet criticised this article for being simplistic. For what it's worth that isn't a reading of the piece I would agree with.
Reference
Williams, M., Teasdale, J., Segal, Z., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (2007). The mindful way through depression: Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness. Guilford Press.
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