Trigger Happy
Pleasure increases up to a point according to difficulty. So it seems very likely that one crucial component of videogaming pleasure is in fact a certain level of anxiety. This sounds counterintuitive but is supported by simple experiments that report increased heart rate and adrenaline levels among videogame users. And my own experience is that even when demands and skill are generally matched, there are periods during the game when I am aware of a temporary, small mismatch between
Now what about the “feelings of complete control” that are said to accompany a flow experience? I think there is, again, something wrong with this way of putting it. We have said that videogames provide a particular pleasure of control, especially when they offer rich controls whose interaction allows for a great deal of variation, and when the controls result in amplification of input. How does this compare with the case of playing a piece of music at the piano? Here, too, the interaction of controls (keys and pedals) is a “deep” one, offering a potentially infinite array of sonorities; here, too, amplification of input is at work,
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