Entering "The Zone"...

[stompy]

Hey guys, I think I found out [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29#Video_games] what you guys are talking about.

I don't remember actually entering a state of flow, due to my horrible memory, but I think there have been a few moments, which reflecting on, seem to be out of my usual capacity. The first one was in Halo 3, where I ended up getting the '10 kills in a row' medal, a big thing for. Also, I also aced the 'sphere breaker' game in Final Fantasy X-2, a game that I really suck at.

 

[Lex Darko]

I think it's pretty clear how to cause this type of experience. I've been able to do it for a while now, but it isn't easy and doesn't always work completely.

If you all have noticed that almost all the experiences mentioned here were during high tension moments often when the person was on the losing team when the player wasn't frustrated to the point of losing focus.

The other common situation is when the activity you are performing is so involved and requires large amounts of focus that during these tension moments your skills take over and it feels like you are on auto pilot, but really you're not which I think is part of why some people fall out of it easily.

What I've noticed for myself to experience being "in the zone" it needs to be during a high tension moment where I am trying to complete a single or very few focused goal or goals. This is easy in video games especially in shooters where eliminating the enemy team is the only primary goal that any one single person can directly effect.

So during those tense moments, I make sure I stay clam. Not allowing myself to get frustrated to the point of any focus braking anger and make sure I that whatever game I'm playing that there is still a chance to win. If there isn't a chance to win you're more likely to give up than to refocus. Staying optimistic about your chance to win is important.

About the crashing, I notice these moments require a lot of energy and the more complex the task the more energy required. For me it's like driving 100mph on the highway, you can only do it so long before it wears you out.

Of course all I've mentioned as far as I know only works for myself and is only based on what I have personally experienced. But I don't overdose on caffeine and stimulants to get in the zone I just use the situation I'm in to bring it only naturally knowing the mood I need to be in to induce it that way I don't have a huge crash even though I do end up feeling a little tired afterward.

 

[Corporal Fitz.]

COD4, Gears, and Halo sometimes but usually they were short bursts that I don't remember clearly, the only thing I remember about my 21 kill streak in COD4 was that it happened on Downpour and I called in a helicopter at some point. The only other one I remember was dragging my team through the mud en route to a comeback victory in Wet Work going 38 - 13.

Hopefully I pull a big zone when Gears 2 Hits the shelves.

 

[stompy]

Uh, just to add more to this discussion, I believe the causes of getting into 'the zone' are a mix of:
CNS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system], it controls the release of hormones during stressful events, such as adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Adrenaline - It explains the sudden boost in reaction times, as well as the increase in skill/ability. People have mentioned that the brain could mistake what's going on in the game as a fight-or-flight response [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response], and react accordingly. Same as our ancestors, and same as our descendants.
Noradrenaline [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noradrenaline] - Another hormone, like adrenaline, it increases heart rate, the amount of glucose the body has access to, and the increase of bloodflow to muscles.

 

[Shiroi_Okami]

Uh, just to add more to this discussion, I believe the causes of getting into 'the zone' are a mix of:
CNS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system], it controls the release of hormones during stressful events, such as adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Adrenaline - It explains the sudden boost in reaction times, as well as the increase in skill/ability. People have mentioned that the brain could mistake what's going on in the game as a fight-or-flight response [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response], and react accordingly. Same as our ancestors, and same as our descendants.
Noradrenaline [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noradrenaline] - Another hormone, like adrenaline, it increases heart rate, the amount of glucose the body has access to, and the increase of bloodflow to muscles.

True, but my mind is quite th eopposite... I usually go away. I don't get hyper active reflexes, my mind usually just wanders away and comes back some unspecified time later of it's own accord. I certainly don't notice time slowing down as I do for an adrenaline rush (except occassionally in Halo or some other similar FPS).

True, its not quite like an adrenalin rush. unlike adrenalin, which causes you to become faster and stronger, but you really notice the effect, its quite a feeling. this 'Zone' phenomenon is quite different. There's no 'rush' to it, its just something that happens, and you only realise it once you have snapped out of it. (mostly) sometimes people can know that they are in the zone and stay in there, but usually not for long. and unlike adrenalin, which is a hormonal reaction, which always lasts at least a certain amount of time, the 'zone' can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the circumstances. a nose itch might break the spell. whereas with adrenalin a nose itch would likely go ignored.

 

[Cooper42]

I'm not sure I agree with stompy.

It's more of a non-cognitive, or otherwise pre-concious state of game playing.

I used to get something very similar to 'the Zone' I ocasionally get with FPS games as I did when I was an audiotypist.

Most of us can probably type without thinking about it; but can probably remember a time when it was a fully concious, slower process.

FPS games are so reflex-based. It basicially becomes a form of pattern recognition; is the thing in the crosshair another player? If so, click.

That sort of reflex, alongside the moving around (often /very/ familiar) levels stops needing any fully concious engagement after enough practice.

I imagine piano players and athletes get something similar. It'd be incredibly difficult to play some piano pieces if you had to conciously think about every hit of the keys, the same for anyone running the hurdles - imagine trying to conciously think about the placing of every foot, the distance form the hurdle, the jump etc.

Our concsiousness can only run at a certain speed, can only process information so fast, can only deal with a certain number of things at once (roughly around seven). Whatsmore, it often lags behind - but that's another discussion.

As such, I think the 'Zone' is more akin to the pre-concious (though not necessarily entirely non-concious) state of action that piano players, athletes, audio typists and other professionals reach whereby certain muscular and reflex actions become pre-concious.

 

[Conqueror Kenny]

this happens to me when i play DMC sometimes i am getting destroyed by simple packs of demons and then i get annoyed with it and stop paying much attention and end up killing masave hordes of the beasts with ease and the bosses just seem like idiots running into my attacks but when i let somone else fight the same boss they ever get better or i was doing really wel without rally realising

 

[Scolar Visari]

I find it near impossible to describe the zone to anyone outside of gaming. Even describing it to you guys is hard. Unlike some I can notice the "Zone" and one of the few signs is that people seem to move a hell of a lot slower in games. A few times I've watched tracers in R6V move by me slow enough I could track them. My hands seem to move of their own accord and my crosshairs seem to snap to enemies before the instant I see them. I find myself cutting through the enemy team before they can even react to my presence. To me the "Zone" is a beautiful experience that comes and goes when it feels like it.

 

[portuga-man]

happens to me frequently.

Then my brother shows up, screams "HEY!", laughs as the controller jumps from my hands (or when i jump, in case i'm on the pc), calls me an addict, and goes somewhere else.

 

[Erana]

That has happend to me more with movement games. Like DDR. That, and fencing. I personally thing the sport of fencing has become a video game. I mean, the goal is to push buttons and to let a box tell you whose winning.

As for FPS, this only happens on the rare occasions that I can actually survive on legendary in Halo.

 

[GrimRox]

This happens to me on a lot of games. Mainly Guitar Hero, Halo and Conker's Live and Reloaded (back in the days when I had Xbox Live). When this occurs to me or my friends we call them Limit Breaks \m/

 

[Ith]

For me, I've thought about it like that quote from Layer Cake: "Meditation is concentrating the front of the mind with a mundane task...so the rest of the mind can find peace."

I got into the Zone with Perfect Dark, dual scoped falcons I'd get 80+ headshots in a 100 kill match, my brother could launch grenades and land it ON the guy from any distance. All we needed was the knowledge that we had an hour free to play and we'd just relax into mindless fragging.

I've never really succeeded with the Zone like I have with the first Halo, possibly because I could perform every action at once, melee and shooting with the smallest of delay, I could estimate the exact height of a jump and compensate the aim perfectly. The first time I scored a sniper headshot while jumping I was like "Woo! Awesome!" but after a year it was a common occurrence.

Halo 2 wasn't as engaging, the firefights were over quick, no medpacks, slow melee.
Halo 3 is the same, though I was in the Zone all through Basic Training on Live, maybe because the map was so small I was constantly in the fight.

I find it much easier to enter the Zone with friends around, played online CoD4 with a friend sitting beside me with a 2nd 360, we both hit the zone, easily watching both screens working as a team without saying a thing scoring 20 each with only one death, attributed to one airstrike.

We did the same thing a week later, but I couldn't get in the Zone, I was too frustrated about a couple of early deaths, and I watched the friend get into the Zone and pull off amazingly timed "Frag-Stun-Fire" moves, thinking 5 steps ahead as he nades a window, stun through the door and then a split-second headshot while the guy is mid-way through falling prone.

I think it's basically when the front of your mind is attuned perfectly to the physics and mechanics of a game rather than the real world. If you can't get in the Zone try the following things:

- Headphones.
- Allocate a pure hour of gaming, and choose a game you know you can win.
- Ignore any setback.
- Take a packet of Shapes, pretzels, chips, anything you can stuff in your mouth quick. Plus a 1.5L of Coke, or sugary drink.
- Turn game sounds off and turn up music of your choice, high tempo for FPS, tense and/or epic for RTS.

 

[pixpaz]

I have had this on CS, COD4 even similar types of feel driving late at night.

There is nothing else besides the known stimuli and repeatedly trained muscle memory. Nothing in between. You sort of know / assume where things are going to be.

In CS it was that 4 DEagle headshot kills in the first pistol round followed by a P90 holocaust in the next round and finding that you are always killing peeps from behind or angles they don't expect.

 

[Copter400]

TF2, I sporadically enter fits while playing the Pyro where the range of my flamer seems to stretch onwards towards oblivion, taking everything with it. It once made me take down an Engineer hidey-hole full of various structures as well as a few Engineers who tried to stop me.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

The only time I can really recall doing it was on GHII 360 version. On one of the downloadable songs (Bury the Hatchet on Expert) I managed to nail the intro without missing a note. If you youtube the song, you'll understand my shock.

 

[Dudemeister]

happens to me a lot iin TF2

 

[stompy]

Cooper42, you're suggesting a sort of 'muscle memory' thingy? I suppose so. I mean, that would allow for the person's conscious in question to 'take the back-seat', and let their muscles do the work for them, through retaining their skill. That seems plausible.

 

[xMacx]

From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.

Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove.

Really interesting phenomena - and great when it happens.

The first time I remember that feeling was playing Galaga when I was very young - the minute I realized I was doing something different it was over - I lost all my lives in short fashion after that.

Used to happen a lot playing Enduro as well.

 

[Cooper42]

Cooper42, you're suggesting a sort of 'muscle memory' thingy? I suppose so. I mean, that would allow for the person's conscious in question to 'take the back-seat', and let their muscles do the work for them, through retaining their skill. That seems plausible.

Something akin to that - the wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory seems to suggest so.
Though it's not just muscular. I think xMacx found something about right, though I persoanlly feel it's a lot more non-conscious than the article suggests.

 

[VonKludge]

Happens most of the time in games with great enviroment, and these days I must say it's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that's bringing me into the zone most of the time... pun not intended. I also found out I no longuer need a crosshair, and feel like a videogame addict for it.