How the Videogame Aesthetic Flows Into All of Culture

This is very true for me, referring to the flow aspect. I love gaming and modding for the "flow" effect it brings. Not just an escape but a form of rest, relaxation, meditation even. For a little while the heavy weight of the worlds problems is lifted. I get to be myself yet at the same time another version of myself in another world, time, and place. One reason I love sandbox games the most or those where I can make my own character as I usually play a version of myself - a version of who or what I might be in a different reality.

Anyhow I thought it was a cool article and the movie itself, Edge of Tomorrow, is rather cool.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-videogame-aesthetic-flows-into-all-of-culture/

"New audiences, also in the millions, seek their cultural centers elsewhere—in videogames and social media. One of the principal pleasures offered by both videogames and social media is the experience of flow. Flow is an aesthetic principle for first-person shooter games, for platform games, for puzzle games. It is also the state induced by watching one YouTube video or Netflix episode after another or by monitoring Facebook feeds for hours on end. As early as the 1970s, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi applied the term “flow” to describe a particular state that he had identified in his subjects: “I developed a theory of optimal experience based on the concept of flow—a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” Csikszentmihalyi’s flow can be evoked by activities common to many ages and cultures. He liked to cite rock climbing or tennis as examples—vigorous physical activities in which the participants lose track of time, fully engaged in the work of the moment. But he also argued that his flow state has something in common with forms of meditation or religious experience."

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The "flow" thing isn't new in itself. I'd almost say it kind of poured out of esoterics into other parts of common culture as well. I think it was there where I found it first mentioned, more than one decade ago.

Aye the article mentions flow can come from a lot of things - they use rock climbing as one example.

To me flow is like getting into the ZEN of the moment. When you just get into something with so much focus that time seems to vanish as does things around you.

A great mental state where you are one with whatever you are doing. I always enjoy that.

wolfgrimdark said:

the movie itself, Edge of Tomorrow, is rather cool.

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Elsewhere I wrote that movies can be awsome entries to time loop genre while series episodes tend to be shitty.
There are exceptions of course, example of time loop movie being an utter garbage is a few years old Premature, while a brilliant time loop episode is from otherwise a dud season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery (Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad).

But time loop is not videogame aesthetic.
One of these days I'll open a thread about movies of this genre, those were very rare in the past, the offering is somewhat richer in recent years but not all are good.

Videogames aesthetic however does appear - on me. Posted before, I can never get bored of Mass Effect style rags. If I'm not wearing those, then the spectacular Divinity OS2 hoodie is on me - that thing causes all kinds of positive stares and questions where to buy it, trust me.
Sadly, samurai jacket, from the new cdprojekt store is already sold out and I want that "trash", desperately:
https://eu.store.cdprojektred.com/product-eng-42-Samurai-Varsity-Jacket.html
What I'm saying, you won't see football clubs and overrated "stamps" like Nike, Adidas, Puma, etc on me. It's either something blank or videogamebased. Singleplayer videogame. Not mmo scams.

The only thing that remains is a proper gamebased wig. Aka, not obvious plastic, not halfball to pose as baldness and not FF13 potato instead of afro.

EDIT:
Forgot to add, I would probably hate a time loop videogame. The reason I didn't buy Nier Automata was grinding all the same bosses over and over in order to get to some so called "true" ending. Same gets no for me, familiar would be yes, but that familiar part shouldn't be boring.

Guess I'm not into Karma or energy flows I guess. As I personally just play games to waste time, and I never immerse myself into the character that I get lost in a fantasy.

Probably why I prefer good story and quests over anything else in my RPGs.

aka "in the zone." I can sometimes get that while programming - especially on a cloudy day so I don't have the sunlight to tip me off that it's getting late. 4X games are famous for the effect.

Too much flow is definitely a bad thing, IMHO. You end up staying up too late or sitting too long. If you've got a schedule to keep, you might not want to play at all because you don't want to have to break off at a particular time.

I don't find the experience particularly pleasurable or painful - it's just there.

I wonder if this is what some people are talking about when they say "immersion"? I consider immersion more of a additive thing: the game has realistic effects of some sort. When somebody talks about a game like Civilization or Divinity: Original Sin as being immersive, I just look at them funny because the games don't look even slightly like reality. But, if the goal is "feeling like you are there," then getting you to concentrate to the point where you don't notice as many distractions would also count.