Development of an Instrument for Studying Flow in Computer Game Play

Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1993. The evolving self: A psychology for the third millennium, New York, NY: Harper Collins. [Google Scholar]; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Csikszentmihalyi, I. 1990. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, New York, NY: Harper and Row. [Google Scholar]; Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989 Csikszentmihalyi, M. and LeFevre, J. 1989. Optimal experience in work and leisure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56: 815–822. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has been widely adopted in research on computer games (e.g., Fu, Su, & Yu, 2009 Fu, F., Su, R. and Yu, S. 2009. EGameFlow: A scale to measure learners’ enjoyment of e-learning games. Computers & Education, 52: 101–112. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Sherry, 2004 Sherry, J. L. 2004. Flow and media enjoyment. Communication Theory, 14: 328–347. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005 Sweetser, P. and Wyeth, P. 2005. GameFlow: A model for evaluating player enjoyment in games. ACM Computers in Entertainment, 3(3): 1–24. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). According to this theory, flow leads to enjoyment, a central construct in computer games. However, no such instrument, adopting a rigorous process to measure all flow elements in the field of computer games, has been developed and validated to date. An effective measurement of flow experiences during computer game play is essential to study how a flow state can be induced. It will assist game designers in understanding the strength and flaw of the game from a player's perspective. This article reports on the development of an instrument measuring all flow elements in computer game play, based on the flow theory, and following a rigorous method introduced by Moore and Benbasat (1991 Moore, G. C. and Benbasat, I. 1991. Development of an instrument to measure the perceptions of adopting an information technology innovation. Information Systems Research, 2: 192–222. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The results show that the validity and reliability of the instrument are satisfactory. This instrument will help information systems researchers further investigate how to apply flow theory in computer games to improve enjoyment and thus game design.