page_title: Flow (video game)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Flow (video game) / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Jenova Chen in 2007. 中文（简体）‎: 陈星汉(2007年) 中文（繁體）‎: 陳星漢(2007年) Français&#160;: Jenova Chen en 2007.
context_page_description: Flow is an independent video game created by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark. Originally released as a free Flash game in 2006 to accompany Chen's master's thesis, it was reworked into a 2007 PlayStation 3 game by his development studio, Thatgamecompany. SuperVillain Studios developed a PlayStation Portable version of the game in 2008, and PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions in 2013. In Flow, the player navigates a series of two-dimensional planes with an aquatic microorganism that evolves by consuming other microorganisms. The game's design is based on Chen's research into dynamic difficulty adjustment at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division, and on psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theoretical concept of mental immersion or flow.
  The Flash version of Flow received 100,000 downloads within its first two weeks of release, and had been played over 3.5 million times by 2008. Its PlayStation 3 re-release was the most downloaded game on the PlayStation Network in 2007 and won the Best Downloadable Game award at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards.
context_section_description: Flow was originally developed as part of Jenova Chen's master's thesis for the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. His thesis was on the concept of dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA), wherein a game adjusts its reactions to a player based on the past and present actions of that player. He illustrated his ideas with Flow, which he created in collaboration with Nicholas Clark. Chen implemented DDA by causing the player to change the game's difficulty subconsciously; he allowed players to dive between planes at will and provided the option of eating or not eating any creature. Players may decide to rush downwards or to grow stronger before attacking powerful opponents. Chen described Flow as "a simple game. It's the simplest test of active DDA." Another influence on the game was psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow, wherein a person fully immerses themselves in an activity and gains a feeling of energized focus. To achieve this state, the person or player must have control over the activity; Chen believed that his DDA theory gave players the control necessary to achieve flow while playing.
  The game was released in March 2006, after two months of development—during which Chen and Clark taught themselves Flash programming. The game's source code was later released in 2009. The game's score was composed by Austin Wintory. A PlayStation 3 version was announced for the PlayStation Store in May of that year, and was released in February 2007. Chen had graduated by that point, and had founded Thatgamecompany, which handled the conversion to the PlayStation 3; Nicholas Clark was one of the employees and served as the game version's designer. Impressed by Flow, Sony provided Thatgamecompany with finances, supplies, and additional staff, and offered them a three-game contract; the PlayStation 3 version of Flow was the first of these. Chen originally believed the conversion could be completed in four months and that it would be ready for the November 2006 launch of the PlayStation Network. However, when it was finally released in February 2007, it did not include "half of the original design".
  A version for the PlayStation Portable, developed by SuperVillain Studios, was released in March 2008. The company coded it from scratch, as the PlayStation 3 version's code and art were too platform-specific to reuse. The add-on pack for the PlayStation 3 version was also developed by SuperVillain. Thatgamecompany was not involved in the development of either project beyond a design influence and art direction role, as they were creating their next title, Flower. Sony Santa Monica created ports of the PlayStation 3 game for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, which were published in November 2013 to correspond with the release of the PlayStation 4. Although no album of music specifically for Flow has been released, in 2012 Austin Wintory released Journey Bonus Bundle as a download-only album on Bandcamp, containing variations on themes from Flow and Journey, a 2012 PlayStation 3 game by Thatgamecompany.
caption: Designer Jenova Chen in 2007
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