Reconciling Csikszentmihalyi’s Broader Flow Theory

The aim of this paper is to put forward an additional condition to the characteristics of ‘Flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975) that addresses the idea that the “meaningful experiences” Csikszentmihalyi is talking about rely on constructions of value drawn from our personal cultural context and not from some absolute set of invariant cultural values. Although this may be seen as broadly applicable to all discussions of ‘Flow’ type experiences the focus here is on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s discussion of his concept of optimal engagement known as ‘Flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1979, 1990, 1996, and Kubey, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. 2002) as it relates to existing and future uses of ‘Flow’ in design and analysis of digital games.