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Flow states and the Quest for the Infinite Ball

Pintastic New England·video·52m 3s·analyzed·Dec 29, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

Flow psychology framework applied to pinball: mastery through understanding optimal performance states.

Summary

Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith delivers a presentation on flow states and optimal performance in pinball, drawing from psychology research (Csikszentmihalyi, Kotler, Benson) and MIT's mind-hand-heart framework. He explores the neurophysiology of flow, the skill-challenge balance, flow triggers and blockers, and practical applications for improving tournament play through understanding arousal, emotional regulation, and personal optimization.

Key Claims

  • Top pinball players possess knowledge about flow and optimal performance that average players lack

    medium confidence · Smith's opening observation about watching elite players perform at high levels despite his own skill investment

  • Flow state in pinball involves narrowed focus, vanishing sense of self, distorted time perception, and exceptional performance

    high confidence · Smith citing Csikszentmihalyi's research on flow characteristics

  • The skill-challenge ratio requires being approximately 4% beyond natural ability to enter flow state

    medium confidence · Smith citing Csikszentmihalyi's calculation, with acknowledgment it's somewhat 'urban legend'

  • Herbert Benson identifies four stages of flow: struggle, release, flow state, and recovery

    high confidence · Smith presenting Benson's framework as alternative to Kotler's instant-flow model

  • Flow triggers include novelty, complexity, and risk; can be deliberately introduced to deepen engagement

    high confidence · Smith citing Stephen Kotler's framework with pinball-specific examples

  • Internal flow blockers include busy mind, anxiety, overconfidence/underconfidence, and social anxiety

    high confidence · Smith's categorization of psychological barriers to flow

  • Tournament design advantages certain personality types (extroverts) who thrive in high-noise, high-consequence social environments

    medium confidence · Audience question and Smith's agreement that tournament environment favors specific performer profiles

  • Game design could deliberately implement progressive difficulty through sequential multi-ball mechanics to maintain skill-challenge balance

    medium confidence · Smith's response to game designer question about applying flow principles to ruleset design

Notable Quotes

  • “I can watch these guys online and they will play forever. And so it feels to me that there's something they know that I don't know.”

    Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith@ 1:34 — Sets up the central inquiry—what separates elite from average players—which the entire presentation attempts to answer through flow psychology

  • “When I'm performing my best, things seem to flow from one thing to the next, to the next.”

    Smith paraphrasing Csikszentmihalyi's research findings@ 10:15 — Articulates the common theme across elite performers across disciplines that led Csikszentmihalyi to develop flow theory

  • “By balancing your challenge with the skill and sort of trying to keep those in balance in order to sort of maintain this flow state, there's an opportunity for you to really advance your skill set.”

    Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith@ 17:20 — Core mechanism for continuous improvement—the 'ratcheting effect' where growth requires constant recalibration of challenge

  • “It's not like a light switch that you can flip on and off. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't.”

    Smith citing Herbert Benson's critique of instant flow@ 19:50 — Introduces nuance: flow is not instantaneous but developmental, requiring preparation and recovery phases

  • “The release phase is about kind of recharging your batteries. So you disengage, you're clearing your mind.”

    Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith@ 21:06 — Highlights often-overlooked preparation for flow—mental disengagement before re-engagement prevents burnout

  • “Anything that distracts from the game is going to potentially take you out of that moment.”

Entities

Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' SmithpersonMihaly CsikszentmihalyipersonStephen KotlerpersonHerbert BensonpersonSteve RitchiepersonBruce LeepersonPintastic New EnglandeventMIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)organizationImmersion Laborganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pintastic New England hosting academic-style presentation on performance psychology applied to pinball, suggesting community interest in scientific approaches to competitive improvement

    high · Smith delivering structured talk with slides, academic citations, and Q&A with game designers present

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament structure and design implicitly favors certain personality types (extroverts thriving in high-noise, high-consequence environments), creating competitive advantage for some performers

    medium · Audience question and Smith's agreement that tournament design advantages specific personality profiles through environmental design

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Understanding and managing psychological states (arousal, anxiety, focus) identified as potential source of competitive edge alongside technical skill

    medium · Smith's core thesis that elite players understand flow mechanics and psychological optimization that average competitors miss

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Discussion of progressive multi-ball design as intentional game mechanic to maintain skill-challenge balance and facilitate flow state

    medium · Smith's response to game designer about sequential multi-ball implementation to build anticipation and difficulty progression

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.156

0:00
And here we are on the brink of something new and unprecedented. I see a lot of people who want to get that edge over all the other tournament players. So this is something new that's going to help you play better. Please welcome Tasker Smith for Flow States and the Quest for the Infinite Ball.
0:39
Morning, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Great. So good morning. So my name is Tasker Smith. I've been speaking with Dave a little bit about the possibility of coming to speak about the experience of playing pinball. It feels like that's kind of a topic that hasn't been fully explored. And it's part of my own kind of personal quest to try to understand how to play the game of pinball better. So I'm always asking myself, what do these people that play really well know that I don't know?
1:20
I don't know if this is true for you. But for me, I feel like I've been playing this game for a long time.
1:26
And no matter how much I play or how much I think I invest in skills and flipper skills and understanding nudging and strategy and such, I can watch these guys online and they will play forever. And so it feels to me that there's something they know that I don't know. And so this is kind of this idea of sort of exploring the idea of flow came out of this question. like how do I learn what I need to learn to play better?

Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith@ 26:09 — Universal principle applicable to both internal (anxiety, distraction) and external (noise, crowd) obstacles

  • “An introvert might perform best when they're at home. It's quiet. They can really focus. An extrovert, by comparison, might be out in gameplay. They want to be around their buddies.”

    Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith@ 28:33 — Establishes that optimal arousal and flow conditions are personality-dependent, not universal

  • “If you added sequential, a ball, then another ball, then another ball... that would kind of build some anticipation and might take you from a point of being able to manage one successfully to trying to manage five.”

    Tasker Robert T. 'Bob' Smith responding to game designer@ 30:49 — Concrete game design application of flow principles—progressive challenge through incremental difficulty

    • Benson-Henry Institute
    organization
    1:55
    So flow is one way of describing this experience, and it's not necessarily the Steve Ritchie version of flow where it doesn't describe necessarily a pinball machine that's designed to have flowing shots that go from one to the next to the next. But there's some science behind this topic of flow. Another way people describe it is being in the zone or having peak performance, but I'm imagining everybody can kind of relate to this idea that you're playing this game, you're locked in this moment, like everything is firing, you know, you can anticipate the ball coming, and the ball just seems to go on and on and on. So that's kind of what we're going for. And we're going to sort of dive into the science of it a little bit.
    2:39
    So I work at MIT, which is an amazing place to work if you're a curious person. They They've been around since the 1860s. During that time, they've had a strong emphasis on this idea of working with your mind and your hand.
    2:57
    Here you see these two characters, one of whom has a book, one of whom is from the Foundry with a Hammer. There's this idea that using your brain is important for analysis and for strategy and for conceiving, for analysis. There's also this really virtuous relationship between using your hands as well. So validating your experiments, like creating experiments to learn from, and like testing what it is that you learn about. So I'm looking at this topic kind of through that lens of mind and hand.
    3:26
    And this is kind of what I think about when I think about how like an MIT person would attack a problem like pinball. This is actually from a local lab or a nearby lab called the Immersion Lab, and this is an experiment that they conducted to try to understand how a human being throws a baseball. ball. So in this example, you can see a subject has got sensors put along their body and they're
    3:52
    testing things like they have accelerometers there, they're testing muscle activity, acceleration of the ball, like the forces at play on the floor and like on each foot. So I don't want to dive too deeply into this, but this is kind of what I would traditionally think of as sort of an MIT approach to a topic like this. This is another example of applying science to like a physical phenomenon. So this is from one of the software tools that we'll sometimes use to, in this case, we're looking at the trajectory of a ball as it travels through space and you can see sort of variation in how it travels in both the X and the Y axes. So that's kind of a traditional, I think of it as sort of traditional MIT approach. So in recent years, they've kind of broadened their thinking a little bit. So in addition into mind and hand, which we might think of as being like computation and synthesis is a word that's commonly used. They have started to look at this idea of the heart, right? So and by heart, they use sort of the analogy of like the experience of something. So it matters like the degree to which you're like invested in something emotionally has a huge influence on how deeply you look at it, your attention, your focus, and it really influences has a deep influence on the impact that you have and the work that you do. This has been this broadening of his thinking from MIT. That's great, but what does this have to do with pinball? If I'm going to look at this topic through the lens, through this MIT paradigm,
    5:28
    imagine we have mind and hand and heart. I would think of this in terms of maybe strategy would be sort of the brain component. Execution would be the hand component and maybe experience is the heart component. So again, to break that out, you know, maybe I can separate these things and again, I'm trying to learn, like I'm trying to figure out like what do I need to learn to play better? So one part of it is strategy, right? I need to have clear goals and know exactly what I'm going for from moment to moment. Again, you don't have to have this, but you know, that's helpful. Flipper skills and nudges, obviously you need to have the like kind of mechanical chops to control the ball as it moves around the play field. But what I want to talk about today is the role that emotion and focus play on your game. So imagine that you have a stinker of a first ball, and you're in a highly competitive situation, and you care a lot about the outcome. Then you can imagine you start to feel anxiety. It can distract you from focus.
    6:26
    I just throw that out there as the emotional experience we have It has a huge influence on the way that we play and how well we play.
    6:36
    So to think about this in another way, I think about these are sort of kind of famous people that you might recognize, some of whom are kind of more fictional, some are real, but Bruce Lee and Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams. Throw Rocky in there just because I love the idea that somebody would get up at 4 in the morning and drink eggs in order to p.m. like the best they can be. I have some Michael Jordan.
    7:06
    So I mention them to think about, what is it that these people are doing that I'm not doing? I mean, I'm not a professional. I'm not going to hire a team to teach me how to play pinball necessarily. My schedule and my training and my sleep and nutrition, that doesn't necessarily align with professional sports, but there's something these people are doing differently that sets them apart from everyone else. So maybe we can learn something from them.
    7:31
    So this is where my technology is a little flutter. I'm going to pop out to show you this video. This works really quickly.
    7:47
    I just happen to love this video, and I play it at every opportunity. So this is Bruce Lee, circa 1970. He's playing ping pong. with nunchucks.
    8:01
    What I love about it is it's kind of a metaphor for, you know, what would it look like to be so masterful at something that you can outpace like a rival?
    8:11
    And what would that mean to be that skilled at pinball? And, you know, in practice, I feel like the guy that's not with nunchucks playing against the masters who do have the nunchucks. And that's sort of what it looks like to me when I see somebody is truly masterful, just play this massive game with huge scores.
    8:48
    So, I just love that video, so I like to play that when I can. Let's see. Back here. All right, so Bruce Lee, amazing.
    9:02
    Going forward here. Okay, so thinking again about this topic of mastery, this is a gentleman, a social psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
    9:15
    and he spent his life, he devoted it to this idea of what is the experience that people have when they're playing their very best? And so this kind of his work,
    9:29
    let's see, so 1934 to 2021, sadly he passed away about a month ago. But he's very well known for this book called Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience. And what he did was he asked people, what does it feel like when you perform your best?
    9:46
    So what does it feel like? So he's not asking, how do you do this? Like, what's your technique? He's asking, what does it feel like, and what can I learn about trying to become better by exploring this topic? So he asked scientists. He asked surgeons, athletes. He asked all these people, and over the course of time, he kind of broadened his study to kind of more, if you think of everyday people, people like you and me. And time and time again, people would come to this idea of flow. So when I'm performing my best, things seem to flow from one thing to the next, to the next. So that was this common theme that came up. And so he dove into that topic to try to understand, okay, what is it that's happening when people's experiences are flowing from one to the next?
    10:32
    So there were, in terms of what it feels like, so there's a narrowing of focus. So you're not thinking about your grocery list. You're not thinking about things outside of this. In the context of pinball, you're focused on your game. More so you're focused on the ball. More so you're focused on, you know, you're dialed in to that one activity. So you're completely immersed in the now.
    10:54
    You have a vanishing sense of self, meaning that you're not distinguishing, like thinking, like, hey, I'm playing a great ball. Like you are in this moment of playing that ball.
    11:04
    It so happens that a sense of time tends to get distorted, which probably not as perceptible playing pinball because it's kind of a short period of time. but during larger activities, that sense of time gets distorted.
    11:16
    And then also, we were talking about how you're performing your best, so this is really kind of about how they're performing and having exceptional performance. And this is kind of what we're interested in, right, because we want to tease out how can we perform more exceptionally.
    11:31
    So what is the psychology of flow? I'm sorry, what is the... Physiology of flow, thank you. So increased heart rate, so you can imagine that. You're having an exciting game. Your heart starts beating. You're breathing more heavily.
    11:50
    Your muscles tense. Again, narrowing of focus. So things are happening physiologically to you that are different from everyday experience.
    12:00
    And one thing I think about is this is a lot like this fight or flight response. that we have that people think about.
    12:08
    So this is what has... Oh, did my picture not come through? Let's see. There he is. Okay. Sabertooth tigers. This is used as kind of a metaphor for fight or flight. So you encounter this creature out in the wild. You're either going to fight this thing off in order to survive or you're going to run like hell. So you need to escape. So physiologically, we have adapted to survive because we respond in specific ways to things like this. So again, increased heart rate, heavy breathing, tense muscles, narrow focus, all essential in order to survive that moment. So what's happening here? In our brain, there is an area called the amygdala. And this is responsible for several key components of that fight or flight response So we release dopamine which heightens the tension and pattern recognition
    13:05
    Testosterone, which boosts strength. And also adrenaline, which increases our heart rate and breathing. So you think about this like your body is responding by having you, your heart rate is beating, you're breathing, you're delivering oxygen, your muscles are tensing up, they're ready to run or they're ready to fight. So this is kind of this physiological thing that happens. And in that case it's sort of survival, but you think that people are kind of strangely wired to sort of pursue these things. So there's a lot of thrill-seeking activities that kind of are intended to trigger the same kind of emotional response, right? There's maybe that's the dopamine that people sort of get, the thrill-seeking they get out of these intense experiences. These are examples of, you know, sort of outdoor recreation, but, you know, roller coasters might be another example. So we seek these things out because they're They're exciting and they set these moments apart from other parts of our lives.
    13:58
    Again, this is sort of what flow feels like. We're immersed in the now, vanishing sense of self, distorted sense of time, exceptional performance, narrow focus,
    14:08
    and exceptional performance is what we're interested in here. So what can we say about the characteristics of the activities themselves? There's things that are unique about them. So, generally they have clear goals, immediate feedback, and something called the skill challenge ratio, which is really interesting because we can use this to kind of leverage our skill set. I'll talk about what that looks like. So this is a chart that looks, it's called the flow channel, and this is something that's written about by Csikszentmihalyi in his writing. So on the vertical axis you see a challenge and on the horizontal axis is skills. And the idea here is that there are some activities that are low challenge and low skills, some that are low challenge and high skills, some that are low skills and high challenge. So there's like a spectrum of activities you can kind of engage in. And I'll use juggling as an example. So if you're juggling a single ball, assuming you have like reasonably good hand-eye coordination, It would sort of leave you in a state of like, I can do it, but it's not very interesting. Your mind is not engaged. You know, you live in sort of this state of kind of apathy, right? So it's not really that interesting after a little bit. But if I give you a second ball and I say, okay, now juggle this ball, suddenly the challenge increases. And again, maybe it's not fully drawing you in because it's not a full use of your experience, like whether you juggle or not. But the more balls I add, meaning the higher you go on the challenge spectrum, if I take you beyond the area of capability you have, so if you feel comfortable juggling two balls but not four balls and I give you four balls, you're going to feel highly anxious. But likewise, if I give you one ball after a period of time and you're juggling it, even if I give you two balls, juggling those after a period of time, if it's not a challenge anymore you get bored. So imagine that your experience kind of lives somewhere in this spectrum. So what Csikszentmihalyi said, and this is sort of urban legend a little bit, but he used this number of 4%, meaning he did this calculation and who knows what he was measuring. But the idea was that if you can reach 4% beyond your ability, your natural ability, that's going to draw you into flow. So it requires all of your attention to get you in order to succeed at that task. So you're reaching just beyond what you can do comfortably, and that's going to kind of get you into this space. And so I think what's really exciting about this is this idea that if we use flow as a focus and we imagine that we take on a challenge that we think is like a reasonable challenge, takes some effort, requires focus, requires attention, requires energy to get you to that place. If you, after kind of living in that place for a while, skills will advance. But as they advance, the skill becomes less challenging and so you sort of teeter more towards boredom. So then what do you do? You increase your challenge. And this idea is that there's this ratcheting effect. So by balancing your challenge with the skill and sort of trying to keep those two in balance in order to sort of maintain this flow state, there's an opportunity for you to really advance your skill set. Does that make sense? So there's like this ratcheting effect if we are able to do that. And it's not always practically, you know, you have to think about how to apply that in this particular context. But I like this as an idea.
    17:43
    So there's another couple other authors I just want to refer to. One of whom is this guy, Stephen Kotler. So if you're interested in this idea, he is a great read. He wrote this book called The Rise of Superman that I absolutely love. And he's a little bit of a, he's kind of, he's an evangelist for this idea of flow. He also has a really great email list if you're interested in this topic. But he writes things like, decoding the science of ultimate human performance. It makes it sound really awesome.
    18:12
    But he has this idea that he talks a lot about the role that curiosity and passion and purpose play in flow. So this idea that the more engaged you are, the more passionate you are about the topic, the more purpose there is associated with it. Like it really draws you into these activities. So you have like this powerful energy that's drawing you into them. You're using your full skill set. So for him, the way that he characterized it, just like living in the space where you're really kind of tuned in and plugged in and passionate and driven to succeed at something that is meaningful to you, that's really going to sort of help you live in this state of flow, which kind of drives high-level performance. One other guy I want to talk about that is pretty interesting is this guy, Herbert Benson. He was a professor at Harvard, also works through MGH for the Benson Hendry Institute.
    19:13
    His team does a lot of work on mind and body medicine. They're looking at the relationship between your mind and your body. For example, if you get super anxious, there are a lot There are things that you can do to kind of relax. Like you can use your mind to influence your physiology. So if I'm anxious and I'm feeling like tense muscles, my heart's racing, then there are, for example, breathing exercises you can do. There are visualizations you can do. So they explore this relationship kind of between mind and body.
    19:42
    That's kind of where his work lives. But he sort of took a different approach to this idea of flow, which I think is really interesting. So he said it's not like a light switch that you can flip on and off. I mean, you can imagine it's hard to walk up to a pinball machine and boom, I'm in flow. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. I mean, it feels like pinball is the kind of thing that should draw you into flow, but I think, as I would say of my own gameplay, there's a lot of times that I'm not able to kind of tap into that. So what he says is, there's actually four stages of flow. So let's look at what those are. So stage one is struggle. And so for him, the way he characterizes this is this is a struggle to gather knowledge and master skills. So if you're coming to play a game, imagine you're focused on learning strategy, you're practicing your flipper skills, you're imagining, I've got 10 games to play, I'm gonna learn all the rule sets, I'm gonna have a strategy for each one, you're crunching really hard to try to prepare yourself for this moment. So that's the struggle. And this is a little bit, it's not really intuitive to me, but I think it's interesting. He says that before diving into flow from the struggle phase, you really need to enter into what's called the release phase. So imagine that the struggle phase requires a lot of energy and a lot of, it's kind of energy intensive. As opposed to that, the release phase is about kind of recharging your batteries. So you disengage, you're clearing your mind. And they refer to activities like gardening, go for a walk, play the guitar, sketch in your notebook, maybe read a little bit. You want to be disengaged from this activity that you want to enter into flow with. You're recharging your batteries and you're resetting. It's not that you're deliberately not thinking about it completely, but just an opportunity to relax in advance of really diving into this energy intensive experience. is a state of flow, which we've spoken about. Fully engaged, hopefully performing in optimal
    21:50
    performance. And then one thing that he says I thought was really great is that recovery is a really important part of this if you want this to be kind of a virtuous experience. So active recovery, like reflecting and recharging. So it's not, you don't want to just have this amazing experience and then walk away from it and go sit on your couch and drink a beer. You might want to do that, but the idea is that it's really, you can really gain more out of it if you reflect deeply on, you know, what did I learn? You know, I had this one game that was outstanding. What was it that was different? Like, did I get more sleep last night? Did I get less sleep? Like, did I have a lot of caffeine? Did I have a beard or like adjust for anxiety? What was it about that moment that helped me enter the state? And so I just like that idea that there's this active recovery phase where you can really learn a lot and hopefully carry that forward. So let's take a moment just to sort of say that foundational health likely plays a big part in this. And again, everyone's different, but sleep and nutrition and hydration can really influence how you perform physiologically. So I would just encourage people to think about what works for you. And let's see here. So there's also this notion called flow triggers, which is another Stephen Kotler term. So he's always kind of like the hype man, like kind of has these very exciting ways to describe things. But he would suggest that like if you are having a hard time getting into flow or you want to deepen your sense of flow, then there are some things that we can look to. So one is introducing novelty.
    23:33
    Another is introducing complexity. And the third is introducing danger. Right? So those are all things, in case of danger, you know, we think about our saber tooth tiger. You know, something that feels dangerous might trigger the amygdala. It doesn't necessarily need to be physical danger, but it could be like a social danger. There are different things that kind of fall into that category that feel sort of threatening that can trigger our, like this physiological response. So I'll use some pinball specific examples. So one way of introducing novelty might be playing one-handed, or there's a technique called using stressors when playing, like in other contexts, but in pinball you can imagine, like, if you're practicing a game and it feels kind of boring to you, you want to get, like, more engaged in it. If you do something to mix it up, like putting ping-pong balls between your fingers when you're playing, or playing on one foot, or playing cross-handed, those are things that, I mean, it's a little novel, and you probably wouldn't do this in tournament play, but if you're at home and you're just trying to get into the zone a little bit, you can play around with novelty to help sort of draw you in. Complexity might be things like turning off the sound or covering the scores, or I don't know if you all have heard of Price is Right rules. So you pick a score that you don't want to exceed and you want to play the game and so you like approach that point. That adds a level of complexity. You're not just playing to get as many points as possible. That's the kind of thing that it kind of engages you in a different way. It's sort of there's an element of novelty, there's an element of complexity. Something like that might pull you in. And danger might be something like assigning a consequence to the outcome. So if you're wagering money, you know, you wager your friend that you're playing, like, hey, I'll tell you what, if I win this game, then, you know, some sort of consequence. And that too will, I mean, I feel like tournament play in general is sort of that, brings that degree of danger to it because there's a high level of consequence to like the way that you play. But if you think about, I mean, if you're having fun with your friends, there might be some way to sort of re-envision the game play and the rules so that it really draws you into it differently. So what are some flow blockers? So what is going to prevent you from entering into flow? There might be internal things, so I'll list a few of them. It's a busy mind if you're thinking about all the stuff that you have to do that's outside of your game. You're not completely immersed in the moment of playing. If you're overly anxious if you overconfident or underconfident you might have social anxiety There are a lot of things that might go on for you sort of psychologically internally that will influence your ability to kind of enter into flow So I would state that anything that distracts from the game is going to potentially take you out of that moment.
    26:15
    And then there are external blockers. And these are things that might occur if you're used to playing at home and then you go into a tournament or you go into a barcade and it's noisy and there's people and the sounds are different, the tunes are cranking, there's like your elbow to elbow with people, that can really throw off your game. There's things that we can do about those things. But again, anything that distracts you from your game is going to be what's considered kind of a flow blocker. So this chart again comes from kind of the world of psychology, but this idea of arousal. So arousal is how engaged you are in an activity. So here again, on the vertical axis, you'll see performance, like how well you perform. And the horizontal axis is arousal. So imagine that in the lower left quadrant, if you just wake up, you know, you're up until 4 in the morning, 6 in the morning, and you're exhausted and you jump on a game, you know, you may not be playing your best. There's a degree to which, like, you become engaged and interested and passionate and your arousal rises. That's maybe where you're going to play well. But again, if you get into a situation where you're around a lot of people and if you get too overly excited, maybe you're not going to play well. Like if I get this one ball, if I can play well on this one, I'm going to win this whole thing. And you get overly excited, then you're going to blow it. So just know that everyone is completely different and there's a level of arousal that seems to be meaningful. So I like to bring my brother into this. So this is a picture of my brother. We gave him, for his 60th birthday, Terminator 2. So we made this icon for him. But he's pretty hilarious. And he always says that this is like his drinking chart. So at one beer, he's playing okay. At two beers, pretty good. Three, crashes out.
    28:09
    So just now everybody's kind of different. And to sort of support that idea, I'll show you this. Everybody's different.
    28:17
    Experience is highly personal. This is the idea that you might have two people standing next to one another who land in different places on that spectrum. An introvert might perform best when they're at home. It's quiet. They can really focus. That's kind of their optimal place. An extrovert, by comparison, might be out in gameplay. They want to be around their buddies. They're talking trash. They're yelling. They're having fun. So I just throw this up there just to mention that everybody's completely different, and my hope is to sort of share some ideas that people can take away from this, but just know that everyone is going to be very different in the way that they engage the game and when they play the best. And so I guess in terms of offering meaningful advice, just really pay attention to when you're playing well and take note of that and think about, okay, I'm going to try to, like, duplicate this again so I can kind of enter this state of optimal performance.
    29:19
    So that is most of what I have for today. Do you have some questions? Yes, I'd be happy to take some questions. I hope... The only thing I'll say is I wish, like, I feel like this is... Studying these topics, I feel like I study them as much as I play pinball, and I wish that the... I came at this, I could say I've mastered this craft based on all these studies, but it's part of my long pinball journey. Does anybody have any questions? I would point out for you that we do have a couple game designers in the room. Is there anything that you think some game designers might be able to do? It sounds to me like what you're saying is if there were a game where those 4% beyond steps could be part of the design of the game. There was always something that was 4% tougher than the thing you just mastered. Have you thought about game design? I haven't really. The thing that comes to mind for me, if you use the juggling analogy, is adding balls to the game. Typically, multi-ball is a little bit like a light switch in most games where it's on or off. If you added sequential, a ball, then another ball, then another ball. I know that does occur as well, but being deliberate about that to try to, if you imagine like kind of the experience arc is you know that you're going to get five balls over the course of some period of time and they start trickling in one after another, then that would kind of build some anticipation and might take you from a point of being able to manage one successfully to trying to manage five. That's the thought. Another area that could be designed, from what you just said, it sounds like tournaments are definitely aiming to make a better playing experience for a certain kind of person because you've got all the people around, there's a certain level of noise, but also at the time that the finals are being played, everybody has to stay back a certain distance from the game and play, and yet when a person makes a good play, he's going to hear off in the rest of this room, the roar, oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did great. A good play or a bad play. So some people, it sounds like, are going to be tuned in for that, and maybe the design of the way tournaments have been run leads to those people always having an extra edge.
    31:56
    Meaning being like sort of the people that thrive in that environment? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I guess maybe that's part of the promise of these internet connected machines, however you feel about the ones that are qualified as being in public spaces or not. I'm thinking about the ScoreBit or the Stern connected system. It's an opportunity to see how people play, seeing scores independent of those tournament situations. that as an opportunity for people to play more comfortably at home or in quieter places or more controlled environments. It's an opportunity for them to show off their skill.
    32:40
    But it's . I had a question. So I'm wondering, in your research, Have you come across any attempts to sort of map the brainwaves to the player playing the machine? I'm thinking, as you were talking about this whole thing, I was thinking about some things that I remember reading online about.
    33:09
    They were looking at brainwaves of heavy equipment operators or even the astronauts who were using the big space arm inside the shuttle that they used to grab the satellites. and there were certain points in time where as they were using these machines, their brain didn't really think of it as an external piece of equipment. Their brain saw it as their hand actually doing it, and that's why they were able to do it so well. I'm wondering if maybe you've come across anything where there's sort of like that link between like you almost become like one with the machine, I guess, in a way. Right. Probably a cheesy way of saying it. No, no. Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, we all felt that way before. Yeah. I'm wondering, have you seen any, like, have they done any experiments maybe with brain waves? I haven't seen anything there. So there's a, so MIT's amazing. It's like this enormous place and there are a lot of different resources. So my gut would tell me to go to sort of the Center for Brain and Cognitive Science. I actually have, so to answer your question, no, not yet. But there's one of the teams that I'm working with in the product development classes is working with these strobe glasses to try to dampen the effects of frequencies of light that trigger epileptic seizures. We have an opportunity to connect with those guys. I'll be sure to ask that question. Any chance I get to bring pinball into my work, I'm trying to. I will say that lab that I showed before with the guy throwing the baseball, one experiment I'm really interested in doing is bringing in a top level player and rigging up a machine with accelerometers and with force sensors, so I can understand. Again, I was trying to see. I mean, people have success in different ways, but just trying to understand frequency of nudging, like the amplitude, but also the frequency. Maybe you could tease out some interesting insights. But MIT is super data driven, which is exciting. And it's a little different from the flow topic, just because it seems to be so subjective. But as Stephen Kotler would say, the science is emerging, which is another way of saying that it's not really super scientific yet. But at some point, I think it will be more so. All right. Thank you. Yeah.
    35:29
    So I got a question. So when I first started getting really good, it was because I remembered not to flip to do a dead bounce. But that is the hardest part for me, which is to actually remember when you're in the moment. what is a good way to actually remember the lessons that you've learned in the past and just keep it, like remembering it? Is it during retention or the recovery phase?
    35:56
    Yeah, I would say pausing. I guess a lot of it comes down to sort of self-awareness. So if you have that moment and you're like, wow, that was a great ball, or I did it that time as a way to kind of... There's some life hacks, like you can reward yourself. I know that in, like for example, if you gave yourself, I mean, this sounds a little silly, but if you have like a cookie or something, or something to kind of reward yourself, just to kind of reinforce this idea that, wow, I did that really well. I know that there are people who, like in the psychology practice, people will sometimes have a rubber band around their wrists, and if they're doing something, like say they're trying to learn not to bite their nails, for example, when they catch themselves doing it, they're like, ah, and they'll snap the rubber band on their wrists. It's just a way, it's like a signal to remind yourself, like, oh, I'm having this, you know, you have a physiological response. It's like, oh, I shouldn't do that. Right, and I'm trying to remember. So I don't know if I have a perfect answer for you other than to sort of try to remain aware. And, yeah, so take advantage of that, like, reflection time.
    37:03
    Hey, thanks for the talk. Yeah. I was just wondering, can you think of an example from yourself when you've achieved a flow state playing pinball and performed at a really high level?
    37:23
    And what game was it? What scenario was it? Was it a tournament? Was it at home? like yeah yeah that's a great question um i think probably for me uh it tends to be with more like more modern games i happen to um during covet i invested in a avengers infinity quest which is amazing game but there's um and one that's sort of i don't know if this is true for anyone else but i got my my highest scores when i first got it before i knew the rules once i've learned the rules now like i'm playing and i'm thinking about it's okay you know just walking through all the different, what should I be shooting for? And you cease paying attention to the ball.
    38:04
    You have these unforced errors kind of where you lose balls. So I would say, for me personally, I think it tends to be in games that have a little bit more sophisticated, so maybe a slightly deeper rule set. But if I go too far down the rabbit hole of trying to achieve every objective that's in front of me, then it totally throws me off. But I know that there are moments when playing really well, and this is like the scariest part of all, is like when you have that moment of realization, like, wow, I'm having a really good ball. I'm about to roll this thing, you know, right down the drain. Because the moment that you become, like you sort of lose the, you fall out of that moment of now and you start to become self-aware, then you just run into trouble.
    38:47
    But other people might have other examples. I don't know. Does anyone? I'm a musician and I've been with low stage playing.
    38:57
    And the quickest way to screw it up is to go wow you doing really well Yeah exactly Are there techniques to declutter the mind and stay in that moment
    39:08
    That's a great question. I will say that there are some things, like for me personally, if I have too many things on my to-do list and it gets out of control, sort of like having an overpacked email inbox, sometimes what I'll do is I'll just write everything out on a piece of paper. and the fact that it doesn't really change anything but the fact that it's on paper means that I won't forget it so then once I've done that I can set that aside and maybe it sort of clears my mind a little bit so I think there are different I mean everyone's going to be different what works for you might not work for me and vice versa but yeah I think that the real challenge is just sort of being like when it's working just really pay attention to what's working and see if you can kind of duplicate that at another time Hi. So the flow state is dependent on the skill level matching the challenge, but as a beginner, pinball is brutal. Do you think it's possible for the state of flow to be reached through game design for beginners or for people without making the game inherently awful and boring? Because it seems like these are the cool games for the experienced people, and then here's all the sucky games for everyone else to practice on.
    40:24
    That you outgrow and get bored of. Yeah, that's such a good point. I mean, I sort of feel like it's probably unlikely that you'll enter flow if you're a beginning pinball player just because you're...
    40:38
    One partial answer is that Multimorphic has, for certain game modules, the practice game, so it is deliberately boring, but it's an exercise kind of thing, so that could help. I guess maybe another thing might be to look towards older games that have a center post so you're not going to lose the ball down the center drain.
    41:01
    That's such a great point. The challenge is you have to develop enough skills so you can keep the ball going. This is sort of a starting point. It would be great if, it seems like an impossible problem, but to get more people into pinball to make that onboarding a little more accessible. Because explaining to a new person, not only is this game about physically keeping the ball in play, but there's also this rule set that you need to learn. And you can't, even if you know the rules, you still have to be able to physically execute. It just seems you lose a lot of people along the way. Right. I suspect if you have your own game, there's probably some life hacks, you know, so you could put a cloth between the lower flippers or on the out lane so that the ball is never going to go out. Then you're talking thousands of dollars in investment. Right. To decide if you're into a hobby. Sure, and frowned upon by the purists, to be sure. For sure, anyway. Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you. Great point, though.
    42:00
    Hey, thanks for the talk. It's been great. Speaking of kind of coming in as a newer player, one of the things I've noticed with some people that I've seen in the competitive space is playing with headphones or listening to music or something like that that I never considered as like, hey, I'm just playing at the bar with my buddies, but if you're playing professionally or competitively, is that something that you've looked into or you kind of have any knowledge about? Oh, totally. This is such a great topic. So one question is you see people wearing headphones, and some people here may do this, so you can probably give a different answer or a different perspective. But one question is, like, are they listening to anything? So is this noise canceling or not? And if you choose to, also, is there a disadvantage because you're not listening to the call outs from the machine? So there's that. But also, yeah, so what are you listening to if you're not just listening to noise canceling? So for me personally, I actually find that it helps a lot. And I have a couple different playlists that I'll listen to sometimes. And it is astounding. I definitely play better in some moments. and I think it's probably because I'm thinking less about the rules and it feels more flowy to me. It turns off this analytical piece of my brain and then I'm just kind of getting into, all right, let me keep the ball going. So I think that's something you should play with and definitely talk to people. What are you listening to? I know that one theory is that you want to find something, like find a rhythm that's kind of in sync with the sort of gameplay you're playing. So if you're playing a faster game, maybe you want music that's a little faster.
    43:38
    It may also speak to, like, speaking of the arousal states, like, you might find that if you're coming into a competition and you're really tense about it, that listening to music that kind of brings you down a little bit is going to put you in a more optimal state for playing well. And likewise, if you're, you know, if you've been up all night and you're, like, dragging, like, maybe listen to something to kind of pump yourself up so you're like, all right, I'm going to be energized and active when I jump into this thing. So a highly personal question. Does anyone use headphones that want a thought about?
    44:08
    At a minimum, try it out because it's interesting and it feels different. But, yeah, it's great. Yeah, you'll see me trying it out this weekend.
    44:18
    I'll be watching. Is there an optimal stance when you're at a pinball machine? Some people sit down, but I prefer to stand because you're not going to be sitting in a chair at a pinball competition.
    44:32
    This is a great question. I've thought a lot about this, and this is, again, highly personal, But it depends on if you're a taller person and you're a shorter person, that's going to change. If you're more over the machine, you can maybe get a better view of the play field. But if you stand back a little bit. Like Lyman Sheets, he's nearly at the cross lock bar level, yes. Right, so physiologically imagine that you're going to be able to manipulate the game differently. So if I'm right on top of the machine, it's hard for me to go front to back, but side to side is maybe better. so I think that's a it's more about physiology maybe than brain state but it's a great topic alright so I'm a new person and maybe I shouldn't say this in this room but I still don't know the rules but pinball is really fun and I enjoy it and in your talk when you were talking about before flow there's that stage where you're just letting go of everything and not thinking that's when pinball is right for me right that's when i get my pinball flows when i'm trying to forget about all the other things in the world and clear my mind yeah and so the goal is just keep the ball going as long as you can if you get multi-ball it's like that's the prize right that you get to play multi-ball so for the developers like to make it easier to figure out what the rules are might be good or will it ruin it for me if i'm following all the rules and not just, I don't know. We'll see. I'm hoping to learn some more of the rules this weekend. Yeah, it's funny. That makes me think of, I'll just mention this buddy of mine. So I joined the New England Pinball League maybe five years ago. And the first time I showed up, I was very anxious, just feeling like I'm self-conscious and am I going to play well or not? Do people care or not care? And I ran into this guy, Kyle, who has a really great perspective on it. He said, I don't really care what score I get. I play to win and I want to play well. But for me, it's all about getting to that moment where I'm just, like you described, like I'm one with the machine, like I'm locked in, I'm playing, this ball is going forever. So sort of think about the thrill-seekers that are jumping off the cliffs just to have this moment of experience. We talked about it today in terms of I'm trying to use it to leverage my skill set so I can get better scores, but maybe it's just the end in itself. It's having enough mastery that you can really be locked into this game of lights and sound that sort of delivers you to that place. I think there's a lot of truth to that. I think we have to acknowledge a design principle first stated out loud by Joe Kamenkow many years ago. Shoot for the flashing lights. That's all that's on the rule card is shoot for the flashing lights. But it does bring up a dichotomy here. I think that we're talking mostly about what would be a tournament type situation. So you have the extra rules, so to speak, imposed on you that you have to be up and at your best or as best as you can be with your physiological state at your turn to go play that machine versus if you're just at home and okay, now I need to clear my mind and so I will go do something that drags me away from my day-to-day cares for a few minutes.
    48:11
    So are we talking about two different things there? Or do they combine some way? She was implying that if you do the fun thing, that could be the predecessor to the real flow state because it would be the release and getting ready to optimize. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think they're connected. I mean, in the perfect world, your skill set ratchets up so that you're in that state while you're playing really well. But maybe the playing well isn't as important to you as it is just sort of being in the game. I imagine I'm playing well, but nobody else has watched. That's why you have to cover the scores.
    49:04
    So kind of going back to that point, that topic about wearing headphones, one of the things that jersey jack machines do that no one else seems to want to do is they have a headphone jack and I've never actually seen anyone use it but I kind of feel like it would kind of be the best of both worlds because you'd be able to hear the call outs but you'd still have your noise cancelling or whatever do you have any kind of opinion on that based on your research? Yeah, I think, again, that's personal. So if you're the person that is highly distracted by people talking around you, and there's kind of a social courtesy that you don't comment on someone's game, particularly while it's happening, and even between balls, it's sort of in competition play. I mean, I think most people abide by this, but the courtesy, I think it's true in golf and it's true in other sports, unless you're deliberately trying to mess with somebody, but you kind of want to let people play their game and respectfully kind of stand to the side. So if you're a person that's distracted by people around you, whether they're trying to interfere or not, then I think that's a good way to go. I actually bought a headphone jack for my Avengers Infinity Quest thinking that it would allow me to play later when my wife and kids were asleep, but then I installed the vibration shaker motor. Thank you. So the whole house rattles now and there's no hiding factor. down there. But it was good. But I mean, that's it. Yeah. I mean, I think, again, it's totally highly personal. But I think in particularly when they're games like Guns N' Roses, if people are really into the music, then I think there's a bigger draw for that than there might be on like Infinity Quest or something else. Cool. Thank you. Yeah.
    51:01
    Last call for questions? Why would someone use their headphones to listen to some totally irrelevant song? What are they gaining by doing that? I'm puzzled by that, but I guess some people are manipulating their sensory state or their emotional state. I can tell you, I mean, not to make this go on forever, but for me personally, I get highly emotional when I'm playing. I don't know if anyone else, especially if I'm having a bad night and I just want to have one good ball. What music does for me is it delivers me to a more positive head space rather than being at the mercy of this game that's being unfair to me. Like a familiar space too? Yeah, exactly. It's like a happy place. Okay, well we'll see if these people do better over the next two days. Thanks very much. Thanks everybody. Thank you.