Imagine you are walking through a Home Depot and see a collection of hammers hanging from pegboard in the tool section. Let’s say you are an English major and you have never seen a hammer before. You might assume that you had stumbled into an unusual art gallery and start admiring the variety of colors and shapes the artist had created. Clearly they are a phallic representation of our patriarchal history…

In this example, you would be treating the hammers as if they were “present-at-hand”. In a game, every time the player is forced to stop and think about the possible actions an object affords they are forced out of their flow state. If this happens too often they will never be able to relax and enjoy the game.

¶ 9:15 AM