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Psychological research has always been one of the important theoretical sources of user experience research. this paper is inspired by Zhi Xiao's carding of stream of consciousness, based on "stream of flow theory" and "cognitive theory". The process of interaction between players and games and the process of stream of consciousness are combined and analyzed, and it is concluded that the appropriate difficulty of the game makes it easier for players to reach the state of stream of consciousness. The level of difficulty is mainly related to the player's thinking (strategy) ability and operation (technology) ability. On the other hand, from a utilitarian point of view, for a larger user group, we also need to control and adjust the difficulty of the game from these two angles to adapt to the ability of the majority of ordinary players. The following is explained in detail:

Cycle-the behavior stages experienced by the player cycle in the game are shown in figure 1 below. In the course of the game, the player's behavior mainly goes through four stages. First, the player will observe and see what information is given by the feed forward of the game. Then, according to observation and thinking, I try to understand the rules and patterns of the game, the current situation, etc., and make targeted choices according to the conclusion of thinking, such as I want to attack point A first. Finally, the game system starts to act according to the thinking decision, and the game system gives corresponding feedback according to the rules after the action, and circulates the process. Accordingly, the game passively accepts the player's instructions and gives corresponding feedback by setting the rules.

Figure 1-player behavior stage (source: self-control) Stream of consciousness-the process of stream of consciousness in the behavioral stage during the game, several stages are repeated repeatedly, and the player's "stream of consciousness" flows in this cycle. In the process of flow, the process of thinking and association of the human brain is "internal suction"; the process of observing the environment by the human brain is "external suction"; the process of external sound and image accidentally entering consciousness is "external inrush"; the process of distraction in the thinking process of the human brain is "internal inrush"; as shown in figure 2 below, the feedback information of the game is captured by the player, and the player completes a cycle of interactive process after external suction and internal suction. In this process, the intrusive flow (the player's mind wandering) may cause the cycle to end at any time. In the process of players immersed in "external suction" and "internal suction", it is the so-called "flow state". Miharichiksen believes that in the state of flow, people are in a state of concentration, do things without thinking, and feel happy and satisfied after things are done; the two are related, and we can think that in order to achieve the state of flow, we need to keep players focused on the game, that is, to keep people in the "internal / external suction" as far as possible to avoid being involved in the "inward flow".

In psychology, the stream of consciousness refers to the process in which some information, emotions and desires from the external or internal unconsciousness enter and exit consciousness in the way of continuous movement. According to the different sources and forms of the stream of consciousness, the stream of consciousness is divided into four streams of consciousness: the inner suction stream, the intrusive stream, the external suction stream and the intrusive stream. -- functional psychology.

Figure 2-player stream of consciousness cycle process (source: self-control) flow-- stay focused and be happy. In most cases, people can only focus on one thing at a time, such as Cherry's binaural listening experiment. When the game level requires the player to concentrate on his cognitive ability to get through, the player will enter a state of concentration, in the process of the player's stream of consciousness cycle. The rich emotions produced by the players due to the performance of the game will cause their mind to wander and break the cycle. Therefore, the player's mood and difficulty and ability are considered comprehensively. As shown in figure 3 below, based on the relationship between the difficulty of the game and the player's ability, we can get different emotional experiences of players in different situations. For example, when players hang up, or use the automatic function to brush pictures, they feel boring and may put down their phones to do other things; players do not have the ability to always have negative emotions when they suffer setbacks, and may choose to interrupt the game to check the strategy, or even abandon the pit directly. While in a certain ability to play furniture, and a certain degree of game difficulty, such as LOL qualifying, through concentration and all-out efforts to win, the player will enter the ideal flow state: "the best experience when you focus to the extreme, it is when you are fully engaged, immersed in creative or fun activities, experience a feeling of selflessness."

Figure 3-the player's mood is affected by the difficulty of the game and the player's ability (source: self-control) ability-the ability demand of the game in the stage of the player's game, observation, thinking, choice mainly depends on thinking ability, the level of thinking ability may be affected by many angles, such as the player's own relevant game experience, the player's understanding of the game itself, the player's mental state at that time, and so on. The action process depends on the player's operation ability, which is also affected by the player's experience, agility, equipment performance, mental state and so on. However, due to the lack of more evidence-based research, as shown in figure 4 below, this paper temporarily takes the thinking ability and operation ability as the representative for the next step of analysis.

Figure 4-player behavior and ability (source: self-made) mainstream-from the point of view of game difficulty, the game type takes the operation difficulty and thinking difficulty as horizontal and vertical coordinates. The distribution of different types of games is shown in figure 5 as shown in figure 5. For example, puzzles and card games require players to have higher thinking abilities and maintain a high level of thinking in the game. Shooting games, rhythm games and other games require players to have a faster response, more accurate operation, and low requirements for thinking ability. Among the listed games, RTS games need not only higher thinking ability of players, but also higher operation ability, which puts forward higher requirements for the comprehensive quality of players. Few players can reach this level of ability, and RTS has gradually become a niche game in today's market. On the other hand, casual games, the demand for thinking and operation is very low. According to the 2021 Game Market report, downloads of casual games account for 80%, while game time accounts for only 40%, and game income accounts for only 20%. Reflects that casual games are attractive to players, but low stickiness, players do not invest time and money into the game. Games such as MMO,RPG, which have good control over the difficulty of thinking and operation, are also popular mainstream games today.

Figure 5-player behavior and ability (Source: self-made) conclusion it can be considered that the game suitable for the ability of most people has more market potential and more fun. Although I did not find the right data, the player's ability level should be in line with the normal distribution, that is, most people's thinking ability and operation ability are average. Therefore, a commercial game for the public should adapt to the ability level of most people in a variety of ways.

Take "LOL" as an example, to some extent, it is a simplified version of the RTS game. In a single game, strategy is still important, but the strategic thinking pressure that players have to bear is shared by teammates and game mechanisms, such as players only need to control one character, limited field of vision, small soldiers attack automatically, fewer resource points, and so on. In terms of operational difficulty, it has always been a very important part of LOL. First of all, compared with traditional RTS games that need to control the entire army, only one character needs to be controlled to greatly reduce the operating pressure. At the same time, for the number of skills, the control of cooling time also reduces the difficulty of operation. In the mobile game "Arena of Valor", further reduce the difficulty, directly recommend the installation, reduce the thinking difficulty of the players, in order to adapt to the scene characteristics of the mobile game.

Figure 6-StarCraft 2 (game screenshot)

Figure 7-League of Legends (game screenshot) thinks from another angle. Different ways of playing can be set in a game to adapt to the ability level of different players, such as Onmyoji, upstream cold, forgetting Sichuan and other games, the game has an automatic picture-brushing function, this function has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, for the sustainability of the growth of the game, from a numerical point of view, players need to constantly accumulate a lot of materials in order to improve combat effectiveness, and there are quite boring game contents that repeatedly paint pictures in the game. Automatic drawing function can effectively reduce the boredom of players; automatic combat also avoids excessive demand for player operation ability. On the other hand, for players who have the pursuit of operational ability, the game also sets up manual combat, PVP combat, boss warfare and other games that require certain operational ability.

Figure 8-Leisure mode against the current (game screenshot)

Figure 9-pvp martial arts mode against the current (screenshot of the game) this article comes from the official account of Wechat: GameTube (ID:GameTube), author: doorbell

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