Stacking Satisfaction: Exploring Flow and Competence in Tetris User Experiences

In order to study the impact of game user experience features on flow, this study documented player reactions to different versions of Tetris. These reactions were: psychological need satisfaction, psychological need frustration, self-efficacy, and flow. Participants played three different versions of Tetris: NES Tetris, Tetris Effect for personal computers (PC), and Tetris Effect for virtual reality (VR). The results were mixed depending on the construct and the version of Tetris being analyzed. The researcher found that that there is a significant positive relationship between self-efficacy and flow in VR Tetris Effect, a significant positive relationship between flow and competence need satisfaction on all three versions of Tetris, and a significant negative relationship between flow and competence need frustration for NES Tetris and PC Tetris Effect. Post-hoc research was conducted on flow’s fluency and absorption dimensions to better explain the patterns observed in the overall flow scores.