Before the release of Pac-Man in 1980, pretty much all video and arcade games were “space shooters.” Pac-Man was in fact the first non-violent video game that appealed to both boys and girls and for that reason, it became an instant classic. Thanks to Pac-Man, the video-game industry widely diversified, expanding to areas of science and education. And all because of a missing slice of pizza. Story goes that Pac-Man’s developer, Toru Iwatani, went to a pizza parlor with some of his friends. When the pizza was delivered, one of them took a slice and… the rest is history. Iwatani spent the next seventeen months designing a game that revolved around eating.

Similarly, Jenova Chen was walking around the campus of the University of Southern California when he looked up at the sky and saw a series of cloud formations. This image became the springboard for Chen’s environmental game, Cloud. Funded by the USC Game Innovation Research Grant in 2004, Cloud invites us to become an androgynous angel - gatherer of clouds - who flies over the earth looking for polluted areas that need some serious rainfall-clean-up.

At 25, the Chinese native Chen has proven that it is in fact possible to create a video game that supports, as he says, “a feeling.” Chen describes his games as “something that you can put down at any time and enjoy your life,” as objects to cherish and enjoy, without addiction.

I must admit that there’s something confusing, almost disconcerting about Cloud. In our games we are so used to gathering points and weapons, and creating strategies to vanquish the weak and conquer the poor, that Cloud seems a bit unreal. And yet, there it is… a simple idea, executed with tremendous care, that unlocks a world of possibilities, so far unknown - or ignored - by the gaming community.

Chen’s second game, aptly titled Flow, is an evolution game that borrows and translates the fundamentals of Pac-Man into the 21st century. An ocean of blue monochrome pixels is your crib, your universe. As a sea creature, minutely designed to flow organically in the digital interface, you must submerge, emerge and return to the depth, as you eat and nibble on creatures of different colors and shapes, allowing you to transform and evolve with the blink of an eye. There are no points to count for and no overt violence in the game… with the movement of your hand (and the mouse) you can dance and eat and change… that’s what the game is all about.

In its first two weeks of release, Flow had 350,000 downloads. Its amazing success, however, is due not only to its elegant flash design and musical score. The small sea creature that you inhabit is actually learning from you. Chen utilized DDA or Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment – a common, yet incomplete feature in game design – to provide players with unconscious choices to help them customize their optimal game experience.

In other words, using Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s Flow Theory, wherein human beings achieve a state of “flow” when they reach a perfect balance between the activity and their skill, Chen embedded Flow with DDA to allow the game and the user to learn from each other, thus achieving a perfect balance in the game play. As one player puts it: “Flow pulls off the remarkable feat of feeling as meditative as it is addictive.” The beauty of Flow is that it is effortless, its mechanics and design do not interfere with the game play; on the contrary, they feel natural, as if you've played this game before.

Both Cloud and Flow unlock the potential in the gaming industry to explore new areas of emotion and delivery within the medium. Its developer and designer, Jenova Chen is now in San Francisco, working for video game giant EA – Electronic Arts. We only hope that they learn from him, as much as he will learn from them.