And now for some things that aren’t worth a post by themselves, but which I can dump together.
ONE: Hey, did you know that some of the content here is being syndicated by Gamasutra.com and GameSetWatch? You can see my article on loss aversion here, and new stuff will appear bi-weekly. They actually want me to be more verbose there than I normally am here, so the columns posted there may have bonus material.
TWO: You may have noticed that the Google Adsense ads are gone. This is because Google booted me out of the program, denied my appeal, and refused to pay me the $115 that was in my account at the time. Presumably the reason being my article on reciprocity where I half-jokingly asked readers to click on the Google Adsense ads. Apparently they view asking people to click on ads as a “threat to their affiliates,” so let me apologize and do what I can to rectify my past mistake by asking, with the same amount of sincerity, that you to NEVER click on ANY Google Adsense ads AGAIN.
THREE: I come across a lot of stuff on the Internet that I file away for possible future use on this site. Usually what I do is use the Delicious Firefox plugin to tag the post and add it to my bookmarks on that site, along with a note to myself about how it might be used. It occurs to me that people might be interested in seeing these bookmarks, and so you can see my Delicious Bookmarks here. Or, if you prefer, you can abstain by clicking almost anywhere on the Internet except for that link.
FOUR: Speaking of which, I’ve gotten in the habit of posting on Twitter about the more interesting of these articles as well.
FIVE: I have articles currently drafted on the following topics: WoW pricing and the decoy effect, regression to the mean and owning some chumps, The effects of external time cues on perceived fun, MW2 javelin glitch abuse as a prisoner’s dilemma, and the endowment effect on used game sales. Look for them at some point in the future.
SIX: Big thanks to Nicholas, Andy, Hugo, David, and Andrew for donating via the PayPal link. You guys are awesome and I’ve ordered Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion from Amazon. I’ve actually read this book before, but lost it and have been wanting another copy to use as a reference since starting this site. So thanks again, guys!
You might want to look into Text Link Ads. Or, if your numbers support it, there may be various other ad options that are more worthwhile than Google.
How about an article on decisions as a study subject in current psychology books, and decisions as they are used by game designers? 🙂
Or, perhaps easier, the psychology of buying and pricing, and item selling in free to play games.
hehe,i never did click on google adds anyway…!
you site/blog is officially on my opera speed dial(along with joystiq and gamespot).
and im a little upset about this:
“They actually want me to be more verbose there than I normally am here, so the columns posted there may have bonus material”,i don’t like the idea of having to check out other sites to see your articles.
My solution to Google Ads has always been to use the AdBlock addon for Firefox. I can’t click what I don’t see.
@ Jurie
I’ve been thinking of putting together a reading list and will probably do so in the future. I’ve got so many other ideas, too!
The psychology of buying is one of them, especially when stuff is on sale. I’m fascinated with the question of why people will buy GOBS of stuff from Steam when it goes on sale or gets bundled with like 50 other games from a given publisher or developer. Why in God’s name would you buy “The Complete id Pack” on steam when you have like 40 other games to play and you only really wanted to play two of those id games, anyway? I haven’t come across any really good answers to this yet, but I haven’t been looking particularly hard. It’s on the list.
@aiat
Glad you like the site! And no, the stuff on Gamasutra will be reprints of stuff that appears here at about the same time, only sometimes slightly padded out. And I will always post a link to the Gamasutra version from the psychologyofgames.com version. So if you subscribe to my RSS feed, you’ll get it all.
@ Andrew
I use adblock too to get rid of the more obnoxious ads, but I periodically click on the ads in sites that I like, provided they’re not annoying.
man you are good!its like you are reading my mind…!thats exactly what its like with me,i have this obsession with adventure and space sim games which even i cant explain:to put it simply i buy every adventure game and space sim i can get my hands on(whether old or new)and the chances of playing them is very slim at best(finishing them them is another story).i still don’t know exactly why i do that!!
—on a whole other note:how can i choose a pic as my avatar?
I’m really surprised that Google checked to see you were encouraging people to click their ads… well actually just writing that, I’m sure they’ve got some clever alert which notifies them of unusual spikes in clicks from sites.
@aiat
Sign up to Gravatar.com and it will automatically link in.
@ We Fly Spitfires
They probably automatically flag accounts for review if their clickthroughs spike within a certain timeframe.
This is a good site you have running here, very smart. The psychology angle is something I always wondered about.
I’m about to do something selfish here and plug my own blog, but it’s for a good reason – there’s an effect here I wonder if you’ve written or will write anything about.
http://easymoneywill.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-makes-video-game-video-game-second.html <-that's the post I wrote, about what makes a video game a video game. In it, I say that for something to be a video game, it must compel the player to use the game mechanics.
Arguably, your blog here is a psychological analysis of why certain mechanics work and others don't. I was wondering if you've seen any trends in game design that are consistently successful.
More verbose? I love how sweet and straight to the point they are. Google wouldn’t even give you the money that’s due? Geez. I wonder if there’s something horrid in the fine print. There almost always is.
I’d be curious if you had any thoughts/articles on wants vs needs and gaming. The article on Virtual Goods you tweeted a while back got me thinking about that.
From Firefox you can easily block google ads using AdBlock addon. This is the best option.