Note: This article originally appeared in my column for Gamasutra. Okay folks, I’m going to nerd out a bit but bear with me. There was this show that my wife used to like watching called Star Trek: The Next Generation. In one episode Captain Picard is being held captive by the Evil Alien of the…
Have you ever wanted to hear me go on about the psychology of video games without that annoying Internet between us? You HAVE? Are you going to be in Seattle, Washington, USA on May 14th at 2pm? You ARE? Well, you’re in luck, because I’m teaming up with some of the folks at GameSpy Technology…
Time for the monthly post where I lump a bunch of stuff together. ONE: Hey! Have you heard about this Facebook thing? Yeah, me too. In fact, for some reason I created a Facebook page for Psychology of Games which you can access by performing clicking motions here. So far I’m really just using it…
I’ve looked at a few kids, like at the store, and one thing I’ve noticed is that they sleep a LOT. Why is that? And while we’re at it, why is it that I spent an entire controller-crushing hour trying to figure out that one level in the puzzle game Braid before giving up and…
Many of us have been surprised in spite of ourselves when one day we looked up and realized that we’ve been paying for a MMO like World of Warcraft when we haven’t logged on for months. Or maybe we’re reading our e-mail and we get a cheerful note from Microsoft saying that our Xbox Live…
Neuroscientist and avid blogger Jonah Lehrer recently published a great article in the Wall Street Journal about what he and others call “the superstar effect.” The piece is well timed, seeing as it deals largely with the effect that someone like Tiger Woods has on his competition and Mr. Woods has in fact just returned…
Let’s say that you’ve hired a coach to help you improve your Slayer game in Halo 3. I’ve heard of stranger things. Let’s say this coach looks like Mr. Miyagi but he curses WAY more. He uses a variety of training and motivational techniques, ranging from grenade throwing drills to trigger finger sprints, doing everything…
[Note: A version of this article appeared as my column in Gamasutra and GameSetWatch.] Microsoft recently augmented their Xbox Live and Games for Windows services with something called “Game Room,” which allows you to buy and/or play classic arcade games like Centipede, Space Invaders, and the like. Basically, it’s just like when we used to…
One of my favorite things about human psychology is how a punishment can be turned into a reward just by changing the way it’s framed. A few years ago a friend of mine was serving on the board for a large conference and negotiating a contract with the hotel where the event would take place.…
And now comes the time again where I dump a bunch of little stuff I didn’t want to make individual updates for. ONE: The website is getting more attention than I thought it would, so a big thank you to everyone who linked here from your blog, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever. I even got huge…
What leads gamers to join one guild in a massively multiplayer game or one clan in an online shooter over another guild or clan? Why do you post on the gaming messageboard that you do as opposed to one of the other countless alternate ones? And once you’re in a group, what kind of things…
Note: This article is also published in my columns on GameSetWatch.com and Gamasutra.com. Soon after its release, some players of the online first person shooter Modern Warfare 2 discovered what became known as “the javelin glitch.” Someone, somewhere, somehow figured out that through a bizarre sequence of button presses you could glitch the game so…
The guys over at Penny Arcade had a great bit where they poked fun at gamers’ obsession with fitting everything into neatly defined genres. The stars of the strip are sitting at a tasting table with Gabe snootily remarking, “This is more of a late eighties platformer, with …Yes, I believe there’s a hint of…
What makes people be such jerks in online games and messageboards? And why do these kids keep stealing my Halloween candy? Wait, actually I think I remember reading something about this… Ah yes, a classic experiment done by Edward Diener at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues way back in the 1970s Little…
Note: A slightly different version of this article ran earlier on Gamasutra.com. I’ll be updating again later this week with a new article here so that you have something to read that hasn’t been previously published. Because I love you, man. While I generally enjoyed Red Faction: Guerrilla, last year’s third-person action game from Volition…
A few years ago I decided that I really wanted a fancy new camera so I could properly indulge my budding interest in photography. Problem was, I didn’t have the cash. But what I did have was a closet literally full of old games I hadn’t played in years and would probably never play again.…
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…
I think most of us have been in “the zone” at one point or another while playing a game. You know what I mean: that trance-like state where things just click and you just can’t do wrong, be it headshot after headshot in a shooter, making jump after perfectly timed jump in a platformer, or…
Why did Activision take an already expensive game and release an even MORE expensive version without adding a whole lot to it? And what does it have to do with “Ozark wild mushrooms served with a brandy demi glaze?” I’ve got an idea. Let me share it with you. As you may know, DJ Hero,…
I wrote just the other day about how loss aversion could be used to increase conversion rates on trial games. You can read that article for more details and a neat experiment illustrating the effect, but the gist of it is that people hate to lose things more than they like to gain them. Losing…
One day when going to check on my friends’ status updates on Facebook, this jumped out at me: Attention Facebook friends: Please for the love of God stop sending me gifts and invites for Farmville, Mafia Wars, Vampires, and whatever other crappy THING you’ve been playing. DO NOT WANT. Just …STOP. GOD. Those of you…
I’m not sure where I first noticed Bayonetta, Sega’s crazy action game starring a witch of the same name (“Bayonetta,” not “Sega”). But I can tell you that I immediately wrote it off as something I wasn’t interested in based on very little actual information. Why? Well, on the 12/25/09 edition of the 4 Guys…
Fanboys. You don’t have to be a very experienced browser of gaming-related forums to see your share of discussions fouled by flames between people hysterically defending their favored game/console/genre/whatever and attacking everything else in sight. Some of it is deliberate trolling, for sure, but not always. There were (and still are) way too many Xbox…
For those of you who somehow don’t know, pro golfer and occasional video game star Tiger Woods has recently been in trouble over not keeping his club in his bag, so to speak. The casualties include endorsement deals with companies who capitalized on Woods’s previous reputation as focused and reliable, but interestingly game publisher EA…
How could publishers get way more people to buy an Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network game after trying the trial version? Let me glue on my goatee and practice my maniacal laugh a few times and then I’ll tell you my idea. But first, let me ask you a couple of hypothetical questions made…
You probably know about Duke Nuke Forever, the sequel to the trailblazing blockbuster Duke Nukem 3D that became the laughing stock of the industry on account of how it spent 12 years –TWELVE YEARS– in development and burned through tens of millions of dollars before being canceled. Wired magazine recently published a fascinating analysis of…
How are loot-based games like World of Warcraft, Torchlight, and Borderlands related to slot machines, chemical bliss, and evolution? Read on for the answer. During my early days with World of Warcraft (WoW) I remember tromping through Westfall killing crowds of Defias bandits when I was shocked by a loot drop: a rare pair of…
What do basketball free throws, Modern Warfare 2, and murdering 11 people in a row have in common? Read on to find out. In psychology, there’s a phenomenon called “the hot hand fallacy” (a.k.a., “the gambler’s fallacy” or “the hot streak fallacy” or “the clustering illusion”). The seminal work on this kink in the human…
Why do surveys overestimate the number of people experiencing the Xbox 360’s dreaded Red Ring of Death? Lord knows I’m familiar with the Xbox 360’s “red ring of death,” or “RROD” as it’s not so affectionately called. I’ve encountered it twice myself. The term refers to what you get on the front of Microsoft’s console…
As gamers, I think we’ve all been there: You’re jamming along, feeling the rush as you shotgun foes in an online shooter or tear your car through the twists and turns of a realistically rendered race track. It’s exciting and in the best cases it may actually get our heart racing and our palms sweating.…
Let’s say you’re compelled to pre-order a game, maybe because the cashier at GameStop got you in a head lock and wouldn’t let you out until you agreed to. So you put down $10 towards Game A and go home, vowing to work out more so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. Weeks later…
How did 2K Games get that cover for Borderlands approved by the ESRB? In psychology there’s a concept called “the contrast effect.” Basically, it means that some perception (say, weight, brightness, or sweetness) will appear greater or lesser depending on a perception that came immediately before it. Because they contrast so strongly and the memory…
Why does Tony Hawk think YOU think his game sucks? Released right at the cusp of the Christmas ’09 shopping season, Tony Hawk RIDE (just like that, in all caps, ’cause it’s CRAZY!) featured a humongous plastic skateboard controller and an equally enormous price tag of $130, but promised to revolutionize the genre. Instead, RIDE…