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Games Entertainment

An In-Depth Psychology of Games 26

Posted by Zonk from the insert-coin dept.
Gamasutra has a lengthy article discussing many aspects of The Psychology of Video Games. The article discusses why we play, why games are made the way they are, and tips for designing for members of our species. From the article: "We are all familiar with the feeling we have when we are completely caught up in a great game. The state where we are completely focused on playing, and all other things become irrelevant. This article is about that feeling - why we get it when we play games, and how we can design games that give us more of it."
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An In-Depth Psychology of Games More

An In-Depth Psychology of Games

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  • I 3 Maslow's Hierarchy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @12:36AM (#12380121) Journal
    Honestly, probably too much.

  • Dynamic adjustments (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dmaduram ( 790744 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @12:40AM (#12380150) Homepage

    Most of the points in this article has been made at one time or another in various industry articles or editorials on Gamespot [gamespot.com]. However, they really *original* point that this article makes is it's final note on the importance of 'dynamic adjustments' to the difficulty of games:

    A good example of this is the first time I played Quake 3. I had never played it before and decided to set up a quick death match game with just one AI-bot against me. I chose the intermediate level of difficulty, and the rules where that the first one with twenty frags would win. The game started and the AI-bot started killing me over and over again. I tried to find better weapons and figure out new tactics, but it didn't do much to help me. After a few minutes, the score was 17-0 to the AI-bot, but at that point I was beginning to see some improvements in my skills. A few seconds later I became completely ecstatic as I got my first frag. It was payback time! After that the frags just kept rolling in - I was killing him over and over again, and I felt like the hero of a movie that rose against the evil dictator in the last act. Soon the score had turned to 19-19 and it was very exciting. I finally got the last kill and won the game, which was an incredible climax. It was astonishing how I was able to improve my skills so fast, and turn the tide so that I managed to beat him in the end. What an accomplishment on my behalf!

    But as you may have guessed by now, all was not what it seemed. I decided to test the AI system to see if there was any built in functionality to modify their behavior after the player. I let the AI-bot kill me 17 times in a row without fighting back, and that's when I realized that the more times I was killed, the less accurate their firing became. After 19 kills, my once worthy opponent was merely a half-wit that mostly seemed to enjoy standing still and staring into walls. It had not been my skills that had improved in my first game, but instead the AI-bot's skills that had deteriorated. I had just been too caught up in the moment to realize it. However, this experience made me realize what an extremely powerful tool this was. The game would never have been as fun for me without it, and I'm sure that many games would be more fun with it included.

    Many, many games hit all the points mentioned in Hejdenberg's article (i.e. imitation, game width, etc.), but fail to be 'fun' solely because of the lack of dynamic adjustments to difficulty.

    Perfect case in point: Devil May Cry 3

    • Pretty much everyone who makes games underestimates the difficulty it will cause the player. Ironically, the players themselves frequently do the same, as no person in their right mind would recommend starting a hobby of Quake 3 by playing intermediate. You should start pretty much every game on dirt easy and work your way up. This is especially true in Quake 3 or any tournament style game, where player skill is not ranked in hours played but in months.

      Games should have 4 difficulty levels, "Normal," "H
      • That is how the Thief series did it. Normal, Hard, Difficult or something like that (the first version was the standard easy, medium, hard).

        I'd like to see more games that require thinking like Thief II (the best in the series).

        I'm about to get Jade Empire which is why I bought the XBox in the first place (well for that and College Football, FIFA & MLB).

    • Re:Dynamic adjustments (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Eivind ( 15695 )
      But this dynamic adjustment can be done horribly wrong too.

      I remember playing a RPG where I was having problems living trough a certain dungeon. No problem, I thougth, I'll just go somewhere else, solve some other quest, gain some levels and then return.

      On return the dungeon was no easier than before. Turned out the monsters in that game had stats calculated according to the players stats. So for example, it'd have a strength equal to your strength+2.

      What this meant was that advancing your character

    • Hmm,



      I wonder if he's right on this assertion though :

      Afaik, the AI in Quake 3 does not adjust when you're behind. In my knowledge, it will act the same according to the parameters defined for the different bots, on different skill-levels.


      I think my sig also defines a very true nature of the pleasures of gaming.

    • Re:Dynamic adjustments (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Myself, I hate dynamically adjusted difficulty levels.

      1. It's an activity that we feel that we can perform - a challenge that requires skill

      Any activity provides us with a number of options - or challenges - that require a certain skill to do. If we don't have the required skill for the activity, the challenge will easily become frustrating or feel meaningless. Pleasure comes in the area between boredom and anxiety at the distinct moment where our options are in line with our abilities.

      Playing a game of

  • Gaming (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 )

    I've got points, and nobody seems to be replying to this. Why is there so few replies?

    I may have to go waste them over in the science place where I pretend to know stuff.

  • Haven't had that feeling much lately (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr.Opveter ( 806649 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @01:57AM (#12380512)
    I do remember getting caught up in games when i was younger. First on games like Leisure Suit Larry and Elite, later on games like Quake and Betrayal at Krondor (i remember spending weeks of 12+ hours a day playing that game in my summer vacation).

    Now i can't be bothered much to get into a good RTS or RPG, it just takes up too much effort and time. Even with the better FPS games that came out recently i'm just not getting that feeling of being caught up in a game.

  • It's all about the brainwaves (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FirienFirien ( 857374 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:12AM (#12381313) Homepage
    When you're thinking 'normally' - un-automatic, processing stuff logically, actually thinking about the stuff you're looking at - your brain patterns are in beta waveform; it's irregular, you're testing out different parts of your brain to see which one helps most at a problem, and you notice other things more easily.

    There was a study done a while ago (the results possibly turned up in one of the popular science magazines? Can't remember.) studying alpha patterns. Alpha brainwaves are what give what is termed 'cyborg ability' - this isn't cyborg in the augmented-with-cool-gizmos though. Here, cyborg means augmentation in a different sense. When you walk, you no longer have to think about the complexity of timing your feet, balance, leg muscles, pressure feedback and all the other intricate things that are needed to master walking. It sounds funny, but you can do it because you're used to it.

    That's not cyborg, but you're starting to get the idea.
    When you ride a bicycle for a few years, you no longer have to think about how you move. Even adults have trouble on a bike the first couple of times - it's about learning how to balance, how to steer with balance, and so on. When you cycle without thinking about it, that's cyborg. You get to a particular place on the road by intending to get there rather than left leg, right leg, move the handlebars this way - it just happens.

    A more understandable analogy for slashdotters is gaming. When you've played a game for a certain amount of time, got used to the keyset and mouse movements - you *don't think about it any more*. You want to move left, you move left. You want to walk backwards round a corner, you walk backwards around a corner. If you don't think about having to press that button to get this to happen - that's cyborg. That's when your brain is so used to what happens that it no longer requires the feedback of 'finger press button' - to the brain, it's 'walk backwards around the corner', and you've practised it enough that you can just do it.

    That's alpha brainwaves.

    The study was examining where alpha brainwaves were found; it's where you find 'think' turned into 'do'. And the three major groups were sportspeople (This is what is known as "The Zone" - where it just happens. You're not thinking about anything else; it's all about what happens, not how it happens, or where to step), zen masters (A different way in - actively turning off the thinking, and settling into alpha by default. The transcendental aspect of it comes from not having the sport or base thought to distract yourself either - pure meditation is when your mind shuts down to one or no active activities, only interrupted by external influence e.g. becoming cold or being disturbed)... and, if you can remember where this sentence was going, gamers.

    Focused gamers stop seeing the outside world, and stop interacting with the keyboard - the brain interacts with the game, and the finger-key interface becomes just another synapse. It's less so with more complicated games, where you have to shift your hands around to new keysets; it's also affected by in-game chat (because you have to upshift to beta to access speech centres) and lag (because your brain activity stops corresponding directly with what happens).

    Another aspect of having the ability to use alpha pattern is that the ability to pick up the other alpha activities is significantly increased, because it's that much easier to get into the zone. With two or three different ways of settling to alpha - gaming and a focus sport, or a focus sport and meditation - it becomes easier to learn other tasks. The brain is becoming more able to adapt to new impulse-response patterns, and so learns faster. Concentration goes up, productivity goes up; it's an incredibly useful ability to have.

    What the article writer doesn't know, but still appreciates the feel of, is the first step along the way. Becoming more skillful; becoming less interface and more immerse, is what takes something to the depths of the brain. And once you're there, it's a pretty small step to reach enjoyment. It's a form of enlightenment; it's just.... pure.
  • I was thinking,"A nice Starcraft picture would work well in this article." and I scrolled down a paragraph to see one.

    Its amusing to see people trying to unlock the science behind what is fun. You play enough video games, and you know what they should do to make the next big game. And at the same time, its like comedy, once you hear the joke, its not funny anymore, but give it to someone else and its amusing. Theres only so many actual types of games, many games are the same as another: River Raid/Grad

  • Old news. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OglinTatas ( 710589 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @08:04AM (#12381888)
    "This article is about that feeling - why we get it when we play games, and how we can design games that give us more of it."

    In 1803 Friedrich Sertuerner identified the active ingredient in opium and synthesized morphine. I play video games way too much, and my nephews play even more. Do we really need to make them more addictive?
  • On the topic of Chance is addicition. They mention lottery and slot machines. People clearly get addiction to gambling games. But "games aren't gambling" was always my mantra; however, games with an element of chance operate on a principal of "random reinforcement." Random reinforcement is when performing an action has no bearing on the reward and/or punishment, except that the action must be done to receive any reward.

    I asked this question to a licensed therapist and that's how I learned the principle
  • He's not too bright, is he? Isn't the idea that journalists should have some idea what they are talking about, especially when dismissing it? Apparently a DS with Nintendogs is the same as a keychain with a preprinted LCD, and Electroplankton is some sort of music sequencer. I have no idea what games Dvorak has liked in the past but given that information I'm pretty sure I could point out what games they, by his standards, ripped off or imitated.

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