Think about the last avatar you controlled in a video game. What did he, she, or it mean to you? Was it just a tool that you used to get from one end of a maze to another? Was it a richly detailed character that might have been pulled from any given movie, television show, or novel? Or was it something that you created, tweaked, and customized from whole cloth –well, digital whole cloth– to look just how you wanted and behave exactly as you thought appropriate?

Among different kinds of media, video games are unique in how they allow us to interact with and develop something approaching real interpersonal relationships with characters. So it’s an interesting question for those in the realms of psychology and communications research to ask how exactly this works. What determines what kind of relationship you will have with your avatar? What characterizes those relationships? And what effects do they have on our enjoyment of the games or other outcomes?

These are the kinds of questions that I will tackle with the help of my guest expert, Dr. Jaime Banks on this episode of the podcast.

Audio credits:
“Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3."AcidJazz" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I'm at PAX West participating in panels and making new friends, but that doesn't mean you don't get a new podcast. Enjoy this audio presentation of a lecture I gave about 30 things I wish researchers would study (or study more) about the psychology of video games. And why it would be great if they did.

It may shock you to hear this, but not everyone is intimately familiar with video games. I know, right? Despite the fact that video games continue to become more mainstream and cut across all kinds of demographic groups, some aspects of games and gaming culture continue to be misunderstood or, worse yet, maligned. In this episode my guest and I are going to examine yet another group that may need some evidence-based information about video games: mental health therapists and similar professionals. That is, those working with kids, adults, and families who may not only be incorporating video games and play into their therapy, but who may be asked specifically about behaviors and habits related to video games.

Basic psychological phenomena like memory, perception, and emotions have huge implications for the design of products or experiences, from nutritional labels to phone apps to voting registration forms to video games. And people who study those kinds of user experiences need to be aware of some of the very basic ways that squishy human brains can be expected to operate as they set out to test and measure how people interact with their products and make sense of their media. If they don't take those things into account, they lose one of their most important guideposts to improving user experiences and helping the designers or directors of the world execute on their visions.

These are the kinds of things I'll be talking about with this episode's guest expert, Dr. Celia Hodent. We will also talk about the challenges and pleasures of being a user experience consultant, and we'll even talk a little about the runaway success of Fortnite: Battle Royale.

In a way, classic adventure games were the precursors to the escape rooms that are popping up in strip malls and warehouses all over the country. But unlike adventure games, escape rooms take place in physical space with tangible objects. But just like with video games, people who design escape rooms and other kinds of live, narrative experiences can benefit from an understanding of human psychology. What kinds of boundaries do typical human perception and information processing place on how an escape room can be designed? How can the well worn mental shortcuts that people use to make decisions and understand the world be used to advance a narrative or provide clues for a puzzle? And then how can these concepts be looped back around to lessons that can be applied to video game design or even how to play a video game and interact with other players while trying to solve some challenge?

In this episode of the podcast, I talk to one veteran game designer Jason Vandenberghe, who has tackled the issue of understanding what kinds of experiences gamers want with the aid of psychology and psychological theories. He aims to avoid false consensus and advocate for what he calls "player empathy." That is, using a framework of personality and motivation psychology to break out of our false consensus and talk about what kinds of gaming experiences that players may want and how to give it to them. 

Jason Vandenberghe's blog

GDC 2012 Talk 

GDC 2013 Talk 

GDC 2016 Talk 

 

Audio Credits

 "Robot Motivation" by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.

"Industrious Ferret" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Many universities and other institutions are offering degrees in video game design and other careers in the gaming industry like art, coding, and user experience design. Some of them are also incorporating courses on psychology because it helps make better games. I talk about this trend with this week's guest expert, Vanessa Hemovich.

 

Modern video games are complicated and require a lot of learning, problem solving, memory, planning, and other things that psychologists might identify as executive functions of the brain. There's a lot going on between our ears whenever we play.

And wouldn't it be great if some of those mental gymnastics helped us with dealing with more mundane but probably more important tasks outside of games. Stuff like school, work, and interacting with other people? Can you connect game-based learning and practice of these skills with "real life" skills? Might this be especially useful for certain people, like kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or who are on the autism spectrum? But even if so, can parents and other caregivers go too far and neglect other types of play that are also important?

These are the types of questions that I'm going to talk about with this episode's guest expert, Dr. Randy Kulman of Learningworksforkids.com.

Enjoy the audio versions of 12 months of Psychology of Games articles from the website. (Sung, awkwardly, to the tune of "Twelve Days of Christmas.")

 

Audio Credits
“Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0Several tracks from Incomptech licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 :
Mining by MoonlightMoon Lounge Omicron PrimeDeucesDaybreakOne Sly MoveSeveral video game songs:
Guile's Theme from the Street Fighter 2 sountrackDiablo 3 main themeOverwatch main themeDark Souls 3

Harassment of many types has been an issue that gamers and game developers have had to deal with for a long time now. In this episode my guest expert Wai Yen Tang talks about research that he and others have done on what leads to harassment in video games and other online spaces, as well as things we might try to curb it. He also talks about the path he took to marry academia and video games.