Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them is a book about how video games use psychology to shape our behavior, manipulate our beliefs, and rig our purchasing decisions.
The 2015 Steam Winter Sale has ditched the daily and flash deals. Here’s why I think that may be a bad idea.
I talk to Dr. C. Shawn Green from the University of Wisconsin-Madison about whether brain training programs work and if regular old action games can make you smarter –and what that really means.
How a simple choice of words can bias your choices in video games, such as what NPC factions to support.
I talk to Dr. Nick Bowman from West Virginia University about how video games differ from other media in terms of the demands they place on players and thus how our approaches to studying them should differ. It turns out that video games ARE special and something new.
In celebration of Halloween, let’s look at some of the psychology behind why people like scary video games.
“Wii U” sounds silly, but Nintendo’s consoles might be benefiting a little from what’s known as the fluency effect.
How can envy can drive us to make in-game purchases and microtransactions? But also, what do we think of others who just buy things we chose to grind out? Let’s see what the research suggests.
An old technique from film making has psychological roots that reach into the world of video games.
What’s the popular topics and state of academic research on psychology and video games? And how can academics package that information for the media and everyone else?
How do gaming Kickstarters that rely on nostalgia make use of our irrational decision-making?