The Psychology of Video Games

Well, I didn’t “do” a podcast as much as I appeared on one. This one on Quartertothree.com, to be exact. It’s a semiregular podcast put on by the folks at that website, where each week a member of their messageboard community sits in as a special guest. I talked about I-O psychology, Skyrim, the new Tony Hawk HD remake, MOBAs, Serious Sam 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and canned obituaries for the gaming industry. Also, my “game of the week” selection was Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, during which I tried to explain why I liked the game but was still disappointed in it overall.

I had a lot of fun doing this and it was fun to talk games with other folks. I’d love to do more podcasts, though I make no claims as to how good I actually was. If you want to hear for yourself, perform coordinated clicking motions here to access the QT3 podcast.

Many of you may be familiar with the Child’s Play charity that was started by the guys behind the video game webcomic Penny Arcade. Since 2003, the organization has encouraged gamers to donate new video games (or cash or other toys) to children’s hospitals around the world so that little Timmy can distract himself from chemotherapy by teabagging some poor son of a bitch in Call of Duty. Coming from two guys who make a running gag out of a robot that sexually molests fruit and an industry that’s often under scrutiny for too much violence, sex, and teabagging some poor son of a bitch in Call of Duty, this is a refreshingly noble endeavor.

Now, while we’re at it, also consider the earthquakes and tsunami that severely messed up parts of Japan in early 2011. It was interesting to watch the gamer community’s reaction to this tragedy since Japan is frequently associated with the gaming industry. As one example, fans of fighting games organized the Fight For Relief tournament to raise earthquake relief donations. While philanthropy thankfully pops up after any high-profile natural disaster, I found it fascinating that the Japan earthquake created so much energy in the gamer community and to see people participating because they consider themselves gamers. I don’t recall listening to gaming podcasts and hearing about special video game charity tournaments after the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti, for example.

Why is that? What are the psychological reasons why gamers jump behind these causes? To be sure, Child’s Play and the Japan earthquake relief funds thrive because enough people just want to do good deeds. Sure. That’s a given. But are there other factors involved that make gamers like you or me more likely to support these particular charities over others? I think so.

Research into the psychology of charity has argued for a “warm glow giving” theory at least since the mid 80s¹ Unsurprisingly altruism not a purely rational decision nor is it born only of some strict adherence to a moral code. We donate, in part, to feel better about ourselves. Shocking! But one thing that subsequent social psychologists and economists have found is that we tend to donate more when we believe that the charity or our fellow contributors share a similar social identity. That is, if we think that other people in our in-group are donating, we’re more likely to support, contribute to, and trumpet the charity because it makes us feel better about our social identity and thus ourselves.

As an example, one recent experiment from the Journal of Marketing Research² researchers found that they could get people to give more money to a public radio fundraiser by telling them that a previous donor had donated a phat wad of cash, but ESPECIALLY if that previous donor was described in terms that made him/her sound similar to the subject. This was most pronounced in those people with “high identity esteem,” which is basically a measure of how strongly people associate with their social group. Another experiment³ got subjects to prefer a promotion in the form of “a portion of our proceeds will benefit charity” over a more rational cash discount for the same amount, just by choosing a charity that the shopper identified with.⁴

But wait, there’s more. Research has also shown that we may donate more to charity when we feel bad about ourselves, as a way to repair our self image. This was illustrated in a series of experiments⁵ where subjects were tricked into writing essays about their own character that were either positive or negative. Those that beat themselves up by writing self-critical essays gave more when they were subsequently asked to give to a charity of their choice.

Sad Panda will donate more to your cause than will Happy Panda. This is because of sad panda science.

I know this may be a leeetle bit cynical, but I have to wonder if there’s something at work here with Child’s Play and similar charities that target gamers. We often get criticized for loving a hobby replete with violence, sexism, and whatever it was that “B4dKillahD00d43” was screaming at me over Xbox Live the other night. Making a success of Child’s Play gives us a chance to refute those stereotypes and show that gamers can be good people. The Child’s Play website itself even notes that “In response to the media’s negative portrayal of gamers, [Holkins and Krahulik] called for the gaming community to donate to Seattle Children’s Hospital” during the charity’s inaugural season. And why not? Whether or not the stereotypes are accurate, this kind of moral cleansing makes us happier and mentally healthier to the extent that we consider ourselves gamers.

So, I encourage you to go and donate to Child’s Play this season –I just did prior to posting this article.⁶ Sure, little Timmy can be kind of annoying over voice chat when the nurse isn’t around, but let’s cut him some slack. The kid has been through a lot lately and we can help him out.

1. e.g., Andreoni, J. (1990). Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving. The Economic Journal, 100, 464-477. [↩]
2. Shang, J. Reed II, A., and Croson, R. (2008). Identity Congruencey Effects on Donations, Journal of Marketing Research, 45, 351-361. [↩]
3. Page, K., and Barone, M. (2011). Warm Glow or Cold, Hard Cash? Social Identity Effects on Consumer Choice for Donation versus Discount Promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 48, 855-868. [↩]
4. Not coincidentally, it’s not unheard of to see vendors advertise contributions to Child’s Play as a benefit of buying their product. [↩]
5. Sachdeva, S., Iliev, R., and Medin D. (2009). Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners: The Paradox of Moral Self-regulation. Psychological Science, 20 523-528. [↩]
6. Do you see what I just did there? Eh? Eh? [↩]

Like most Earthlings, I’ve been playing a LOT of Skyrim lately. I hated Oblivion and Morrowind, but this particular role-playing dragon murder simulator has really gotten under my skin, thanks in part to how immersive it is. It’s not uncommon for me to hunch in front of my keyboard for hours, forgetting time and space while I ford fjords and cram my inventory full of Falmer ears (I might NEED them!). I wrote a while back about immersion in video games and Skyrim seems like a textbook case of jamming on all the right buttons:

• A cognitively demanding environment –you’re constantly scanning for threats, items, and pathways
• Multiple, coordinated sources of sensory information –sight and sound work really well together here
• Extensive interactivity –you can pick up, mess with, or kill a heck of a lot of stuff

One thing that Skyrim really goes all in on, though, is limiting the incongruous elements on your screen. The idea here is that presenting players with things that remind them that they’re playing a video game undermines a sense of spatial presence and immersion. Skyrim conspicuously omits or minimizes things like damage indicators, cooldown timers on abilities, level indicators on enemies, icons indicating effects, and HUD elements to activate powers or items. It’s super minimalistic and a far cry from something like World of Warcraft where you’ve got numbers bubbling off enemies like fireworks and half your screen is taken up with icons, minimaps, and hotkeys. The result is that it’s easier to lose yourself in the world, as many of us are finding out.

Just a compass, a crosshair, and that Lydia chick who keeps getting herself killed.

That said, I wonder if Bethesda’s pursuit of immersion has actually gone too far. Skyrim’s anemic UI actually often fails to give you information that you really need and want. Say you’ve just gotten a new Fear spell that affects creatures up to level 10. Soooo… What level is that wolf? Or that bandit? No way to know, really. And how much longer until my protection from frost potion wears off? Is my weapon still poisoned? And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve blithely trooped around the landscape while diseased or cursed because I failed to dive into a UI two levels deep to find out. And don’t get me started on favorites and hotkeys.

One universal complaint of the game seems to be that the UI is awful, and I have to wonder how much of that was exacerbated by an iron clad design goal to shove everything possible off the main screen in order to increase immersion. Despite how much I’m enjoying it, it kind of strikes me as an example of swinging too far to the other extreme.