The Availability Heuristic is Always On

One of the stories that’s making the rounds right now concerns Adam Orth, a (former) Creative Director at Microsoft who caused a ruckus by cramming his foot in his Twittermouth. He did so while weighing in on a potential “always on, always connected to the Internet” nature of Microsoft’s next Xbox console. The gist of…

The Psychological Appeal of Violent Shooters

I have a new article up on gamesindustry.biz exploring the psychological appeal of violent shooters via self-determination theory. I draw from work by Scott Rigby, Richard Ryan, and Andrew Przybylski that looks at how this theory of human motivation can explain why violent shooters are so popular. SPOILER: It’s because good shooter design also happens…