The Near Miss Effect and Game Rewards
How failure can feel like success and motivate you to keep playing under the right circumstances.
Twitching, Cheering, and Dirty Laundry
Twitch has added microtransactions as a way to support streamers. Cool. But what are some psychological quirks at play?
Why Do Achievements, Trophies, and Badges Work?
Do achievements, badges, and trophies in video games work? If so, why?
Dark Souls and Gitting into a Gud Mindset
How Dark Souls 3 taught me to be a better parent by encouraging me to embrace failure.
Kisses, Anticipation, and the Lost Art of Identifying
Wait. Don’t identify that loot yet. You’ll enjoy it more.
Kill Cam Kudos and Overwatch
Video: How a small tweak to Blizzard’s new game might nudge people towards sportsmanship.
Four More GDC Presentations About Psychology and Video Games
Four free talks from the Game’s Developer Conference about psychology and video games.
Learned Helplessness and Halo 5
Why some games and some experiences make us feel more helpless than others –and what designers can do about it.
Newtonian Engagement and Metal Gear Solid V
Why are some games better than others at getting us to just keep playing without taking a break?
The Steam Winter Sale is Too Much Sale
The 2015 Steam Winter Sale has ditched the daily and flash deals. Here’s why I think that may be a bad idea.
Reason Based Choice and the Golden Path
How a simple choice of words can bias your choices in video games, such as what NPC factions to support.
The Psychology of Horror Games
In celebration of Halloween, let’s look at some of the psychology behind why people like scary video games.
A Wii Little Fluency Effect
“Wii U” sounds silly, but Nintendo’s consoles might be benefiting a little from what’s known as the fluency effect.
The Kuleshov Effect: Is Batman Hungry?
An old technique from film making has psychological roots that reach into the world of video games.
Shenmue 3 Kickstarter and the Affect Heuristic
How do gaming Kickstarters that rely on nostalgia make use of our irrational decision-making?
When the Pay to Win Button Backfires
How do players react and what social comparisons do they make when others pay real money for in-game advantages?
Free Money, Grocery Bags, and Smarter Than You
How the irrational way we treat “free” as a price in games can lead us astray …or keep us on track.
Why Did the Mass Effect 3 Ending Ruin The Whole Series?
What do the ending of the Mass Effect series and a painful medical procedure have in common? They both illustrate how memory and evaluation of experiences interact.
Why We Hate (Some) Motion Controls
Some recent research suggests how to predict whether motion controls and other weird peripherals will lead to frustration or enjoyment.
Psychology and Video Game Kickstarters
3 psychological phenomena that can help determine the success (or failure) of a Kickstarter video game pitch.
Hand over $4.99 or Spider-Man Gets It
All it may take to get people to spend money in free to play games is one well placed countdown timer.
Red vs. Blue: Which Should You Choose?
Has anyone ever done research on whether playing on the red team or the blue gives one a mental edge in games? Yep.
Psychology of High Scores, Leaderboards, & Competition
How can information about players’ scores and other accomplishments be framed so as to motivate them to compete and try to do better than other players? Let’s explore 3 psychological phenomena that can help.
The Psychology of Destiny’s Loot Systems
Destiny’s loot system leaves out one very important component that could make playing the game more compulsive and habit forming. But it adds in another that might be prolonging player enjoyment after getting a sweet loot drop.
Cheap Beer and the Psychology of PlayStation Now Pricing
Sony just launched its PlayStation Now service that lets you rent access to streaming games. The pricing seems a bit odd to some, but it actually uses some well established psychological tricks to nudge you towards the option that Sony wants you to take. Allow me to explain…
Frustration vs. Video Game Violence in Real-Life Aggression
Does violent content in video games cause violence in real-life? Or might something more mundane like frustration over controls and difficulty offer an alternative explanation?
When Marketing to Gamers Backfires
Products frequently try to appeal to group membership when marketing to gamers, but a new study shows when this “you’re not a real gamer if you don’t buy this” approach is likely to backfire.
Thomas’s Dark Soul Is Alone
What do Dark Souls and Thomas Was Alone have in common with a cartoon from 1944? They all illustrate how we’re biased to fill in story gaps based on our own experiences and beliefs.
Why We Love Ellie From The Last of Us
Why do we feel like we have a real relationship and feelings for characters like Ellie in The Last of Us? The psychology behind parasocial relationships explains why video games are better at this than any other medium.
You Can Cheat, But Don’t Be a Cheater
My wife was once highly offended by a cartoon mole, and the story highlights how a simple attack on self-concept can reduce the frequency and severity of cheating in video games.
Twitching and Choking: The Audience Effect in Games
Between Twitch and YouTube, many people are now gaming for an audience. What effect does this have on performance? It depends on the audience and the game.
Fake Feels and Free Passes
The story of one very scary bridge may explain why Game of the Year discussions ignore the flaws in games like The Last of Us.
The Psychology of Video Game Avatars
Are you more dominant, kind, assertive, clever, or flirty depending on how your character appears in-game? Both new and old research has shown that the avatars we adopt can influence our behaviors not only inside the game, but outside as well.
How Not to Compare the Xbox One and PS4
With the Xbox One and PS4 in stores this month, many of us are comparing bulleted lists of features when trying to decide which to buy. That’s a step up from blind fanboyism, but such an approach can still trigger a couple of mental errors in judgment. Here’s how to avoid them.
The Psychology of Video Game Nostalgia
With the help of researchers in psychology and marketing, let’s explore why we tend to get nostalgic about old games, why we may be fooling ourselves about how great they were, why it may be a good thing anyway, and why it makes us vulnerable to marketers.
Saucy Necromancers And the Psychology of Self-Perception
What effect does using highly sexualized avatars have on our preoccupation with body image and acceptance of rape myths? Some new research on self-perception theory and virtual reality avatars suggests some things you should be aware of the next time you sit down at a character creation screen.
Less Humble Bundles Are More
The “less is more” effect can make one product seem more valuable than another even though it has less to offer. The Humble Bundle deals provide a great real-world example of how you might be willing to pay more if the deals were presented in just a slightly different way.
Why You Don’t Burn Out on Candy Crush Saga
Candy Crush Saga is the most popular game on Facebook, iOS, and Android. Unsurprisingly, it uses a few psychological levers to move its players, and this article focuses on one of them to answer the question: Why do they limit the number of lives you have per day instead of letting you play as much as you want?
Why Do Color Coded Clues in Level Design Work?
Level designers often use colors to guide players along their way. The psychology of inattentional blindness and traffic accidents has more in common with this than you might think.
Why Gone Home Is So Immersive
The first person exploration game Gone Home is one of the most immersive games I’ve ever seen, and it was done with just a tiny budget and team relative to AAA games. Let’s look at what theories of spatial presence have to say about what the developers did and why it works so well.
It’s Not So Bad: Cognitive Dissonance and Cheap Games
All else being equal, do you enjoy the games you pay full price for as much as the ones you buy on sale for cheap? While it of course first depends on the game, a certain well known theory in psychology suggests that paying $60 for the new Tomb Raider game when it came out…
A Blind Gorilla with a Fez Walks Up to a Border Checkpoint…
Here, I’ve got a quick task for you. Assuming aces are worth 11, quickly double the value of each card below and add them up. The answer is 50, right? Well, yes but that’s not the point. The point is that you probably missed the fact that the 4 of hearts is black. Assuming a…
The Psychology Behind Steam’s Summer Sale
Summer is here! Time to pump up your video game backlog until it’s bloated, gurgling, and making vaguely taunting motions from over in the corner. In other words, the Steam Summer Sale has begun. I just bought Hotline Miami, Fez, and The Swapper for like 14 cents while typing that. Like last time, Steam is…
Can The Xbox One’s Kinect Read Your Mind?
Well, no. Of course not. That’s a silly question. Why would you even ask it? That said, the updated supercamera on the Kinect 2.0 is capable of some pretty amazing things. Microsoft demonstrated how it can tell where you’re looking, estimate your heart rate from the color of your skin, and even infer your mood…
The Left-Digit Effect: Why Game Prices End in .99
Why, when you saunter into a game store or navigate your favorite e-tailer, is everything priced $59.99, $29.99, or $19.99? More specifically, why do all those prices end in “.99?” Why not just be honest and price them at $60, $30, and $20? Retailers aren’t fooling anyone by pricing them one cent cheaper, are they?…
A Tale of Two Talent Trees
Can the presentation of choices on an upgrade screen or talent tree affect how we feel about those choices? Consider the two screenshots of talent trees below. No, look, don’t ask why just yet. Just consider them! The first one is from the first person shooter Syndicate while the second is from the latest Tomb…
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…
Heuristics, Ho!
This pricing I just saw on Bioshock Infinite inspired me to make a quick note: This is just a nice example of what psychologist and influence connoisseur Robert Cialdini would call a “click, whirr” moment. Bioshock Inifinite is only discounted three cents here, but we’re so used to thinking that something is a good buy…
The Zeigarnik Effect and Quest Logs
What do waiters in a 1920s Venetian restaurant and today’s average role-playing game fan have in common? They both tend to remember what they have yet to finish. Sometime during the 1920s, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was sitting in an Austrian restaurant (or maybe German; accounts differ) when she noticed something peculiar: waiters displayed an…
Modifying Player Behavior in League of Legends With Honor
One of the blind spots in my gaming experience is the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre, which consists of competitive multiplayer games like DOTA, Heroes of Newerth, and League of Legends. Part of the reason I’ve never jumped in to any of these massively popular games is the one-two combination of a daunting learning…