Ack. Sorry, folks, something went awry and I had to do an emergency restore of the site from an incomplete backup. This means that comments on the last three articles –of which there were a few dozen– are now gone.

I’m so sorry, there were some really good comments in there. I’ve backed everything up again (I really should create a new backup every time I update) so if you’re so inclined please feel free to repeat your comments or leave new ones. Things might possibly look unusual while I polish the edges back off over the next few hours but everything is working.

Time for the monthly post where I lump a bunch of stuff together.

ONE: Hey! Have you heard about this Facebook thing? Yeah, me too. In fact, for some reason I created a Facebook page for Psychology of Games which you can access by performing clicking motions here. So far I’m really just using it to announce new posts, but it gives me a little more freedom to comment on them than Twitter does. If you use Facebook, you should “Like” the page so that you become a fan. Because I like it when numbers get bigger. I’m sorry, but I really can’t give you a better reason than that. ((Don’t let that stop you, though.))

TWO: Big thanks to Kyle, Alex, and Emerson for sending donations my way via that Paypal button. I’ve used it to buy a few books, including A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (And How to Take Advantage of It, and Buying In: The Secret Dialog Between Who We Are and What We Buy. I’m catching up on my reading lately thanks to some travel. I’m particularly looking forward to getting to the latter two, as I’ve been wondering about a few things along the lines of pricing, sales, and the like. In particular I want to figure out why digital distribution systems like Steam can throw up collections like “Every id game ever made, ever” and we’ll all go bananas buying it even though we’ll never play most of them and we already own the rest.

THREE: As a reminder, I’m going to be giving a lecture ((ooh, look at ME, I’m a lecturer! La tee dah!)) at the Login Conference next month. I’m putting the finishing touches on the presentation this week, and by “finishing touches” I mean “starting to write it.” The theme of the talk revolves around what psychology has to say about how gamers behave differently when they’re in groups versus alone, and how the composition of those groups matters. I’m going to be posting a more detailed outline of the lecture this week. If you’re going to be at Login, please come and see me! My talk is entitled “The Psychology of Games: Why We Do What We Do With Friends (and Screw That Other Guy)” and it’s going to be on Thrusday May 13 at 2:00 pm. In the “Harbor” room, apparently, which sounds tres classy. Come shout disruptive things from the back row of seats so that people will mention the session later.

And now comes the time again where I dump a bunch of little stuff I didn’t want to make individual updates for.

ONE: The website is getting more attention than I thought it would, so a big thank you to everyone who linked here from your blog, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever. I even got huge a traffic spike the other day from Metafilter, so OH HI to everyone who came from there. Grab the RSS feed before you leave. Now, next on my checklist is getting onto the front page of Digg.com…

TWO: On a similar note, I’m really impressed with the quality of comments people are leaving. I learned long ago to accept having my ideas debated (if nothing else, grad school familiarizes you with the art of ruthless critique), but what really impresses me is that when people disagree or offer a different interpretation, they’re doing it in a civil and thoughtful way. This is generally true, but the stories on the glitcher’s dilemma, genres, and attraction-selection-attrition are particularly good examples, both of differing views and people expanding on my own initial thoughts. Go read those comments if you haven’t.

THREE: I’m taking this show on the road! In collaboration with some of my buddies at GameSpy Industries I’m presenting a lecture at the Login 2010 conference in Seattle come this May. The title is The Psychology of Games: Why We Do What We Do With Friends (and Screw That Other Guy). Here’s the abstract:

What can decades of research by psychologists tell us about how gamers behave differently when playing video games with strangers versus with friends or alone? Under what conditions will grown men and women in multiplayer games do things like cheat, abuse glitches, hurl vulgarities, form allegiances, return favors, play fair, welcome newcomers, and form communities that persist outside of your game?

Hey, this stuff is human nature, and psychologists and behavioral economists have been looking at these kinds of things in other contexts for a long time. They just use their own jargon –stuff like prospect theory, deindividuation, reciprocity, game theory, social identity building, decision-making heuristics, person-organization-fit, distributive justice, and other fancy terms. Sometimes they even draw diagrams.

In this session, a Ph.D. in psychology who also happens to be an avid gamer will bridge the gap between these two worlds by looking at what the science of psychology has to tell us about why gamers do what they do when they’re in groups and how game designers might leverage these kinks in the human mind to design better experiences for everyone involved. Each topic will be accompanied by a review of relevant scientific research from the fields of psychology and behavioral economics, as well as real-world data from actual gamers to back up the claims and test the hypotheses.

I’m going to post a more detailed outline of the lecture soon, and hopefully after the conference I’ll be able to point you to where you can get a recording of the presentation. But if you’re going to be at the conference, please come see me! Shout “UNEXPECTED HOT POCKET!” in the middle of my talk and we’ll share a laugh.

FOUR: Thanks to Alex for hitting the PayPal donation button and buying me a copy of the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. I’ve referenced the book once or twice already on this site, plus I have at least one other article idea drawing from it. Want a review? Lucky day! I wrote a full review of Nudge over on my personal blog.

And now for some things that aren’t worth a post by themselves, but which I can dump together.

ONE: Hey, did you know that some of the content here is being syndicated by Gamasutra.com and GameSetWatch? You can see my article on loss aversion here, and new stuff will appear bi-weekly. They actually want me to be more verbose there than I normally am here, so the columns posted there may have bonus material.

TWO: You may have noticed that the Google Adsense ads are gone. This is because Google booted me out of the program, denied my appeal, and refused to pay me the $115 that was in my account at the time. Presumably the reason being my article on reciprocity where I half-jokingly asked readers to click on the Google Adsense ads. Apparently they view asking people to click on ads as a “threat to their affiliates,” so let me apologize and do what I can to rectify my past mistake by asking, with the same amount of sincerity, that you to NEVER click on ANY Google Adsense ads AGAIN.

THREE: I come across a lot of stuff on the Internet that I file away for possible future use on this site. Usually what I do is use the Delicious Firefox plugin to tag the post and add it to my bookmarks on that site, along with a note to myself about how it might be used. It occurs to me that people might be interested in seeing these bookmarks, and so you can see my Delicious Bookmarks here. Or, if you prefer, you can abstain by clicking almost anywhere on the Internet except for that link.

FOUR: Speaking of which, I’ve gotten in the habit of posting on Twitter about the more interesting of these articles as well.

FIVE: I have articles currently drafted on the following topics: WoW pricing and the decoy effect, regression to the mean and owning some chumps, The effects of external time cues on perceived fun, MW2 javelin glitch abuse as a prisoner’s dilemma, and the endowment effect on used game sales. Look for them at some point in the future.

SIX: Big thanks to Nicholas, Andy, Hugo, David, and Andrew for donating via the PayPal link. You guys are awesome and I’ve ordered Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion from Amazon. I’ve actually read this book before, but lost it and have been wanting another copy to use as a reference since starting this site. So thanks again, guys!