The Psychology of Video Games

Examining the intersection of psychology and video games

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Articles

Using Social Proof to Battle Toxic Behavior

How can we use one classic finding in the persuasion literature to combat toxic behavior in games?

December 4, 2022 in Articles.

Using VR Games as Pain Management

Why video games are a great solution for the difficult problem of pain management.

November 2, 2022 in Articles.

How to Give Your Dungeon Master Feedback Like a Pro

How do you best give feedback to a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master about how to improve their game?

October 3, 2022 in Articles.

Using Games to Develop Empathy

What if a video game could help nurses and doctors to be more empathetic with their patients?

September 1, 2022 in Articles.

How to Disguise Lousy Luck as an Absolute Win

Ever played a tabletop role-playing game with “story dice”? Here’s some of the simple psychology behind why they’re so much fun.

August 4, 2022 in Articles.

Watching Eyes and Listening Ears in Valorant

Riot’s AI is listening to your voice chat. Will it curb toxic behavior?

July 1, 2022 in Articles.

Level Drain and Loss Aversion in D&D

How has one particular quirk of psychology shaped the design of Dungeons & Dragons across editions?

June 1, 2022 in Articles.

Morally Disengaged Murder Hobos

How do Dungeons & Dragons players justify bad behavior? And how can a DM use the same tricks to make really bad and really believable villains?

May 2, 2022 in Articles.

How Some Games Keep You Playing

How games like Guardians of the Galaxy and Gears of War try to keep you from quitting when you end a level.

April 1, 2022 in Articles.

Fluency in Dragon

Why you shouldn’t always randomly generate names from a table for the dragons or characters in your D&D game.

March 1, 2022 in Articles.

Making Monsters of the Multiverse More Collectible

How Wizards of the Coast could have leaned into the psychology of collecting to sell more Monsters of the Multiverse

February 1, 2022 in Articles.

NFTs and Psychological History

Ubisoft is experimenting with using NFTs to make in-game items unique. But they’re getting the psychology wrong.

January 11, 2022 in Articles.

Deep Rock Habits vs. Rewards

Are rewards the same as incentives in game design?

May 17, 2020 in Articles.

Good Old Scarce Games

How one online games marketplace is hoping to sell you more by offering less.

April 18, 2020 in Articles.

The Perils of In-Game Currency

The psychology behind how we spend in-game currency.

January 16, 2020 in Articles.

Why Do People Collect Virtual Items?

Virtual items by nature lack many of the things that make physical items so collectible. Here’s how game developers and publishers make virtual things more collectible.

December 20, 2019 in Articles.

Patently Worrisome In-Game Offers

How far can customizing offers for in-game purchases go before they seem unfair?

November 15, 2019 in Articles.

Loading: When We’re Willing to Wait

When might you be more willing to wait for a loading or matchmaking screen to finish?

October 14, 2019 in Articles.

Marvel Games and Spatial Presence

What is it about Marvel super hero games that is really effective at making us feel transported to another world?

September 25, 2019 in Articles.

What the Heck are Surprise Mechanics?

EAs says loot boxes are just beloved “surprise mechanics.” In a way, this is true. In a more relevant way, it is not.

August 26, 2019 in Articles.

How Much Screen Time Is Bad for Kids?

How much screen time is good and/or bad for the psychological well-being of kids?

August 11, 2019 in Articles.

Shared Mental Models Win Games

Shared mental models, a concept borrowed from psychology, help explain why some teams dominate in multiplayer games.

July 28, 2019 in Articles.

The Psychology Of Fortnite’s Battle Pass

Three simple psychological principles that help get players to pay for the Fortnite Battle Pass.

July 14, 2019 in Articles.

Are MOBA Players Smarter Than You?

What link have researchers found between intelligence and how well you play MOBAs?

April 16, 2019 in Articles.

Apex Fish in a Small Pond

The “Squad Eliminated” screen in Apex Legends and the psychology of comparisons.

February 18, 2019 in Articles.

Getting Gamers: Now in Paperback

My book, “Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games” is now available in paperback.

February 11, 2019 in Articles.

How Video Games Do Feedback Well (and Poorly)

How games provide feedback …and how they’re lacking.

January 14, 2019 in Articles.

You Screwed Up: The Value of Errors in Game Tutorials

Should game tutorials hold players’ hands or encourage them to fail?

December 16, 2018 in Articles.

Nudging Moral Choices in Games

How game developers might use a bit of psychology to better structure moral choices.

September 18, 2018 in Articles.

The Focusing Illusion and Overwatch

The same wrinkle in our thinking that explains the optimism of people paralyzed in car accidents explains why it’s so frustrating when people don’t play map objectives in video games.

August 20, 2018 in Articles.

Fortnite’s Success Is Due to Random Chance

Part of why Fortnite is so popular is the way it uses random rewards –and I don’t mean just loot drops.

July 16, 2018 in Articles.

Boosting the Credibility of Steam’s Discovery Queue …With Psychology!

We make new opinions more readily than we change existing ones. How can recommendation engines take advantage of this?

June 1, 2018 in Articles.

The Pleasure Paradox of Big Buffs

How obscuring players’ understanding of what’s going on might actually help them enjoy it more.

April 10, 2018 in Articles.

Tess Teaches Psychology and Destiny 2

Three lessons about the psychology of in-game purchases, illustrated by Destiny 2’s Tess Everis.

February 2, 2018 in Articles.

Using Psychology and Loot Boxes to Destroy Video Games: A Fun and Practical Guide

Today’s special guest contributor tells us how to use psychology to make loot boxes truly evil.

January 1, 2018 in Articles.

Using Psychology to Design Leveling Systems

In which we apply some lessons from the psychology behind combining losses and gains to leveling up in video games.

December 4, 2017 in Articles.

Don’t Do Your Best: Goal Setting and Horizon:Zero Dawn

Horizon: Zero Dawn’s hunting challenges make good use of goal setting psychology, but here’s how they could do a little better.

October 1, 2017 in Articles.

Synchronization and Unifying Players

How a few seconds with one trick from social psychology may help players get along better.

September 4, 2017 in Articles.

Why Do People Play Jobs?

Why do people play games that simulate jobs, even their own jobs that they spend hours doing every day?

August 13, 2017 in Articles.

Compared to Other Heroes of the Storm…

Here’s little psychological trick Heroes of the Storm uses to make us feel better about our performance after a match…

June 27, 2017 in Articles.

Why We Love to Hate Negative Reviews

How one bit of negative information in a game review or forum post can color our entire perception of a game.

June 2, 2017 in Articles.

Carrying the Responsibility Bias for the Team

A cognitive bias helps explain why some people insist that they carry the whole team in online competitive games.

May 1, 2017 in Articles.

Why Being a Better Gamer Can Help You Be a Better Person

How being good at games can make you more open to improving other parts of your self.

April 1, 2017 in Articles.

A Blizzard of Procedural Justice

What we can learn from Blizzard’s changes to Overwatch about creating a sense of procedural fairness.

March 2, 2017 in Articles.

The Consistency of Automatic Helping in Games

How one simple trick from the psychology of persuasion could lead to better gaming experiences.

February 2, 2017 in Articles.

Zeigarnik Effect and Quest Logs

How checklists and quest logs get us to keep playing.

January 2, 2017 in Articles.

Deliberate Practice and Getting Good

How a certain kind of deliberate practice might help gamers get good.

December 6, 2016 in Articles.

Overwatch Overjustification

How rewarding Overwatch players with bonus loot boxes may push them back towards Quick Play.

November 21, 2016 in Articles.

Do Non-Player Characters Count as an “Audience”?

Can the presence of NPCs affect our performance the same as having real people watching us?

November 1, 2016 in Articles.

The Overjustification Effect and Game Achievements

How achievements, trophies, and badges in games can lower player motivation under the wrong circumstances.

October 3, 2016 in Articles.

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