Podcast 12: Video Game Violence

In this episode I talk to Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson about research on the effects of video game violence.

Podcast 11: Video Games and Our Health

How do video games affect our health –both physical and mental– for better or worse?

Podcast 10: Can Video Games Make You Smarter?

I talk to Dr. C. Shawn Green from the University of Wisconsin-Madison about whether brain training programs work and if regular old action games can make you smarter –and what that really means.

Podcast 9: How Do Games Differ From Other Media?

I talk to Dr. Nick Bowman from West Virginia University about how video games differ from other media in terms of the demands they place on players and thus how our approaches to studying them should differ. It turns out that video games ARE special and something new.

Podcast 8: Envy and Microtransactions

How can envy can drive us to make in-game purchases and microtransactions? But also, what do we think of others who just buy things we chose to grind out? Let’s see what the research suggests.

Podcast 7: The State of Video Game Debates

What’s the popular topics and state of academic research on psychology and video games? And how can academics package that information for the media and everyone else?

Podcast 6: Using Psychology to Craft User Experiences

If the users of games are humans, then a little psychology should help a lot in user research, right? Celia Hodent from Epic Games explains why in this episode.