Psychology of Video Games Podcast

My guest experts and I discuss how moral choices in video games are different from other media and what makes them so difficult. We also discuss some of our favorite and most compelling choices from games.

Empathy --the ability to understand and share the emotions of others-- is a powerful tool for those wanting to create games where the goal is to get players to think differently and have powerful emotional experiences. It can be used to great effect and probably plays a big part in more games than you realize. But leveraging empathy in games has its own risks and pitfalls. Designers who do so need...

Special ALL HAWAII EDITION! To give me a little breathing room after finishing up my book manuscript, here are two complete interviews I did while researching the recent loot box podcast episode. One is the full interview with Representative Chris Lee, and the other is with Ed White, who has provided testimony during hearings on the topic.

What is the relationship between loot boxes and problematic gambling? Should loot boxes be considered a form of gambling? In this episode I talk with Chris Lee, a politician, and David Zendle, a researcher, who are both very interested in the answers to those questions.

How do game developers make virtual items as collectible as physical objects?

I talk with Dr. Anthony Bean and several of his collaborators on a book about psychology and the Legend of Zelda.

I talk with Dr. Richard Landers, an expert researcher on gamification and game-based assessments. We discuss some of the psychology behind why gamification does (and does not) work, as well as why it's so difficult to do it well. We also talk about the use of actual games to assess people's skills and abilities. Is it possible to create, for example, a game that measures people' general mental abi...

I talk in this episode with my guest expert, Megan Connell PsyD, who uses Dungeons & Dragons in group therapy with remarkable results and runs a weekly D&D game with psychology nerds on Twitch. We also discuss what lessons psychology has for helping other people at the table --possibly including yourself-- and how to find and get along with a new gaming group.

Say it's time to download a new game for your phone or tablet. What, out of the billions of choices out there, will you choose? Psychology pretty consistently tells us that when we have too many choices we look for strategies and heuristics for making those decisions easier. And what's more, much of this might happen with little to no conscious thought. Our brains have evolved to become really goo...

Video games often get kind of a short shrift when it comes to how valuable they are considered, versus a being a waste of time. Yet an argument can be made that they teach and reinforce valuable skills that psychologists have found to be important for success in work and life in general. Games can teach you how to persist through obstacles, for example, or how to cooperate with people towards a co...

Think about the last avatar you controlled in a video game. What did he, she, or it mean to you? Was it just a tool that you used to get from one end of a maze to another? Was it a richly detailed character that might have been pulled from any given movie, television show, or novel? Or was it something that you created, tweaked, and customized from whole cloth –well, digital whole cloth– to look j...

I'm at PAX West participating in panels and making new friends, but that doesn't mean you don't get a new podcast. Enjoy this audio presentation of a lecture I gave about 30 things I wish researchers would study (or study more) about the psychology of video games. And why it would be great if they did.

It may shock you to hear this, but not everyone is intimately familiar with video games. I know, right? Despite the fact that video games continue to become more mainstream and cut across all kinds of demographic groups, some aspects of games and gaming culture continue to be misunderstood or, worse yet, maligned. In this episode my guest and I are going to examine yet another group that may need...

Basic psychological phenomena like memory, perception, and emotions have huge implications for the design of products or experiences, from nutritional labels to phone apps to voting registration forms to video games. And people who study those kinds of user experiences need to be aware of some of the very basic ways that squishy human brains can be expected to operate as they set out to test and m...

In a way, classic adventure games were the precursors to the escape rooms that are popping up in strip malls and warehouses all over the country. But unlike adventure games, escape rooms take place in physical space with tangible objects. But just like with video games, people who design escape rooms and other kinds of live, narrative experiences can benefit from an understanding of human psycholo...

In this episode of the podcast, I talk to one veteran game designer Jason Vandenberghe, who has tackled the issue of understanding what kinds of experiences gamers want with the aid of psychology and psychological theories. He aims to avoid false consensus and advocate for what he calls "player empathy." That is, using a framework of personality and motivation psychology to break out of our false...

Many universities and other institutions are offering degrees in video game design and other careers in the gaming industry like art, coding, and user experience design. Some of them are also incorporating courses on psychology because it helps make better games. I talk about this trend with this week's guest expert, Vanessa Hemovich.    

Modern video games are complicated and require a lot of learning, problem solving, memory, planning, and other things that psychologists might identify as executive functions of the brain. There's a lot going on between our ears whenever we play. And wouldn't it be great if some of those mental gymnastics helped us with dealing with more mundane but probably more important tasks outside of games....

Enjoy the audio versions of 12 months of Psychology of Games articles from the website. (Sung, awkwardly, to the tune of "Twelve Days of Christmas.")   Audio Credits “Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0Several tracks from Incomptech licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 : Mining by MoonlightMoon Lounge Omicron PrimeDeucesDaybreakOn...

Harassment of many types has been an issue that gamers and game developers have had to deal with for a long time now. In this episode my guest expert Wai Yen Tang talks about research that he and others have done on what leads to harassment in video games and other online spaces, as well as things we might try to curb it. He also talks about the path he took to marry academia and video games. 

I talk to someone who does research on gaming addiction about the concept in general, how hard it is to research it, and the APA's recent decision to (possibly, at some point in the future) include Internet Gaming Disorder as a real mental disorder in the handbook psychiatrists use to diagnose someone. Audio Credits: "Robot Motivation" by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC...

Moral choice in video games is a concept that has been with us for decades now. Many games feature points where you must decide how your character reacts to moral dilemmas or decide which of two evils is the lesser. And even games without much choice usually have characters that we pass moral judgment on when we decide if their actions are defensible or not.  Media psychologists have studied those...

In this episode I talk to Dr. Jesse Fox about her research into how we identify with our video game avatars, how that affects how we play, and how it may affect what we take away from games. Specifically, we review a paper entitled "Playing for Love In a Romantic Video Game: Avatar Identification, Parasocial Relationships, and Chinese Women's Romantic Beliefs" and another study looking at how cust...

In this episode we explore what people like to collect virtual objects in video games, why they do it, and what game designers could do to make collections more fun to acquire and use. About this week's guest: The Play & Interactive Experiences for Learning Lab 

My guests on this episode are Dr. Chris Ferguson and Dr. Patrick Markey, the authors of the new book Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong. We talk about why people tend to blame violent video games for all kinds of things, the state of the research, morality and games, and some of the reasons why games are actually good for you. About the podcast: Previous episodesBuy the Mora...