[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan examines how research on jam reviews, of all things, might have surprising lessons for video game reviews.]

For every one of us, making decisions is part of hour daily human existence. Most of them are of little consequence –what to eat, what movie to see, what video game to buy– so we have developed an astonishing array of mental short-cuts to make these kinds of decisions comparatively quick, easy, and not too mentally taxing.

We may eat what we have eaten and enjoyed in the past, and by and large we use simple decision rules such as "I like this genre" or "I like this developer" to choose movies or games.

Other decisions, though, are either much more important or much more public and thus we put more work into it. Whom should we date? What college should we attend? Which house should I buy?

When faced with questions like these, many of us have probably drawn two columns on a piece of paper, labeling one "Pro" and one "Con" and then listing things in each column. When trying to decide whether to marry or stay a bachelor, famous biologist and five-time Counter-Strike world champion Charles Darwin did exactly that, producing the list below.

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: Jam and Game Reviews" »

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[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan takes a complex look at the psychological concepts behind immersion with regard to video games.]

Along with "OMGDUDESOAWESOME" one of the words that gamers like to toss around when describing their favorite titles is "immersive." But what exactly does that mean? And what makes a game immersive? Ask 5 people and you'll probably get 10 opinions, but psychologists have been studying immersion in various kinds of media for decades, including video games, so they could probably shed some light on those questions.

Except they don't call it "immersion." Instead, they call it "presence," which, admittedly, isn't as cool. Regardless, researchers have identified several kinds of presence in regards to how we perceive media, but it's spatial presence that I think comes closest to what gamers think of as "immersion."

Briefly, spatial presence is often defined as existing when "media contents are perceived as ‘real' in the sense that media users experience a sensation of being spatially located in the mediated environment." The idea is just that a game (or any other media from books to movies) creates spatial presence when the user starts to feel like he is "there" in the world that the game creates.

People who experience immersion tend to only consider choices that make sense in the context of the imaginary world. Someone immersed in Red Dead Redemption, for example, might be more likely to use travel methods, like stagecoaches, that make sense within the game, instead of methods that don't (like fast traveling from a menu screen). People immersed in media also tend to enjoy it more.

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games" »

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[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan looks at the psychological underpinnings of one of Bioware’s trademark RPG elements, defining 'psychological reactance' and pointing out how it's used in titles like Mass Effect.]

Earlier this year I was playing through Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins and found myself on the twin points of one of the company’s signature dilemmas: with which of the non-player characters should I pursue a romantic interest? Should I woo the crabby but sexy Morrigan or should I court the more pure hearted and worldly Lelliana?

Or hey, maybe I should put the “role play” in “role playing game” and succumb to the roguish (literally) Zevran’s advances? Oh, I can’t commit! Bioware has been presenting me with this same basic choice since Baldur’s Gate (Viconia, before you ask) and I always end up doing the same thing: I string everyone along as far as I can until I’m absolutely forced to make a choice.

So why is this? Why do I invest so much mental and emotional energy into this pointless choice between make-believe people in a video game and why am I so reluctant to commit?

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: Psychological Reactance and Bioware Games" »

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[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan examines a regular household tradition to muse on whether overindulging on games affects our reception of them.]

My wife and I have a Father's Day tradition where I get to celebrate the joy of parenthood by kicking everyone out of the house and playing video games for 12 hours straight. This year I decided to take a chunk out of my backlog by unwrapping Bioshock 2 and popping it in.

Normally it would take me weeks of playing a game like this in one or two hour chunks when I could find the time, and I'd often look forward to these bite-sized gaming sessions. But this time I wanted to use my annual alone time to burn straight through as much as I could without stopping.

A few hours later I was slinging plasmids and stomping splicers, but I was enjoying the game less and less. This made me think of something called "hedonic adaptation" that Dan Ariely had written about in his new book, The Upside of Irrationality, which explores some of the upsides of our irrational human nature. Had my playing Bioshock 2 for hours and hours straight diminished my enjoyment of the game?

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: The Role of Hedonic Adaptation in Game Reviews" »

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[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan looks at Realtime Worlds' APB to explain why people don't usually like paying by the hour for MMOs -- or other services.]

Back in April of this year, Realtime Worlds announced the pricing model for its soon to be released MMO, All Points Bulletin, or "APB" as the cool kids say. A lot of us are looking forward to the futuristic cops vs. robbers game, but the announcement about the pricing elicited a fair number of jeers from a lot of players. Here's how the press release broke down the two payment models in US dollars:

1. Buy the game for the MSRP of $50
2. Play 50 hours for "free."
3. Buy additional game time using one of two options:
a) $6.99 for 20 hours
b) $9.99 for unlimited hours during the next 30 days (or you can also buy 60 or 90 day subscriptions)

Upon hearing this, the nerd rage was palpable on some forums. For sure, this was partially over the fact that APB was to have any monthly fee AT ALL, despite that being par for the MMO course. But there seemed to be two other targets of the virtual hand wringing.

First, the play time included with the retail product was doled out in hours (50 of them, to be precise) rather than the traditional 30 days of unlimited play. Second, the $6.99 for 20 hours of game time seemed a bitter pill to swallow, apparently because people didn't want to pay by the hour.

People seemed to willfully ignore the fact that the game DOES include traditional 30 days of unlimited play for one flat rate option, though. There was also some vague stuff in there about being able to earn game time in-game, but I'm going ignore that for now.

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: APB - Aggregated Payment Bias?" »

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[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan explains some psychological reasons why those big bundles from Steam and other digital distribution platforms are so hard to resist.]

Steam, the digital game distribution platform owned by Valve, often has these weird bundles for sale where they cram together, for example, every id Software or every Rockstar game or every game featuring squirrels into one package. One message board I frequent has a mega thread dedicated to gaming bargains, and doing a search for "Damn you, Steam" produces results like these:

"Damn... maybe I want Colonization. Have CIV IV & BTS on Disc. Should I just get Colonization @ $10.19 or just get them all and have on Steam for a wee bit more. Damn you Steam."

"Got $170 sitting my cart. Staring at it trying to figure out how to cut it down some. Damn you, Steam."

People are talking like Steam is forcing them to pounce on such deals when they happen even though they already have a huge backlog and may actually already own physical versions of half the games included.

What makes these plainly ridiculous bundles so attractive? I'm glad you asked, because I can think of at least three psychological principles at play here.

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: 'Three Reasons Why We Buy Those Crazy Steam Bundles'" »

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[Psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan continues his new GameSetWatch column by examining why game creators might want to consider stuffing their virtual tip jar before the next user comes along and checks it out.]

Okay folks, I'm going to nerd out a bit but bear with me. There was this show that my wife used to like watching called Star Trek: The Next Generation. Maybe you've heard of it. In one episode Captain Picard is being held captive by the Evil Alien of the Week.

Said Evil Alien twirls his space mustache, gestures to a bank of four lights, and asks Picard how many lights he sees. When Picard says "Four" Evil Alien is all like "No way, dude, there are FIVE lights," but Picard is like "No way, buddy. There are only four lights." Also there are painful electric shocks involved, but Picard refuses to see five lights.

Turns out that most of us is no Jean Luc Picard (thank God, because that guy is SUCH a nerd) because we're apt to disbelieve evidence obvious to our own eyes when the conditions are right. And we don't even need a big scary alien dude looming over us. All we need are a few strangers in the room with us saying that they totally see five lights.

In the 1950s psychologist Soloman Asch conducted a series of experiments where he had gave members of a group an index card with a line drawn on it. Asch then projected a set of three different lines onto a screen and asked subjects to identify which one matched the one on the cards. Kind of like this, where the one on the left is what you'd see on your card and the one on the right is what you'd see projected on the screen:

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: 'The Power of You: No, Wait, Others. I Meant the Power of Others'" »

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[Psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan continues his new GameSetWatch column by looking at the psychological ramifications of taking advantage of people's inertia to keeping with the status quo - particularly with regard to sign-up options for media and how they could be applied to games.]

Many of us have been surprised in spite of ourselves when one day we looked up and realized that we've been paying for a MMO like World of Warcraft when we haven't logged on for months.

Or maybe we're reading our e-mail and we get a cheerful note from Microsoft saying that our Xbox Live Gold account has automatically renewed and the charge applied to our credit card. And still we don't do anything about it. Why not?

A Brief Example Involving Adult Stuff

Before I explain, consider this graph, showing the participation rates between two groups of in a 401(k) savings plan. (For those who don't know, a 401(k) plan lets employees automatically sock away part of each paycheck for retirement. They offer lots of benefits and participating in them is generally a smart thing to do if you don't want to keel over of old age on the job.)

Continue reading "The Psychology of Games: The Status (Quo) Effect" »

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[Psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan continues his new GameSetWatch column by discussing the pricing for Microsoft and Krome's Game Room for the Xbox 360, which launches this week, analyzing why seemingly illogical pricing can bring significant advantages if pitched correctly.]

Microsoft recently announced that they were augmenting their Xbox Live and Games for Windows services with something called "Game Room," which would allow you to buy and/or play classic arcade games like Centipede, Space Invaders, and the like.

Basically, it'll be just like when we used to hang out at the neighborhood arcade, only with fewer cigarette burns on the machines and no attendants pretending they can't hear you while they listen to their Walkman in the back office. Or maybe not; I've never been to your place.

What I thought was interesting, though, was the price structure for the games, which breaks down like this:

- 40 points - Play a game just once on one platform (either Xbox Live or Games for Windows), like dropping two quarters in.
- 240 points - Own the game on one platform but not the other.
- 400 points - Own the game on both platforms.

So if we rate those three options from 1 to 100 on an "Accessibility" metric and plot that with price, it look something like this:

I don't think it takes much insight to guess that Microsoft would rather you not take the first option (about $0.50), since it won't take long to figure out that playing like ONE game of Frogger is quite enough for you. They'd rather you spend the 240 points (about $3) to buy the game on one platform, or even better 400 points (about $5) to buy it on both. But I don't think these prices are optimal for that. I think there's a way for Microsoft to actually get more money out of people by raising their prices.

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: Xbox Game Room's Dummy Pricing (Not for Dummies)" »

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[Psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan continues his new GameSetWatch column by writing about how social dilemmas work in the world of gaming, and how designers can work to diffuse them before everybody gets glitch happy.]

Soon after its release, some players of the online first person shooter Modern Warfare 2 discovered what became known as "the javelin glitch." Someone, somewhere, somehow figured out that through a bizarre sequence of button presses you could glitch the game so that when you died in multiplayer you would explode violently and murder everyone within 30 feet of you, often resulting in a net gain in points.

It wasn't long, though, before the method for creating this glitch spread through the Internet and servers were filled with exploding nincompoops. Just to a Youtube search for "Modern Warfare javelin glitch" and you'll get hours' worth of video explaining how to do it --it wasn't a very well kept secret. In fact, it quickly got bad enough that developer Infinity Ward had to rush out a patch to fix it, presumably screaming "Ack! No! You guys, stop it!" the whole time.

Continue reading "The Psychology Of Games: The Glitcher's Dilemma" »

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[In a brand new column for GameSetWatch examining of the fascinating intersection of gaming and psychology, writer Jamie Madigan considers how small tweaks to the way a message is framed can lead to big changes in what gamers are willing to pay for.]

How could publishers get way more people to buy an Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network game after trying the trial version? And how can MMOs get wayward customers to resubscribe? Let me glue on my goatee and practice my maniacal laugh a few times and then I’ll tell you my ideas.

Zombie Outbreaks and Loss Aversion

But first, let me ask you a couple of hypothetical questions made famous in certain circles by two guys named Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:

"Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for a zombie outbreak, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the outbreak have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows:

Which of the two programs would you favor?"

Okay, so Tversky and Kahneman actually phrased the question in terms of an Asian flu and not a zombie outbreak, but I figure we would stick to territory more familiar to gamers. That said, which of the two programs would you pick: Program A or Program B? The researchers found that most people they asked chose Program A: 72% versus the 28% who chose B.

So then the researchers presented the same hypothetical situation but with the following options:

Continue reading "The Psychology of Video Games: Zombies, Barbarians, and Loss Aversion" »

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