Psychology of Video Games Podcas‪t‬ Jamie Madigan

How can psychologists help esports athletes improve, stay healthy, and thrive? I talk to a guest expert with a background in sports psychology and other areas who is doing just that.

When games have a message that they try to convey through systems and gameplay, do players listen? Do they hear what the designers expect? Does anything tend to change as a result?

Audio Credits:

“Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Polish_Ambassador/Diplomatic_Immunity/05_Robot_Motivation

Satisfactory Dev Highlight Music by Sleeper's Delight https://soundcloud.com/sleepersdelight/satisfactory-dev-highlight-music

I talk with authors of the new book Surpassing The Limit Break: The Psychology of Final Fantasy. About, well, THAT. Topics like the psychology behind Final Fantasy's storytelling, its use of gender subtypes, how its music enhances our enjoyment, how we develop attachments to characters, and how the game makes use of fundamental psychological drives.

Audio Credits:

“Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Gymnopedie No. 1 by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3837-gymnopedie-no-1 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Video games sometimes have an image problem. Honestly some days it feels like one black eye after another. But, let's not lose sight of the good stuff. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that video games help people and make our lives better. They create scaffolds on which we can build social support. They motivate us to improve. They get us into healthy mindsets around problem-solving, developing new skills, and cooperating with others. And a lot more. In this episode, I talk with my guest expert Dr. Ryan Kelly about the overlap between video games and positive psychology.

Loss aversion refers to the fact that we feel more pain from a loss than we do pleasure from an equivalent gain. Losses are worse than gains are good. Most of the time game designers want to avoid triggering this feeling, but not always. I talk with my guest expert this episode about how game designers can incorporate --or not-- loss aversion into their game design. In fact, he wrote a book about it!

Audio Credits:

“Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Despair Creation by Max Lija, Othercide OST (https://www.maxlilja.com/)

Why do people troll other players in video games? Do they get something out of it or are they just "broken"? A lot of us like to think the latter, but some researchers are starting to investigate exactly why people troll in video games and in general.

Links:

https://twitter.com/christinelcookl
https://socialinteractionlab.com/
Audio Credits:

“Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Hitman by Kevin MacLeod. Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3880-hitman License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Children Laughing Sound by Mike Koenig http://soundbible.com/1848-Children-Laughing.html