As a game designer you might not be aware how psychology affects your game. It’s only completely logical to not know since not many psychology studies are done with games. Often we see games as this magical digital medium that lets us escape reality. Games are special, why should they be affected by psychology? But yes they do. Some games even are designed around psychology. Think about games that are all about getting the player high on arousal or horror games that are all about scaring the player to death.
I’d like you to become aware of psychology, how it works and how you can use it to your advantage when designing a game. With each article I will discuss a psychological theory or theme and show you games that already apply it. I will also suggest how you can implement the theme or theory in your own game design. Hopefully these articles inspire you and create that spark of interest into psychology and HCI (human-computer interaction) as it did for me. I strongly encourage you to speculate how your game is affected by psychology or how you can use it to improve your game.
You can check our my website here: http://www.sitavriend.nl/
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/why-i-hate-fun/
Ever since I decided to specialize in game design I struggled with the word “fun”. It might sound silly to struggle with a term that is so central to the art of making games but it makes sense once you start …
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/784/
By now you know that our brain is remarkable and weird. How it perceives things and how it can fool us. But you are not yet aware of the two different methods our brain uses to perceive the world: top-down processing an…
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/game-design-and-gestalt-laws/
The Gestalt laws explain of why we perceive patterns in a certain way. Perceive patterns relies on h…
Perceiving is believing, or is it really? We have five basic senses which we use to perceive the world with: smell, taste, touch, seeing and hearing. But there is a difference…
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/can-there-be-too-many-choices/
Last week I wrote an article on the dual-process theory which covered how we make decisions. This week I’ll discuss if it is possible to have too many options to choice from. As you know from l…
Last week I talked about the power of groups. I discussed the advantages and disadvantages of groups and how we behave in group. This week I’d like to continue on about groups, how we…
There are two different kinds of pleasures we experience every day, we have anticipatory pleasure or ‘wanting’ and consummatory pleasure or ‘liking’. ‘Wanting’ is pleasure f…
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/reactance-theory/
You can make something more desirable by forbidding it. That something can be anything: an item, an action, an idea. Well this is possible and known as the reactance theory. Reactance is the feeling you get…
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/players-emotions/
This topic will probably be one of the more ambitious topics I will write about for a number of reasons. First of all emotions are not a just about feeling excited about playing that new game you bought tod…
As you might have guessed, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is all about motivation. It tries to classify our reasons for being motivated to do something and explains why we are motivate…
Hello again, I’m sorry for not releasing an article last week. I was on a last minute trip to Sweden to check out Uppsala, the city I will study next year. So with any further ado, let’s…
Developmental psychology is the study of how our cognitive processes change throughout our lives. The field used to focus on children and how their cognitive abilitie…
http://www.tinker-entertainment.com/sitavriend/psychology-and-games/the-power-of-a-group/
Groups are very interesting to psychologists. You might not think about it, but groups are very powerful. They can change your behavior and the way you think. Groups can even make you do things you woul…
Curiosity is the pleasure of learning and not knowing. It sparks the desire to learn or the desire to figure out how stuff works. Curiosity is closely related to the differ…
