Dr. Jamie Madigan is a psychology Ph.D. who writes about the overlap between psychology and video games. He is the host of the important and successful podcast “The Psychology Of Video Games” and the author of an excellent book “Getting Gamers: The Psychology of video games and their impact on the people who play them”.
Studies have shown that both his podcast and book are worth your time and will indeed make you awesome. They are highly recommended.
You can find his website at www.psychologyofgames.com and don’t forget to follow him on Twitter as well (www.twitter.com/jamiemadigan).
And now on with the interview!
Thanks for sparing some of your time to give us this interview, Dr. Madigan, it’s really a pleasure. Let me start the same way you usually end your podcasts: which game are you playing now?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: I’m currently banging my head against Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It’s from the makers of my favourite game series, Dark Souls. Those games are certainly enchanting in their own way and really pull you into their world. I’m pretty disappointed in Sekiro, but that’s a whole other conversation.
I started playing videogames back in 1981 and when Ultima IV came out it was a revelation to me as it was to you. A rare game. Even more rare though was any kind of conversation combining the words “psychology” and “videogames”. When and how did you decide that this is a combination worth pursuing?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: I started the website back in 2009 when I was reading a lot about behavioural economics and the psychology of decision making. I started seeing how those theories could explain why games were made the way they were and why information in games was often presented as it was. I thought games could also make a great touchstone and set of examples for explaining psychology. So I started the website and it took off.
I have been reading all kinds of research about videogames for as long as I can remember. It has helped me in my game reviewing and analyses and it’s easy to see why it is generally so important, to publishers and developers as well. Can you explain how it benefits gamers though?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: A lot of the benefit goes to developers who can use it to make better games, which in turn benefits players. But even players who understand how games are influencing them can come at the experience on their own terms and make better decisions. Knowing that we tend to overspend when using virtual currency because we rely on faulty mental shortcuts can definitely help you control your spending, for example.
There is always the issue of how to reach children or young people when talking about videogames. In Norway, for example, schools have started offering classes for those who wish to become eSports players. How can we improve general education on the effects, the enjoyment and the opportunities of videogames?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: I’m not an educator, so I really don’t have an answer to this question. But my guess would be by including it in all the channels we normally do: classrooms, assignments, clubs, etc.
Violence can easily be one of the first things children come across when they start playing videogames. The connection began with Death Race and continued all the way up to a number of games like Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto (to name but a few really famous ones). But not all violence is perceived the same way. Is there a distinction in our brain between killing a Koopa Troopa in a Mario game, a bloodless Bokoblin in Breath of the Wild, a zombie in Dying Light and a human in Uncharted?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: I’m not aware of any research addressing this exact question, sorry. I can say, though, that the research linking video game violence to real-world violence is not very convincing and has several kinds of critical flaws. So in neither case you cite do we have evidence that it leads to real live aggression or violence.
Do you feel that violence plays an important part in videogame design? Are we somehow drawn to it more than we are drawn to other forms of gameplay?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: Violence is a shortcut to demonstrating a mastery. Killing something means that you have conquered that challenge. Getting a headshot (with the accompanying gory explosion) is a very effective way of communicating to the player that they did something skillful. But it’s not the violence per se that people are attracted to and respond to. It’s the idea that they’re getting good at the game and surmounting challenges. You can make nonviolent games that elicit the same feeling.
There’s no definitive answer yet —not in my knowledge at least— that connects violent videogames to violent behaviour. Do we have a more definitive answer on the positive effects of videogames instead? Can they teach us or help us understand any of the virtues of the Avatar, for example, like compassion or sacrifice?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: This is an interesting area of research that we don’t have enough of. Video games can obviously teach information in the sense that it can pass things on and people can remember events or things that were said in a game. But I’m not aware of much research on gaming for attitude change like what you describe.
Your book starts by focusing on the group mentality and it explains the deindividuation theory, which means that someone can lose oneself in the anonymity of a group and behave in a way different than normal. Does this apply on the internet as a whole? Can it explain the toxicity that we are experiencing online?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: Yep, all the same principles can be in play in any virtual group or interaction. Forums, chat rooms, comment sections, Twitter, etc.
You also analyse fanboys and fangirls and you write that we tend to be more positive towards things we have chosen to support. Why support a single thing and miss out on others though? Is videogame fanboyism the same as being a fan of an NBA team or a soccer club?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: In a lot of ways it’s similar to other fandom, yes, like in sports. That’s a pretty solid parallel. And a lot of people can’t afford or don’t have interest in owning every gaming console. Those things are expensive! And so if you make your choice, you want to feel good about it. One way to do that is to convince yourselves that the other choices were bad.
You have spoken fondly about Telltale’s The Walking Dead (season 1) and Life Is Strange, with which I agree wholeheartedly. I consider them, along with The Witcher 3 and The Last Of Us, some of the best narrative examples we have ever seen. Why is narrative so important to us?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: I’m not sure how much it has to do with psychology, but we just like stories and people and characters. Narratives tie things together and make it easier to remember and explain things. We can talk about people who hold views or experiences more easily than the views or experiences themselves. We can sympathise with characters because we’re wired to sympathise with other humans. Narratives also create tension when a story is unresolved. If we start to experience an interesting narrative, we don’t want to leave it unfinished.
Do you feel that choice in narrative as an immersion device is more important to players than an excellently told story? For example, would it be better if the Last Of Us allowed the player to choose its —in my opinion— incredible ending?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: I’m not sure. I wish there were more research on this kind of thing, or that I knew about it if there is. There’s something to be said for a character making a choice that we as a person or player would not make (e.g., Joel at the end of The Last Of Us) because it lets us experience that choice and understand that character. But generally people like a feeling of agency and choice. There’s probably room for both.
Another kind of choice is the sandbox design of player builds in the Dark Souls series. The freedom it offers, which is important to players, clashes with how difficult it is to make progress. While in other games we would see this as a negative and complain about the difficulty and lack of balance, here it has been a clear success. What pushes us to keep on trying and failing in this sadistic game from our Japanese friends?
Dr. Jaime Madigan: As long as we’re feeling SOME kind of progress or increase in our mastery of the game, that goes a long way. In Dark Souls you can keep learning enemy placements and behaviour until you can deal with them. You can also level up and get stronger, or upgrade your equipment to get stronger and maybe make a boss encounter manageable. Or you can summon another player if all else fails. And when you finally do beat it, it’s a great sense of accomplishment.
This is one of the problems I have with From Software’s newest game, Sekiro. You can’t level up, improve your gear or get help in the same way you can in Dark Souls. Bosses and mini bosses are obscene difficulty spikes and a lot of people experience them as impenetrable walls to both progressing in the game and progressing in their sense of mastery. It’s the opposite of motivating for that reason.
We know videogame addiction is very complex and not easy to prove. How do you feel about it and what advice would you offer to people who are struggling with it?
There are clearly some people who suffer from problematic gameplay and addiction. But I think the topic is also susceptible to moral panics and the real numbers of addiction are still unknown but probably much, much smaller than what is currently thrown around. And a lot of what people want to call “addiction” is actually normal behaviour where someone is just really engaged with a game and is able to disconnect when needed. It’s a term that has a lot of meaning amongst psychologists and it’s thrown around pretty casually by lay audiences.
Thank you so much for your time.
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