Terraria

Terraria is a sandbox game that has been very popular for a long time only just quietening down three years after its release. Terraria is a mixture of multiple genres (Action, Adventure and RPG).  I thought would be a good game to see how and why people get affected or attached to the game because of the mixture of genres. I asked a couple of people what they liked most about the game and what they didn’t. 

Person one said: “I enjoy playing Terraria in general because it’s always an adventure...you never know what you can find...I’m get very excited when I find new items and biomes...I like finding multiple things to craft with...it’s enjoyable in multiplayer...and it’s a easy and very calming game after a stressful day at work”

Person two said: “It was fun for the first couple of hours but the worlds are too small there isn’t a lot of exploring to be done and the bosses don’t need a lot of tactics or strategies to beat”.

Between the two people I asked they seemed to have very varied views on what makes Terraria a good and bad game.  Person one views are a lot more helpful on the subject and talk about more things than person two that kept their answer “short and sweet”. In persons ones reply they talked a lot about multiplayer and how it’s a lot more enjoyable playing with friends than alone.

Environmental psychology

Environmental psychology is an offshoot of psychology as full subject. Environmental psychology looks into how environments affect human behaviour. I looked into this to see if a player/gamer can feel more emotional or attached to a game depending on what kind of environment they are playing in.  Mostly it was outside and how people in little villages are a lot happier than people are in cities and statistics on crime rates are different. I did come across that people enjoy being in large beautiful spaces which if a game developer could tap into would make more gamers/players enjoy their games. If an environment looks nice and somewhat realistic a player/gamer might be more inclined to play the game more just to see all the nice things the game has to offer.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rdeyoung/envtpsych.html

Sound psychology

Sound psychology is an offshoot of psychology as full subject. Sound psychology looks into how Sound affect human behaviour. While I was researching this I found most of things not very useful to what i wanted but eventually I came over studies that talked about how whale songs and other sounds of wildlife have a tendency to calm down and relax people, while loud and heavy music made them more angry and excitable. A lot of other studies talked about how music can affect a unborn child and whatever music the mother listens to while pregnant could affect the child in later life.

https://archive.org/details/psychologyofsoun024527mbp

http://www.soundtherapyinternational.com/v3/the-psychology-of-hearing.html

Colour psychology

Colour psychology is a offshoot of psychology as full subject. Colour psychology looks into how colours affect human behaviour. I looked into this topic to see if it was possible for a game developer to be able to change how something is lit or textured to make it look cuter or meaner by what colour pallet they used. 

The table above shows one of the many different tables/diagrams that show what different colours mean to people. The different tables seem to show different colours meaning different things which have made it hard for me to determine which is right and which is wrong. Using this table I will try and use it for my practical where I will make a room and change the lighting and the sound to see if that changes how the player reacts to it.

http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/meaning-of-colors.html

http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

Video Games Affect The Brain

This article talks about how video games can affect the brain and if there is any good or bad points to playing games. Also this article brings together alot of different studies and compares and contrasts them.  Early into the article they talk about different psychology and neuroscience studies that are coming up with lots of results on how video games affect the brain.

This article is very helpful with all the referencing and resources used at the bottom of it. But i find it to be slightly biased towards a more negative side of how it games affect the brain when i went to be more neutral on the subject.


http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/Default.aspx?id=39414

Empathy Video Games

This article talks more about creating characters and how gamers can identify and empathize with them. The two main examples are Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider franchise and Elizabeth from Bio-Shock Infinite, theres a little bit about new game release The Last Of Us as well.

'I've never cared for characters as much as I've cared for Joel and Ellie,' " Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann

This is a nice quote taken from the article which shows that game developers/ creative directors are taking more care and attention in developing their games character.

This article has showed me that i should narrow down my search on games in general and pick some well known characters and see how the game developers make them so well known and loved.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/28/tech/gaming-gadgets/empathy-video-games

Emotion, autonomy and psychopaths

Within this article the writer talks about the cyberpsychology and how it should be seen as a proper branch of the psychology tree. Then they start talking about how video games effect peoples different side of the brain and how emotional attached people can get to certain characters. In this instance its Master Chief from the Halo franchise.

 ‘I would love to see people like myself get over to game developers and publishers the results of this research; and present them research that's going to work," she says’

This is a nice quote from the article which i think would help video games out in the long scheme of things. With the added input into how games could/are affecting people game developers can act on this and help out to stop bad behaviour and increase good.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/aug/07/cyber-psychology-video-games

Video games make you cry

This short article talks about how the writer reads civil war books and has some emotional attachment to that era because of his family being there.  After this brief insight into the writer he soon starts talking about video games and how they could affect someone as much as some books affect him. He talks about the different genres of games that gamers have ranked as emotionally powerful and what kind of emotions can be betrayed by said games.

‘Role playing games: People get real cranked up. "You see life and death and magical things occur." Players get involved with the characters due to the depth of the story (that "rival novels"), cut scenes, "sweeping" musical scores – and of course the dozens and dozens of hours of play.’

 I think this article is useful because its narrows down on what games gamers themselves find are emotional powerful so I can research more into one or two of the top ranked and one or two of the bottom ranked to see what the differences are between the two types of games. And some of the statistics that were used are similar to the ones I've found in previous articles which I find reassuring that I’m in the right area.

http://www.bowenresearch.com/studies.php?id=3

Daphne Bavelier Video

While I was researching how video games affect the player I came across this video, which goes into much depth on how games affect a player’s brain.  The video shows a lot of pros and cons on if video games are good for someone or if they are not. There is multiple statistics to back up their theories which could be useful to my essay.Attention seems to be increased when playing video games where the lecturer shows a few examples and tries them out on the audience. This is very interesting and the lecturer talks about the shift of attention which is what happens when a car accident happens.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video_games.html