Psychology of Games

August 31, 2010
Stacey Mason

In finding what might be one of the coolest sites on the internet, I’ve discovered interdisciplinary blogging at it’s finest. The Psychology of Video Games reveals how games promote player-avatar identification, why acquiring armor for our level 79 Orc Hunter is more pleasurable than it should be, and how games tap into our psyches to keep us playing, buying, and loving it.

Jamie Madigan, the site’s author, is serious. He has published in scientific journals as well as gaming magazines, and he is one of the small (but growing) number of researchers who actually seems to play games and fluently understand the culture.

Elsewhere, Gene Golovchinsky reviews work by Nick Diakopoulos on gamelike interactive visualizations for learning.

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