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/