12/21/2023 0 Comments Psychology of the looter shooterAccording to marketing professor Russell Belk, the aim isn't to finish the set, but in "striving for bigger and better collections." For Borderlands players, that means trying to get guns and other items with the best stats, which requires repeatedly completing missions such as beating a raid boss that drops rare loot.īecause item stats are random, looting is like gambling, which can lead to addiction. Why do gamers love to pick-up loot? One reason is probably similar to why people collect Pokémon: because it's a challenge. As Bavelier and Green summarized in ' The brain-boosting power of games', "The player must decide whether a moving object is friend or foe and choose which weapon to use, where to aim and when to fire, all in the space of a second or so." This is relevant to Borderlands, in which certain enemies are vulnerable to damage from specific elements (like fire) so players must quickly switch between elemental weapons. And the reaction times of regular gamers are 10% faster without sacrificing accuracy under pressure. Over the past 15 years, psychologists Daphne Bavelier and C Shawn Green have found that playing action games improves a variety of mental skills, such as making people better at focusing on visual details and switching between tasks. What might be a very simple decision if you have all the time in the world becomes much more attractive and complex when you have to do it split second." In other words, multiple rounds of rapid shooting will force you to concentrate on the game.īesides prompting a rush of the 'feel-good hormone' dopamine, FPS games also benefit cognitive function. First-person shooters put these tasks on speed. As Nacke explained, the effect is down to the fast-paced nature of FPS games: "Video games are essentially about decision-making. The results showed that people experienced greater positive emotions and skin arousal when playing levels that were immersive compared to boring, and were even more happy and excited when playing levels designed to provoke flow. In a classic study, researchers Lennart Nacke and Craig Lindley measured physiological responses - from facial muscle movements and sweating (via electrical conductivity) in skin - of adults playing the FPS Half-Life 2, then asked participants to report their psychological state. Games can also draw players into a mental state known as 'flow', a concept developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who described flow as "A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it."įirst-person shooters like Borderlands seem to be especially good at drawing people into a state of immersion or flow. According to user-experience designer Emily Brown and computer scientist Paul Cairns, that has three levels: engagement, engrossment and total immersion. One of the main reasons why people enjoy playing video games is they create an immersive experience that makes you forget the world around you. This combination, coupled with the franchise's humor, is what makes Borderlands fun to play. Why is everyone so excited about the new game? Well, it's partly because Borderlands is the archetype of a looter shooter, which adds role-playing game (RPG) mechanics - notably killing enemies that drop loot as a reward - to the action of a first-person shooter (FPS).
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