Video Gamers Podcast - The Mind of a Gamer - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh and Ryan are back with special guest Jamie Madigan! Jamie is a lifelong gamer who also happens to have a PhD in Psychology (with a focus on gaming culture). This is an INCREDIBLE episode you can’t miss. From Gaming ADD to those that platinum everything, to discussing if online friendships are “real” and more. We get the insight gamers truly want to know and have a blast while doing it. It’s an episode like no other, filled with gaming knowledge and video game chat from the Video Gamers Podcast! Please support Jamie and consider purchasing one of his books!  You can do that here: https://www.psychologyofgames.com/  Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake, Disratory and Gaius Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paramount! Behold! My name is Maximus Intertanius and I come to you with big stars in big dramas like Gladiator 2, Dexter, Original Sin, and 19 to the Video Gamers Podcast. You know, gamers come in all different types and have vastly different reasons for the games they play and why they love them. From the hardcore competitive gamers that love a challenge to the chill, relaxed gamers that want nothing more than to tend their farms. The psychology of gaming is a fascinating and oftenly debated subject, and that's what we're diving into on today's episode. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh, and joining me, he still refuses to try Path of Exile 2, and if a game involves dodge rolling he's instantly skeptical maybe today we'll find out why he's so weird it's ryan listen listen we figured out last

time with the sushi roll with the crabs treasure and stuff like going there yeah this it's just rolls aren't for me man that's all it is man. And yet I know you love sushis. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Right. And joining us, he's got an actual PhD in psychology, has been a lifelong gamer. He's one of us and has made analyzing gamers both his career and passion. It's the one, the only, Jamie Madigan!

Hey, guys. All right. Thanks for having me on. Oh, man. We are so pumped to have you, Jamie. Thank you so much for being here with us. Absolutely. Yeah.

So just to give our listeners an introduction to you, Jamie, You do have a PhD in psychology. And not only that, but you have written several books on this. One of them is Getting Gamers, the Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them. And then you had the engagement game, which is why your workplace should look more like a video game. Love that. I'm going to second that one right there. Yeah, that's a good read. And then most recently, the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons.

I am a huge D&D fan, as are many of our listeners. Amazing, yes. And not only that, but you also have a podcast that is the psychology of video games. Yeah, Psychology games. I cover both video games and tabletop role-playing games like D and D. You're a busy man. Yeah. It's fun. Time flies though. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I've been doing this since about 2009. I think it was when the first blog post went up. So I've been at it a while. That's a long time. It takes, you know, it takes a, uh, a certain dedication, a touch of, uh,

of crazy, uh, and a lot of passion to do that for this long. We've been doing this for, I think we're getting close to five years now. Uh, yeah. And, uh, it's been a blast, but you know, there's, there's definitely some work involved there as well. And I want to say that shows the longevity too. I don't know how many people today use the term blog anymore, which I grew up with. I know Josh knows, and a lot of people used it from the old days. But yeah, people don't really blog anymore or vlog. I did always call them articles on my portfolio website. There you go.

It's a blog. Yeah, exactly. You got to make it official sounding. Is blogspot even around anymore? Probably. Somebody probably gobbled them up. Yeah. I used to have a bunch of friends that were like, hey, I have a blog, check it out, everybody. And then everybody would follow each other's blogs on blogspot. So the first blog that I ever ran, I actually hand-coded in HTML. Wow. It was before the blogging platforms were even a thing. That's before they made it easy for everybody.

Exactly. I go in there and manually update it by editing things and text edit. We have a website that's easy to update, and we don't remember to update that. Well, listen, Jamie, it's awesome to have you with us. We're really excited to pick your brain about some of the topics on gamers and gamer behavior. We're really just trying to figure out how Ryan's brain works, honestly. But let's touch on the really important stuff first. And that's that you are a gamer at heart. Have you always been a gamer? Yeah, no, I'm kind of aging myself here a little bit but i

was of the generation that grew up in the arcade like the oh here we go here we go now we're gonna have to hear 30 minutes of street fighter from josh oh yeah no this was before street fighter even this you know this was best uh best christmas gift i ever got was like a 20 roll of quarters that i you know took down to the arcade and uh spent and so yeah no i i walked down to the two local coin op arcades that were near my house as a kid growing up and uh loved doing that and then sort of graduated from there into like early pc gaming uh and then you know some of the early consoles although i kind of skipped a certain generation of consoles when i went off to college and and so forth but always kind of stuck with it in my spare time and yeah now i i play on whatever i got pc console switch phone people have heard me

tell the story of going to aladdin's castle in my uh in my mall and uh man the art we just we literally just did a uh an episode on like the it was kind of nostalgia based in arcades it was one of those things where it's like things that just don't exist anymore in gaming and arcades were one of those uh slap that corner on the on the top right or the corner on the top right there yeah challenge that guy next yeah. I got next. I'm next up. I got next on Karate Champ. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I've told the story

of the dark, shady corner of my local 7-Eleven putting more money into Street Fighter 2 than I can remember as a kid. I actually played that at a laundromat, oddly enough. Oh my gosh. Anywhere that had one. It was great.

Like, if they had an arcade machine that you could walk to, you were like, dude, I just found 50 cents. Like, I know where I'm going. Let's go. Galaga or Battlefield 42 at a Pizza Hut or something like that. Wherever it's at. You're in good company, Jamie, because I think you and I are probably pretty close in age. Ryan a little bit younger, but he caught the tail end of the arcade craze there as well. So yeah, so it's just kind of a pastime and a habit that I never gave up. I just kind of clung on to it to one degree

or another until like earlier today, like right before we recorded. Yeah, there you go. So like, what are some of your favorite games that you've played recently you and i kind of had a little conversation uh over email and i i'm not gonna lie i kind of nerded out with you over some of your favorite games but for our listeners what are some of your favorites yeah i mean the stuff i'm playing right now uh marvel rivals which is the team-based competitive shooter sort of more overwatch than overwatch yeah do you have a favorite character in rivals so i'm like maining usually healers support classes so cloak and dagger right now yes and storm if i have to go offensive and i try to stay away from tanks i don't like tanks in the game i never have much success yeah i was a tank player in overwatch and i just can't do it in rivals so i'm a moon knight

so you can cloak for me any day of the week. Yeah, that's good stuff. And then the other game that I put, I don't know, a couple of hundred hours into since it came out in early access is Path of Exile 2. Yes. So I've been dumping time into that, and I think I have fewer than 10 hours in Path of Exile, so this is like brand new to me. I never played Path of Exile at all, ever. I was familiar with it, but I was always a Diablo guy. Ryan is still a Diablo guy. Ryan, I just would like to point out the fact that there's another person that loves Path of Exile too. Yep, bring it on. I know. Listen, I'm a purist. I'm going to stay with the, you know, the true, the true game. Diablo two. I'm going back 25 years, man.

That's where it's at. My, my Diablo two is Diablo three. That's the one that I played the most of the series. Oh man. And then you did mention Elden ring in there as well, right? Yeah. So if anybody ever asks, like, what's your favorite game or game series series i always point to the dark souls and the souls born series so starting with dark souls and bloodborne and then most recently elden ring so i

played all of those multiple times you know through i did like a playthrough when eldering was about to come out where i played a fresh game of all of those all the way through uh so i love those games and have put tons of hours into them elden ring i played a bunch of co-op even with some some friends with the help of a mod oh the mod is great yeah seamless co-op shout out to that if you want to try it out makes it work yes absolutely uh are you elden lord uh i do do believe I got that ending and a couple of the other ones. Okay. Well, you beat it. The insanity one. Yeah. That's impressive in my book. So awesome. And then it's funny because you did mention

kind of a gamer blind spot to us when we were chatting. And it's one of those things that kind of made me realize that that's something I think that we all have. And a lot of people in our community, especially some of the older gamers that we have, we hear this a lot where it's like, I used to love gaming, then life kind of happened. I had kids, I had a family or a job or whatever. And now I'm back into it. And they kind of have this blind spot there. I know for myself, EverQuest way back in the day was my big blind spot. I got too far into EverQuest and played that game for years and years and years to the exclusion of all of the video games. Ryan, it was Destiny 2 for you? Yeah, Destiny and Destiny 2 were weekly raid nights and then just doing runs, you know, almost every other night as it was.

And I didn't play anything else for years. So that was definitely the blind spot there until probably about Witcher 3 I dabbled in and then, you know, God of War. And then I kind of fell off and Destiny also in turn fell off. So yeah. Yeah. And then Jamie, you mentioned that you kind of have one where you you feel like you missed a little gap in in gaming for a little bit yeah i mean it was kind of it was kind of a little bit wider than what you guys are talking about it's a whole generation of games like i never played any of those games. I think I had an NES that I used to play Tetris and it was only because I worked at a toy store and like I got a discount that I picked it up.

But yeah, no, I never really played any of that. And as a result, like I don't have any nostalgia at all for like those characters, like Sonic, Mario, Metroid, um, that kind of stuff. Um, like I don't, I don't even pick those games up for the most part. I think I played like, uh, the last Zelda game or no, the previous to the last Zelda game on the switch. Yeah. But you like a challenge in games is, is that, I mean, with Elden Ring and Dark Souls and some of those, because we always talk about like, we call it Nintendo hard, like a Nintendo games.

They were Nintendo hard games because they were really difficult. I mean, you know, these are some of the things that we grew up on and you kind of had no choice. You either just, you know, banged your head against this game 50 times because you had three lives to beat the whole thing or that was it. And I kind of credit a little bit of that, like me liking difficult games and a challenge and that sort of thing to those days. But is it fair to say that you like challenging games? Yeah. I mean, I don't mind a challenging game. I think the thing that usually attracts me is more of the puzzle of like, well, how do you prepare for the challenge and how do you figure it out?

So if you take something like dark souls, you know, how do you spec your character out? How do you upgrade your weapon? How, you know, how do you approach the fight? And especially like Elden Ring now lately, when there's like so many different ways to spec and you got your potions you can go in with and environmental tactics and so forth. Like that, that's the sort of stuff that I like. I really like, like breaking a game and finding a strategy or a build that just makes it easy and fun. I agree.

If you keep throwing your head, banging your head against the wall, then I like a game that lets you try something different instead of just expecting you to get the button presses down right. Yeah, that's what I enjoy too. I'm not a big Souls guy, but the ability to craft certain potions and this and that to have that set up to where, oh, if I link this with this, this is going to power up that and it'll do this much damage. And then it just makes the battle that was seemingly impossible so much easier. So I thoroughly enjoy that kind of stuff, too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, you know, here's a good question for you, Jamie, is, you know, with being a lifelong gamer, you know, and getting into psychology, how did you get into psychology and what made you want to focus on gaming with it? Yeah. So I majored in psychology in college. And that was mainly because I was interested in

what's called industrial organizational psychology or organizational psychology or work psychology. You guys ever heard of this? I worked for a major... I worked for Progressive Insurance for 16 years. So I am a little bit familiar with some of that mindset. We took personality tests. And to even get employed, you have to pass a personality test. And they decide what type of person you are and whether they think you'll be good for the company and stuff like that. So I think that touches on some of that maybe. Sure. It does. Yeah. So our general remit is try to make work suck less. Yeah. That's good. Through the use of psychology and psychological science approaches to measurement and all that sort of stuff. So that's what I, I majored in psychology and then went to graduate school for an IO psychology degree, uh, and was playing games all, you know,

all throughout, uh, here and there, and then got back into it and graduate school and then got to, you know, move into that career. So that's like my day job is I'm an organizational psychologist. Right. And I work and then I do this psychology of game stuff on the side because I just found it really interesting. And like I said, about 2009, I was reading a lot of books about sort of social psychology and behavioral economics and what we used to call the psychology of decision-making and some of those other types of topics. And I was like, huh, like this kind of explains why games are designed the way they are. So, so often like why game design works when it's done well, and sort of explains why gamers behave as we do, you know, when we play

or don't behave as, as we do when we play. And I was like, well, somebody should like write about this. And then I decided I'm somebody I, I could do this. Yeah. I know a guy, he could do this. And so I set up the blog, psychologygames.com started writing about it and kind of quickly like found an audience of both, um, just gamers, you know, people that like to play games, but then also kind of surprisingly within the game industry of developers and designers and community managers were kind of following what I was writing. And then eventually got the deal to publish the first book, started the podcast, published the other books and so forth. And so here we are. So I guess the short answer to your question is that I think there's a lot that the field of psychology has to offer on game design and player behavior.

That especially at the time that I started doing this, nobody was really talking about in a formal way or putting out there. And there was very little research, very little academic research that was directly about the psychology of video games. And it's pretty cool that over time that has evolved and there's a lot more really good research out there being done by people that grew up with video games and knew they wanted to be psychologists or researchers, academics. And so they sort of blended those two things like I did, except they're actually out there doing the hard part, which is the research, the scientific stuff. I'm just a popularizer. I write about it. prepare me to like go and read original sources like journal articles and chapters and presentations and all that sort of stuff and make sense of it and then translate it for you know lay people and everybody else so in mixing the two i have to ask this because it's just my brain is i'm very curious but in mixing these two did that lead to kind of any like fun, like self revelations as a gamer?

Um, kind of, I guess it might've occasionally come up where I was looking at like gaming motivations, like, you know, why do different people like to play games or what types of game experiences do they like to seek out? And like the thing that I described before, like I enjoy solving the puzzle and maximizing and sort of stuff and i don't enjoy competition in most aspects or i don't enjoy you know crafting types of games and like people have studied these different types of um these different features in games and then looked at like well what are the personality characteristics of the people who gravitate towards those different types of games or those different features? So, yeah, that helped me sort of put like words to it and standardize it.

I think we kind of figure that out naturally as gamers. Like, I do not like sim games like, you know, Stardew Valley is a beloved game by almost everybody in the world. And to me, it's the most mind numbing game. You know, The Sims, for instance, to me is it's like, why do I want to play a game that's like life when I'm living life? Like, this is just work for me. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, I think people kind of naturally figure out like what they kind of gravitate towards.

But it's really neat to kind of know that there is a deeper kind of understanding and basis behind that you know what we think is just oh i just don't like this kind of game yeah yeah you know but there's probably something there that is a reason why you don't like that kind of yeah i think there's there's reflections to like everything in real like in um i'm not the biggest sim game guy or crafting but but when i am in there i love to get the crafting that uh can do it when i'm not there and i also in in real world like i have a 3d printer i 3d print all the time and i love just pumping out prints and it's going while i'm not around and it kind of is the same correlation between the two where it's just it's operating when i'm not there and

it feels good you know and so yeah that's that's the one thing i love in these crafting games that that it's just it's just pumping when i'm away and i'm doing other things you know with the game but you know it's yeah it's so weird the the the tie-in between real world uh pleasures and then video game pleasures if you will yeah yeah so ryan have you heard of a game called satisfactory so okay so josh is very excited because um so we uh we actually i got on satisfactory with uh josh and then one of our old hosts paul and they showed me the ropes and we just went all out for like two or three weeks just hardcore right before one of these updates that came out. But we had the most obnoxious, amazing base you could ever imagine.

And then organizational czar Josh is like, you're mixing this with that? Because me and Paul, we're just putting conveyor belts so we can travel across areas. He's like, you can't put this in the way of this. And so that one definitely hits those marks of uh it's it's satisfactory when you when you place this stuff you know and they're in the right spots and you're like yeah that looks that looks good man i i like this this is this feels good and you're and you're

sitting here on a computer playing a game you know yeah yeah and you can get into like optimizing inputs and outputs and through through rates and efficiencies satisfactory is one of those games that we really really like encourage people to play it's i think it's a like it just released in its full form it was an early access for like six years or something crazy yeah i played it through most of the early access period yeah yeah we did too but that's one of those games where it's like have you played this if you haven, you really should play this game. Just try it. Please just try it, yeah. Yeah, so, all right, awesome. Well, listen, we have some really cool topics

that we're really excited to get into, but we're going to take a short break and then we're going to get into those. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes.

Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. All right, we are back. So, you know, we're all lifelong gamers at heart, and we generally say that we aren't experts or professionals, and so it's not every day that we get access to one of those. So we sort of came up with some of these ideas that we wanted to know a bit more about, and we think our listeners can definitely relate to as well. So we'd love to dive into a few of those with you, Jamie, if you don't mind. The first one is a conversation that we see happen all the time. I catch a little bit of flack for it.

I know it's meant in love, but it's just kind of know thyself type of nature. And I am very opposite in Ryan in this case. And that is the, I just call it gamer ADD for myself. It is the, you know, I love playing a multitude of games. You know, I've always equated it to sampling at the buffet. Give me a bite of this, a bite of that. Let me figure out what I like, and then I'll load my plate up with some more of that. Whereas Ryan and a lot of other gamers are very much, once I find a game I like, I lock into that game. I will play it until I 100% it, get that platinum trophy, put thousands and thousands of hours into it. This is the only game I feel like I need because I've found a game that I find entertaining and I enjoy. And this has actually been a fun conversation amongst our community as well, because

there's a lot of people that are like me. And then there's a lot of people that are kind of like Ryan in that case. And I thought it'd just kind of be fun to kind of talk about that a little bit. Like, is there some psychology behind that? Is it just a, you know, a, hey, some people like a variety and other people's don't, you know? And so I thought it'd be kind of a fun little topic that not only we can relate to, but I know a lot of our listeners can relate to as well. Yeah, for sure. And I'm definitely of the type that burns hot and will try to finish and power through a game. If it's the kind of game that can even be finished, you know, a lot of games aren't like that. They're just, they're forever games. Yeah. that. So I'm not, I'm not really familiar with any research that looks at differences in across people in terms of like, do they like to finish a game or do they sample and move around? But

there's a fair amount of research on the kinds of things that, you know, get people to continue playing a game and, you know, and quote unquote, finish it. And like I said, even how they do that in games that aren't finishable, like Marvel rivals, you know, because that's a competitive online shooter and they have seasons. So even if you get to the highest rank in the competitive that ends at the end of the season and you start back at zero, but they're like that game, for example, is a great one to look at in terms of the number of things that you can progress on. So there's like meters everywhere in that game. And like after a match in that game, you might see like four or five meters like build up. And then you fill them, you get 10, you know, you complete 10 matches, you get five kills, you do this little

thing with this character and you unlock an achievement or you get some points or some in-game currency that you can use to like purchase cosmetics or things in the battle pass. And it's really effective because it's like overlapping, you know, there's always something going on and it builds a lot of it around themes that you can kind of always something going on and it builds and builds a lot of it around themes that you can kind of get your head around and remember and so forth and it shows you pretty clearly like which ones are incomplete like what ones you've started you know i've written a lot about the idea of endowed progress where we like to finish things that we feel that we've started and we like to complete sets of things uh you know if we have a choice between doing something that offered that's brand

new and it offers a bigger reward or doing something that like closes out like this is step six of six and it will close out this quest or this progression like for a lower reward a lot of people will go and just like check the thing off the list and close it out and get it off of your quest log or what have you. That's so funny because we were playing Marvel Rivals last night and they have a seasonal quest thing and I happen to just be looking. And I'm not normally, see, this is what's interesting, is normally in Ryan the same, well, I don't know. Ryan really loves the Moon Knight skin. So but it's like cosmetics generally don't do anything for me.

You know, it's like I'm not generally paying for a battle pass. These little bars for me, at least generally, you know, don't really matter. I want to get better. I'm the I am the competitive guy that's like, hey, I want to be better than other people in this game. I want to improve my skills, learn this character character master this character in these combos and things like that but i found myself last night doing a stupid quest where it's like hey if i just do this one thing i get this thor skin for free there you go there they drew you in dude and they got me i'm not even the kind of person that really cares about that stuff.

And that's, I always, I equate it, and I think they did this brilliantly. It's just the Fortnite effect that I've kind of said with a lot of things. But, I mean, I have an eight-year-old son. He's been gaming with me since he could walk, pretty much. I gave him a controller with no batteries before, you know, he just so he could hang out and uh we would play together and so he's he's a good solid gamer but he even asked me with uh rivals he's like is there a new characters dad is there any new ones and and i'm like dude they're already putting out more than overwatch ever did you know within a couple months and and like it's just that instant gratification that constant

reassurance of like you're getting something new you either check this box or you're getting a new skin or you're getting a new character and i think the youth is so conditioned for that that that's what they strive for and then that's what developers are creating yeah and i like the games that do it in ways that reward you just with cosmetics and not like in-game advantages or perks or that sort of stuff. Cause cosmetics I can usually leave or take, like there may be a particular skin for a character that I like to play that I'll work towards. I generally won't spend real money on that sort of stuff. Although I have bought the Battle Pass for Rivals for both of the seasons so far. But yeah, I like the ones that just keep it simple. Cosmetics, the core experience of the game stays the kind of pay to win model, which I think is good. I know there's some games out there and some people like that. And if that's, you know, hey, if that's what they like, then, you know, power to them. But I do think gamers as a whole have kind of rebelled against this. Hey, if I pay money, I have an advantage over other people, especially in a competitive game.

And it's like unlocking weapons, too, and class abilities or looking at your war zone yeah i i have a tuesday night group of friends that i play video games with and we've been playing space marine 2 oh fantastic game so good yeah and we're playing through the campaign but we're also doing like these pve missions that you you can play which are meant to be like multiplayer like they're balanced around multiplayer i think those are better than these PVE missions that you, you can play, which are meant to be like multiplayer, like they're balanced around multiplayer. I actually think those are better than the campaign, honestly.

I don't like them. Oh, you don't like them. Oh, that's interesting. And the reason is that like all of the progression stuff is locked behind all of like the unlocks depend on your progression. Like, so you have to play and unlock and earn currency to unlock, like the cool.

You know, weapon or to make this weapon more powerful and so forth. And it feels like some of this stuff is, is frequently balanced around you having done that. So again, like the idea is that you throw your head against the wall until you've earned enough until you've done enough grinding to earn the unlocks that make the levels playable. And like one of my friends has got like way more hours than the rest of us. And he's got all the stuff unlocked and he is just plowing through the tyranids, you know, and, and just being like, you guys need to play more during the week so that you can unlock this stuff. And I'm like, nah. It's funny because as we've gotten older, the grind has really become almost a detriment. If I know a game has a lot of grind involved to it, it's almost like a put off. And it's weird because that grind is supposed to get you to want to play more. Like it's, hey, you know, there's more that you can work for. There's more that you can do.

But, and there's younger Josh used to love the grind and that slow progression. I know Ryan was same way with Destiny 2. He, you know, you were grinding every character in that game with the raids and stuff. But now, I don't know, man. It's just, maybe it's because we're older and it's just like,

I don't have time for this grind anymore. It's that like 15 to 25 range. You got time. You got no kids, most likely. And you have the time to grind. And nowadays, it's, I want to have fun. I want to enjoy my game time. I want to play.

I don't want to have to spend 15 hours doing this to unlock the gun to help me 10%. Yeah, it's definitely the time invested is not worth the reward for people like us anymore. Yeah, it needs to respect my time. The game design needs to respect my time. Agreed. You can offer that stuff, but, you know, don't like degrade my experience playing the game if I don't engage with it. Yeah. So let's let's move on to another one, because this one, I think, is very near and dear to probably most gamers at this point. And we're dads. There's a certain stigma, especially for

people that have been lifelong gamers, that the friendships that we build online and through gaming aren't real. We've heard this from parents. We've seen it in TV and media and stuff like that, where it's like, hey, if you met somebody playing Halo back in the day, that person's not your friend. You know, that might have been somebody that you played games with, but you don't know that person in real life. And so I think it's a phenomenal movie. And John is the one that actually turned us on to this. But there is a movie called The Remarkable Life of Ebelene that focuses on somebody that is handicapped and found kind of their friendship and life through that game. And so I highly recommend people check that out, especially if you want a little bit of a tearjerker there too. But this is one of those things.

As a parent, my kids play online games, and they have met some really cool people. Our community that we have, I mean, we just had a Marvel Rivals night where we had 28 people playing Marvel Rivals together in these fun 6v6 matches, and it was just the best time. That sounds awesome. It was fantastic. You should come join us because it really is a good time. Send me the info. I'll be there. Oh, absolutely. And so it's one of those things where I think as gamers, we have made friendships. I know we have just through this podcast and playing games with people. We've met some people that I consider very good friends, even though we've never met each other in real life, you know, and there's the thinking that, you know, if not that this would happen, but Hey, if the internet goes away,

you don't have that friendship anymore. So it's this false friendship, so to speak. And this is a tough one, you know, because as a dad, there is the part of me that, you know, says, hey, kids, you should have real life friends. And of course, my kids have online friends as well. And even for me, somebody that's been a gamer my whole life, I still struggle with this a little bit with the your online friends aren't as important as your real life friends. And I know that objectively, I can look at that and kind of go, Hey, that's not necessarily the case, but I'd love this topic because I think it's one that is still, there's a lot of people that aren't sure about that. So what are your, what are your thoughts on that? I have thoughts.

Oh, good. All right. I actually have a whole chapter in my book about the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons about this topic. And it applies, I think, equally to video games, like those types of relationships. Okay. And the punchline or the spoiler is that one is not better than the other. They're different. And they satisfy different needs. And you want both. So the story that I tell in the book is that I had a D&D group that had been playing for

years and years together. And we were meeting in person, typically at my friend's house every Friday night and we'd play. And then March of 2020 happened. Oh, yeah. If you guys remember. Oh yeah. We're playing the beginning of COVID and lockdowns.

So we were like, okay, let's skip this week. And then we were like, uh, I don't think this is going to go away anytime soon. We're not going to be able to get together in person anytime soon. So we moved like, like a lot of D and D players did. We moved to online using tools like discord and virtual tabletop software right to sort of simulate the experience of sitting at a tabletop except we're doing it through video calls um and that continued for a while and then even and we never ended up getting back together because two of the people that were in the

group moved to Florida. Another one moved to California. We brought another guy into the group, but he lived in Wyoming. So it was just geographically dispersed. But the game is still going to this day online. And so I found that question really interesting of like, well, which is better? And I think that, well, first of all, I tend to stay away from the term like in real life or real life friends, because I think games are part of real life. The internet is part of real life.

It's just your life is mediated by a technology in that case. And the research that I looked at kind of talked about social capital, which is like the benefits that we get from being part of a social group. So, you know, I may be part of a family and that means that I can call upon my family members to do things for me or help me out. And I have obligations to them. I may be part of a religious organization, and I can similarly call on people to help me out, and there's certain things that I'm expected to do and benefits that I get. And the social capital, the researchers kind of talk about two different kinds of bridging and bonding. And like bonding social capital is usually what you get with like the really close interpersonal friendships, like a family or a close friend or a roommate or something like that. And it can result in like pretty concrete real world benefits, like a drive me to the airport,

help me move this bed, you know, come help me install my new graphics card, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And bridging social capital is the kind that you get that's a little bit more dispersed. And it's the kind that you get from being members of groups that are not quite as closely knit and that may only meet occasionally. So like a church group, maybe an example of that, like a hobby group, maybe an example of that. Something on Meetup that you got into because you're into photography and you joined this photography group on meetup.com or found a local group of that kind. And that tends to not get you the same advantages, but what it does is that it exposes you to

different kinds of people than you would normally get exposed to. So you get exposed to people with different worldviews, different race, different, you know, everything. And those can be really good if you need connections to other groups you don't normally get associated with. So if you need like help finding a job or referral for, you know, something to do in a city when you're visiting or something like that, that's what that's really useful for. And what the research that I read has pretty consistently shown is that in-person activities create bonding capital and online gaming, for example, or online D&D creates that bridging type of social capital.

So they're good for different things. And one does not necessarily like supplant another. Uh, so I think the answer to your question is, yeah, you should have like friends that interact with mainly, mainly in person. Uh, and that may or may not include gaming and then yeah,

have joined that, that world of Warcraft guild or that that team or have like i do where you have those tuesday night friends that you play with that don't live you know in the same city that i do anymore uh and have that kind of experience that is this is awesome i literally got chill bumps like like listening to this because it's really cool to hear like this kind of laid out you know know, because again, you know, I've met some incredible people. I know Ryan has online. I'm sure like you have as well, but it's really neat to think about when you're playing games with people. And like I said,

you know, it's, it's weird how sometimes we can just make a connection with a random stranger. Like I love rocket league, you know, and I was playing a random match twos and I met this guy that we just oddly in Rocket League hit it off where it was like we were just in sync and we were chatting after the match. And it was like, there's just this obvious thing there. But if never like taking the time to consider that you meet such a broader range of people that all like have something to offer. You know, you are exposed to people that you probably, like you said, would not meet in real, in, in the bonding part, you know, and the, again, these aren't people that you can say, Hey, come help me install my dishwasher,

but that you can reach out to. And I mean, we've had plenty of those where it's like, Hey, I'm having a rough day. I just need somebody to chat with, or can you hop in and just play some games with me? I need to blow off some steam or something like that. So it's really cool to kind of have that, like just kind of put forward and say, I think sometimes people don't take a step back and think about that kind of stuff. Um, so yeah, I, I love it, man. Like that makes it's, it's a really neat point. And the other thing to keep in mind is that with those online groups, like the barrier to entry and the barrier to exit are low, right? Like if, if you find out that you're not getting along with these people, uh, or you don't want to be a part of that group, just leave. And like, it's harder

to leave like a group of friends, for example, or your family, uh, than, than harder to leave like a group of friends for example or your family right uh then then it is for like a group that you meet just online and only know through online and you can also sort of like be more um adventurous or more open in sharing things about yourself with an online group of people because there's less potential for damage to your social reputation. There again, it's like easier to leave and block and that sort of stuff. So you actually will find that people, when they engage through social media or message boards or what have you that, you know, they'll overshare, they'll do that kind of stuff. Uh, and they do it on purpose and they can have great benefits because again, like if people overshare with you, then you're getting exposed more and more to like new ideas and understand people. And, you know, old guy shaking his fist at the clouds kind of thing.

I feel like that's something that's dying in, in, in honestly, like in our modern society, I feel like people just want to go to opposite ends and nobody wants to communicate in the middle and try to figure out why people think the way that they do or try to learn from, from that interaction. It's, you interaction. It's something that sadly we see and people want to shout their opinions and then it's become this, if you have a different opinion than me, I just, I don't like you. Instead of the, well, why do you have this opinion? And let's try to figure this out. Maybe we both get to learn something out of this too. Yeah. In the idea world, it works like that and not just people arguing in bad faith for

example and i think you see both uh online for sure i love i love the uh the idea of of online communication and online friendship is is is no different than irl like you said you don't like that term i i don't either i think i i have people that I've met within the last year or two that I feel personally closer to than people I've known in IRL for 10, 15 years. And it's just that connection and that ability to be open with somebody you've never met in person face- face but you have a bond and a relationship with them that transcends you know personal connection like the the the being in front of them so yeah that that's so cool and it's something that's so i think new within the last you know 15 20 years that people are still kind of wrapping their minds around but um yeah we're gonna keep learning every day and and uh yeah i'm excited to see kind of where all this goes yeah like like one more

thought yeah i love it we're excited we love it especially with things like games it's easier to get in with a group of people like that because the game provides the scaffolding for the social interaction like you can go in and you instantly have something in common that you can talk about talk about the game you talk about what you like about the game and and what you're going to do and what your plans are and then you ease into the you know what do you do for a living you know what's your family situation that sort of stuff and. And it is the same reason, if you think about it, why it was so easy for us to make friends when we were kids, because we were all like in school together and we all played the same games

and maybe watch the same TV shows and read the same comic books and, and why it's easier if you're lucky to work with people who have similar interests, like you can form those kinds of relationships. But when you say don't work outside the home or if you are unemployed or if you, you know, work at home, like in your job, it's more difficult to make friends because you don't have that scaffolding. And gaming can provide that in a way that other things can't. Yeah. I think there's something to be said too, for it's,

it's, it's a lot easier to, like you said, the barrier of entry, that social awkwardness. I mean, I know that there's a lot of people that struggle with, you know,

feeling like they're socially awkward and in their minds, it's, I can't go up and approach this stranger and start talking to them. We get it in our Discord, dude. Lurkers. We got lurkers in our Discord that will sit there for a year. I've been here. I've been listening to you guys forever. I'm going to just say hi. And then they just get open arms. What's your favorite games? We always like to try to just bring everybody in. And it's almost like just kind of a revelation like, okay, these people are cool. They will accept me. And it's always cool to see every time. And I'm getting, again,

goosebumps now thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. So I really like that, that it is just an easier kind of barrier to entry. It's a little bit easier to put that virtual foot forward to start these relationships. It's slow risk is a way to look at it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We got to move on as cool as I think this topic is, man. Let's look.

Type 45. Yeah. Type 45. Oh, here we're already after. You see how this goes. Jamie's learned already. He knows. He knows who we are.

All right. So, you know, I, we all grew up playing video games. Like I, I consider myself a very good problem solver. I know Ryan is too. He's awesome at just kind of analyzing something. What's wrong? How do I fix it? That kind of thing. And I actually attribute a lot of that to the fact that I grew up playing video games. Games are always presenting you with some sort of challenge. They're presenting you with a problem that you have to overcome, whether it's a boss fight or a level or, you know, uh, you know, any number of things there. Um, but you know, and I think we see that, you know, in an age where kids grow up playing

Minecraft nowadays, that was the first game that like my kids actually played because as a, again, as a parent, I kind of went, there's value to this game. Like they have to learn how to think they have to solve these problems. And, you know, I do feel like there is a good tangible benefit here. And, you know, it's one of those things that makes me curious, right? Because back in my day, you know, there was the big thinking, well, video games are going to rot your brain. Yeah. You know, and that was a common saying and i i had friends who weren't allowed to play video games because that's exactly what their parents thought you know is oh those will rot your brain um and i know that this is something that you have looked into specifically because

i know you actually kind of broached this subject in your book. So the question is, do video games make us smarter? Do they help with problem solving? Or is there maybe a little bit of that, yeah, they can rot your brain? Yeah, as usual, the answer is it's a little complicated, and it depends on what you mean. But that whole moral panic around video games will rot your brains, because before that that it was television. And before that it was comic books. And before that it was crossword puzzles. And before that, like go all the way back to like, I forget which one of the ancient

Greeks, but like one of them was like kids writing things down these days, like that rots your brain. You should like commit it to memory. You should memorize the Iliad and not write it down. Um, so that, that's like an impulse that's kind of always been around. So I'm pretty skeptical of it. And I think video games have a lot to offer that would not rot your brain. They're interactive.

They're social, meant often, which is something you can't necessarily say about a lot of other activities that are more passive. So I think there's a lot to go on there. If the question is, do video games make you smarter or do they help you develop mental skills? And I don't know if you guys remember, but there was a a craze a while back with all of these brain training games. Do you remember these? Oh, yeah. Brain Age on the Nintendo DS even was like a big seller. And the idea was like, you can do Sudoku or you can do like these little puzzles and you can do like the Stroop test and all these other kinds of things and like develop these mental abilities.

So you're going to have improved memory and you're going to have improved reaction time and recognition and all this sort of stuff. And none of the research really bore that out. Like they didn't make you smarter. They didn't, they didn't improve your memory. They didn't, except in the game, like you would get better at remembering things that were in the game, but if you needed to remember where your car keys are, no, no, you're not. You're no better off than, than before. But I am also familiar with some research that looked at like certain perceptual skills that game action gamers in particular have. So people that play a lot of say first person shooters or other types of action games tend to be better at like picking specific things out of a cluttered visual field like they will cue into and recognize things like they'll be able to pick pick out details from a picture more and they'll be able to tell like how like where something is moving yeah uh and they've even looked at like sounds and they can sort of tell like, is the sound

moving from the left channel to the right channel? You know, when you listen to it in speakers or are a bunch of dots migrating to one side of the screen or the other when you look at it. So these sort of like low level perceptual skills, there's some evidence that those can be trained by playing action games. And part of that for sure, and this is something you always have to be careful about when talking about these kinds of things is that part of it is people who have those skills are attracted to playing those kinds of games because they have those skills. They make the games more enjoyable or they make them better at them. So they play more of them.

Um, but the researchers, you know, I looked about and I, I have a whole chapter again on this in, uh, getting gamers book. They control for that, that sort of stuff. And they did like before and after trials where they had people play, you know, games that they'd never played before and then measured their effects, that sort of stuff. Um, that all said, I do think that video games often offer kids opportunities to practice reading, for example. So I hear stories about, yeah, I got my kid to play a Japanese role-playing game, a JRPG, and it has just hundreds and hundreds of words of text at a time. And they'll sit there and they'll read it because they're interested in it, and that's great. I grew up playing Zork. I mean, honestly, I attribute playing these text-based games to helping me learn how to read.

Yeah. And I think there's some evidence that they give you opportunities to practice those skills, like the problem-solving skills, social skills. And again, I talk about this in the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons. When you're sitting down at a table and interacting with people, you can help improve your communication skills. How do you formulate your thoughts? How do you convince people to do what you want? How do you regulate your emotions?

How do you make plans? And I think all that sort of can apply equally well to video games. There's unfortunately not been a lot of direct research that I've been able to find like measuring it. Um, but I think it's a, it's a compelling argument. Any graduate students out there looking for a dissertation idea? There you go. That one's free. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned that because it's, it's one of those things where again just kind of a a real world example is you know i'm getting older my reflexes aren't what they used to be you know i my ability to you know

play a fast-paced first-person shooter and have really good aim is not what it was 10 years ago but i kind of i call it like battlefield awareness like i can kind of see when that person off in the distance is low on health and this guy's running off behind this pillar to try to regenerate health and it's like i'm better at that now than i am at like the clicking heads really really fast and quickly and things like that and so i think there there definitely is that like almost like you said like training or reinforcement like that that that lay of the battlefield you can see the whole field where before you're just like, kill, kill, kill. And now you see the whole picture. You see everything that's there because you've been trained and seasoned over time.

And I think that's what it's become for us is that we can kind of assess the environment and act accordingly within these games. That's my excuse anyway. Right? That's why I didn't get that headshot. Yeah. The term for that is actually game sense, which is a term that was borrowed from sports because you have coaches talking about game sense

and games like soccer and basketball where the athlete will know just sort of like where people are on the field and who's open and who has the ball and all that sort of stuff. And same thing applies to video games. Like you said, you like tracking cooldowns on abilities and positions of healers and, you know, what, how, what percentage is the point at in terms of, you know, what we need

to do? What are the objectives? Right. So you hear that, Ryan, we're, we're getting better at game sense as we go. I love it. Oh man, this is awesome. So listen, we're running out of time here, Jamie. But as we wrap things up, we always love this too. Is there a game that is coming up that has just got you super hyped? Is at the top of your meter is like, I can't wait to play this game. Is there the on the horizon for you there well i'd say path of exile like either more early access content or the full release and they haven't put a date on it so i don't know if it's even going to be this year but i love what i played of early access in that and

i'm looking forward there's still like six classes that they haven't released in early access yet and all the skill trees that are going to go with it and everything weapons classes i know yeah i play a warrior in path of exile too i'm level 80 ish somewhere around there i'm pretty much at the end game for that and it's like but there's no axes there's no swords yet like there's there's all this stuff and so i'm i'm very excited for the future of that game as well uh alas, Ryan will never know. Maybe one day it's, it's early access still. What do you mean?

I got plenty of time. It'll be free to play too. When it comes out to play. I know. So awesome. Jamie, thank you so much. Again,

I just want to remind people about your books, getting gamers, the psychology of video games and their impact on the people who play them. That sounds fascinating to me. I actually really want to check that one out. The engagement game, why your workplace should look more like a video game. So any business people out there that run a business, you should absolutely check that one out. And then your newest one, the psychology of dungeons and dragons. Again, I know we have a lot of fans of dungeons and dragons, myself included. So I think that is a fascinating read as well.

And then also your podcast, which is the Psychology of Games podcast as well. Jamie, what's the best place if people want to pick up these books? What's the best place to point them towards? I'm going to put a link in the episode description to make life easy for them. But is there a best place for them to check these out or to purchase these? Yeah, just go to psychology of games.com. That's the website where I, I also post articles.

So there's like literally hundreds of articles going back over the years that are free, uh, for the reading and for the checking out. And you can find out how to subscribe to the podcast, how to read the books. You can listen to excerpts from the audio book version of the, the psychology of dungeonsgeons and Dragons.

Oh, awesome. And find out how to follow me on social media. I'm at Jamie Madigan on Blue Sky, for example. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jamie. Again, a link is going to be to your website in the episode description. And everybody better go look and everybody better go follow. I'm telling you right now. From me. Yeah, there you go. Do not disappoint this me. Yeah. There you go. Do not disappoint this man.

Yeah. This, this was an absolute blast, Jamie. Thank you so much for coming on the show with us. I mean, what a cool insight into just some aspects that I don't think gamers really, you know,

like think about, I think we kind of feel some of these things, you know, as, as gamers, but it's really been really neat to kind of get an inside look on that. So we absolutely appreciate you lending your expertise and just coming to hanging out with us, man. We're going to have to get you in that Marvel Rivals night because that would be awesome.

So we'll definitely touch base on that as well. So that is it for this episode. Thank you for tuning in. Remember to follow the podcast in your podcast app. Click the follow button. Click the plus button. Don't forget to rate us five stars and leave a review if you enjoyed this as well. Make sure you go check out Jamie's website.

That's it for this one. Until next time. Happy gaming. Thanks. See ya!