Hey Players and Dev Team,
Here is something to consider before you make changes to the game and for those who don’t know about this term, Habituation.
We have experienced an influx of similar MMO’s within the past 10 years. So much too that we find ourselves questioning the integrity of the developers who make them. Why have we done this? well when we play a video game we like, our brain creates a drug called serotonin. This drug makes us happy. What we don’t know is that the over usage of this drug can cause the symptoms of Habituation. This includes depression, feeling of loss, anxiety, and an overall dread of the perceived topic of interest. When you play games for 6hrs a day 365 days of the year. You are literally sending your brain into a comatose state of depression due to Serotonin. Your own body is making you feel good and making you feel worse at the same time.
Now that we have that out of the way. There are a few things players can do to stop this.
- go for a walk in-between gaming hours. some sort of exercise allows for the body to cycle your system.
- eat healthy foods and less sugars.
- drink lots of water. Dehydration can happen without you knowing it.
This isn’t to say that it will help you right away. There is no instant fix for any situation. but building good habits eventually leads to results.
Now, for the developers. Building good game design strategies to combat Complacency, Parasitic design elements and Habitual routines can improve you players outlook of your game. The worst thing you could do is make the players feel complacent. This just enforces Habituation. So, some steps to remove this:
- Designing missions that don’t feel like fetch quests.
- Providing in-between puzzle games and challenges that require thinking and skill.
- Changing up your seasonal content to be more interactive with the stories.
- making sure to not implement FOMO (fear of missing out) design elements.
Lets talk about FOMO. The fear of missing out is the number one anxiety inducing cause in video games today. It is literally altering peoples mindset towards a more addict lifestyle. If they aren’t playing the game, they are missing out on the best. This is co-inducive to gambling addiction and a more severe habituation lifestyle.
With all this new knowledge at your fingertips, I encourage you to research more about it. Also, Just use this to better help your lifestyle in general and maybe help others identify why they are feeling anxious or upset while playing video games.
Anyways hope this helps,
cheers