The cycle of going beyond a difficult level or boss is familiar to most of them: they fail over and over again. Finally, you decide that it doesn't happen and you step away. When you return to the game, you can put on what felt insurmountable in one or two attempts.
The reason why this experience is so universal? It is coded as our brain learns.
“A video game requires some mental energy (i.e. attention resources), which is inevitably exhausted over time,” Celia Hodent, Ph.D. In Psychology and Game UX Strategist, Polygon said via e -mail. “If you have already played a game for [one] Hour and begins to fight against a new boss, they have made a lot of cognitive efforts to understand how the enemy works and how to defeat it, emphasize their energy and die. “
However, if you sleep on it, not only recover this consuming energy – you also allow your brain to complete an imperative part of the process of learning a new ability.
“Sleep helps to consolidate what has been learned in long -term memory during the day. And we can't learn whether we don't remember, ”said Hodent. “A lack of sleep can have a very negative impact on learning and development in general.”
And it's not just beginners or beginners (reading: children) who need sleep to learn new skills (like Master a video game), ”said Hodent.
It happened to me recently Lonely mountains: snow drivers: I played the game in the morning before work and tried to achieve it beyond a few goals. I tried again after work and still couldn't push through. The next morning, after a good night sleep and with a fresh cup of coffee next to me, I pierced the destination through the target – and the target times also for a few harder runs.
It is not the only reason that you are at a certain level or so frustrated to give up a game. Hodent outlined three “learning approaches” that are involved when you learn how to play video pieselvel or learn something: behavioral, cognitive and constructive psychology principles.
You can imagine behavioral psychology as a conditioning-or “input edition”, said Hodent, where a certain action causes a certain effect, and you learn to combine these things, “like when we destroy a vase, we may find looting inside. Or when we hear a certain sound that enemies will recognize us. “
The conditioning is also based on repetition. “We know that it enables conditioning work if the players can repeat an action, e.g. B. practice a new weapon against enemies. Just like Flash cards, ”said Hodent.
It described the second type of learning – based on cognitive psychology principles – as “opening the black box (the mind) and taking into account the limits of the human brain. Perception is subjective, attention resources are scarce and the memory is faulty. “
But that's not a bad thing – it only means that good video game designers should collect new concepts in such a scaffolding so that the player does not achieve tiredness that makes them so frustrated that they give up permanently. We are happy to learn, especially when we get a win from time to time.
“We know that the work memory (the part of the memory that enables you to encode information, e.g. when reading these lines) mature quite quickly and we cannot maintain our attention for a long time or are efficiently efficient. If we try to teach players too quickly to players in a game, there is a very good chance that they don't remember much. You will therefore not feel competent about what the game plays, which can be frustrating, ”said.
And now we are the third framework, constructive psychology principles that prevent this frustration through “targeted learning”.
“A video game that pauses to force the feed players a tutorial text is not particularly efficient (and many players don't like that). On the contrary, to bring the players into a situation in which they have to overcome an obstacle by learning a new ability […] is much more sensible and efficient, ”said Hodent, citing Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 as an example of this principle in action. “To simplify it instead of saying you, 'Hey, by the way, you have to press X to jump into this game', we show you a chest on an upper platform and you have to discover how to jump there to get there to get (with subtle guidance from the design). “
It is also not all about you, the player, to know when to go away. Games should contain breaks from the learning process.
“Carefully designed games should be held accountable [cognitive psychology principles] And let the players take a breather (e.g. by not letting them learn them again, but simply learned that), ”wrote Hodent.
The next time you get stuck at a difficult level, you can rethink the tactics of the Brute researcher through as many failures as it needs to surpass it-according to science, a loss game, and one that you cannot end up brains out. Instead, take a break, practice easier levels or just sleep on it.
“This is the main reason why it can have a good sleep pattern for children and young adults with a developing brain (up to the age of about 25),” said Hodent. So prioritize this sleep plan – it could make you better in video games.
