Motion sickness rating for games

[Gdrazzel]

Hi I suffer from motion sickness when playing most first person games, driving games are usually an exception, I'm not sure why. It would be great if you allowed users to rate games for motion sickness say out of 10. I find if I play isometric games eg: Diablo 2 or POE, I never experience it. but often it's hard to figure out if a game is liable to cause this before buying and trying it. It can be very disappointing

[Zekiran]

And yet there IS still a need for such a thing - or at least, a fix to the problems that cause it. Without enough people actually speaking up saying "jesus this game makes me ill" or "wow I get a serious headache whenever I play --" game manufacturers will continue to offer too few options to fix this for the wide variety of ways that it occurs.

[Walach]

When most people speak of motion sickness in games they really are talking about simulation sickness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulator_sickness

It might be almost the same but it might help reading about it.

I have a friend who has such intense problems with movements in games that he CAN'T even play Diablo 3. That might tell you how hard any sort of scale would be to use.

Other than that, most people here have already said the things I was going to say, ie, field of view etc. Hope you find out what causes your problem!

[Count_Dandyman]

Origineel geplaatst door Zekiran:

And yet there IS still a need for such a thing - or at least, a fix to the problems that cause it. Without enough people actually speaking up saying "jesus this game makes me ill" or "wow I get a serious headache whenever I play --" game manufacturers will continue to offer too few options to fix this for the wide variety of ways that it occurs.

And people are speaking and game makers are giving the options as can be seen by people in this very thread pointing out the multiple different things that can cause it and the settings to change to fix them.

This isn't something that is a simple yes or no question and there are always going to be edge cases out there that there is no solution for.

[Zekiran]

Origineel geplaatst door Count_Dandyman:

And people are speaking and game makers are giving the options as can be seen by people in this very thread pointing out the multiple different things that can cause it and the settings to change to fix them.

This isn't something that is a simple yes or no question and there are always going to be edge cases out there that there is no solution for.

Right - but one of the things that some games DO NOT do, is offer the ability to turn off motion blur or change the FOV. Those things, in my eyes, should be absolutely available in every game out there. There's no excuse for them not to have those.

[Gwarsbane]

Origineel geplaatst door Zekiran:

And yet there IS still a need for such a thing - or at least, a fix to the problems that cause it. Without enough people actually speaking up saying "jesus this game makes me ill" or "wow I get a serious headache whenever I play --" game manufacturers will continue to offer too few options to fix this for the wide variety of ways that it occurs.

Why do you need a "Warning!!!! game can give you motion sickness" on every single game if you know every single game can give you motion sickness?

You're not going to know if motion sickness effects you in the game, till you actually play the game. If you know you get motion sickness, in any way shape or form, then you already know games will give you motion sickness.

As already mentioned, the amount of motion sickness you suffer varies from person to person so there is no way to know just how bad it will be for someone till they play, this is why a motion sickness rating out of 10 is more then pointless. Your 10 could be my 4.

Again its the hot spices all over again. I might put something thats 5000 scoville on my burger like ketchup, but you might be screaming in pain looking for a vat of ice cream to dump in your mouth.

Even with my motion sickness that I can get from games, sometimes its just me getting a headache after an hour, sometimes its me wanting to get to the bathroom to throw up after 5 minutes of playing. Yet if I turn off or change the same feature in both games my motion sickness goes away. There is no way to know just how bad its going to be for me till I actually play the game.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

OP's idea is a meaningful one, though it's just that it's not really easy to do because it's a poorly-researched field with little practical standardization at the moment.

However, I'd say that, as a practical matter, it's pretty easy to categorize games according to some basic criteria:

* camera perspective panning - does the camera move its position relative to the scenery? If so, how?
* camera perspective rotation - does the camera turn its angle relative to the scenery? If so, how -- yaw, roll, or pitch?
* camera zoom - does the camera change its range of view independent of position and angle?
* sensitivity - FOV and mouselook sensitivity, camera sensitivity to panning (e.g. how does the camera respond to the character's movements, particularly important in 2D sidescrollers)
* other graphical settings (e.g. motion blur)

Your basic 2D sidescroller has panning, but rarely anything else.

Modern 2D sidescrollers often use 2.5D which involves both panning and zoom.

FPS and TPS games involve both panning and rotation. FPS involves more rotation, as the camera is tied to the character's head, while TPS allows a greater width of sight but less range without rotation.

FPS rotation involves both pitch (i.e. turning up/down) and yaw (i.e. turning left/right). Some TPS games do this, though it's common to restrict this to over-the-shoulder views.

Roll rotation is rarely used in 3D, though sometimes happens in 2D or 2.5D games (e.g. Sonic bonus stages).

Games also differ in their sensitivity. FOV is sorta how far back the "eyes" are, and also mouse sensitivity to changing perspectives, in 3D games that use mouselook.

I've found that games with high FOV, sensitive mouselook, and particularly input lag with regards to mouselook, are the most nauseating.

I also don't like zoom in 2D/2.5D sidescrollers, but it's more of an annoyance than a nausea-inducing thing.

[Tito Shivan]

Origineel geplaatst door Gwarsbane:

Why do you need a "Warning!!!! game can give you motion sickness" on every single game if you know every single game can give you motion sickness?

That's why I suggested instead to be able to know if the usual motion-sickness disablers (Has the game an FOV slider? Motion blur toggle? head bobbing toggle?) are avaiable for the game.

Origineel geplaatst door Zekiran:

Right - but one of the things that some games DO NOT do, is offer the ability to turn off motion blur or change the FOV. Those things, in my eyes, should be absolutely available in every game out there. There's no excuse for them not to have those.

There's a few things that heavily influence a game purchase for me. and they're things I consider very basic stuff any game should have.
-Configurable controls (I'm a leftie and hate being bound to WASD to play)
-Graphic options (like FOV-sliders, motion blur toggles)
-Bots/Single player capabilities for games MP focused.

And I've actually not bought (or refunded) games for the lack of one (or more) of these features.

Oh, and I just realised another thing that makes my motion sickness go haywire...
Smoothed mouse movement. It gives me a bad case of the drunken syndrome really fast.

[Zekiran]

yeah I'm not personally saying "I NEED WARNINGS!"

What I AM saying is that games NEED to be fitted with the ability to directly change those things that are known triggers for motion sickness: FoV, motion blur, etc.

[Tito Shivan]

Origineel geplaatst door Zekiran:

What I AM saying is that games NEED to be fitted with the ability to directly change those things that are known triggers for motion sickness: FoV, motion blur, etc.

Heck, some of those should be considered part of gaming settings 101.
It baffles me when a game doesn't include what ammounts to options to change basic settings.

[Gwarsbane]

Origineel geplaatst door Tito Shivan:

Origineel geplaatst door Gwarsbane:

Why do you need a "Warning!!!! game can give you motion sickness" on every single game if you know every single game can give you motion sickness?

That's why I suggested instead to be able to know if the usual motion-sickness disablers (Has the game an FOV slider? Motion blur toggle? head bobbing toggle?) are avaiable for the game.

Origineel geplaatst door Zekiran:

yeah I'm not personally saying "I NEED WARNINGS!"

What I AM saying is that games NEED to be fitted with the ability to directly change those things that are known triggers for motion sickness: FoV, motion blur, etc.

Well thats up to the developers to not just put that stuff into their games, but also advertise that they have it. If you want that stuff in the game and advertised then you need to bug the game developers for it. Valve won't do it for them.

[Zekiran]

We... already know that.

Steam, however, is a very large platform and in order to point individual game developers or their PR/Marketing department at WHY such a thing is needed, threads like this should remain and get some amount of attention.

[Gwarsbane]

Origineel geplaatst door Zekiran:

We... already know that.

Steam, however, is a very large platform and in order to point individual game developers or their PR/Marketing department at WHY such a thing is needed, threads like this should remain and get some amount of attention.

No developers are looking here for ideas for their page. Valve will not tell developers that they should have this stuff on their page.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Also, I think a good way to evaluate a game for its simulation-sickness potential is to watch a video of gameplay footage.

[Zekiran]

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Also, I think a good way to evaluate a game for its simulation-sickness potential is to watch a video of gameplay footage.

That's sadly less accurate than you'd imagine. Most 'lets play' make me absolutely dizzy. Virtually none of my own play of those exact same items has. Again it's a matter of personal brain and eye issues, but ... most of those can and should be mitigated at the game options level.

[Satoru]

Origineel geplaatst door Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Also, I think a good way to evaluate a game for its simulation-sickness potential is to watch a video of gameplay footage.

It’s still incredibly subjective even if the footage was accurate. Thus making a “rating” system for nausea is mostly pointless since any such ranking would be inherently inaccurate and have extreme variations between people