A poll about video games, motion sickness, and whether I'm being crazy.

[rmd]

It seems I'm not alone in sometimes being prone to "Simulation sickness" (which is motion sickness without any actual motion). So, I've made a poll about it.

[Poll #1453161]

Comments

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

L gets this. I just don't play.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

The only game I play is City of Heroes and I avoid the first person viewpoint because gah, yeah.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that FPS games made after 2003 won't make me Doomsick? Because the nausea and vertigo I got from Doom put me off the subgenre entirely.

And does dramamine work? If so, that's way cool all by itself.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I don't play the games, but I have watched over g's soulder as he does and they make me woozy just watching.

[metagnat.livejournal.com]

I get motion sick when I play and when I watch other people play. The Halo games were the first time I noticed this.

Unfortunately Portal also does this to me. That's the only one I've been willing to suffer through.

I definitely played some old-school quake 1 & 2 and didn't get it then.

[dfjdejulio.livejournal.com]

I only get actual motion sickness if I travel on an empty stomach. As long as my gut is full, I do not get motion sickness.

It is possible that I simply never game on an empty stomach, I suppose...

[catness.livejournal.com]

Couldn't answer your last two via poll: I just coped with it. And if dramamine *works*, then yay.

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

I think taking dramamine to enable yourself to enjoy something that you, well, enjoy, makes perfect sense. I actually had to pop a dramamine in the middle of Eternal Sunshine I seem to recall, because there was just too much shaky cam and it was making me nauseous. Fortunately I had some in my purse that I had bought so I could similarly enjoy some of the simulation rides at Universal Studios in Florida. Unless there is some terrible risk to taking dramamine, I don't see why it would be unreasonable, silly, or crazy to do so. :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

initial tests seem to indicate that dramamine works for me. i haven't determined if it's placebo effect or not.

some FPS games let you adjust things like frame rate and the field of view on your screen, and some people find that helps.

i never used to have problems with FPS's, but occasionally in HL2 (there's this bit whenever you get out of the dune buggy you drive in part of the game where it does this whirl around from your POV as you get in and out of the car that just hit my nausea center), and even more so in later HL games and Bioshock, i have problems.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I get sick from watching and playing. Seeing a first-person simulation of falling? Ugh, my stomach drops right out.

I also am very susceptible to motion sickness. Car and air sickness are not as bad as when I was a kid, but are still both inducible states. Sea sickness, though, is bad. It is possible for me to feel sick on a moored boat, though I find that I can tolerate short boat rides on protected waters when the water is calm. However, I can also get "mal du debarquement," a fancy name for when the seasickness (and sometimes airsickness) follows you onto land. Bleh.

If dramamine/bonine helps with the simulation sickness, then awesome. Makes me wonder if pressure points (like Sea-Bands) would help as well.

Edited to add perfect icon. :)

[muffyjo]

So there are loads and loads of games that I get this from. The amusing part is that I do not suffer from motion sickness anywhere else, boats, planes, cars, etc.

I remember it best from Grand Theft Auto but I also know it from something as mild as World of Warcraft. Something about the graphical interface that my brain vs. ear does NOT like.

[evwhore.livejournal.com]

My susceptibility seems to vary depending on how much I've been playing a particular game lately (i.e. it seems I can build up a tolerance) and also single vs. multi-player, because in the latter you usually only get half the screen which really cramps things down and you have to look harder etc.

The worst was playing 4 hours of Halo while severely hungover.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

One thing to try as well is to go into the options menu and see if there's a checkbox for 'head motion'. Turning that on or off may help. (games that 'bob' the camera up and down to simulate how your head moves when you're running, vs. having no 'running' camera adjustment on the fly. Steadicam vs. hand-cam is the way I think of it.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I don't appear to get motion sick at all. Not even while reading in moving land vehicles, which seems to set more people off than not.

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

I get motion sick when playing the flying parts on Lego StarWars. I'm also incredibly motion sensitive, boats are tough for me and even watching the kids on swings is hard.

[laurenpburka.livejournal.com]

I have never played a first-person shooter because I get unbelievably VR-sick. Won't risk it. Nope.

[beccane.livejournal.com]

I don't play first person shooters, so haven't had that experience... however, they used to play a short clip before IMAX movies of the view of Fort Worth from a helicopter as it flew around town, and eventually to the museum where the IMAX theatre was - and that would give me motion sickness every time.

[scliff.livejournal.com]

Of the games you named, I've only played Bioshock, and yeah, it got to me on extended sessions. But I also got motion sick playing a little Katamari, so it's not just FPS. Not one problem with many long sessions of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Some games have good camera behavior, and others really don't. I remember learning that for cars, there's some crucial suspension frequencies that cause motion sickness, and designers learned to avoid them. I suspect there's something similar in video game camera motion that's not fully understood yet.

To the folks who checked 'crazy' and 'problem' (none of whom seem to have commented): how is taking dramamine for this form of entertainment any different than taking it for ocean fishing, scuba diving, or even just a scenic cruise?

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

The games I play, I tend, where plausible, to not play in first person mode simply because the lack of peripheral vision drives me batty. :)

But in games where first person is the only option, I've not had any problems. But then, I'm also one of those who can read while in a moving vehicle. In fact, until the last few years, I'd never experienced motion sickness. Now I'll get queasy in the car if my blood sugar is low.

[corivax.livejournal.com]

I get motion-sick watching, but not usually playing. I guess it's like flying a plane or driving a car, where the same bumpy landings and tight turns will be fine if I'm driving or flying, but bother me if someone else is.

[goingdriftless.livejournal.com]

So I don't know how to answer your questions... because I've never really been a gamer (except for, like, Tetris and Bejeweled). BUT, I spent a bunch of time working on computer graphics for virtual reality... and being in the CAVE always, always made me motion sick. I finally figured out that I was OK if I did it in limited bursts and if I wore those motion sickness wrist bands. But once I came down with awful vertigo... don't know if or how it was associated, but it was while I was working there... I fainted and had to be hauled out of work in an ambulance, taken to the ER, and dosed with mighty amounts of Meclazine.

So... umm... yes?

(Avocado icon for no reason at all!)

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

The only remotely-like-FPS game I've ever really played (and still pull out and play now and then) was Ultima Underworld and its sequel - games that had more exploration and puzzle-solving than combat (though there was substantial combat), and the game's rocking, realistic up-and-down, left-to-right as you moved forward can always trigger my motion sickness.

So if I'm planning to play for a couple of hours, I pop a Dramamine first. It's no different in theory from a person I know who regularly gets headaches at movies -- both from eye problems and from the volume -- and simply medicates with Tylenol before going to see almost any movie in the theater.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

And, reading the thread above, I can say it very definitely helps me - it is no placebo. Without it, it takes about half an hour for motion sickness to kick in, and it intrudes onto my consciousness gradually; I find myself trying to ignore it, because I'm enjoying the game too much and don't want to acknowledge that my inner ear is trying to make me stop confusing it.

But with Dramamine in my system, my inner ear simply sits, happy and drugged, and lets me play.

Hm, haven't fired up UU for a long time... :)

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

I once got motion sick from a Quicktime cut scene in one of the Myst games... but I hardly ever get motion sick in real life any more, go figure.

[kjc.livejournal.com]

Back when they used to play Doom games at the Ranch, they made me way ill.

But since then, I've played Portal, Rock Band, & L4D with you & none of them make me sick. I think it was something in the rapidity of the movement & the shakiness that did it. Or maybe the lack of terrain? I dunno. But even the 90' fast-POV-switch in L4D doesn't do it to me.

Taking Dramamine would be a big deal for me because it makes me pass out. But I do take Bonine before I fly or get on a boat (because I am prone to motion sickness), so if I really liked the game but not the side-effects, I'd probably take Bonine.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

huh! i've noticed the dramamine making me somewhat sleepy. bonine doesn't have as much sleepy-making? i may try that some time, then.

[kjc.livejournal.com]

bonine doesn't have as much sleepy-making?

Not for me, at least. Nor the rest of my family. Drowsiness is listed as a side-effect, but I'm guessing it's got a lower incidence than Dramamine does.

Also, Bonine is chewable, but I don't recommend chewing cuz that fake raspberry flavor WILL drive you nuts very quickly.

And I've been using it (when needed) for 20 years now with no problems.

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I'm *still* disappointed I can't play System Shock.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

There's no way I'd take a drug to enable me to play video games, because, y'know, who needs the side effects. I suppose if video games were a whole lot more important to me, that might change, but as it is...no way.

[alanj]

Almost all first-person 3D games, from Wolfenstein 3D through the present, make me motion-sick. Fortunately I also dislike the entire FPS genre so I'm not missing much.

I played Portal despite massive problems with motion sickness. I tried to limit my sessions to 15 minutes, and it still made me ill. Partway through the game I upgraded my graphics cards (for reasons unrelated to gaming), and I found that the smoother frame rate helped a little, but only a little. I've also found that playing while close up to a big screen is worse than playing at a reasonable distance from a small screen.

I haven't tried dramamine, it's been so long that I've had any problem with motion sickness from actual motion that it didn't occur to me. (Reading in cars gets to me pretty quickly, but also fades quickly once I stop.) The next time there's a game like Portal that I feel like I absolutely have to play despite the sickness, I'll try that.

Third-person perspective 3D games with a camera following the primary character occasionally make me a little bit ill, but not nearly as much as first-person games.