Why are people so into 'work experience games' like farming games and truck driving simulations?
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Simulation games in the genre of experiencing some kind of profession, such as the country life experience game ' Stardew Valley ' and the ' Euro Truck Simulator ' series in which you drive around Europe as a truck driver, are popular with many gamers. Jamie Madigan, an industrial psychologist and game writer, discusses why people are so immersed in their work that they even hold a game controller in their hands.
Why Do People Play Jobs? | The Psychology of Video Games
https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2017/08/why-do-people-play-jobs/
The psychology of why video game farming is so satisfying | Popular Science
https://www.popsci.com/health/stardew-valley-psychology-farming/
Unlike games where you pilot fighter jets or giant mechs, most simulator games where you pilot farm machinery or trucks focus on realistically recreating mundane tasks, and the content of the games is relatively modest.
You might wonder why people who work hours a day would be happy to work in a game, but Madigan says it's not so strange if you approach it from a psychological perspective.
Most people have to work to make a living, and only a handful of people can get their dream job. In reality, most jobs have unclear results and goals, problems often occur, and there are many things that you cannot do anything about, which can be stressful.
Games are different. Without
One of the mainstream models in the field of industrial psychology as a methodology for motivating workers is the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). In their paper announcing SDT, American psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan argued that 'intrinsic motivation has three elements: competence, autonomy, and relatedness.'
Competence, also known as mastery, is the feeling that you are good at something, autonomy is the feeling that you have choice about how to perform a task, and relatedness is the feeling that what you do matters to others.
The idea that work simulation games are a great way to take a break from life is backed up by a study published in 2019 by researchers at the University of York in the UK and the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The study interviewed people about the games they played when they were facing difficulties in life, such as family problems or relationship troubles, and found that several people cited Stardew Valley, along with the Pokémon series and Overwatch, as helping them get through difficult times.
'There are many ways to stimulate feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, and it's no coincidence that many of them coincide with good game design,' said Madigan. 'Game designers get players to improve as they progress, slowly increasing the difficulty while making their achievements feel meaningful to NPCs and other players.'
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