It’s one thing to suck at games just because you suck, but in my defence I suck at certain games because they make me sick. Allow me to explain: I’m sure everyone has heard of motion sickness or car sickness where a person will be sick to their stomach due to unseen motion. Well I get something called simulator sickness which comes from playing first person shooters or games like Oblivion or Fallout 3
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Simulator sickness is the reverse of motion sickness where the brain sees movement on the screen in front of it but realizes the body isn’t actually moving, so in turn the brain assumes what the eyes are seeing is false and the body must be poisoned and hallucinating. To protect itself, the brain will make the body sick in order to vomit and eject the poison. Not a pretty picture, but that’s how science explains it.
As a gamer, this protection system blows because generally I only get about an hour sometimes before my body will become sick and try to eject the suppose poison causing me to hallucinate the world of Fallout 3 which doesn’t give me enough time to built up my character and explore the world. This sickness is even worse when it comes to FPS games because the movements are even faster and so my time is always guaranteed short with these games. I’ve always been a bad shot in FPS games and with my practice sessions constantly being called on a count of Ralph, I’ll never get better either.
Also, imagine having to explain to a bunch of online buddies why you suddenly have to bolt mid-game to go toss your cookies. That’s real cool. I use to play Call of Duty 2 with some friends and I actually had to do that once. Thankfully they understood but I was still embarrassed.
I haven’t always had this problem with simulator sickness though. It only started when games went fully 3D. I remember the first game that set me off was Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and it took me being sick twice while playing it before I realised that I could keep playing for hours on end. It was a horrible feeling especially when you know how awesome that game is.
There are ways you can counter act the sickness like taking motion sickness pills or moving your TV further back but I have a tiny living room and I can’t afford pills for every gaming session, so I just play my games in moderation to avoid staining the carpet.
Happily there are still lots of games I can play that don’t get me all pukey that I can spend hours and hours playing and kick people butts at, but sadly, deep down in my heart I know that I will never be a professional FPS gamer and that hurts me. Well, okay maybe not but it would be nice to even just beat my boyfriend at Call of Duty: World at War.
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The first game I remember affecting me was Red Faction 2 on the PS2. I couldn't even finish the first level. I only really feel it now though when playing FPS's but not all of them trigger it. CoD4 and Halo are fine but Bioshock sets me off after about an hour or so.
To this day I have never played Half Life 2 because of motion sickness. Bad times :-(
At least you have a good reason you can't play FPS, unlike people such as myself who are just terrible and an embarrassment to the genre.
Hell, even nowadays there are games that I have to alter the camera motions on to make them playable. The Ratchet & Clank series, for instance, is unplayable to me with the regular camera motions: They're just too... floaty. I've gotten through two Metroid Prime games, but both of them make me ill if I play them for long. Oddly, Portal wasn't too big a problem, I think because a lot of it is spent contemplating stuff rather than weaving about.
One tip for people suffering from simulation sickness is to try to alter the camera speeds. Once I switched to (ironically) FPS-style controls in Ratchet & Clank Future, I could play it just fine. Just because you get sick playing a game one way doesn't mean that you can't find a way to play it that doesn't make you sick.
There maybe hope for me yet.
Most people who get motion sickness get simulator sickness too. They both work basically the same way. It sucks. I get both too.
Now I know: YA RLY.
NO WAI! That sucks, my heart goes out to you.
For the record, though, I do get carsick if I play my DS during a car ride. But I've never gotten simulation sickness. I guess I dodged a genetic bullet on that one.