Motion Sickness and Video Games

Madeline Miller recently wrote about motion sickness triggered by video games, potential causes, and potential fixes. I feel seen. As a child, I distinctly remember playing Shadow the Hedgehog of all things when I first discoved games could make me nauseous. I am able to build up a tolerance to games if I play daily, which is how I dumped many hours into Minecraft as a teenager and Cyberpunk 2077 more recently, but it wears off fast, and intentionally making myself sick every day for a few weeks is quite unpleasant. For that reason, I mostly stick to games that are 2D and/or are primarily played with a top-down view. Baldur’s Gate 3 was a godsend for this. It’s interesting because not all 3D games affect me. Almost all first-person games become unplayable after 15 minutes, but third-person games are hit-or-miss. I was able to play through Persona 4 Golden just fine. Final Fantasy 7 Remake wrecks me. This inconsistency makes the potential fixes that Madeline brings up interesting to me. I have never considered how FPS and field of view could affect my motion sickness. I am curious to experiment and see if I can make more games playable, because it’s kind of an isolating experience at times. I love video games, as do all of my friends, but I am limited to only a small subset of the games that they play. They recently got really into Marvel Rivals, and I could only play a game or two at a time with them before I have to go lay down for the rest of the night. I have only ever met one other person that is also affected by this, so coming across this post showed me that there are dozens of us. Dozens!