Episode 64 - How Can Video Games Make Us Happy?

[Music] Hey everyone, it's me, Dr. Jamie Madigan, the host producer and the guy who does this whole podcast thing. I'm glad you're here because it gives me a chance to dive into the psychology literature and bring back things to help you understand why video games are so often designed as they are, why they're marketed and sold as they are, and why we behave as we do when we play them. This is the episode about video games and positive psychology. If you want to support me in what I do here and hear fewer podcast ads in the process, you can do that. Just go to patreon.com/pog, that's for psychology of games, and join a bunch of other people just like you who are kicking a dollar or so a month my way. That way you can also get some cool rewards like access to the ad-free podcast fee, bonus episodes, and some other stuff. You can also help out by checking out my new book, The Engagement Game, Why Your Workplace Culture Should Look More Like A Video Game. In it, I explore what video games can teach us about being more engaged, successful, and happy in the world of work. It's actually a great tie-in with this episode of the podcast. To find out more, you can go to psychologyofgames.com/book, or just do a search for Jamie Madigan wherever you buy your books these days. You'll find it. Finally, if none of those floats your boat, please go and leave me a podcast review wherever you get it from. And maybe follow me on Twitter, I'm @jamingmadigan. Both of those things help grow my audience and make future books and other projects more likely. So video games sometimes have a nameage problem. Honestly, some days it feels like one black eye after another. For example, perhaps to know and surprise, a 2019 research paper by TakeVis.org reported that many people still believe that violent content in games is harmful to players, despite a lack of scientific evidence. The same report highlighted common concerns about people, especially children, becoming addicted to video games to the point where they fall apart in the personal work and academic spheres of their lives. Relatedly, the loot box issue seems like it will never go away since it keeps showing up in hit games and rekindling debates about how far video games are traipsing into the realm of gambling. And that's not even getting into the incontrovertible facts around harassment of players and game industry employees that happens in games and games adjacent spaces like social media. Some days we have to work harder than others to be a booster for video games as a hobby, as an art form, and as a social activity. But hey, let's not lose sight of the good stuff. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that video games help make our lives better. They create scaffolds on which we can build social support. They motivate us to improve, in general. They get us into healthy mindsets around problem solving, developing new skills, and cooperating with other people. Big chunks of my new book, The Engagement Game, look at how video games create player engagement through being really smart about things like feedback, goal setting, and giving players opportunities to grow. In fact, I think there's a big four-lane intersection between video game design and positive psychology, which can perhaps most simply be defined as the study of what makes us happy. Positive psychology covers thoughts about joy, contentment, happiness, engagement, those kinds of things. And like video games when you kind of think about it, positive psychology focuses on our strengths and things we have in abundance. Not necessarily our weaknesses or our shortcomings. So how is that? How do video games provide a vessel for happiness, engagement, and mental well-being? How can psychologists and therapists use this fact to help those struggling to be happier? How can anyone take a moment to reflect on their gaming experiences and come away happier for having done it? Well, those are the kinds of questions that I'm going to answer in this episode with the help of my guest expert. That's coming up in just a second. All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the interview portion of this podcast. I'm excited about this. We're going to get positive and uplifting and we're going to talk about positive psychology with our guest expert this episode, who is Dr. Ryan Kelly. He's an author, a psychologist, a graphic novelist and the co-founder of Geeks Like Us, which is an inclusive community-based media company that aims to help Geeks flourish. He's also an award-winning researcher and college instructor. And he's the co-creator and illustrator of Max Gamer, the first autistic superhero comic book. His research focuses largely on innovative models for mental health, youth well-being, and utilizing VR, tabletop, and video game techniques to promote wellness. As a Niklaim pioneer in Geek Therapy, Dr. Kelly travels monthly to comic and gaming conventions to speak on how to use games, geek culture, and science to help people. And he's often featured in popular news outlets and podcasts, places like WNBC, Fox, sci-fi, variety, Huffington Post, psychology today, and others. Dr. Kelly, Ryan, welcome to the podcast. Glad to finally have you on. Oh, man. So happy to be here. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah. So we've known each other for, I guess, a couple of years now, and change. We met at PAX West a couple of times and we've been on some panels together there. Yeah, we have. We've been talking about having you come on because every time I talk to you, it seems like you have something cool that's going on that you could share. So glad to have you on. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was really exciting. Kind of. We heard a lot about it in that introduction, but, you know, generally speaking, what kinds of things do you do and what kinds of work do you do and how does it involve video games or other types of games? Yeah. So, you know, right now I'm a psychologist with a private practice and I work largely with youth up to federal launch ages, so low 30s. And, you know, I do use video games in therapy a lot. So, you know, I started with video games and research. My dissertation was on looking how video games can improve social skills interventions for kids with Asperger's and creating a specific one that was shown to be effective, which is great. All the way to now where I'm going to be doing some research with a colleague of mine through USC on a first person shooter and how to reduce toxic behavior. Cool. Now it's mainly clinical work. So I have my practice in my office. I have a, you know, a VR room. I have an Xbox one, a couple of Xbox one, an intensive switch. And, you know, I use it to assist with assessment, therapeutic intervention, you know, and helping improve people's lives. And in 2017, a colleague of mine, who of course you share two Dr. Megan Kanell and I, wanted to find a way. Yeah, I'm making it on the podcast, oh, I'm actually. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, we've done a lot of D&D stuff together and we said, you know, we want to find a very effective way to get entertainment, education and community out to, you know, geeky folks and gamers, you know, we say that with, with, with, and deerment. And created a media company called Geeks like us where we, you know, weekly have weekly programs with professionals who have turned their geek passion into career. You know, Monday, we have clinical role, which is a bunch of mental health professionals that use D&D in therapy, play a game Tuesday. We have Laura DeJour, we're a communication professor, plays, you know, bloodborne, bio shock, dark souls and talks about the advance lore of it while playing. Wednesday, we have Zach Rehartsman. He is an education specialist based in New York. He creates, you know, education, curriculum, space around video games. He does these playthroughs and talks about how to use an education. Thursday, we have Thuppens where we play fun video games and talk about psycho-related issues. Friday, we have pro social gamer where we talk about, I play with a riot, R&D individual, Chelsea, who you, you had recently. Just had Chelsea on the podcast as well, so yeah. And we just positive engagement on, on, on, on there. And then we do also on Friday, we have Randall Hampton. He is a D&D illustrator and he draws while talking to an expert in some field, whether it be an author, celebrity, psychologist, and then we have mental health gaming where we just, I simply play through mental health related games and invite, you know, guests who may have been involved in the creation of that game. All for the sake of showing how great games can be increasing the, you know, subjective well-being potential of gaming and to entertain and educate and to make Geeks proud and gamers proud of this wonderful medium. Cool. And I'll have links for all the stuff and the blog post that goes with this episode of, of the podcast. And if anybody's looking for Geeks like us, it's GeeksLikeUs.com except the, the threes in Geeks are the, are the ease in Geeks are threes. Fortunately, whatever way you type it, it'll work. Luckily. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But on, but on YouTube and Twitter and Twitch, absolutely. GeeksLikeUs with the ease in Geeks are threes. Yeah. So, you know, you mentioned having a practice in an office in a VR room and all that. And like as we record this, unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is, is instilling full swing despite some places deciding to open up. It's still shutting down a lot of places and people may not be comfortable, you know, going out or being around crowds So like how has this whole thing affected what you do in your practice? Yeah, that's a great question. So you know, we are an essential practice. So we have technically been able to see people however You know, like you said some people are not comfortable coming and my wife works in medicine and had some COVID cases So we've been quarantined since late February because of because of that But you know, so it's been a lot of tele therapy, you know, we use things like VC or zoom Devices that we hope are HIPAA compliant Which because of COVID and because of all of the Just unpredictability of everything HIPAA has really kind of been flexible on what you can use so I can even play video games with my kids as long as I you know online As long as I've got certain privacy features and my kids you mean your your patients who are kids? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely my clients. Yeah, good good call. Yeah. Yeah, I don't see my children face to face They got to earn it so they go in a separate room now, but So you know tele therapy has been very nice for the most part I've been able to continue what I'm doing except for very young children. It's just I think a little too difficult. Yeah And for geeks like us we've increased our content because obviously you know, it's a time where I think people could really use it as you've said Yeah, so have you have you seen an inflex or or a change in the types of things that people want to talk about or get help with because of The whole pandemic and maybe the knock on effects of that like having to be at home and away from friends and so forth Yeah, you know, it depends on the age, but I mean Some people are scared and anxious You know some people are bored and agitated. I'd say the majority of youth is just sort of Becoming inert, right? It's not even not having a ton of people who are panicking or clinically anxious and have it panic attacks More as I am ones who are waking up at 12 or one in the afternoon going to sleep at two to three Don't have a really goal oriented all of their daily living skills were mediated by their institution And the fact that they're not at school anymore, you know their institution It's out the window and so it's you know, you sort of left with hey Why do you get up in the morning and these kids who used to say school are like I don't know right yeah and So right now my main goal is like let's get some daily living skills. Let's get a sense of purpose. Let's have Four goals at any given time that we are going to work towards and progress monitor So that just because the world is stopped doesn't mean they feel like they have to stop their lives and feel meeting us Yeah, that that resonates in my household really well because especially because we just ended the school year So what little structure there was with the tele the tele education is gone right and we can't go out and Like it's been a struggle because my kids are going to be wanting to stay up until 12 1 a.m I still have a job. I still get up at like 630 And go to work. So you know they're staying up. So It is difficult because they don't because I don't have a good answer when they say why why not why can't I stay up late and sleep in late And why can't I sit in front of the computer all day Right, and it's like well And they are then the kicker is that when they sit in front of the computer They're actually interacting with their friends most often like they're playing video games together They're hanging around out in discord servers and I don't want to like deny them that kind of interaction that kind of Contact with the these people that are important to them. So it's it's tough to strike a balance Yeah, you know, and I think to be to be honest most of my work these days is with parents Um because just like you said it's hard to know how to navigate it. You know, I think it's Gaming is great, right? I mean again if you think about you know people are scared their quarantine They're bored These these kids as people in general aren't able to actualize things that they would otherwise be able to You know in video games can provide them with an escape to obtain that sense of engagement accomplishment You know even though the rest of the world is you know fairly inert and So these video games can be very good at the same time, you know too much of anything can be a problem And it's hard to know as parents like how to navigate it Well, they're on the screen all day is it bad like you said it depends on what they're doing um, you know, I I can't tell you um, how many parents on what I'll give you actually a case example At a kid last week really good kid very very very brilliant. He's nine and great mother mother is is high work ethic Is not a big fan of screens in general or video games and so high limitations limitations are okay But there's a fear behind it at times and you know during this time, you know a nine year old You think about how do they interact she said what you know he's getting zoom with his friends and I said uh Okay, are they playing games? No, and I said why imagine that's incredibly awkward and she's like yeah, they just they don't really know how to interact And I'm like well, yeah, that's good for adults too Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I was like well, that's you know, that's because they're nine and nine year olds largely based their relationships on mutual interest or joint attention shared enjoyment and activity activity based play and um You know, I was telling this mother again a great mother just hesitant um, get your kid to play Minecraft set up some play dates for an hour with a friend Uh, get their parent and get them to play Minecraft together and you know, she had voiced some concerns about it And I said, well, listen So this kid who we'll call Harry um, you know had not had anger problem in a very long time and all of a sudden is having them He's agitated. He's being short. He's being defiant because he's being defiant He's getting punished which makes them feel worse about himself Uh, the the little bit of screens he had access to is now not accessible for a month, right? And yeah, yeah, and um now in the parents' defense the anger gets pretty high and he breaks things and stuff So it used sort of as a parent again. You're like what do I do? Yeah, um, but my suggestion was give him back the Xbox Have scheduled Minecraft times he needs to be able to connect with his same age peers To have some fun interactions to feel positive about himself to get some laughs That's where the connectedness comes and you know Again with all the social distancing the best way in my opinion to achieve social connectedness is gaming Uh, he did it and he's been doing really well and he works very hard to get those those hours of Minecraft time Um, because again the reason he was struggling is because he there were certain basic psychological needs that were not being met Because of quarantine and video games provided it. I mean, it's incredible that we have that access that resource It is yeah, and we didn't have it half a generation ago. No So that that's actually kind of a good segue into the larger topic of positive psychology and you had a chapter In a recently published book um, edited by Rachel coer who doctor Rachel coerd who's also been on the show Uh, and the books called video games and well-being I actually have and have a chapter in there as well. Yours was um, I thought it was at the beginning There it is positive psychology and gaming strength and resilience plus one So what is that chapter about and how does it fit into this larger conversation? Well, yeah, I mean sort of a jerk answer. It's positive psychology video games, but Okay, okay, that's fair But but it's it no it's yeah, so it's about positive psychology video games But you know Jamie if if I were to ask you what positive psychology is what what would you say? Yeah, I mean, I probably come at it from more of like a social psychology angle because that's that's what I'm used to But it's just generally about you know happiness and it's Resilience and being able to deal with stressors successfully so that you remain optimistic So it's a lot of like martin selicman You know his kind of research on learned helplessness sort of the inverse of that It's learned resilience And and being happy. It's the psychology happiness essentially Yeah, you know my favorite definition is real short and to the point It's just the scientific study of what goes right in life, right? Okay, and it involves Everything you just said so positive psychology is less concerned of a deficit focused approach We're less concerned of saying well, let's figure out what's broken and try to make it less broken And it's more to be like well, what's working what goes well? And how can we capitalize on that to increase the functioning of whatever we're talking about um And you know video games is are are inherently Strength-based you know again again looking for what works the example I give is you know You don't pick a fighting character based upon which weakness you like the least right is You know you're like well I pick You know ike because I like his charge up moves or I like curvy because I like the fact that he Can fly and and has a lot of uh, you know is hard to knock curvy um And you know with with video games there's a lot of opportunities To understand Um how to incorporate positive psychology in our own life Because we are naturally practicing positive psychology while playing video games So why why does that work so well? Why do you find it in video games and and not other types of media as much? Yeah, I mean there's two ways to think of it. One is. is taking existing theories and applications of positive psychology and seeing if video games somehow corporate that. The other is what can we learn about positive psychology from video games? And if I were to start with the latter, is you sort of think about how we view our world that we live in. In real life, not in video games. We tend very much to be deficit focused. We are naturally problem solvers. And a part of that, we look for problems to solve. However, there are times where we get so focused on looking for problems, we're not looking for what's working. And that's with a lot of things. So if we are thinking about ourselves and in a performance, we did on something, we're looking for what we did wrong that we can improve upon, but we're not necessarily naturally going to look for what we did well to be proud of or to try to do the next time. And that's consistent across a lot of different psychology. Like negative information carries more weight. Like we pay more attention to things that went poorly and more attention to our failures to predict something. And it's been speculated, it's kind of like an evolutionary advantage actually because if you got to spend time and calories on something, it's more like figure out what went wrong than it's right because the consequences are, getting eaten by a tiger versus just having a handful of berries. (laughing) We have to make one to understand better. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly important, right? And there is a correlation between high IQ, high intelligence, and anxiety. And I think a common working theory is people with high IQ are even more so naturally problem solvers. So again, the more of a problem solver you are, the more you're going to look for problems. And then with anxiety, it's basically looking for problems that might not even be there. So you're starting to perceive things as threats that aren't even there. But the idea is that's probably our default mode is humans. Let me look for deficits at the cost of neglecting strengths or things that are going well. And I think of like a bicycle example, and then I'll talk about dark souls, but I sort of think of like a bicycle, and you see it and the chains off the gear. And someone says, "Oh, that's a cool bike. What's it used for?" I don't know, but I know the chains off the gear. I gotta get that back on. Someone else says, "Oh, is that, what kind of tires does it have?" I don't know, but I can tell you, it doesn't work because the chains off the gear. If you sit and hyper focus on this problem, it does need to be fixed. We need to get the chain on the gear. But if all we do is think about that, and we hyper focus on fixing that problem, we don't recognize that we've got top of the line tread mountain bike tires. We don't realize we've got a $2,000 frame. We don't realize we've got state-of-the-art suspension fork. And I can't actually tell you what that bike does, or how I might use that bike. I can only tell you it doesn't work right now. That's it. Now, video games flips that on its head entirely. We switch into a totally different paradigm when we go into video games. Yes, of course we still look for problems. But what we're doing is, let's say you're playing like a sassons creed, and you are trying to think of how to get from point A to point B. You're not thinking about your weaknesses or deficits. You're thinking, "Let me think about all of the skills that I have. How high can I climb? How far can I jump? What things can I interact with? You're naturally thrust into, how do I use what I have instead of, how do I develop something that I'm weakened right now?" And that's just a dynamic of the game, right? The inherent structure of the game is, no matter what it is, your character or race car or whatever it is, is going to have notable weaknesses and notable strengths. And what we tend to do in video games is, it's designed that way, more so than real life a lot of times. Absolutely, and it's a lesson we learn, right? So I use, and so if we're practicing that over and over, we know that when you then leave that, you're more likely to have a strength-based view of the world, which through Gallup polls and a number of studies we see is what predicts success, people who focus on their strengths as opposed to define themselves by their weaknesses. So, you know, with dark souls, I love dark souls, and as an example, because I very much view it as if you believe in a god creating a human. I feel like that's how he or she does it. It's right. You've moved sliders around and it's ten points. Yeah, right. I think I got the random character. It's like, one time. Right. Well, what we see is, you know, it's, it's, for those who have not played dark souls, it's, you know, basically at the start, you get to choose a character. For the most part, everybody has the same amount of points, but they're delegated to different areas. So, you have areas like intelligence and faith, which a sorcerer or something might have, because they want to have spells. You have areas like strength and vigor. That'd be areas to like have a really strong weapon or be able to carry a lot of armor. That'd be like a barbarian or a warrior. You have areas like dexterity, which, you know, in endurance, which would be like a rogue. Now, here's the deal. At the beginning, when you choose somebody, they all have the same points, but they're different areas. A sorcerer is going to have 14 and faith, 14 and intelligence, six and strength, six and vigor. Right. You know, you flip that for a tank. And the idea is, as you play, here's what we know. And I'll ask you this, Jamie, do we want to, as you level up, you get points, and you get to put, you decide where to put them. Would we want to, based upon research, would we want to put our points into our weaknesses to break even, or would we want to put it into the things we're already good at? Now, you want to focus on a build, do a quality build, to focus on a couple of things, or a sorcery build, to focus on one or two things. You don't spread them out. That's not going to help you. Right. And we know that in video games, but we tend to forget that in real life. So what I did was I looked at over 200,000 builds that have been thrown up on this website. I didn't personally, but it's on this website. And then there's an algorithm to say, like which ones are voted as the most desirable. And it also has the top PVP and PVE Dark Souls players on streaming, the ones who do really, really well the pros. Yeah. And PVP is playing as other players. PVE is player versus environment, which is like single player essentially. Yeah, yeah, thank you. And what we see is none of them. Literally none of the top 10 have any builds that have not chosen two to have like 40 or 50 points in and two that have less than 14. It just doesn't happen. So in the chapter I wrote, I even provide a matrix of that. Because the fact is you cannot be exceptional and normal at the same time. You cannot be remarkable in average. So if you were to delegate all of your points so that you're 22, 22, 22, 22 as opposed to this split, you're not going to be able to finish the game well. You're not going to be an asset to other people very much. It's going to be harder to work with the team. And that's really the way we should view ourselves in real life. And like you said, I want to be the best build that I'm meant to be. I'm not going to try, as a wizard, I'm not going to try to be a tank. I'm not going to be a tried, be a one that fights up close and is really strong. I need to find out who I am and I'm going to make a quality build of me. And video games provide that paradigm, which is great. - Yeah, and it's interesting because that goes along with a lot of the research and thinking that's happened in the last, I don't know, decade or so, maybe longer in the performance management literature. So like the world of industrial organizational psychology, there's a lot of people saying, focus on your strengths. Build up your strengths. Don't try to get training or experience or mentorship to improve on the things that you're bad at. First focus on the things that you're really good at. Unless there's some minimum level of confidence or training or certification needed. But if you're a great communicator, then find opportunities that allow you to practice that skill and use that skill. But if you're a bad, if you're bad at detailed, handling details and detailed organization, orientation, don't try to follow opportunities or don't try to necessarily work on those as much as the things that you're good at. - Exactly. - And it's all kind of born from the same positive psychology movement. - Absolutely, yeah. Which is funny because I mean, you think about positive psychology, it really didn't become that big until the 1960s. I think, yeah. - Forgotten Mark DeLegman and all his students, right? Back then. - Well, so that was a little later at Penn. But and they were a massive, Seligman used to be the APA head. He's for sure a big leader in positive psychology. But even just general of saying, hey, as mental health should include a well-being angle or in the comments. positive angle that didn't even really studied until the 60s and then they were like as if it was a big revelation "Hey, why aren't we studying good stuff?" It's like it got an embarrassing that it took so long. Yeah. So video games provided a pretty good illustration of that. Yes they do. So, you know, we can see and maybe learn these lessons. Has there been any research or do you have any sort of anecdotal experience about like but do people, you know, do gamers tend to have that sort of attitude about life outside of games or can it be used in therapy and coaching? So it absolutely can be used in therapy. I mean there are some games that through osmosis, you're going to learn things. You don't have to have your attention drawn to it. But in therapy a lot of the times what we're doing is saying, "Hey, play that game but I want you to consider a few things. As you're playing Dark Souls I want to consider what your build would be in life. I give a lot of my clients a build, a profile sheet, whether it be on D&D or a Dark Souls when I made but including typical features that affect us in real life. And it's I want you to put the points, here's the amount of points, you put them where you think they lie for you. And then where do you want the existing points to go if we're going to make a quality build? And what would that look like in real life? What kind of goals will we need to set that would give you two extra points in this area? Okay. You know, and it's in trying to find a way where you view yourself as a character that you can level up and do achieve. And so I keep these sheets for most of my clients where it's also a wonderful form of progress monitoring where you start off here. Right. And then we set goals and we set specific action steps to achieve them. When we achieve them we put a point into the player and it's incredibly empowering to see this avatar of who you are as it applies to real life and see you are becoming more and more your ideal self. So it's it's great in therapy for many reasons. But I would say, you know, there's sort of two ways I would answer your question. One is does through as osmosis it make people less likely to be deficit focused? Hard to answer that directly. In general, I would say no, however, we do know that it is a protective factor against like depression or anxiety and that it increases through osmosis without having to have me direct their attention. It increases these positive psychological elements in their life. And I could speak to that for a moment if you'd care to share. Yeah. Go ahead. So, you know, one thing we look at is just in general playing games, what positive impact does it have? Beyond therapy or things you and I would do, what positive impact does it have? I get this question a lot by the way. So I'm really really can I ask in what way do you get that question? Like people just emailing me after finding the website or the podcast or the books. I'm just saying like, oh, I'm working on this school project or I'm a journalist working on article and you know, what are the positive? It's usually two parts. Why do people play games so much? And then what are the effects of playing games? What are the positive and what are the negatives? Yeah, and it's an important question. I feel like I'm often telling parents the positives and sometimes telling the adolescents some of the negatives. Right. It tends to be a we've got to find that we're going to start. But you can't be playing 12 hours a day. But by the parents, you know, it's like, but you know, you I would really encourage a kid play video games. So, you know, with through osmosis a couple things we look at is I like to view it through the permamodel. Permal is an acronym of positive psychology and it stands for a couple things that we need in life to have good well-being, to be satisfied with life, to be to be happy instead of just not sad. Right. And that's positive emotions. Engagement, which would be like an emotional involvement or commitment to an interest. Relationships, sense of meaning and purpose and achievement. And so we've done, we looked at research that's already been done of do video games help in any of those areas. And the answer is they help in all of them. You know, if we look at positive emotion, one of my favorite studies is for people who play six to 10 hours of video games a week, they have higher reported positive emotions compared to people who don't play it all. When it comes to engagement, you know, there's not people just sitting there apathetically playing a video game. It's most of the time when they're playing. Right. QA testers or two hours. Correct. That's a good point. But when they're, you know, when we play while we are playing, we tend to enter into what's called a state of flow. It's a mindfulness state of mind where we can be present. We can just, we can just be enjoying the moment and the feelings we're having. Amygdala functioning is reduced. So we're not feeling anxiety. We're not worrying about things. So it's a great kind of mindfulness activity playing video games. And it's something that we engage fully in and allows us to engage with others as well. You know, and what we see is the more immersive the game, the more we are involved in it, the more we are engaged in it, the more likely we are to to have a sense of connectedness, which. You kind of risk stating the obvious by saying that games are designed to be engaging, right? Like exactly. Players to play them and continue to play them. Right. Right. It's, you know, you're absolutely right. Again, with all this industry work and, you know, talking to psychologists, the question is, how can we make these games more immersive, more engaging? How can we keep them playing? How can we keep them invested in the story and the follow-up? So it's, if we use it correctly, it can be great. You know, with relationships, you know, and I love to ask you actually, Jamie, you know, relationships are changing with computer mediated relationships. How do you, how, how would you describe computer mediated relationships, whether it be through match.com or video games or whatever, like, do you see, do you think they have value? Sure. Yeah. I mean, broadly, it's just that there's some sort of technology in between you and that person and your interactions. And they can certainly have value. I think that they often have different types of value. Like there's a sort of exchange or immediate transactional quality to face-to-face relationships. You can't often get through computer or technology mediated ones, you know, like somebody from your world of work craft guilds, probably not going to be able to give you a ride to the airport, you know. You don't know them. They're not going to be able to let you, you know, come over and help you with a project or something you're building or whatever. They're not going to be able to loan you money. Other than they can be more interested. What a great excuse to not have to help your friend move. I wish I could help you move in your house. I just gosh, we're still part of 2000 miles away. Damn. Oh, pursue fate. I just want to help you move. So there's, you know, those qualities to it. And I think that, you know, that that matters, right? Because those types of relationships are important support is important, right? And you can't get all the types of support through a computer or technology mediated relationship. But, you know, you can certainly share information, you can get emotional support, you can get social support. And a lot of times if there's a relationship that's mediated by some sort of technology, if it's online, I think people are more likely or feel more comfortable kind of sharing, like personal information and opening up to people in ways that they wouldn't necessarily because they feel that there's less risk in doing some for online relationships. So, yeah, I think they have value. I think the values that each type of relationship bring are different than we should have both. I'm 100% and, you know, I largely work with children in adolescence and quite frankly, when I think of the effect of video games, usually I'm thinking of the effect of video games on a developing mind versus a developed one. But, yeah, I mean, it has those and what we see is for adolescents. 40% of gamers report talking about vulnerable issues with their online friends that they do not talk about with any face to face friends. You know, the even just learning how to social interact, games tend to teach that actually. I mean, as you know, we sort of have this quote unquote stickiness that games try to encourage where they try to find ways to have you connect with other players within their game incentives to refer others to play to hire people to be in guilds to work together. And only exactly you can only enter this dungeon if you have six people with you, you know, there is much like Snapchat and things ways where you have to keep up communications with people in the villages, right? Because they might have a new task so you have to check in repeatedly. You have to have reciprocity with your guild. Like it teaches basic social skills and ways to maintain relationships. It might seem silly. I'm maintaining a relationship with this prospector in world of work. But I am learning if I'm going to be able to get this thing, I do have to go back and talk to him and check in. And, you know, if I want to sell them out of it. So that's interesting because like my younger daughter plays a lot of Roblox and she has a set group of friends that she plays with. And she is, she absolutely has to take time to like say goodbye to everybody when it's time to look off and get ready for that. Absolutely. So I'll come in there and give her like, okay, 10 minutes starts saying goodbye because she honestly she kind of gets like really upset if it's all course. It's hard to offer. Tell her she has to go now. So it's, it's kind of rituals are are are annoying, right? Because it adds 10 minutes to the time it takes her to log off. But they would also probably be appreciated by friends outside of the game as well. Right. I tell parents sometimes imagine you're going to get your son playing basketball. And you just snag them out and no one knows what happened. They don't say goodbye. A good playing man we play next week or any of those very important micro interactions that actually maintain relationships that we very much underestimate the importance of. And that'd be so weird, right? It'd be so weird if it's like just playing a basketball game. You just snagged away with no explanation or like you know just half in the middle of the game. I gotta go and just running away. It's a whole different. A whole different speed in the different direction. They're like what a jerk. Let's not invite that guy. Right. But you did bring up one thing. There is something that can tend to happen. If it becomes the the only or primary means of of connection. Something called social cocooning can occur where they get better at computer mediated communicating. They get worse at face to face. So if you don't have enough face to face relationships to use the skills that you got in the computer mediated communication, it's not going to it's not going to transfer. And you know, but that's that's a different thing. The meaning and purpose. You know, obviously there's the general meaning of purpose you get of just I want to platinum Marvel Spider-Man as I know you and I both did. I want to you know, I want to a sense of mastery of this thing. I want to you know, beat this divine beast. But the more important one is it gamers report having a sense that they belong to something greater. You know, we we see in research that the more players it takes to defeat somebody, the more of a sense of meaning that player says they get out of it. And the more likely they are to say, if I ask them, do you feel like you belong anywhere? You know, in real life or wherever the more likely they are to say, yes, I do. And report that I belong to this guild or I belong and they'll tell you about all the things they've done together. Last week and we took down this me and 23 others took down this, you know, super hard dragon and this dungeon with, you know, whatever. You know, so I can provide that. And then the last is achievement. Again, I think of a, you know, of course, you know very much about operant conditioning and how that can improve performance and behavior. I know it's a big I/O thing. Yep. It's a big psychology thing in general, yeah. Well, big in general, but I think when, you know, when we're trying to think of how would a psychologist apply operant conditioning beyond Skinner boxes and rats and things. Obviously, I'm working with children and adolescents and in those situations, we're creating behavior management systems and a workplace, you know, you want to keep job satisfaction, decrease turnover. You want to make sure that whatever they're getting, they feel like a sense of achievement that it is achievable. And in video games, that's the opera conditioning is what makes video games so powerful for better or worse is they've perfected that. And one of my favorite things is, goal setting does not necessarily come natural to children. The idea of I have to achieve A before I can achieve B before I can achieve C or, you know, not having this all or nothing mentality. It's something that has to be learned. It's especially hard for kids who have poor executive functioning, like those with ADHD. Video games show you that you how to set goals. You cannot enter this building until you've obtained, you know, gotten this item. You go to get the item. You cannot get this item without another person being a go talk to this NPC. You recognize that I have to do these steps to achieve a goal. And we see in research that kids who play video games are able to logically talk about goal setting, young children, I think the study was like seven to eight year olds are more likely to be able to logically talk about how to achieve a goal when given social scripts compared to kids who do not. And more likely to have frustration tolerance when not getting things immediately. So, you know, that's just one way to sort of view it through the model of Perma and you know, video games hits all of them. So, you know what I think is interesting there is here talking through the Perma model and all the different pieces of it that the acronym stands for, is how much it sort of overlaps with general, the psychology of motivation in general. Right. So, if you look at like what motivates people to learn or to engage in a behavior in a task or you know, do a job, engage in an activity, it's a lot of these things. It's like it's feeling connected to other people. It's working towards a goal and closing the gap and seeing where you are the distance to the goal and wanting to close it. It's about engagement and intrinsic motivation and like the fact that you're doing the activity because it's meaningful. It's about having autonomy and choice. It's like these concepts are showing up in both places and I'm just kind of stop my head. I'm not sure what to make of that. I don't think they're the same construct. It's not like you'd positive psychology and motivation are the same thing. I think they're clearly not. But I just find it really interesting that there's a lot of overlap there. Well, I think you're right. And I think it's, I mean, looking for motivation would certainly be a type of positive psychology. I think the alternative is, you know, are you feeling apathetic today? Do you feel anadonic? Meaning, for those who don't know that, just not getting as much pleasure out of activities? Whereas, you know, if we're looking for motivation, I'm not looking for, hey, why are you feeling so lethargic? It's like, what's making you want to do it? Right? What is motivating you? And let's capitalize on that. I mean, it's, you know, again, when we, there's a model that I used to do a lot of research for that's increasing the support, it's called the dual factor model of mental health. And I do talk about that in this chapter. But one of my favorite things, and I've done a number of studies and many others have done studies to support this and they're consistently provide this answer. There used to be two types of people flourishing where their well-being was high and their symptoms, clinical symptoms were low, so they weren't depressed or anxious, or troubled. People who had low well-being, meaning they don't experience a lot of positive emotion, they're not satisfied with life, and have high symptomology, diagnosed depression, anxiety, bipolar, what have you. But the dual factor model says it's not just about an absence of symptoms. It's about a presence of positive psychology, a presence of, do you feel hope? Do you feel happiness? Do you feel excitement? Do you feel sense of engagement? Everything, Jamie, that you and I have been talking about. And there are two new groups. One is called a vulnerable population. They don't have clinical diagnoses, so they're not depressed or anxious, but they're also not very satisfied with life. They're kind of this purgatory. They're not waking up with twinkling eyes. They're just sort of mad. They're the C student who just doesn't engage. And then the more interesting one to me is these symptomatic but content. It's about 18% of the population. People who actually have clinical symptomology, they have pathology. They have some diagnosis or mental health condition that for sure impedes upon their functioning. However, they also experience positive emotions. They find ways to be satisfied with life, family life, home life, school life, general life satisfaction. And when we look at the performance of those four groups, obviously flourishing is the highest performing. But the symptomatic content group does better on a number of things like grades and friends and so on than the vulnerable group, which suggests that at times well-being and positive psychology is actually more important to assess and intervene upon than pathology. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so they're two different factors. They're not just the same thing. Exactly. It's a dual factor. Exactly right. Cool. Well, cool. So I know we've talked for a while here, but I also wanted to ask you about geeks like us, which we brought up briefly in the introduction. So what kinds of resources and other content does it provide and what's that about? So geeks like us is a community-based media company. I started with Dr. Megan Cannell. And we have two main messages. One, we want to encourage and celebrate unapologetic enthusiasm, which is, in our opinion, the core aspect of what a geek is, someone who's willing to be unapologetically enthusiastic about something. And the other is how to turn definition. Yeah, we were big strong on it. And then the other one is how to turn your passion into a career. The reality is we believe that interest in Star Trek or video games or computer coding or Harry Potter or whatever is not a fruitless endeavor if you hone it, right? If you find ways to make it improve who you are as a person, improve your life, incorporate into your career, find ways to help you flourish. So a big part of what we do is trying to provide education and so on and entertainment to say, here is how to take your geek interest and incorporate them in a life to improve yourself and your life and of those around you. The resources we provide as of now, we have a Discord channel that is publicly available where people can join and talk about in multiple channels of anime or video games or 80s talk or tabletop games or whatever, connect with people who are using them in meaningful ways. Beyond just patrons who join, we have heads of industries who are in there. We do AMAs where you can ask, you know, Dr. B who does D&D and take this in Seattle, take this as a mental health and gaming. You can ask him anything. You can ask him on the podcast or -- Oh nice. -- A few episodes ago, yeah. Yeah. It's -- you know, we have Dr. Chelsea Hughes who works for Riot Gaming doing all sorts of -- I've had her on the episode. Yes, you did. You have the best expels. The best expels. That's right. Sort of these heads of mental health and gaming, mental health and comics, whatever, who you have direct access to talk to and we can communicate with these people. We also do a Twitch channel where we stream tabletop games with these therapists across the nation. We stream mental health games where we talk to the people who are involved with making it like hellblade, where we just play and, you know, talk -- play games and talk about a psychological issue. We have Zach who does Hey Listen Games. We talk about how to use games in education, curriculum. We have Louer DeJour with Dr. Daniels where he talks about, you know, plays games like Blood Born and so on and talks about the narratives that are created in these stories. Again, video game is just -- it's just storytelling with RPGs. It's the most -- it's the newest forum of sitting around a fire and telling legends and myths, right? Yeah. So it's -- and again, with that, it's a community thing. People are talking in the stream, chatting. And we have a lot of other stuff we're going to be rolling out with our -- with our website and creating articles and everything. But those are the two biggest we do now. In addition to pre-COVID, flying out to, you know, many, many cons a year to try to connect with people, share these issues, talk about ways to use this that will improve your life. That's kind of our gig. Yeah. Yeah. One day we'll get back to the con scene. One day for sure. And things will be better and normal. New normal. New normal, that's right, exactly. Cool. So just to start wrapping things up, have you been playing anything good lately, any -- any video games, board games, other kinds of games, that you've been playing? Yeah. Yeah. Last night I actually played Monster Dungeon Mayhem with Dr. Anthony Bean, his wife, Dr. Daniels and his wife. And -- What is that? It's a card game. You can play it on Zoom and it's up to six people if you get the expansion. It's so easy to play, but it's really fun. It's a good card game. What's it called? Dungeon Mayhem. Dungeon Mayhem. Mayhem. Yeah. It's two to four players, but you get the expansion. You get to have six. So did that. I just got the Rick and Morty D&D, because I want to try that with a -- not necessarily therapeutic group, but just a connecting teens together group. So I'll see how that one goes. Been playing a lot of Valorant. It's Riot's new first person shooter. Yeah. So we have a channel -- a program on our Geekslick Us channel called ProSocialGamer where Chelsea and I play games, and we talk about how to make the online interactions pro-social, to avoid toxicity, to show that it doesn't have to be this stereotyped, you know, people tilting and trolling. It can be people working together being supportive. And we've been playing Valorant. It's a great game. And then aside from that -- oh, I'm really -- I'm about to get in -- we just published a psychology of Final Fantasy book. And -- We'll put it toward that. Oh, yeah. And what I'm going to be doing from my middle-health gaming program is I'll be playing through 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12. And talking with the -- Yeah, I probably will just devote a certain amount of time to each -- Okay. I will finish the Final Fantasy 7 remake because that just ends in mid-gar. But I'll be doing that while talking to the authors, while talking to maybe some of the voice actors for the games, while talking to people that are relevant with it. If you have an interest, Jamie, and Final Fantasy, any in particular, of course, you're welcome to join me. But that'll be the next heavy endeavor that I'll be playing. Yeah. That's cool. That's tall order, but seems like it would be fun. I'm looking forward to that. It's almost like studying for licensure where you're like, "This is going to be terrible, but I'm excited to learn a lot." It's like, "Oh, my God, this is going to be so much Final Fantasy, but I'll have -- I've actually never personally played through 6, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to the nostalgia of playing 7. That's me, Garso. Then, of course, Jackbox Games. You got to love Jackbox. Trivia Murder Party is a blast. I got into that. I bought one of those because my family and I were sick of the few board games that we have on hand. And so we all sat around the TV and did that. It was a lot of fun. Oh, man. Do you remember which party you got? It was the one with Trivia Murder Party. The first one. The first Trivia Murder Party? I think so. It was the first Jackbox game. No, no, no. You got the one I have. It's Party Pack 3. It's got like guest, be anage, Trivia Murder Party. The Party Pack 5 or 6 has the second Trivia Murder Party, but it's such a blast. See if thieves a little bit. I play a ton of games. But those are the biggies. Cool. Yeah, I'm looking -- I've got that Final Fantasy 7 remake on my wish list. I'll get around to that as well because I loved the original back in the day. I played it on PC, actually. And then I was like, "Really? What console games are like?" And I went out and bought a PlayStation. Oh my gosh. It's so funny. It was like the first console I had owned since like, in NES, I think. Oh my gosh. Why are you hired to that? Yeah. Holy cow. Well, I'll tell you, the Final Fantasy 7 remake ends once you're out of Midgar. So they're going to have -- I actually did not know that until I'd already had it. So there's going to be two more of those. So that's a bummer. But on the upside, my understanding is their next one is going to be doing a remake of Final Fantasy 10, which -- That's the one with Titus. Yeah. And Yunan, Orrin, and you know -- Walker. It's his race as well. She has a dress made of belts. Yeah, and he had a grand-thony being named his daughter after Lulu. Oh, really? Which I don't know if his wife actually knew that. Because I -- I named my daughter -- one of my daughters after Samoy's Gamji from the Lord of the Rings. Heck, yeah. And my wife didn't really realize it until it was too late. My wife caught one. My daughter's name is Maya. After Maya Angelou, she passed away the same year my daughter was born. But she was almost going to be named Ripley. And I'm a big sci-fi guy, right? She's almost going to be named Ripley. So I made the mistake of watching Aliens with my wife. And she goes, "Wait, is that why you want to call her down to Ripley?" And I was like, "No!" And she was like, "What about Zina Morph? Let's name her Zina. Little Zina Morph." And then you can negotiate down to Ripley. That's how you -- Right, exactly. Like, what about Bishop or Whalen? How about Ripley? Ripley's got a -- It's the least bad option from her perspective. Until she, you know, surprised and goes with Newt. And I'm like, "Oh, crap. I thought that would be a one-to-two misdirected you." Yeah. So my daughter, Maya, face hugger Kelly. That's my -- That's right. Yeah. So the only thing I'm playing around -- I still play, like, Overwatch. I've played it perpetually here and there. But Dicee Dungeon, have you ever heard of this game? I feel like I have -- but explain it to me. Maybe I haven't. It's a rogue like. So you do runs through a dungeon. You can play as these different classes. And it's essentially a card game with a Dice skin on it. So it'll, like, roll Dice and, you know, you get a one through six. But it's -- you play them like cards. It's not like you add the Dice up, generally. So it's like, "Oh, when you roll a four or below, you can activate this ability, you know, and do damage or heal." Oh. Or do crowd control on your opponent. And cool. When you roll, like, at six, you do this. And it's super cute. It's -- Yeah. What's it called again? I see dungeon. I came out like a while, it's kind of last year, but it was on a steam sale for a few bucks and I was like, I've heard good stuff about this and I grabbed it. I'm glad I'm dead. Yeah, I see. My brother and I like those games. He and I play the Pathfinder card game. Not a lot of people know of the card game version of that, but it has similar features because they're basically taking. D&D also has a game like that. I've not played the D&D card game. Yeah, so I kind of put it in the same category as like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, except Monster Train. Monster Train, simpler in design. That's cool. It's not as strategic, but it's as surprisingly strategic given the simple veneer on it. It's not as much of those, but I think if you like those, you might like this one. I will. I'll check that out. I'll definitely check that one out. So last question for you, where on the internet should people go if they want to find out more about you and the stuff you do? Probably the easiest way is Twitter, drrkelly, that's KELY. I do have, our website is currently under construction for geeks like us, and you can find me at Southeast, but that's probably the best one. I think you've got the other URLs if I recall. Yeah. I'll put up links to that stuff and that blog post that goes with this episode of the podcast. Perfect. So that would be, and you're welcome to approach me and chat with me. I'm trying to help in whatever ways I can for what I have the band with for. So I say Twitter because I'll be able to interact with you, but I can steer you toward our, you know, any sort of publications or graphic novel site or whatever it is, whatever you look for. Cool. And the book is video games and well-being, press start, edited by Rachel Coert and the chapters by various people, including yourself. And then if you pick that up, maybe you want to check out chapter five, which is called for ever questing and getting good written by some guy named Jamie Madigan. Some guy. Yeah. I hear things, but maybe when we look at that as well, but your chapter was called positive psychology and gaming strength and resilience plus one. Sorry, you can definitely go check that out as well. And if you are a final fantasy fan, go check out the psychology of Final Fantasy on Amazon for pre-order. It's currently, oh, I might have changed currently number one in comic and gaming criticisms. I know. Yeah, Tony and I are talking about getting an episode of this podcast together with some of the authors from that. So I might be seeing you again. I might maybe speak again, but look forward to it if so. So you can look forward to that. And just a reminder, you can also go to psychology of games.com to find out all this information, including all those links. You can find out information on my new book, The Engagement Game, why your workplace should look more like a video game. And then you can also find out how to follow me on social media. I'm @jammymadigan Twitter, for example. I'm on Facebook. You can subscribe to the podcast. And then if none of that tickles your fancy, there's literally hundreds of articles about the psychology of video games there waiting just for you. Several of them are bespoke, written specifically for you, the person listening to this. That's not true, but you'll feel like it is if you go there. So Ryan, thanks so much for doing this. This was really cool. And I am going to bookmark this chapter for you, the next time that somebody asks me, what are the positive aspects of games? Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. And I'm really looking forward to having you. I want to talk to you about your new book down the road. That sounds amazing. That's right. Marally. Yeah, look me up. We'll do. Perfume, thank you so much.