I've posted a thread or two here before about my complete inability to play first person shooters. I get unbearably motion sick after a surprisingly short amount of time, and consequently I haven't been able to enjoy some of the best games of the last 15 years.

For example, to date I have played approximately 45 minutes of Half Life 2. This has taken me at least 5 sessions to accomplish. After each session, I have to go lie on a couch for at least 30 minutes to recover.

I have tried some things to ameliorate this condition, from playing with a small viewing window to even taking Dramamine, and nothing I've tried works.

What I'd like to try instead is seeing how much of a game I can watch being played. I think I could at least get through a lot more of a game viewing it than playing/viewing. I watched the last battle of Portal 1 like this, and didn't really have any problems. I don't want to do this for every game, just ones with that extra level of story that I'd like to experience but can't. The game that prompted this question is, of course, Bioshock Infinite, but others I'd be interested in are games like Bioshock 1, Portal 1/2, and maybe seeing if I could finally experience the end (and middle...and second half of the beginning) of Half Life 2.

Does anyone know where I could find this sort of thing? I've looked around Youtube, but I can't really find what I'm looking for. I don't want the player talking over the video, and I'm hoping for something that's pretty much a complete playthrough, not just a set of tutorials.

The OnLive gaming service offers this feature for sure, and I'm pretty sure that's possible in the Gaikai system as well (although Drakino would be able to answer more definitively). You just log in and can immediately watch other gamer's sessions. Of course there's no way you can control when they stop and start. :-)

As you've found, Youtube offers tips 'n tricks videos with narration, but rarely a completely playthrough unless it's a speed run.

But here's the thing... I don't think it'll work for you. Once you pop those puppies to full screen, I'll bet you get motion sickness *worse* from watching than you would from playing. That's been the most common reaction in my experience. I certainly have that reaction: I can't watch someone else play FPS's, but I have no problem playing them myself (with a few exceptions such as Quantum Conundrum).

This specifically just came up in my household. Everyone was excited that I'd picked up Bioshock Infinite and wanted to see it on the big screen in the living room. And, predictably, everyone but me got very motion sick in short order. Most of the other people in my house have to be reading or looking at their laptops most of the time and only glancing up occasionally or during cutscense.

(The game is absolutely sublime, by the way. If you want to discuss it, start a separate thread.)

You said you tried Dramamine. I've found Dramamine tends to make me feel worse than the motion sickness, just, in a different way. Have you tried Bonine?

Good points. I'll have to look into those. But like you said, I don't necessarily want to watch random play sessions. It's tough, because I'm looking for a play-through that just offers the experience. I want to take in the world and the story of the game without playing it. This makes what I'm looking for very specific, because I don't want a deep dive into the game where the player goes and looks for every unlockable element.


I'm not doubting you, I just don't know if this will be the case for me. Like I said, I watched the end scene to Portal [1], and had no problems that I can remember, but it's been a while. Still, I won't be surprised if I start watching one of these play-throughs I'm looking for and I get sick.


Ugh! That's what I keep hearing! It sounds awesome! It's killing me that I know I can't play it. It's really awful not being able to experience that game when I want to so badly...


I haven't noticed any effects from the Dramamine its self that I could tell, but then again I've never taken it and NOT done something that would make me motion sick otherwise. I hadn't heard of Bonine, though, so I'll check that out.

I actually have a physical coming up. I should ask my doctor if this is a weird condition...

A lot of people stream live to twitch.tv. Several games even have support for streaming in-built.

That is kind of worrisome. I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the open ocean soon and was planning on taking Dramamine 'just in case'.

Sharing your gaming session and allowing others to watch will be an optional feature of the PlayStation 4, powered by Gaikai. As will allowing the other person to take control.

Bring both Bonine and Dramamine and experiment with both. Also, if you end up spending a lot of time on the ocean, take heart in the fact that you're supposed to be able to get used to it. They don't call 'em "sea legs" for nothing.

Basically, my problem with Dramamine is that it's a powerful antihistamine which makes me feel dizzy and drowsy, and slows my reaction times so that I feel like I'm moving through life on a 200ms delay. Also it's headache-inducing for me. Overall, Dramamine makes me feel like I have a head cold.

Bonine has no such issues for me because it's a different class of antihistamine. I can take Bonine and feel no side effects.

Dignan, if you're taking any of these drugs as an attempt to combat game-induced motion sickness, make sure to take the drug 30 minutes before playing. That'll give the drug a chance to get past your liver and into your system before you start hitting your body with all that nasty cue-conflict stuff.

Let me update that statement. Experiment with "none" as well, including experimenting with various behavioral and environmental tricks to reduce the effects of motion sickenss.

That was good info, thanks.

As far as the cue-conflict, there have only been a couple cases where being still while watching something in motion made me nauseous in a great while. The first was the first time watching somebody else play Mario Galaxy on a 60inch television. Specifically, the running over the asteroid, or whatever it was, part did me (and a bunch of other folks at the party) in.

The second was a good one. Our simulator here is a huge, 20ft diameter dome. It is not motion-based, but you get use to it. That is, until one of our pilots was practicing for an airshow and I was in the other crewstation. Fun times! I probably wouldn't have had a problem in the air, but spinning around like that without anything to accompany the visuals made my stomach do flip flops. Thankfully, it just takes closing your eyes in there to fix it.

I can't help thinking that if you're taking medication in order to take part in something that's completely optional, you're doing it wrong.

I dunno. I figure, there's a series of hoops I have to jump through to be entertained in this fashion. TV, game console, trip to Wal-Mart on Easter (I picked up BioShock Infinite on Easter Sunday, all the other stores were closed so it was my only option)... If I have to take a side-trip through Bonine-ville to get there, then it's just yet another optional step in all of this.

In the meantime, Dignan, all your problems are solved. Just let Christopher "Walken" you through it (spoilers):



:-)

That was pretty great

Would taking Dramamine to go fishing be okay? What about getting vaccinations to go traveling in certain regions? Where is the line?

No. Yes.

Travelling is optional

Instead using a pharmaceutical, you could try some more natural things. On Mythbuster they had an episode where they tested various remedies against motion sickness. Ginger pills worked for Adam, but not for me when I tried some. A magnet bracelet didn't do anything for neither Adam nor Grant, while a collegue of mine swears by them when he is out in our small boats working. So, YMMV.

I think you will find that watching someone else play is worse because when playing the FPS yourself you know which direction the view is going to move so your eyes can pre-empt your screen view (proactive) whereas watching someone else play is reactive. That is what I find anyway.

Having said that, I have been playing Skyrim for a few hours before bedtime lately, and I often still feel like I am moving after I lie down. That rolling motion after getting hit with an arrow really affects me, probably because it is game generated and therefore I can't pre-empt it.

Yup, that's the heart of the cue-conflict theory.

Wikipedia goes a step further:

Tony,

While that description makes sense (and is very interesting), I don't really see how that helps differentiate between viewing a game being played and viewing/playing it yourself.

This is the opposite scenario, of course, where the inner ear transmits that the body isn't moving but the eyes say it is. But I'm not sure I see how cue-conflict would explain why controlling the experience is any better (or worse, for that matter).

Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got very queasy from simply watching gameplay, but I'm interested in your response to this particular part of the issue.

This is purely my theory, entirely unsupported by scientific evidence, but it makes sense to me:

The Cue Conflict Theory is based on the idea that you are seeing one kind of motion with your eyes, while sensing a different kind of motion in your inner ear, and somehow this causes nausea (for me it's mostly headache at first, but if I let it go untreated too long it can become nausea).

It's my belief that being in *control* of the motion (driving the car, piloting the plane) is an additional layer of insulation against the cue conflict messages. Somehow, being in control of the thing that's causing the conflicts tells your brain, for example, "it's OK, I know that the inner ear feels like I'm rolling sideways when my eyes see a yaw motion. I told the plane to do that, don't worry", dampening the cue conflict effect.

This could be an explanation why some people get carsick even in the front passenger seat, even when watching the horizon, but don't get carsick if they're driving. Or a pilot who's fine if he's at the controls, but gets sick if he's a passenger.

I think that translates into the video game world as well. This is something that I very specifically encountered during LAN parties. I always got motion sick very quickly when watching a friend play, but was fine when I was playing the very same game myself. I think that being the one making the control inputs gives my brain an additional "cue". I'm the one requesting to my brain that I want to turn left, the brain is managing my muscle controls to operate the mouse or joystick, and so my brain is compensating and deliberately ignoring the cue conflicts from my innner ear.

Anyway, that's my theory.

That makes sense to me, and I can see that logically. I tend to think that controlling the motion might not be enough to tell these mechanisms in our brain that everything is OK. I still think the brain knows that the eyes see one thing and the ears feel something else, and doesn't really care that the hands are telling it "I'm pressing the yaw button, so don't worry, eyes and ears."

But I'll have to see. I don't think I got very queasy when I watched that Walken video. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets worse after more time (it was a fairly short video with lots of cuts), but I can tell you that I can't get through the first training level of Portal without stopping for 30 minutes. It's awful.

Part of it might be concentration. If I know I don't need to focus on making that jump/hitting that target/throwing that switch, perhaps I'm able to sit back and watch it with a spectator's view.

*edit*

Okay, I'm completely wrong. I only made it through half of this video that's been going around the web recently.

I need to go lie down now...

Okay, you win Tony.

Seriously, I got through about two minutes and thirty seconds of that video, and immediately after posting that edit, I went to lay down on a couch for 15 minutes before we had to leave for dinner. For the entire 15 minute car ride I felt awful. It wasn't until I sat down at the restaurant that I started feeling okay.

So I need to adjust my timeframes. It used to be that I could play for about 5-10 minutes before lying down for 30. Now it's 2.5 minutes of playtime/viewtime.

So yeah, it looks like I wouldn't be any better just viewing stuff.

Crap...

That was really rather good

Out of interest, do you have this sort of difficulty with films? Like, for example, Cloverfield?

How about rollercoasters? I assume you're not really a fan

It would be interesting to see if it's the motion without feedback cues that causes the problem, or perhaps some artifact of the visuals not having the field of view relative to the motion itself that causes this problem. Something like one of my stereo video robots would be an interesting test.

I find this sort of issue quite interesting, but can't really understand it from a personal viewpoint, as I am (apparently, at least to date) completely unaffected by motion sickness/vertigo/seasickness, etc. Video games, light aircraft, roller coasters, boats, you name it, nothing has ever caused any feelings such as those you describe, so I don't have personal knowledge of this sort of problem.

I do sympathise, though.

pca

Thank you! Yeah, it really sucks. I wish I had your constitution, and I have no idea where this comes from. I have one theory, but it seems really silly.


Yes and no. Cloverfield I didn't really have a problem with, and I loved it. I saw Paranormal Activity 3 in the theater with my wife, and I had my eyes closed for half of it, but not out of fear, just out of sickness! (I swear ).


Here's where my silly theory comes in. Up until age ~13, I was afraid of coasters. From ~13 to ~17-19 I LOVED them and rode one of my favorites 20 times in a row once. Then one day when I was around 17 to 19 years old I went on a ride called the Drachenfire 8 times in a row without getting off (there were no lines in the park that day). Ever since then I've had this problem. I don't know if that's what did it, but all I know is that I can't go on a coaster anymore, and I can't play FPS games. It wouldn't surprise me if this theory were proved wrong OR right, but all I know is that a roller coaster was closed after six years of operation and then torn down and recycled after standing closed for four years.


That would be a good test. I can't remember if I've ever been keen to try one of those VR helmets at the arcade. I don't think so...

Hmm. Interesting. I wonder if you have something a bit like Mal de Débarquement Syndrome? It kind of fits the possible cause, but seems to normally be present all the time to one degree or another.

pca

Weird! I hope that's not what I have It seems like about half of that applies perfectly to me, but I can't really tell. I have a checkup soon and I thought I'd ask the doctor about it. I'm not particularly worried about it, but it would be nice to have some professional input on the issue.

That was an extremely shakycam video shot with an unnaturally wide-angle lens. That might not translate to video games. I wouldn't use that as a litmus test.

I've found the following variables contribute to motion sickness:

- Field of view (FOV) from narrow to wide-angle.

- Size of video image on the screen (small window versus full screen and everywhere in between). I once played at a LAN party next to a guy who ran Quake in a 1" x 1" window on his screen to combat motion sickness. He played Rocket Arena quite well that way, handed me my ass repeatedly.

- Corollary to size of video image: distance from the screen (how much of your field of view fills the screen).

- Frame rate of the video.

- Motion blur of the video.

- The types of motion contained in the video (does the view shake or bob? Are the rotations slow and steady or quick? Is the motion damped or smoothed out ala steadycam or the video game equivalent of steadycam?)

- The way the video game translates your input into motion (for example I can play Portal nonstop, but can only get through 1 or 2 levels of Quantum Conundrum before having to stop).

I've found that messing with those variables can help. The problem is that I don't know which direction they need to be messed with, up or down, in each case, because different people have different reactions. And also some of them are not adjustable by you.

All good advice. I'll think about those. Is there a demo of Bioshock Infinite available? I certainly don't want to shell out $60 for a game I can't play. I didn't try out Portal until it was either free or very cheap on one of those Steam sales, and I got Half Life 2 very inexpensively as well...

One of my friends was raving about how awesome the menus were in Bioshock Infinite. So I guess if you can't play the game, at least you could look a the main menu.

I do like a well-designed menu...