We got an XBox 360 for Xmas, and I’ve been playing Bioshock recently. After playing for about an hour, I noticed that I have a motion sickness type feeling. It gets pretty bad, with nausea and dizziness. When I start feeling this way, I have to stop immediately, there’s no way to play through it.
Does anyone else experience this? Are certain games worse than others? Does it go away after you play for a while, or does my body have an internal regulator that will force me to play for only short periods of time? I’m not going to take Dramamine every time I want to play a game.
I have this with some games, generally older ones. *Quake II *used to do it to me all the time. F.E.A.R. for the 360 does it to me too. I noticed in F.E.A.R. that if I disable the head bob I don’t get as sick from it.
I think it’s actually related to turning around. I noticed that I started feeling ill after a battle where I was spinning around pretty fast. Bleah. Motion sickness is caused by the visual field not correlating with body position IIRC… maybe there’s nothing for it. I still can’t read in the car, for that matter.
First, you’re not alone. I’ve read that about 20% of the population can encounter this. Most people who play a lot of these games don’t because it’s a self-selecting group (if it makes you sick you just don’t play), but it does arise from time to time. There’s usually one of two things occurring: you’re either getting bothered by being focused on a rapidly shifting view or the fact that you’ve got some still things and some moving things in your vision.
Since you mentioned that you get carsick while reading in vehicles then I’m guessing that the problem is the mix of motion and stillness.
There are a few things you can do that may alleviate it for you. You could turn out the lights which would help your view. Also sitting closer to the television so that it occupies a greater portion of your field of view may help.
You’ll need to experiment and it is possible that you may just find it impossible to enjoy this kind of game. Good luck.
You would think it’s just the FPS games, but I had a similar problem with my friend’s Simpsons Xbox game. Maybe I can only play for an hour. I really feel nauseated… not fun. I was enjoying Bioshock.
I don’t have motion sickness, but I do have vertigo in some games. Assassin’s Creed for instance - when Altair jumps from the top of the highest tower aaaaall the way down to the convenient haystack, I feel my heart rising like I’m really falling from a great height - and the landing’s gonna be unpleasant.
I have pretty severe simulation sickness to the point where I’ve given up on most 3-D games. I just can’t handle anything where the camera moves around too much. I mostly stick to 2-D games (there’s still some made for consoles and lots for portables) or 3-D games that use a fixed camera (for example, Lego Star Wars is a 3-D game but the camera doesn’t move much).
I also try to take breaks often and sit further back from the TV so that I don’t get locked into the screen as much. Keeping my feet on the floor seems to help a bit as well. I remember reading that you might be able to get acclimated to it by playing short amounts every day so your brain stops thinking you’ve been poisoned. I don’t play that much so I can’t say if that will help.
It can be frustrating since more and more games are going for immersive, 3-D environments that look more realistic every year. Fortunately for me, I was never a big fan of first person shooters or 3-D platformers so I don’t feel like I’m missing out too much. I’ve been on a rhythm game kick since I picked up Guitar Hero and none of that series or Rock Band give me any trouble.
This happens to me but only with certain games. I can play Bioshock and a boatload of other first person games with no problems but if I play Half Life, within an hour I’m nauseous with a headache. I thought maybe better graphics would help but when I got the Orange Box, Half Life 2 did the same thing to me. I’d really love to play the series. What I’ve seen so far is really cool but the effect on me is too much.
Oddly, Portal doesn’t do it to me. I guess there’s not as much going on screenwise there.
I got Call of Duty for Christmas, and I played for less than five minutes before I felt very ill. I used to be able to play FPS’s for hours, but over the years I’ve grown more and more sensitized to the motions, and now I can’t play them at all.
I get the motion sickness also from first person shooters like Metroid Prime and others. However, if it is the over the shoulder type or camera view that follows the player like Resident Evil 4, Zelda, Prince of Persia, etc. I have no problem at all.
I have this happen both with some PC games and Playstation games. I can’t play Morrowind at all (PC) because if I try for more than 10-15 minutes, the nausea kicks in. I think there were only one or two places in EverQuest (the maze in the ‘basement’ of the Plane of Mischief, for one) that did that to me. Things like very quick repeated corners, head bob motion, and the like did it. I haven’t seen any games lately that do it.
As mentioned above, try disabling head bob, or play in third person if that option is available.
Although I don’t get carsick, I do get motion sickness from some PC games, typically FPS games like Unreal Tournament. It’s worst when I’ve just started playing after a long hiatus; after a few short sessions I start getting used to it and can play longer without ill effect.
I think what helps for me is that as I become more accustomed to the controls I start unconsciously moving my body or head the way my character would be moving, which helps cut down the ‘seeing motion but feeling still’ effect (much like not getting car sick when you’re the driver). Although this means that no matter how much I play, watching someone else play will have me feeling sick in minutes, since I can’t predict how they’ll move.
I get motion sick from first person vehicle driving in games. That’s the main reason I’ve never gotten all the way through Half-Life 2. I’m fine if I can switch to a third-person view, though. Most of the time, first-person games don’t bother me at all, but I have noticed that sometimes, when I’m really tired, the nausea and dizziness will kick in even with games I can otherwise play for hours.
Totally. I loved Bioshock–the story, the atmosphere, the graphics–but I can’t play it. I had the same issue: after about an hour I started feeling very queasy, and the feeling persisted for about two hours after I stopped playing. Not really bad, but I got the feeling like it would have gotten worse if I’d kept playing.
For me, most of the problem came from the forward movement–the kind “pitch and roll” movement like you’d experience if you were standing at the prow of a small boat through rough waters. If I could have just moved forward at a steady pace without the “pigeon head bobbing,” I think I would have been fine. Maybe there’s a way to do it, but I couldn’t figure it out in my limited playtime.
For reference, I’ve never had this same feeling in any other game I’ve played. Just Bioshock. But then, I haven’t played a lot of other games in a similar genre (just things like Dead Rising and World of Warcraft).
I have this same problem sometimes. For me, alot of it has to do with being comfortable with the controls. I was getting really sick when I first started playing Fallout 3, then I realized I was turning my character alot, and making lots of unnecessary movements and such- once I got used to the controls, it got better. So it’s possible that once you get used to Bioshock, your situation will improve.
That being said, someone upthread suggested turning the lights off. I’ve actually experimented with this a bit, because playing video games with the lights off has always been my default. However, I’ve found that having a light source of some kind tends to help keep me from getting nauseous. The two caveats are: 1) you want to avoid screen glare, because that’s just obnoxious, and 2) you don’t want the light source to be within your peripheral vision.
I turn an overhead light on on the other side of my basement.
I don’t have this problem, but I’ve heard that one part of the problem is due to what the Field-of-View (FOV) is set to. Small angle FOVs (basically like walking around with a pair of binoculars on) induce motion sickness in many people. Some games have the option to change the FOV angle setting, which can help if it can be reset to >90 degrees or more.
Incidentally, bioshock did have a pretty small angle FOV setting (especially when viewed on a widescreen TV), but was patched to include a wider FOV.
A friend mentioned recently that the type of TV you’re playing on could have something to do with it. Tube TVs are apparently more likely to contribute to motion sickness than LCDs/HDTVs. I’m not sure why it would matter, though. My husband quit playing console games because he had issues with motion sickness, and now he’s convinced we need to get a new flat-screen TV and an XBox since it may have been our old TV that caused the issue. :rolleyes:
