This week I spent more time in the world of Minecraft but with a few changes. The first session I played I had to cut a bit short because I was overcome by nausea and dizziness. I originally attributed the feelings to the large amount of ice cream I had eaten while I was playing but was worried it may have been motion sickness. After paying for a while during my second session my suspicions were confirmed, Minecraft is among the first person view games that give me motion sickness. I have had this happen with other games before (Portal and Halo to name a couple) but not all first person view games have this effect on me. To solve, or at least lower, this issue I have a couple tricks I try before giving up on a game so I tried these out on Minecraft to see if I could continue this inquiry. 

First I went into settings and lowered the mouse sensitivity, this makes the movement of your mouse slower on screen so that instead of flicking all around in the field of view your “head” moves slower within the game. Less chaotic movement in the game can be earlier on the tummy sort of how going down a rollercoaster gets some adrenaline going where going down a rollercoaster while spinning would be much uhm, messier. I mentioned field of view and this is another setting that can be changed in Minecraft, and many other games. I find that a wider field of view can help with motion sickness so I increased the field of view, this is also done in the settings menu.

The last change I try to solve motion sickness issues in first person view games is my last resort change. I only do this when the first two changes still leave me nauseous and the change is the “window” the game. This is when you play the game out of full screen mode, as a window, with part of your background/desktop showing. Having the game sit within a stable image really helps me with motion sickness, but the game can feel much less immersive so I only do this if the other changes don’t work. 

This photos show a game starting in “windowed” view

 

Here is the YouTube video I got these tips from

 

I’m not sure if there are other methods to solve motion sickness while gaming because these have always worked for me.

 

I ended up finding an abandoned village in my game, more on that in my next update!

A good reminder, but what if my homework is video games?