FPS: First Person Sickness

The content of the following post may change the way that some people see me.  Some people might feel that what I'm about to reveal/confess will not only make me less of a person, but less of a "gamer" as well.  To that, I rebuttal with: "Piss off."  Just do a Google search and you'll come back with over 100,000 results for motion sickness and video games.  It's not an isolated thing.  It's pretty common.  And that's what I'm here today to talk to y'all about.  Yes, I just typed "y'all."

But first off, I wanted to mention that I used to get car/motion sickness a bit growing up.  Up until sometime in Jr. high or late elementary I would have to either be sleeping or watching out one of the windows so as to not feel ill on car trips.  So, the happenings of motion sickness aren't entirely foreign to me.

So I just finished playing about an hour worth of Legendary (as of the writing of this, which I did a couple of days ago) and I had to stop as I started feeling the onset of motion sickness.  This is not the first time this has happened.  The very first time I felt motion sickness from playing a video game was back in 2006 when I was playing Time Splitters: Future Perfect.  When it happened, I recognized the feeling but at first couldn't figure out why it was happening.  I'd played other FPS' before (Goldeneye 007, Time Splitters 2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter) and had never felt sick before, so I just chalked it up to just feeling sick for no good reason.  After the second time it happened, probably the following day, I realized that it was due to motion sickness caused by the game.  Did that stop me?  Uh-hell no!  I played a bit until I felt the first tinges of sickness, then stopped for a while, eventually going back to the game sometime after I felt significantly better.  Eventually the feelings of being sick stopped entirely and I was able to play all night/day/night/sleep/day etc.

I guess I felt that I had since become immune to FPS induced motion sickness as I hadn't thought about it again until earlier this year when the feelings of being ill came back.  Later in 2006, I purchased Time Splitters for the PS2 and was perfectly fine with that game.  When I played Doom 3 in 2010 in a darkened room with headphones, I felt perfectly fine; although maybe that had something to do with some sensory deprivation, or I'm just making shit up.  Then late last year/early this year when I started playing a lot of PC FPS' (Portal, Portal 2, Bioshock, Doom, Dear Esther), I felt perfectly fine.  

Then, a month or two ago, I started feeling ill after maybe 30 minutes of game playing.  This wasn't from some current AAA title either.  This was from Doom II: Hell on Earth.  By the end of the first level, I was starting to feel like I was going to be ill.  I've played Doom II now for only 58 minutes because I was feel like crap every time I play it.  I felt a little bit ill after playing Team Fortress 2, so I don't know what that's about.  maybe it's my eyes being too used to moving around and I'm just sitting still.  I've also played Slender for about half-an-hour and felt fine afterwards.  A little jittery about what was in any shadows, but physically alright.  And now, motion sickness again from Legendary.

A lot of the posts I've read about how to curb/cure this is to play often to adjust your eyes/brain to what's going on and that it's normal.  Another one is to move farther back from the screen, which I don't think is my problem as I currently have my laptop connected to our TV, which is about seven feet away from me.  I personally think that I might be able to lessen the effects by just playing an FPS frequently enough, but if it doesn't seem to stop, then I may just have to stop playing that particular game.

My name is Jack, and I sometimes get motion sickness from first person shooters.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Now That That's Over, Time For French Fries!


Update: It is two hours after completing this post and I feel fine now, with no sign of nausea.  All I did was eat some baked french fries, drank a bottle of Ninkasi Total Domination IPA and finished watching Wrath of the Titans.  It wasn't a very good movie, although I liked Toby Kebbell (the guy who played Posiden's son).  I'd totally watch The Adventures of Agenor.  Let's get on that Warner Bros.