Motion Sickness From Games

So, I realize that there's probably another topic somewhere on the forums that discusses this at length, but with Forum Search being broken right now, I'm kind of unable to find it.

Anyone else ever have problems getting motion sick from games? My mother used to be a pretty avid gamer, before games entered the 3D era, and now she can't play most modern games due to motion sickness. I don't have this issue for almost every game, but a few games in particular make me absolutely ill. I can't play Minecraft in spite of me loving it because it makes me feel like throwing up.

Anyone else have experience with this? Will I ever be able to play Minecraft without having to go lay down for an hour immediately afterwards? Also wondering if there are any other cases of specific games causing people to feel sick, even when they're usually fine, like me.

I think the closest I've ever come is when playing Tetrisphere, my eyes would noticeably hurt. Like, really hurt.

For something more on topic, how about some Extra Credits.

The 360 version of Marathon Durandal reportedly did that.

Apoarently I have an iron stomach because it didn't affect me. I've never felt video game motion sickness unless something else was wrong.

I used to get that way whenever I played a FPS, I still get it to some degree but most games I'm fine with now.

I'm not positive, but I think it has something to do with frame rate and/or field of view, if you are getting a poor frame rate with a fairly narrow field of view, it can be intensely disorienting, I never had an issue with 3rd person perspective games because you generally always get a huge field of view. Once I started buying better videocards, I started having less issues with first person perspective games.

Battlefield Bad Company 1, the first online multiplayer shooter I really got into, gave me violent headaches at first. After a couple of dozen hours, it was gone, and it never came back. I guess it's a bit like sea-sickness. Eventually your body adapts and you'll be fine.

So to anybody who suffers from motion sickness. Don't be a baby. Suffer through it. Walk it off. Videogames will be the pay-off.

I got sick playing the Half-Life series of games.

Strangely, I'm totally fine with every other FPS I've ever played including other Valve FPS games.

I also used to get sick back in my World of Warcraft days, but I think that had more to do with staring at a bright screen for eight hours in the dark and less to do with the game itself making me sick.

Glad those days are over.

this x10000. hl2 is the death of me, and it's (probably) the reason i never finished it (sad i know). maybe should try adjusting the FOV?

team fortress 2 however barely gave me problems.

doom 2 was also nauseating back in the day, just something about the constant bobbing up and down. as well as single player Goldeneye. in general it may have to do with combination of framerate, FOV, and the kind of motion involved.

on another note i'm proud that i only had to look away from the screen during Cloverfield once. :)

I've luckily never had any issues with motion sickness in video games. I've always found it a little weird how it can affect some people so strongly, but have virtually no effect on others.

yes i use to get it back in the n64 days. i was playing golden eye. playing it for a while made threw up. my advice is to eat before playing

I think Descent was the last game that got me motion sick. But a lot of those software rendered 3d (Doom, etc) games could have that effect, Descent was just the worst.

Mario Galaxy is the only game that has given me severe motion sickness. I couldn't even get past the tutorial. :(

@kalmia64: Thats sad :( It's weird how I had no problem with that game whatsoever, but Minecraft kills me so much.

Motion sickness/nausea is a not-uncommon problem with video games. I occasionally experience it from parallax, but the FOV issue is documented enough that I find it annoying when people poo poo it as though it doesn't exist. Valve has been a stand-out for their You may want to check these videos out:

FOV in Games

Totalbiscuit Discusses FOV

The last time I remember having severe motion sickness was Cod 4. I know I've had it since then a couple of times, but incredibly seldom at that.

Edit: I just remembered I went and tried to play Metal Gear Solid(Ps1) a few year ago for about 3 hours and it made me come close to throwing up.

Only from very old first person perspective games. Doom was the worst culprit. Once free-aim became a thing (looking up and down), that was no longer an issue.

Sometimes bad framerate will get me but its fairly rare.

I know when I played Marathon Durandal on the 360, I would get headaches after only a few minutes of play, but never actually felt so sick that I thought I would have to run to a trashcan pretty quick.

Yeah I get it every now and then. It used to be worse. I feel it the most often with certain fps games. I remember Red Steel for the wii being one game that I couldn't play for more than a half hour or so. Golden Eye on the N64 did it to me also. The only non first person game that I can remember feeling like this with is the Batman Arkahm games. If I ever got stuck and had to look around a lot in those game I would start to get a sick feeling after searching and moving the camera a lot.

I can't play Valve games without getting motion sickness. This has happened with Half Life 2 and Portal.

Could try changing things like motion blur or field of view. The only thing that has ever given me motion sickness was a CRT monitor running at 60Hz.

Never had it ... lucky me :D

The only game that has ever made me sick was Stacking. I think that the way your character moved in the game didn't quite agree with me, it just gave me an aggravating headache.

Nope, never, which is nice since I suffer from horribly debilitating levels of motion sickness in real-life. Two minutes in a car that I'm not driving leaves me with a headache and nausea that lasts for at least an hour.

The only game that ever gave me motion sickness was the Beatles Rockband. specifically the weird technicolor dream sequences. I think it was all a combination of all the weird shit going on in the background combined with trying to concentrate on the note highway that did it for me.

It's weird because I never go it from regular Rockband.

Something about the games that has lots of blurring really hurts my eyes. Never happened when I played Burnout Paradise a few years back but when I replayed it last year, it really fucked up my eyes.

The only game that I ever got motion sickness from.

i remember clearly having motion sickness probably for the first time during grand theft auto vice city. then from there, i used to get really bad motion sickness during the original days of xbox 360. Almost any first person game on 360 or even pc would make me sick within minutes. id have to lay down with my eyes shut for about an hour before i could funtion as a normal human again. it was terrible. it seems to have stopped at some point probably due to better displays/framerates idk....

The only games that ever gave me motion sickness were the Tony Hawk games on the N64. Dunno why.

After getting very sick a few years ago, I haven't been able to handle some first-person games. I can handle Skyrim for a decent while, but games like Call of Duty or Half Life just make me sick within a hour or so. Minecraft also makes me sick if I move too fast. It's pretty inconvenient, as I even got a little sick while enjoying The Last of Us, but if you learn your limits, it's manageable.

And if you -really- want to play a game that makes you feel motion sick, you can also take medicine to counteract it. Which is rather overboard for playing a videogame, but I've done it before when I really wanted to play for a long session on a game that kind of made me a little queasy after a while.

The main thing bothering me most recently is a bad response to flashing visuals. If I see the wrong thing, I have little partial seizures; which aren't great. Pupils dilate, heart races, and mind gets fuzzy and very disoriented for a while. But again, it's just about learning what your limits are and what you can handle. Though, sometimes games can be dicks and throw in unexpected flashing for dramatic effect. Strobe lights and such, as well. So, preparing is never perfect. Just things you get used to over time.

@vextroid said:

Holy balls this.

When I first read the initial post, I immediately thought of that 360 remake of Marathon Durandal. I only played the demo for maybe 15 minutes and it gave me a splitting headache followed by nausea. I had to lie down. Just brutal. I was not expecting it either since I had never been made sick by a game that I was playing before. Watching someone play an FPS, sure, that would make me sick, but it had never happened when I was actually controlling a game.

Seriously, F that remake.

Motion blur, low FOV, and excessive head bobbing can all give me a headache and make me feel nauseous.

@generic_username: Games with FOV that's too close do that to me.. eg Dead Island = (..

@jctango: I haven't played it, and I'm unable to tell the difference between FOV stuff, so that's probably why I don't understand what the trigger in Minecraft is.

I'd normally assume that it must be own settings on the game, but even watching other people play makes me want to lay down, and I can't assume that everyone is using the same "I don't understand PC gaming" settings that I use.

Tried playing Dark Messiah of Might & Magic the other day. Didn't even make it out of the tutorial before a dreadful, nauseous headache kicked in. There's something about how Source engine games move that makes me sick as a dog.

Then again, it might have been exacerbated by eating something funny before hand.