ABSTRACT
Experiencing a video game happens in our mind. This is why it’s important for game creators to understand how the brain processes information so they can offer the best experience possible to their audience. The brain is extremely complex, but we can simplify our understanding of what is happening in the brain as we process information, such as when we are playing a game, as follows. It starts with the perception of stimuli, then focusing our attention on a task, and hopefully keeping a memory of what we have experienced. Human perception, attention, and memory have great capabilities, but also great limitations that we need to account for. Perception is subjective, attention is scarce, and memory is error prone. The level of attention we dedicate to an activity will greatly impact the quality of information processing, as well as our motivation and emotion. This chapter gives a quick overview of all these elements.
