A couple of times when I’ve played Dynasty Warriors with my girlfriend (who has ADHD diagnosis), I noticed that she would be literally running in circles having absolutely no idea where she was. She’s not a gamer and controlling the camera can be finnicky for someone who isn’t used to dual analogs, so there’s that, but she also has trouble reading the minimap.
Yesterday I’ve had her play Crash Bandicoot 3 and she got “lost” in stage 2, the first underwater level. At the first sphere with electricity thingy, she thought she was supposed to keep going right, she didn’t notice the pipe opening leading down.
Is “getting lost” like that common for people with ADHD?
She’s also pretty lousy at Bomberman games, but she enjoys playing them.
I’m audhd but I’m have noticed similar with one ADHD and one officially neurotypical but suspect friend. Particularly in Fat Shark games I can “read” the environment very easily to see how to progress while they blindly bumble around and get distracted constantly.
Personally I have trouble with getting bored in the pauses. Whether it’s having to wait to progress through text boxes or gameplay is just slow and enemies have long windups (looking at you fromsoft), I get distracted and end up losing interest. Stuff like the combat speedup settings in Rogue Trader are great for me.
Oh, and too long boss fights, staying concentrated for that long is hard.
Long boss fights where you have to manage very specific combinations. Games like Dark Souls become impossible.
In fact anything where I have to time things consistently and frequently gets me fucked up.
Never finishing a game, because you get distracted by something else for a time, and on return completely deleted how you play it from your brain.
Some people with ADHD like my wife have difficults with navigation. Some people like me with ADHD are particuarly above-average with navigation. So it just depends.
The major thing I have trouble with is that having a high IQ, as a kid I never had to study all that much. In college, I did for the first time - and I didn’t have the skills or patience. And even to this day: I have low patience to learn a new videogame, and even lower patience to try and try againt o beat it. I hate losing, and I play mostly simulation games or games like GTA where I can cheat and just wander around an open world. I’m not proud of this, it’s just fact. Dont’ think I’m bragging about my IQ, either, that has limited benefit and my life is pretty shitty - mostly unemployed most of my adult life, I’m 51 now on dialysis and I’m most likely going to be dead within the next decade thanks to all that shit that ultiamtely is due to having ADHD.
I’d say that’s more a symptom of gaming inexperience than ADHD. Especially older games like the ones you mentioned don’t hold the player’s hand as much as modern ones and I’m sure the retro art style takes some getting used to.
I have ADHD but I usually don’t have any trouble navigating videogames. But I’ve been playing since my childhood.
I doubt that was because she had adhd and was actually because she doesn’t play video games much and not used to the navigation tools. Biggest problem I have is staying focused on a single task when there are so many things to distract me (usually more tasks).
What about a game like Bomberman, where you have to get a good “read” of the screen in order to not get killed?
I have ADHD and have a great sense of direction, but my partner who also has it has a horrible one. I don’t think that’s necessarily a common ADHD trait, though it’s a spectrum of disorders and often has many comorbidities like autism, OCD, RSD, and many others and could have some that give better or worse spacial orientation, sense of direction, etc.
That said, my most common issue is repetition and grinding. It equally bores me and makes me anxious. I want a game that takes minimal skill developed through repetition and muscle memory, and more that have multiple ways to approach and solve a “problem” and throws lots of variety at you so others can’t become too good for me to compete with by simply memorizing patterns or similar strategies but people with general strategy skills can win even with minimal experience learning the game (of course some is always required but if it takes 100hrs of grinding to even be a real competitor, I’m out). For example, I hate chess because good players have just memorized some moves to get out of very specific situations and don’t actually have to think and adapt much on the fly. This applies to a lot of FPS, platformers, online RPGs, etc. It’s usually also why I prefer coop games to competitive ones.
I have ADHD, and I also happen to have an absurdly good sense of direction.
My biggest problem with video games isn’t losing track of where I am, it’s losing track of when I am.
Video games, especially the Civilization series, and MMOs, make it incredibly easy for me to lose track of time. I’ve stayed up late and ruined countless nights of sleep from those.
can confirm the time blindness. As a kid, video games caught my hyperfocus and I often didn’t realize how time went by.
one more turn - civilization
“One more turn…” “Wait, wtf, why is my phone buzzing?” “Aw fuck that’s my wakeup alarm. Fml….”
The day I discovered that Unciv exists and I can play civ from my phone with mods that fill out almost all the DLC and expansion content is forever lost to me. I remember adding the mods and then the sun rising outside.
Most of my problems are with working memory. I also get lost a lot, forget quest descriptions / hints, can’t remember what NPCs told me to do, forget I have key items, get frustrated by reading or long cutscenes, skip all tutorials and then call the game unfair when I lose.
Most challenging genres: metroidvanias (basically the entire game is about remembering where you can backtrack to), some puzzle games, walking simulators, heavy narrative or text story games, some simulation games. Stuff that makes you sit still and pay attention like school
Most compatible genres: open world RPG, rhythm, PvP, action, management. Stuff you can just play around with and figure out intuitively
I don’t get lost but I do have a hard time staying on task for obvious reasons.
Getting lost is not an ADHD thing. I’ve had ADHD my whole life and literally never get lost.
It’s not a part of my ADHD, but it is a common ADHD problem, and my wife with ADHD has it. It’s just not a universal ADHD thing.
So what you’re saying is… if none of your symptoms present that way, then ADHD cannot present that way for anyone else?
Ah, yep, that’s exactly what I wrote in my comment. Great reading comprehension.
I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but it’s what you wrote.
My biggest “issue” (it’s not an issue for me, but it’s infuriating to people who watch me play) is spending huge amounts of time faffing around with stuff that has extremely little impact on the game. I have over 80 hours in Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave and have not finished Part 1 on any route. I’m checking out Aion 2 and have spent ages walking around harvesting ingredients and clicking on minor collectibles and grinding enemies for pet souls instead of doing the main story that rewards the lion’s share of XP, so I’m basically not really progressing at all.
I’m not lost, but it might look like I was lost if you were watching over my shoulder and wondering why it is taking me so freaking long.
Like other have said she is probably just lost because she doesn’t play games often.
My biggest issue is that I don’t finish games. It feels like I’ve completed about 1% of the games I start :D And I’ve re-started many as well, multiple times…
Those are not consequences of having ADHD but of not knowing how to play video games. Video games have rules, expectations and clues non-gamers don’t consider or know how to handle. The issues arising from that lack of experience may be made worse by having ADHD, but are not caused by ADHD.
I wondered about that level navigation part, whether the path forward was clear enough or not, because my 11yo nephew, who is not a gamer by any measure and very rarely gets access even to a smartphone, didn’t have trouble seeing that lower part of where she was supposed to go.
I’m fairly used to playing games (including but not limited to the first Crash Bandicoot on release), but I might get confused by that location as well.
At least from the still image, the background is so busy and drowns out the pipe at the bottom. Like, I see it, but if you hadn’t pointed it out I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Especially if it’s a static image and a stressful level.
I would certainly have found my way when actually playing, but for someone who isn’t used to gaming you’re more likely to “just keep going”, in this case from left to right, than look for where you’re supposed to go.
Having that open pipe design background, in the same colour scheme, and bigger than the pipe you’re supposed to be looking for, is not well designed to help people navigate quickly and easily if they aren’t focused on it or know what to focus on.
If a game is too long what will happen with me is I will get distracted before I finish it, step away for a number of months, and by the time I feel the drive to return I’ll want to start back from the beginning rather than pick up where I left off. As a result I very rarely actually finish such games.
Not ADHD here, but along these lines I love when games give you a recap on what was going on when loading your save. It’s such a thoughtful feature.
