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 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.
one more turn - civilization
“One more turn…” “Wait, wtf, why is my phone buzzing?” “Aw fuck that’s my wakeup alarm. Fml….”
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.
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.
I get lost A LOT.
And of course, too many words. Blah blah blah. Let’s get on with it and let me play the game!
I’m also not very good at combos, but maybe that’s just me. Hitting a specific combination of more than 4-5 buttons is near impossible. It’s usually just easier to avoid using that move than to try to try to build up the muscle memory.
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.
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.
This just sounds like someone without much gaming experience to me. My dad was pretty much the same when he tried Mario 64
For me at least this does track. I often get lost in video games or miss out on clues the should guide me to the solution. I think this can be partially attributed to hyper focus on one specific thing (the “I was supposed to go right” in your example) but also to to my mind wandering as I play (“gee, I wonder who voiced that character” or “oh that was a lot like that movie we watched last night, I meant to look up the plot on Wikipedia because I think I missed something”).
Honestly, this is a large reason I just don’t play a lot of games. I enjoy them generally but it takes so long to make progress and I get stuck in ways that friends don’t do it makes me feel dumb. It’s better now that I have medication to help but I still gravitate to “easy” or more casual games (I love the Two Point series of games, and the LEGO Star Wars games but many see them as childish or too easy).
Have ADHD. Almost never get lost. Only time I ever get lost is when I’m in some stupid thought and blow past my exit and zombie drive for 15 minutes before I realized I missed my exit. The problem is I would be so deep in my thoughts that I would make turns and exits and not remember doing any of it.
remember that video games’ UI and UX design are not creations of physics nor biology. they were intentionally built by just a few ppl (in the context of Human history). the game designers haven’t done brain scans & interviews with every gamer who ever lived. so their design wouldn’t reflect anything specific about “normal” brains.
and each player’s info processing is uniquely developed from their brain structure and their experiences. even neurotypicals are widely varying in their communication and brain processing style.
tl;dr - idiosyncrasy in gaming is not enough info to attribute to ND symptoms/characteristics. combine the data with more from all areas of life.
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.
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 don’t think navigation is linked to ADHD. You said it yourself; she’s not a gamer. She isn’t familiar with how games work.
It could be because she doesn’t play much, but I still believe ADHD could be part of it. Maybe she doesn’t get lost, per se, but rather that she doesn’t pay enough attention to what around her character. I have ADHD , and distractability in video games is something very familiar to me. Sometimes, the correct route seems obvious to other people, but I can run around in circles for quite a time before realising I’m not going the right way. It’s often a question of slowing down and observing carefully what’s being shown to me on screen. I never played Crash Bandicoot, but in certain games, I need as much info as possible on the minimap if I want to orient myself correctly. Again, I don’t think it’s a matter of getting lost; I got a pretty good sense of orientation in everyday life. Navigating video games without getting distracted is something else entirely, though.
