One of the things that have made video gaming difficult for me is that with many shooter games like Halo, Call of Duty, etc. I get very sick. So much so that I start to sweat, get dizzy and sometimes throw up. I really hate it, because some of the games my kids play look like fun.

I have thought about taking pills to combat the motion sickness, but even the non-drowsy ones make me sleepy, and then I am out of action for the day and my wife yells at me for being lazy. So that route is not available to me and really never was a serious one anyways.

I have read several online posts suggesting ginger pills might work, but so far I have not tried to use them so I personally don’t know. I do know that ginger is supposed to be good for the tummy which may also help with the nausea part of simulator sickness. I will give it a try later to see.

So when I was thinking about this topic today and doing some reading about it, my daughter-in-law was in fact playing Call of Duty Black Ops 2, and I was just afraid to even watch her play. I took the controls however,and went into the options menu to investigate some possible settings I could change that might help me play this game.

One setting offered hope, so I lowered “look sensitivity” to it’s lowest setting, and no more nausea. While I only played a few minutes, that is usually all it takes to make me ill. Now, I am hoping that the feature is available in games like Halo, and some others that I love to play around with but so far have not been able to play long enough to really enjoy.

I am sure that there are other things one can do to minimize the effects of simulator or, motion sickness. Sitting farther from the screen, improving the lighting around the room, especially between you and the screen, and lastly playing games with more realistic graphics, and less first person views to them. This however, is not a guarantee.

I was fine with Diablo 3 yet Call of Duty got me inside of 15 minutes. I am hopeful that as the quality of our graphics continues to improve, that this problem will begin to fade. I also hope that game designers will begin taking the fact that people who want to play their games are unable to do so, due to this problem, and offer options that while they may make the game play a slight bit slower, will allow those of us who are sensitive to this illness, the chance to play as well.

I would be interested to learn any tips or tricks you have learned and tried that help you deal with this problem. And as always, if I discover more details on the subject, I will pass them along to you as well.