Placebo effect and the idea of making the user wait without the feeling of waiting
Imagine you are on the supermarket and it has an app which you can schedule the less crowd line so it could speed up your check out process while still selecting the products. There's a button which you click to finish the scheduling and after you click it keeps loading. Every second it passes make you more stressed since you don't know if it's going to work and all the other lines are just getting bigger. Behind the curtains there is a lot going on, like systems working up, requests being made, servers receiving and giving back feedbacks, but the user (you, in this case) maybe don't know nothing about this. Of course systems could be improved, but sometimes it's just impossible. So for the user, It will be probably frustrating.
The same happens on games, but a little more complex. There are a lot of actions happening on the same time, which make systems get long and long to process those requests and give what the user want, making them very frustrated, mainly when a game is made for excitement and fun. It was also the doom for some games, such as 'Anthem', from EA, which users constantly blamed the company for the long static loading screens (on PS4), that often broke the gamers' experience.
With the evolution of technology, process are highly improved, giving us almost instantly responses, with faster actions, molding us into it. Considering waiting is no no longer an option, how can we give users the instantly feedback they want? The answer is: we can't (not always). What we can do is simulate that with a Placebo.
But what does Placebo do?
According to the website verywellmind.com: The placebo effect is defined as a phenomenon in which some people experience a benefit after the administration of an inactive “look-alike” substance or treatment.
And to understand a little more about it, let's get a little back in time. Henry Beecher, an anesthesiologist from Harvard Medical School, published in the 50’s, a paper called "The Powerful Placebo" explaining his theory, tests and results on the effect.
On digital products, we commonly see the Placebo effect applied to user experience design, for example on the launch of an app we use splash screens (like a loading screen for apps) to drag the attention of the users, reducing their anxiety, while the system load hundreds of events in the background.
What about the games? Well, someone probably thought about that and did the homework pretty well. In the game 'Immortals Fenyx Rising ™' (from Ubisoft), you play the part of Fenyx who is in search for her brother in a greek mythological scenario. The game found an interest way to "fool" (in a good way) the player. During your discovers, you face some crypt challenges and, every time you enter or leave the crypt a loading screen starts. We all know how loading pages are annoying, but somehow Ubisoft did it fine. On the loading screen, you still keep the control of Fenyx flying down a space-like scenario hunting small crystals that also help you out increasing your power, combining the placebo effect with a progress mechanism, that we can take advantage for building our digital products giving our users a meaningful experience on their waiting time.
Conclusion
Games can give us insights on how to improve the user experience, as they are made for engagement, one of the main goals of digital products. Among all the possible mechanisms we can learn from games, the placebo effect is one of them. When is not possible to reduce the time of loadings we can design, on our advantage (and user's), other engagement experiences. Even you designing a great experience there will be boundaries and the problems regarding that, but the users don't know about it. So making them feeling comfortable on their usage is one big step. The Placebo effect is not the solution for reducing time, of course, but it can be the solution for recreating the perception of time.
Bibliography:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-placebo-effect-2795466
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-the-placebo-effect
https://gamerant.com/ps4-games-will-benefit-ps5-ssd-load-times/
https://medium.com/designerpsychology/placebo-design-76c7e8b0529d
