Motion Sickness Is Stopping Fans From Playing The Witness

It looks like The Witness is making some gamers sick to their stomachs, and not in that internet-talk way where you claim a game is so bad it makes you want to puke. The issues are tied to the games visuals and are surprisingly varied in nature.

While PlayStation 4 indie game The Witness has done well critically, it sounds like some players are having issues with the game’s visuals. The UK branch of was the first to stumble upon the issue, siting threads from Steam, NeoGAF and Reddit where players are reporting similar issues with the visuals in The Witness.

From the mastermind behind Braid, Jonathan Blow, The Witness is set on a large island that is basically one big puzzle box. Similar to games like Myst or even The Room, progress through the game is hindered by visual and logic puzzles that, when solved, open up even more mysteries to be figured out.

The problem folks seem to be having is with the game’s visuals. According to the original story, the field of view, as well as the bright colors and the game’s unique textures, are forming a concoction that’s causing motion sickness in some.

What’s kind of interesting about all of the comments is that the folks affected by it are being super polite concerning the situation, going so far as to complement the rest of the game in the same sentence. Basically, people are saying, “Hey, sorry, great game, but it’s kinda making my head spin in circles.”

Thankfully, Blow has not remained silent on the matter and has already responded to some of the folks voicing concerns about The Witness.

When one player mentioned the issues on Twitter, Blow responded saying he’s already working on a fix.

It’s a bummer that some players are having trouble looking at The Witness. It’s not a super common event that a game causes these kinds of issues for so many players, but at least Blow is already on the case to hopefully figure out a fix. As the original post points out, Half-Life 2 caused a similar issue when it released and, with VR just around the corner, we’re likely to hear more and more stories like this. Hopefully it will all level out as developers learn new tricks to correct the issues and apply them to future games.

As for our readers, have any games given you a similar experience? One of my buddies couldn’t play Dead Space because that game’s over-the-shoulder view just wasn’t sitting right with him, but I hold to this day that he was just too scared of the necromorphs to continue. Share your stories in the comments below.