Too Much Gaming, Anyone?

Nrik noted a wired story about too much gaming and how sometimes a few too many hours of gaming can cause your mind to blur some lines. For me it was Tony Hawk- I played so much that I started sizing up curbs for grinding while driving home from work. Katamari Damacy has been a problem too. I'm fairly certain my car is large enough to pick up the railings on the overpass near my house. I'm even more certain that these thoughts are bad.

GTA

[kaustik]

Is it just me, or has GTA clouded the minds of others as well?

Black and white ...

[Monkelectric]

For anyone who remembers Black and White, most of the game is spent looking at (fairly gorgeous) landscapes. I was driving one day and passed by a very small valley with a tree in it. I was overtaken by an urge to grab the tree and place it in my village store.

Then I decided it was probably time to pay attention to the road and take a break from black and white.

Re:GTA

[lukewarmfusion]

During Christmas break of my junior year of college, I was told I wasn't needed at work (but that they'd still pay me!) so I got to spend three weeks on GTA3. Fantastic. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody to bitch about spending so much time in front of the TV with "those damn police siren sounds blaring." Unfortunately, I also didn't do much driving during this time (no car, no need for one).

When I finally did drive, I realized I was reaching for the handbrake so I could turn around. When I saw a police car, I had the idea that it would be faster to simply use his car...

Don't get me started on the pedestrians I saw.

Re:GTA

[Aggrazel]

The other day I saw a Ferrari Testarossa pulling out of the building near where I work (The Federal Building of all places, who knew they got paid that much) and instantly I thought "Ooh, Cheetah" before realizing what I was thinking.... I just hung my head in shame.

tetris, indeed

[wintermute1000]

Seems like a large portion of people commenting so far have (fond?) memories of Tetris completely taking over. I haven't played Tetris in years and I can still conjure up games in my head.

I know also that I became really suspicious about social interactions while I was playing the Sims. I'd talk to people and know they were just doing it so their social meter would rise, and would leave feeling used and resentful. It was really terrible, because while it's generally not so hard to curb violent impulses, I started feeling like none of the people who talked to me throughout the course of the day actually had any regard for me and get really discontented.

Burn-out 3

[cexshun]

After an intense session of Burn-out 3, I was driving to pick the wife up from work. Comming up on a sharp intersection, I instinctively reached for the e-brake, ready to power slide around the 90degree turn at 50mph. Luckily I caught myself, but it gave me quite a scare.

Postal..

[AgentPhunk]

A few years back there was a pretty sick game called "Postal", where you basically went around killing people in lots of twisted ways. Your arsenal included the usual pistols, shotguns, etc, but also a moltov cocktail that I could never really find a good use for on any the levels.

Until... the "Marching Band" level (cue nefarious laugh) If you lobbed the flaming moltov cocktail just right into the marching band you'd set a bunch of the band on fire, who who begin flailing and screaming, setting other band players alight in the process. At no other point in the game could you take out so many so quickly, with such panache.

Ever since then I've always cast a curious eye towards the (albeit few) marching bands I've seen, thinking, "hmmm.. that Tuba guy really looks annoying.. where's a moltov when you need it?"

Puts a whole new spin on "this one time, at band camp.."

one word: carmageddon

[jonastullus]

after playing too much carmageddon (a really tasteless game where you overrun people with your car in a first-person perspective) I came to know its dangerous effects when considering while driving in RL how many points the inline skater at the side of the road would bring...

and after playing loads of "need for speed 2 underground" and flatout (also a racing game) which is especially fun on icy roads, i had to remind myself that i wasn't playing it anymore when really driving on ice covered roads after the game session! these things can get really dangerous when you overestimate your driving skills or the car configuration right after having played a racing game.
the effect usually fades within an hour or so, but technically it should be forbidden to drive just after having played a "realistic" car related game!

also, after many, many hours of counter strike i found myself checking out rooms for possible cover and would think ahead for strategies to use when ambushed. this was actually fun even in RL but without doubt shows how very attached one gets to the patterns learned during hours of continuing immersive gameplay!

jethr0

Re:Oh yeah..

[tambo]

Great topic.

I found Half-Life 1 to be infinitely creepy. After a long gaming session, I got up to get something from the fridge. Along the way, I happened to run into a single strand of spider-web hanging down from the ceiling. My barnacle-avoidance instincts kicked in and I twisted my body out of the way - it took me a second to figure out what the hell I was doing.

Of course, I have all of the usual stories of seeing stuff when trying to fall asleep after late-night gaming - falling Tetris pieces, Super Puzzle Fighter blocks, Puzzle Bobble bubbles, even minesweeper scenarios. I think it's especially prevalent with games featuring lots of visual elements that your brain can abstract into functional pieces...?

- David Stein

Crimsonland... shudder...

[Txiasaeia]

I can't believe nobody's mentioned Crimsonland yet. A terrific game, the entire purpose is to kill bugs creeping in from the edges of the screen with various weapons. Since they come from all around you, you need to watch out for the bugs with your peripherial vision. For *weeks* after going through a couple Crimsonland marathons, I couldn't even use a computer because it looked like various bugs were "creeping" in on me, even when I was browsing the net or whatnot. I sat there once, watching a "bug" crawl around in my peripherial vision, and *knew* that I needed to stop playing it. Most disturbing game ever made (psychologically, not in terms of actual game mechanics).

Re:dreams

[wastingtape]

My first year of college, when i lived in the dorms, one of the guys there created a Quake III level of a portion of the campus, complete with all the buildings and everything.

Talk about mixing games with reality. It's odd enough to feel the urge in real life to "act" like you would in the games, but when you've already spent hours in the game map which is a replica of your real environment, and you know around the next corner there's a rocket launcher, it's hard to stay focused that you're in the real world. :P

Re:Tetris

[MindStalker]

Not nearly as sad as my mindsweeper days when I would sit around trying to memorize and mathematically figure out common patterns you see in the game. Obvious example is if you see 121 along a straight wall there is a bomb behind the 1's

Re:Tetris

[Wog]

But see, that's *exactly* how I pack a car.

When I was a teenager, it was my job to pack the family van for the long gift-laden trip to the in-laws. I would pack like a fiend, because I obsessed about not leaving any holes.

"No, don't put that in yet. There's a space. Give me the small piece. No, that one. There."

They would wonder how I got everything in with room to spare.

Re:Zerg in my sleep

[zapp]

Gaming addictions are one thing... but I knew this kid would would never stop playing starcraft.

When I met him, he was a black belt in tae kwon do (he was korean), was in the CS program, and prettty bright.

Last I heard of him, he had dropped out, his roommates (and brother) kicked him out of the house because he never showered, cleaned, or got a job.

Real Danger

[BlueMonk]

This may all sound funny (I'm guilty of thinking that as I read some of this too) but when I think about it and realize how real it is, it starts to scare me. Cars in particular are one situation where people go on auto-pilot and might react before thinking. We have a lot of stories about people who "almost" did things... I wonder if there have been real accidents that people don't dare share. And I wonder if the dangers increase as games become more realistic (a more realistic emergency brake controller for those who have mentioned using that, for example).

Same here, only work instead.

[numbski]

When I was in high school, I would work sadly long hours at Taco Hell. 16 hour long days during summer break at times. I'd work night shift, get off at say, 4 am, and go to bed.

Then dream about making Tacos.

No!!!!!!

It gets worse. Later on, right after the dot-com bust, I was working a call center at Compaq. During certain times of the day, when things were slow with nothing to do, I'd decided I wanted to get better at Perl coding. I'd sit there for hours making strides in a program I was writing, learning new modules, working on problems, etc.

Then I'd go home, and not only dream of coding in Perl, but occassionally fix my code IN MY SLEEP.

God help me. I recently figured out what was wrong with our DNS server while under the effects of anesthesia for an upper endoscopy. Yikes.

Re:Oh yeah..

[GeckoUK]

I'll add this here, but it could equally be tacked on to just about every thread on this story.

Next week there will probably be a story about someone trying to get video games banned because they affect the impressionable kids. It would be interesting to go through and correlate how many of the people crying out then that video games never affected them are today posting about how they fantasise about beating up hookers and running others off the road.

Yeah, Baby! Ha, ha, ha! How about some ACTION?!

[Kejope]

Hmm. I don't know what these people are talking about. hehe The background: Despite the Red Alert reference, my fondest memories of this type were when I was in high school. My brother and I decide to "spend the weekend on Arrakis." From Friday afternoon until almost-school-time Monday morning, non-stop, we took turns completing levels in Dune II. He napped (on the floor by the PC) while I played. When I finished a level, I woke him. "Tag, it's your turn." The cool part (or disturbing, depending on view): Literally, for the next 3 days, EVERYTHING I looked at had a Dune map superimposed over it. Trikes and Quads were crawling over everything. I heard the spice credits ticking constantly: slow rate, fast, increasing value, decreasing. The credits ticking was the most memorable. It may be many more years before I forget that beautiful sound! *wistful sigh* Speaking of *emotes*, playing on MUDs, such as NannyMUD (telnet://mud.lysator.liu.se:2000 *ahem*), can cause a LOT of this verb-translated-to-RL effect. Role-playing games have been noted for this effect for many years. I have been known to shamelessly use "Argh," and "Boggle," verbally to express myself. --Kenneth

Re:GTA

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I erred in permitting my kids to play GTA *period*

Quake + Hallucinations + driving = badness

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at a video game company on a PC Gamer Game Of The Year title. At this company (and no, it wasn't Electronic Arts...), Engineers worked an average of about 70 hours/week with peak times exceeding 100 hours/week. Needless to say, fatigue was a real issue, so in order to wake ourselves up between coding sessions and before the drive home on a boring stretch of highway, we'd play Quake deathmatch spontaneously throughout the day/night and for approx. half an hour before leaving for home, whatever time that was.

Well, I don't know whether it was physical and mental exhaustion or too much Quake, or a combination, but on one pre-dawn drive home a driver ran a red light on a cross-street and cut me off, nearly clipping my front bumper. Rather than hit the brakes or swerve or hit the horn, I reflexively reached for the "6 - Enter" combo (select rocket launcher, fire). I actually removed my hands from the steering wheel and reached for a keyboard that didn't exist!

The visual hallucinations, blackouts and memory loss that had been occuring in the prior months I could ignore, but when I chose to rocket-strafe a car rather than swerve to save my life, at that very moment I *knew* beyond a doubt that I was gaming too much and things needed to change while I was still alive so I quit soon after.

Oh, and if any of you remember being fragged by a LPB camper named BaldHeadedBaby, that was me.

Chess

[CrazyWingman]

Y'all are sick. Not because you dream video games, but because all of the stories here are about dreaming about video games. Have none of you ever played a game without a pc/console?

I can remember chess club back in high school. After the tournaments, we would be driving home on the van, and I would still be seeing how I could attack the person two benches ahead and one person over from me. I was not the only teammate who had this happen either.

Go play a "real" game.

Re:GTA

[lowrydr310]

After playing it, you start thinking that even though the road has two lanes of traffic, you could squeeze between those cars and go much faster

It's legal in California if you're driving a Motorcycle. It's easiest done when there's near-standstill traffic, however I've done it in 55MPH+ traffic just for the rush.

When I was visiting my brother in Pennsylvania I found myself doing the same thing and almost got into trouble. Out of habit, I'd squeeze between cars to get to the front of the traffic light, but people in PA aren't used to that and it really pisses them off.