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It's funny. Laugh. Entertainment Games

Too Much Gaming, Anyone? 894

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yes-there-is-such-thing dept.
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.
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Too Much Gaming, Anyone? More

Too Much Gaming, Anyone?

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  • Oh yeah.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    For me it's the Thief series of games. I've been walking behind people and thought "I could blackjack him/her..." Don't call the guys in white coats, though, I've never lurked in shadows while wearing a black cape or muttered about "Keepers".

    • Re:Oh yeah.. (Score:2, Funny)

      by CK2004PA ( 827615 )
      For me its America's Army. I'm watching the nightly news of Marines clearing houses in Fallujah and thinking to myself "Why don't they RPG that house first, then throw in flash bangs and frag nades before kicking that door in?"

      I know thats bad.

    • I can totally relate to this with Thief. I may not have contemplated any assaults, but casing a place for unobserved entry, yeah, I've thought about that.

      On the other end of the scale, I also invested a lot of thought into Space Trader for the Palm - but that was more on money making schemes.

      • Re:Oh yeah.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tambo ( 310170 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:48AM (#11321901)
        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

        • Re:Oh yeah.. (Score:3, Funny)

          by Specter ( 11099 )
          Oh it's not all visual. It turns out that the sound of someone slapping their BlackBerry back into it's holster sounds a lot like someone reloading their pistol in Counter Strike. There was quite a while there where anytime someone holstered their BlackBerry my first instinctual thought was: "Awesome they're reloading! Time to frag!"

    • Battletoads (Score:5, Funny)

      by numbski ( 515011 ) * <numbskiNO@SPAMhksilver.net> on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:22PM (#11322452) Homepage Journal
      It's been a looooong time, but when I was a kid, those stupid levels with the speeder bikes....ugh! Anytime I get into traffic and start weaving through, I hear the music in my head.

      Duh duh duh. Dun dun, dut, dut da da. Dut da da ut. (doo do do do do do do)....

      Worse. If I hit a jam shortly after, I hear sad midi drums.

      Boom chick, boom chick, boom chick chick chick... :P

  • GTA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kaustik ( 574490 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:33AM (#11321598)
    Is it just me, or has GTA clouded the minds of others as well?

    • Re:GTA (Score:5, Funny)

      by spywarearcata.com ( 841806 ) * on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:35AM (#11321651)
      I think I erred in permitting my kids to play GTA *before* taking driver's training...

    • Re:GTA (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:38AM (#11321707) Homepage Journal
      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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:38AM (#11321716)
      Is it just me, or has GTA clouded the minds of others as well?

      It isn't just you... [navy.mil]

      • Real Danger (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BlueMonk ( 101716 )
        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
    • It's never made me violent or made me want to steal a car. Just given me an even more irrational fear of the police. If I nick their car, they're going to kill me!

      • Re:GTA (Score:3, Informative)

        by MindStalker ( 22827 )
        Trust me they will. Almost got into an accident with a cop once. He was pissed. I woulda probably been thrown to the ground, had he not turned around and realized his headlights were off (thus the reason I didn't see him in the middle of the night).

    • Re:GTA (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Aggrazel ( 13616 )
      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.

    • Re:GTA (Score:3, Informative)

      by DaHat ( 247651 )
      After a week of playing GTA3 on the PC and not leaving the house, I got in my vehicle to head to the grocery store when I had the uncontrollable desire to throw the vehicle into reverse and gun it into a car behind me... then throw it into gear and take out two signs and a pedestrian... not a good feeling.

    • Re:GTA (Score:2, Funny)

      by Sheepdot ( 211478 )
      Is it just me, or has GTA clouded the minds of others as well?

      Yes, I get this overbearing sense of omniscience, like I'm looking over a city down on what appears to be a 2d terrain. Everything is all pixelated and ...

      Err wait, did you mean Grand Theft Auto 3?

      Contrary to public belief, there was a GTA and GTA2. The multiplayer features in GTA2 were excellent for LAN partying (if you were fortunate enough to have the PC version). Now if only they'd add some TRUE multiplayer to GTA3, then the game wouldn't

  • dreams (Score:5, Funny)

    by psycht ( 233176 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:33AM (#11321605) Homepage Journal
    I know I've had too much Quake III, when often used to dream of insagibbing my friends.

    Although good dreams, I knew I needed to back off a bit.

    • Re:dreams (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wastingtape ( 576230 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:55AM (#11322030) Homepage
      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

    • Lucky you (Score:5, Funny)

      by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:01PM (#11322126)
      I realized I was playing Unreal Tournament too much when I used a modified wireless tazer [boingboing.net] to shoot a big glob of liquid, then performed a shock combo on the neighbors cat.

      Poor fluffy, his hair stood straight up for a week.

  • i do that all the time (Score:4, Funny)

    by frogger01 ( 806562 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:33AM (#11321614) Journal
    this happens to me all the time. i can hardly fly for ten minutes in my tie fighter before i think that i'm in a star wars game....
    • That is an interesting comment. Perhaps games that too closely resemble daily life are more dangerous than games that are largely fantasy. The reflexes and unconscious strategies learned in a fantasy game are unlikely to be triggered in real life. Games like GTA seem to be another story.

      Games that are highly realistic, like high end flight simulators, can actually train reflexes and unconsious strategies that are effective in real life. The problem with GTA seems to be that it resembles real life visu

  • Burnout 3 (Score:4, Funny)

    by clarus ( 39399 ) <clarustnb@NospAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:34AM (#11321622) Homepage
    Even worse was when I went on a burnout 3 binge. I would pull alongside a tanker trailer and start calculating the best angle to hit it so that i could bounce over the median into oncoming traffic.

    It certainly did change my temporary assesment of situations.

  • Hmm, guess I need to stop playing CTF! (Score:5, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:34AM (#11321626)
    In addition to attempting to blow someone away with a nearby shopping cart at the grocery store while reaching for a flag wrapped in plastic I have been told I say, "owned" entirely too much.

    Bah. If only I could grapple to work.

  • same, but different (Score:5, Funny)

    by dynamo_mikey ( 218256 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:34AM (#11321627)
    Too much gaming definitely caused me problems, for example I find it hard to focus after several hours because my wife is yelling at me.
  • I keep on dreaming about the games during day and night and keep wondering I am one of the characters. Way too disturbing when you wake up from sleep and you are tired of all the dream gaming!!
  • Nothing quite like sizing random furniture to fit between other furniture, then expecting it to blink, bloop, and points to be added to my hud on the top right.

    Now, don't get me started about my dreams^H^H^H^H^H^Hnightmares.

    - shazow
    • I've long fallen victim to CS/MOH:** syndrom(looking for snipers, finding hiding places/exits) but only since I fully switched over to Linux have I become addicted to tetris(though the hexagon-based one). What' worrying for me is that when I get bored I start playing the game... in my head. Literally. I see the little blocks fall, move them around, and put them together. The little score-counter thing works too(though I doubt that I really get as high).

      • Re:Ah, the days of tetris (Score:5, Funny)

        by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:57AM (#11322056)
        If you want really scary I got bored one day and decided to get some good scores in Minesweeper.

        It took a couple of days and when I was done I saw the various number sequences in my sleep. I could play minesweeper in my head.

        Then I realised the truth. MSFT had control of my brain and was using it to upgrade minesweeper. A bit of tinfoil and a linux install and I am feeling much better now.
  • Yes... working 16 hour days at my last job, we would sit and play xbox (tony hawk 4) for half hour at a time...

    now being sleep deprived, over worked, and only having Tony Hawk 4 as an escape, on my walks home from work I would actually attempt to grind curbs (but I didn't have a skateboard)... resulting in some nice injury... I believe that is the definition of too much gaming... or is it too little intelligence... not sure...

  • Whenever I'm at the cinema, I always expect someone to jump out of the projectionist's window, blast a hole in the screen and run through it...

    -- Steve

  • Zerg in my sleep (Score:5, Funny)

    by sckeener ( 137243 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:36AM (#11321665)
    I can remember playing so much starcrack, that I couldn't close my eyes without seeing Zerg prancing around.

    Little zergs scratching at the door.
    Little zergs digging holes.
    little zergs racing across the landscape.

    It was wonderful.

    • Re:Zerg in my sleep (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zapp ( 201236 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:17PM (#11322392)
      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.

  • starting to become a fantasy on every commute when Crazy Taxi came out for the DreamCast. I looked at every traffic jam as an exercise in planning the best route, including a jaunt down the ravine behind my workplace to "drop off passengers" faster at work each morning.

  • After playing too much City of Heroes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bobartig ( 61456 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:36AM (#11321673)
    When I see a crowd of kids/ppl standing in a parking lot, I think about positioning for area attacks based on surrounding architecture and the shape of their group.

    I also marvel at how long it takes to get around cities without superspeed (basically the ability to run 60 mph all the time)

  • Good lord (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:36AM (#11321674) Homepage
    From the article:

    "I've been using the computer for so long, and command-Z works for undo in all the software programs," Hoffman said. "So whenever I find something in my life that I want to undo, I reach for the command-Z keys and I find it weird that it doesn't work."




    You need a fucking vacation. NOW.



    ~D
    • No, you need a vacation -- from slashdot. Come back when you're a nerd :P
    • > From the article:
      >>
      >> "I've been using the computer for so long, and command-Z works for undo in all the software programs," Hoffman said. "So whenever I find something in my life that I want to undo, I reach for the command-Z keys and I find it weird that it doesn't work."
      >
      > You need a fucking vacation. NOW.

      So you spend three weeks and 50,000 Simoleons setting up a vacation that would end with a menage-a-trois with you, your boss' wife and just one lousy goat.

      And then you fi

  • ...caused me to start ducking down behind hills whenever I walked behind them. It also made me really good at spotting human-shaped targets...I mean people.

  • Tetris attack (Score:4, Insightful)

    by UtucXul ( 658400 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:36AM (#11321677) Homepage
    Mostly it was Tetris Attack for the SNES for me. When I played a lot of that there were tiles in the bathroom that I kept rearanging in my head to make matches like in the game.

    We won't talk about what too much Goldeneye made me think.

  • Oh yes, it's for real. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vengeance ( 46019 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:36AM (#11321686)
    Too much Doom had me scared in the office.

    Too much Quake2 had me strafing around corners (still do this a bit).

    Too much Asheron's Call had me jumpy just from being outdoors (what was THAT? Oh, just a log, not a golem).

    Too much Liesure Suit Larry, and I... nevermind.

  • GTA3 (Score:2)

    by Garak ( 100517 )
    After playing many many hours of GTA3 I've found myself out sizing up cars, thinking I could go yank some guy out of it and take off. One day I was walking up the street and came across a car that looked really fast and I had to stop my self from going up and trying the doors.

    GTA3 and above have to be the worst, just because it simulates doing crimes in the real world. Most other games are modeled in a fake place, somewhere there is no real parallel to here in the real world.

    • Re:GTA3 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aixou ( 756713 )
      ++ This is something I've talked about with many of my friends. After playing a lot of GTA, almost all of my friends feel the same way -- they start sizing up cars and getting tempted to hop in a running car. We're all level headed people and we would never actually do it, but I can't imagine what those who are more easily influenced would do.

      This is one of the reason I call bullshit on anyone who says that videogames can't actually spawn violence, or that it's easy to entirely differentiate between vi

      • Re:GTA3 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:42PM (#11322741) Homepage
        This is one of the reason I call bullshit on anyone who says that videogames can't actually spawn violence, or that it's easy to entirely differentiate between videogames and real life. I'd like to hear more opinions on this.

        But it is easy to tell, as evidenced by you not stealing any cars. You might feel a GTA-inspired urge to size up the car and take the nice fast one so you can evade the cops(I do too), but you know that you are in reality and that the real-world consequences (not just legal for you, but the consequences for the one you steal the car from) stop you.

        The problem is not that reading/seeing/playing a game involving some concept may cause you to think about doing it in reality. The problem is the "more easily influenced" people who actually would forget about the barrier between reality and fantasy and act on the urges.

        If playing GTA can make you commit real-life crimes, then watching the History Channel can make you commit genocide, and either way you are a nutjob who should be locked away. That's just my opinion, anyway.

  • Black and white ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <slashdot AT monkelectric DOT com> on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:37AM (#11321699)
    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.

  • Dreams (Score:2)

    by GrEp ( 89884 )
    The problem I have when I play Civ3 to much is I have a hard time getting propper sleep. After three hours of gaming I can't get the map out of my head, which takes me for ever to get to sleep. When I do get to sleep I have fuzzy dreams about playing Civ3, and when I wake up I donot feel very rested.

    And yes... after played GTA3 for the first time I thought about obtaining the FBI car while driving. This was a one time thing and after another play session I was desesitized. Maybe the problem with some pe
    • When I play too much Civ3, it isn't that I dream about it, no. I dream about normal stuff, except that these dreams become TURN BASED! Trust me, this is weird enough to try to slow down playing civ3.
  • The Real World Doesn't have Respawn.
  • After getting heavily into Half Life 2, I started strafing around corners, wondering if there were headcrabs behind trash cans and cardboard boxes, and basically looking for objects that I could pick up and throw at people if I needed to!
  • Sounds like Nrik didn't participate in one of the past polls: When Do You Know You Play Too Many Video Games [slashdot.org]

  • WoW... (Score:5, Funny)

    by methangel ( 191461 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:40AM (#11321752)
    I know that after playing 6 hours of WoW and stopping at 4 a.m. I dream about levelling up and gaining items. The issue is, my mind believes that I HAVE gained levels and I DO have the new items. I am sadly mistaken when I play again.

    • Re:WoW... (Score:3, Funny)

      by mizhi ( 186984 )
      I've found after playing CoH intensively that I'll sometimes think I can just point at an object and interact with it.

      On related notes, when I've been coding intensively, I sometimes wish I had a debugger handy for real life situations.
  • You whipper snappers with yer new fangeled 3-D games. Try a game that repeats itself exactly the same way (with very little variation) like old school coin-ops. I remember sitting in the back of class working on my PacMan moves. For me, it was the audio of those games. Who could forget the PacMan 'death', the Galaga 'yellow ship tractor beam', the sound of the Defender ship blowing things up, or the relentlessness of Space Invaders.

    They still haunt me.

  • tetris, indeed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wintermute1000 ( 731750 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:41AM (#11321756)
    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.

  • Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:41AM (#11321758) Homepage
    This is honestly like almost any other phenomenon... If we do something enough, we start thinking of the world in those terms. If you do art, you begin to see things as an artist does... Colors, relationships of spaces, etc.

    By no means is this limited to gaming, and it's also what makes interactivity such a powerful tool for learning. Most people I know prefer to learn by doing. Doing in a properly engineered virtual world is a great way to prepare people for doing in the real world. That's what simulations are all about... And most games are simulations.

    ~D

    • Re:Of course... (Score:5, Funny)

      by OldSoldier ( 168889 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:54PM (#11322902)
      I agree completely. For myself, it isn't just limited to computer games. Many years ago when the Othello brand of Reversi came out my siblings and I played so many games back to back that both my brother and I suffered from the symptoms described.

      We both were in high school then, he was working at a grocery store... stacking fruit, when he saw apples next to oranges he thought he could put an orange on the other side and flip the apple over and it should become an orange. When I took naps on a couch with a pillow at my head, I felt, if someone put a pillow at my feet I should flip over and become a pillow.

  • Burn-out 3 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cexshun ( 770970 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:41AM (#11321769) Homepage
    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.

  • too much DDR (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Second_Derivative ( 257815 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:42AM (#11321777)
    I'd say it's pretty bad when you hear a techno tune, close your eyes and you can just see the arrows...
  • Do I need to kneel, or even lie on my stomach to make this shot?

    Ghost Recon can do this to you. Every person is a potential target. Too bad there's no IFF IRL...

  • Personal excesses: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Von Helmet ( 727753 )
    1. I played Theme Park fanatically when it first came out. Waiting for new rides and shops to be researched was agonising. You'd sit doing little routine things to pass the time, waiting for the little light bulb to appear in the top right hand corner of the screen. After playing that for hours at a time, I'd keep imagining I was seeing something flashing just out of sight.
    2. More recently, playing Splinter Cell makes you look out for shadows and places to hide. I used to catch myself trying to step as lightly

  • Postal.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AgentPhunk ( 571249 )
    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 ban
  • I knew I was playing too much Warcraft (custom map DOTA to be exact) when my 3 year old daughter came running down the isle at target holding a WC3 box yelling "Daddy, Daddy it's your game! Woot!"

    Yes sadly I no longer use that exclamation. My wife tells this story way too much.

  • About 15 years ago, I was a BIG tertis fan, playing it at any opportunity I could get on my amiga. Though it got to the point I saw, and played the game in my dreams while asleap.... aghhh.... and non of the pieces fited either.....At this point I decided to cut down a bit! :)

    • Re:Tetris (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MindStalker ( 22827 )
      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
  • I don't think this is always bad. I consider flight sims to be an enjoyable genre to play, and it has the side benefit of reinforcing the stuff I need to know when piloting a real plane. This of course assumes that the sim is accurate, and most of 'em are pretty good at that. The benefit is that I can get a taste of what a situation might be like without the risk of doing it for real. Like instrument flying. I'd rather practice on the game a few hundred times before I bet my ass in the seat of a Cessna.
  • I did about a 2 week crunch on the game, staying up late to complete it. I got stuck on one of the levels where you had to shoot out all the security cameras without being detected. Of course, this was time based so you had to do it quickly.

    Next morning I'm walking down the office hallway when I look up to see a security sensor and for a split second my body tensed up and I tried to react until my higher brain kicked in and went "whoa partner! This is *reality*"

    Gave me a new appreciation for practicing

  • one word: carmageddon (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jonastullus ( 530101 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:45AM (#11321841) Homepage
    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
  • All the replies so far seem to be talking about how the posters have been affected by gaming - so how come whenever a story comes up linking too much gaming with something bad we all jump on the "all sane people can keep games and reality separate" argument?
  • I no longer play FPS because I started dreaming about being chased by demons after playing too much Doom. I find these kinds of games so immersive that they affect the way my brain works.

    I remember a story that came out about somebody who did the "restore game" finger sequence after doing something embarrasing at work -- they had the same reaction I did -- time to give it up.

    I'm still addicted to games, I just avoid ones that change my brain in such a noticeable fashion.

  • Seems to me, when you get that engrossed in a game... it affects your thinking that much (as in the Tony Hawk example) then there has been an excellently crafted game. Tony Hawk did it to me, along with games like Need for Speed, CS and others. Doesn't mean I think about speeding, or shooting people IRL - but it did change how I looked at enviroments.

    Anyway, you don't have to spend a lot time gaming for an extremely well crafted game to change the way you look at the world. I think it just means the des
  • after reading some of the examples and realizing that I live in an area with three major colleges (housing who knows how many gamers) within 10 miles or so of each other... uhm, I'm not leaving the house anymore, and am instructing my wife to do the same.

    --
    There is no giant ball of tape - you have been lied to.
  • Most slashdotters (myself included) say that videogames do not cause violent behavior.

    Could a person seeing violent behaviour in a game have one of these videogame intrusions and do something they might not normally do?

    Or is it just the whackos who obsess over this shit? When I was in HS the original doom was the controversial game. We all played it, but only the weird ROTC kid with a gun rack in his truck (in california), the one who had that "im a crazy mofo" look in his eyes obsessed over it. Eve

  • The subject's a joke, but I've had dreams inspired of video games many times. I've been hooked more than once on games like MUDs, AC (Ashersons Call/Crack), Diablo II, Halflife, etc. I routinely have dreamed about these games. Killing Zombies in AC with my level 15 mage, or kill mephisto over and over again with my sorceress in Diablo.

    This shit gets into your head and it won't come out. I lost a serious relationship due to AC, and I just kept playing. The game made reality seem harsh compared, even though
  • Guns in specialists mod often times have laser sights that project a red dot on the walls. Every time I'd see a hint of bright red out of my peripheral vision in real life I'd tense and prepare to spin around, dive (in slow motion), and blast the sucker with my deagle.

    Not that I ever actually did that .... almost though...

  • Crimsonland... shudder... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @11:51AM (#11321946)
    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).

  • Zelda, Ocarina of Time. (Score:4, Funny)

    by mikael ( 484 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:05PM (#11322202)
    After playing Zelda, Ocarina of Time, I still have this desire to hit the large stones on the lawns in our campus with a large sledgehammer, just to see if there are any secret tunnels leading to quest characters.

    When my little cousins played Super Mario 64 first came out, they later visited an art museum, and wer tempted to try taking running jumps at large paintings to see if there were any secret entrances.

  • I know I play too much DDR when (Score:3, Funny)

    by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <prsn@kev.gmail@com> on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:06PM (#11322230)
    I start losing weight.

  • I once saw this guy at a mall (Score:3, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @12:26PM (#11322498)
    He was walking down a staircase, and before reaching the bottom, he jumped, landed in a low stance, looked behind him, looked forward, got back up and started walking again.

    I figured he played console games a little too much.

  • Columbine? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digidave ( 259925 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @01:12PM (#11323132)
    What's most interesting is that when a story is posted about somebody blaming a game company for some sort of crime, everyone here says "I've played GTA for 72 hours straight and never carjacked anyone!". Yet here we are and everyone's agreeing that the lines can get blurred, even momentarily.

    Is carrying out video game violence just the next logical step to what you all have experienced? You'll probably never reach that point, but what social or mental deficiency would you have to have before acting out a game becomes reality? Do we maybe start looking at Columbine and other tradegies and saying that maybe games to have some role in some violent acts.

    Most difficult of all, is if we can find a link, what do we do about it? Go back to NES-style graphics?

  • Chess (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CrazyWingman ( 683127 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @01:46PM (#11323572) Journal

    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.

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