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March 28, 2024, 11:09:30 PM

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Gaming bleeding into real life

Started by Neil, November 27, 2010, 10:47:56 PM

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Neil

Been playing a fair bit of Undead Overrun again this week, and was playing hours of it this evening with Big Jack and Vega.  Then I went out for a mooch, saw a bunch of youths standing on a hill, and thought to myself "hmm,  they're gathered together tightly enough that I could take most of them out with a stick of dynamite."  Thing is, it wasn't a flight of fancy, it was my subconcious still playing Read Dead Redemption, and trying to help me out. 

This ever happen to you?  I know it's happened at least once before, after an extended gaming session...  trying to press a bumper button to look behind me, or something.

Mister Six

Yep - for ages after I played Just Cause 2, every time I saw a big pylon thing I'd get the urge to run up and throw C4 on it. Particularly annoying when I lived in the UAE as camping in the desert meant there was always at least one on the horizon.

pk1yen

After a long session of Halo Reach on Halloween, we all walked over to a house party, and on the way, some unmitigated cunts decided to throw a big firecracker or something at us -- which (while it was fizzing) sent my brain into "fuck, grenade" mode, and I did a remarkably fast sidestep out of the way to the right, while spinning 60 degrees to my left, and continued to walk speedily in the same direction away from the blast.

Then I realised there was no accessible zoom button. If I had a rifle I'd have headshot the fuckers for sure.

I was so glad I don't have a car when I played GTA.

Surely everyone has had the Tetris dreams and seen the patterns in random pieces of street.

Viero_Berlotti

There was a Japanese puzzle game called Hexcite on the Gameboy that was like a cross between chess, tetris and poker. I got a bit obsessed with it and after a few months, could beat the game at Grandmaster level. I'd fall asleep at night and still be playing the game in my mind as I was dreaming, and I'd approach any decisions in my life as if they were a move in Hexcite.

I get this kind of thing with any game I become obsessed with. I remember the first three Splinter Cell games on the X-Box. I'd try to play them through on a purist stealth level, minimal fatalities and zero enemy detection. Again I'd still be playing them in my sleep for weeks after, and I'd view every day situations as if I was Sam Fisher trying to sneak across a heavily armed courtyard to retrieve some vital data from a terrorist network.

If I was to play amateur psychologist for a second I'd suggest it was a quite common occurrence, when the obsessive logic part of the brain plays a one-two with the imagination and gets caught in a loop.

HappyTree

When I spent a lot of time in the original Doom level editor I'd look at real buildings and my mind would work out the code for making a wall like that in the game. Now I look at buildings and from time to time imagine how easy it would be to bounce up them and use ledges to hang onto like in Crackdown.

The Mega64 guy doing Shenmue is hilarious :-D

Mega64: Shenmue

Puffin Chunks

I found Mirror's Edge to be a nightmare for this. When I was playing it intensively, I would step out into real life and if I saw red pipes or platforms, my mind instantly started calculating how I could use it to vault over to another part of the building and traverse on to the rooftop. I managed to stop myself actually doing anything (I would inevitably have injured myself quite badly), but the urge to actually try to do something I clearly wasn't physically capable of was quite strong. On my way to work I pass two red box-like things of increasing height, which lead up to a ventilation unit, looking exactly like the units in Mirror's Edge... even now, I still calculate how few jumps I could do it in.

weekender

Whenever I'm in a car having played Mario Kart a short while beforehand, I want to take out all the other drivers with shells, bananas etc.

Whenever I sense someone might not be telling me the whole truth, I quiff my hair, point at them and yell "OBJECTION!" after I've been playing Kirby's Fun Land.

Angst in my Pants

It's quite scary though, isn't it?  I play Zuma's Revenge on my phone during the commute home, and when I close my eyes at night I see the coloured balls scrolling along. 

There's a great poem by Neil Gaiman called "Virus" about this.

chand

I often find myself looking at waist/chest-high walls and mentally marking them down as potential cover spots. Also there's a car park near me that I cut through which has a CCTV camera, my Metal Gear training encourages me to walk right underneath it to stay out of its view.

Little Hoover

Quote from: Puffin Chunks on November 28, 2010, 02:35:20 AM
I found Mirror's Edge to be a nightmare for this. When I was playing it intensively, I would step out into real life and if I saw red pipes or platforms, my mind instantly started calculating how I could use it to vault over to another part of the building and traverse on to the rooftop. I managed to stop myself actually doing anything (I would inevitably have injured myself quite badly), but the urge to actually try to do something I clearly wasn't physically capable of was quite strong. On my way to work I pass two red box-like things of increasing height, which lead up to a ventilation unit, looking exactly like the units in Mirror's Edge... even now, I still calculate how few jumps I could do it in.

Yes I'd always think like this, even before Mirror's edge because of Tomb Raider games moving into more urban areas. I'm slightly worried about ever getting a drivers license, because my whole life I've been trained by games to drive recklessly fast, without having to worry about the consequences.

Big Jack McBastard

I remember being out at a pub with my folks just post-dinner and an air ambulance landed over the street from us (dropping someone off at the hospital there), being knee deep in GTA IV at the time I was at once totally unfazed by it and yet mildly concerned a SWAT team would come piling out of it looking for a ruck.

Snippets of Fallout 3/NV are making their way into my dreams too, not specific events but the computer terminals and knackered industrial places, sewers, dark metallic vault corridors and the like are cropping up. I'm not complaining, they can make for some memorable nights.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I can rarely go for a walk in the countryside without imagining a team of grunts coming over the brow of a hill with an Elite being all clever in the background.

FIND COVER

CROUCH

GROUP THEM TOGETHER

GRENADE

BANG

PISTOL SCOPE

ELITE HEADSHOT

BYE BYE INVISIBLE MADE UP COMPUTER ALIENS IN THE PEAK DISTRICT

Maybe this is a bit old school and low-res but I find my Patience/Solitaire approach always popping into me mind in the rest of life, it's like a primer for a basic life attitude - unfortunately I didn't realise when I was young, that's why I'm home playing this classic Billy No Mates game* a third of the day. Yes, the computerised card game. What more could you want from a game though.

*using Linux, with all that entails...

madhair60

Back when I was playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 all the time, I used to visualise skating "lines" in the places I would go.  Like, "I could grind that and kickflip onto that, manual to that, keep a combo going".

Also, I used to (and sometimes still do), on car journeys through cities, look out of the window and imagine a little man acrobatically leaping across the buildings, collecting coins.

Treguard of Dunshelm

I used to find after playing Metroid Prime that I would try to lock onto things as if I was still in the game.

I don't drive, but if I'm in a car after playing a driving game for a long time I mentally try to get the braking points. And probably like many people I've felt I could carjack someone and get away with it after playing GTA.

I've been playing Dwarf Fortress a lot recently after SNG started a thread about it a while back, and often see dwarves running around when I close my eyes. I also spend a lot of time thinking about streamlining steel production when I should be working.

Zetetic

I like to think that my constant attempts to work out how buildings and streets would be torn apart if a warzone can be blamed upon a combination of Men of War and countless FPSs.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I am sometimes tempted to think that if enough handymen stand in the same place they will eventually walk around in a loop for the rest of their lives.

Cold Meat Platter

Quote from: Big Jack McBastard on November 28, 2010, 04:17:05 PMSnippets of Fallout 3/NV are making their way into my dreams too, not specific events but the computer terminals and knackered industrial places, sewers, dark metallic vault corridors and the like are cropping up. I'm not complaining, they can make for some memorable nights.

I'm getting exactly this, although my dreams often have a post-apocalyptic feel to them anyway. I'm forever being chased from place to place by aliens/men/things/concepts through vaguely familiar shitscapes and I usually have to make a convoluted journey using public transport at some point.

While being obsessed by goldeneye in the late 90s (I even used the two-controller setup) i used to see red targeting reticules appear on things, especially security cameras.
Oh, and still, when buzzed by a seagull I instinctively think "FUCKING CLIFF RACER CUNTS"

VegaLA

I do have to check myself from looting when i'm in the shopping mall. I think 'Dead Rising' is to blame for that mind... but wouldn't like to say for sure.

Also, the urge to kill Hookers after a session in my car so I can get my money back washes over me, but i'm not the type to upset the law so.

Jack Shaftoe

I reckon I could go all the way from Chiswick to Kensington in a more or less straight line without touching the ground, leaping from building to building, in the style of Crackdown. If I wanted.

mycroft

I can't walk past a church spire without figuring out how I'd climb to the top to synchronise the viewpoint on the Assassin's Creed map. I'd climb 'em too, if there were handy hay carts at the bottom.

PAGATRON

I pass this building to and from work on the bus...

Strata Tower, London.


And it always remind me of this building.

Half-Life 2 Citadel, City 17.

Zetetic

Curiously enough there's a multi-storey car park in Hampshire that's forever one-and-the-same as a multi-storey car park in Half-Life 2: Episode 1 to me. I won't post images, but from the inside they both look very much like multi-story car parks[nb]You've probably seen one.[/nb].

Quote from: Little Hoover on November 28, 2010, 01:21:27 PM
Yes I'd always think like this, even before Mirror's edge because of Tomb Raider games moving into more urban areas. I'm slightly worried about ever getting a drivers license, because my whole life I've been trained by games to drive recklessly fast, without having to worry about the consequences.

You'll be fine. Driving a real car is nothing like driving in a computer game, even on a mega-sim like iRacing with a force wheel, bucket seat and multiple screens.

The sense of speed, increased visibility and the feedback from the car tells you a hell of a lot more than in a game where feedback is 90% visual, 5% generic vibration and 5% sound.

Why I Hate Tables

Since playing Silent Hill radio static startles me to a stupid degree. On one occasion I was listening to an old John Peel show while walking through early morning fog and looked around frantically. There was nothing there, obviously, other than a creeping shame.

bitesize

Quote from: Little Hoover on November 28, 2010, 01:21:27 PM
I'm slightly worried about ever getting a drivers license, because my whole life I've been trained by games to drive recklessly fast, without having to worry about the consequences.

it's Burnout 3 that was the worst offender for this, for me. cos it's all about taking other cars down, the minute i got behind the wheel and in traffic i'd start thinking "just nudge that guy out the way, over the other side of the road to get some more boost, and i'm away!". dangerous...


Consignia

I'll admit a momentary lapse of judgement in my driving theory test casued by excessive Crazy Taxi caused me to fail because I said to slow down quickly "Shift into Reverse".

I also when up the wrong side of the road during a lesson after playing GTA 3 and being used to American side driving.

samadriel

Once when I was drawing something, I reached to the upper-left of the sketchpad to physically hit 'Edit/Undo' (I think the lack of keyboard in front of me stopped me from trying to 'ctrl-Z'); that strikes me as being two brain-wrongs at once.