A long, long time ago when Grand Theft Auto 3 was new, I played a 9 hour session without distractions. Immediately after this over indulgence was completed, my mind was completely optimized for real-world fastest path object retrievals. I had to do grocery shopping. No steps in my path were wasted. Nothing but the items I wanted to buy were even seen to me. In what usually takes 30-40 minutes, I completed in 17, with nothing forgotten.
My friend Dave Taylor (programmer on Doom / Doom 2 / Quake / Abuse) was famous for marathon gaming sessions when he was at id. He told me it almost killed him after a session because he was driving and saw what he thought was a Quake rocket ammo box and he instinctively swerved the car at speed to "pick it up", but it was in fact a concrete pylon securing a guardrail by a drop-off. He narrowly swerved back into the road.
On a lighter note, I played far too much GTA: Vice City on PS2 in college, to the point that when driving in real life I forgot to check my side and back mirrors at stop signs, and instead realized I was squeezing my middle fingers on the steering wheel instead of turning my head to look.
Even closer to the mark—I used to play Carmageddon with some of the engineers at Apple when work was wrapping up for the day. Yeah, you had to come down from that very quickly when you got into your actual car then to begin the commute home.
There are lots of other non-videogame related versions of this too! The one I'm probably most familiar with is Parkour Vision, where practicing parkour enough leads you to view the environment completely differently, seeing a kash vault here, a kong to precision there. It's quite enjoyable! I imagine skaters have a similar thing. From the little bit of skating that I did I mainly just got to appreciating smooth areas of road or path.
On the game side of things, the strongest I've ever got this was during/after playing The Witness. It's an incredible (and incredibly addictive) puzzle game that will have you seeing puzzles everywhere in the real world if you play it enough. The game even alludes to this effect in one of the endings!
Interesting, anecdotally I would say all my more serious gaming friends hit this at some point. But it takes serious consecutive hours in game.
Something interesting about VR gaming is the very heightened sense of spatial involvement. If I play a game on the screen I remember it as if I played it on a screen. But if I play in VR my instinct when reflecting on it is that I was there, in the game world. It can feel silly to talk about with people who don't play VR, but all the ways in which you remember experiences in the real world are the same. When you talk about it you can't disconnect them without just adding "in VR" to the end of everything. It's never that your character did the thing, it was you, you were there.
I've had the opportunity to drive on race tracks that exist both in VR and in real life and the spatial relationship is 1:1. So your brain is blending the two experiences seamlessly as you drive around, and you apply all the same spatial cues from VR onto the real world.
I also think VR takes this to the next level. In VR, for example, you can often move slightly through walls, since they are not there, so you can cut corners a bit. After long sessions on my meta quest, I sometimes get the idea that I can do this in real life as well, with predictable results.
I think this effect might not be limited to video games - I remember when I was learning 3D modelling and rendering a few decades ago I started to break down scenery in my mind automatically, a permanent "how would this be made or faked in a program if you were to do it".
I think excessive concentration on a new skill can just create that pattern in your mind, no matter what the source.
General lore is that if you're creating training sets for visual recognition you can make about 2000 judgements a day. I've occasionally done about twice that and found my visual system misbehaving.
From what I understand the tetris effect is not caused by the video game itself, but by playing it for an inordinate amount of time. The "tetris effect" has been there way before tetris, any monotonous activity done for an excessive amount of time will cause a tetris effect (i think a lot of people are familiar with hypnagogic hallucinations while falling asleep after driving all day, for example).
I think I disagree. I've had this phenomenon happen to me with a card game, 'Set' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(card_game)). I for sure did not play this game for an inordinate or excessive amount of time, yet I started to combine everyday objects around me to compose a 'set' in my mind. I think during the game you can just enter this hyperfocus state and try to be faster than your opponents; a 'skill' easily leaked to outside the game itself.
As a member of the western community of player who practice Tetris the Grand Master (a series of arcade version of Tetris that focus on speed) since its beginning in 2004-ish, I can attest that the Tetris effect happens when you're beginning to seriously play but then disappears relatively quickly. With well over 2000 hours of play across versions and counting, I don't have any of this effect.
The same can be said Bemani-style rhythm game (Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, ...): when listening to music I could imagine potential sheet music I could play in the games, but it's no longer the case (and I don't have clocked as many hours on it).
Video games can alter the perception of reality. TFA is about the "Tetris Effect", which is nothing new per se.
Perhaps the new elements is that studies confirm its existence, and that it could be leveraged to prevent or mitigate PTSD.
On a side note, this works even with chess. At some point I played Chess a lot, and I noticed I started to interpreting people's movements, behavior, intentions even, as chess piece moves and tactics. Must be weird for actual chess GMs.
Any experience can alter your perception of reality, it doens't change reality. That doesn't mean it can't be a problem that needs to be addressed. It can also be a benefit and help people experience situations that would be dangerous to experience in real life so they get the skills to deal with them without being in danger. Think airline pilots practicing airplane failures in a simulator. The professional airplane simulators are so detailed, it really looks and feels like being in a plane.
This is one reason I no longer enjoy driving simulation games as much since I started driving real cars. It feels like re-learning driving as my physics engine in my head need to adjust to the new physics each time.
Also quit playing PUBG because after a few hours I find myself processing my real environment as if I'm in the game, feeling like my instincts trigger to things that remind me something from the game.
Maybe it's like the way how people get adjusted to modified bicycles that turn to the other direction instead of the expected one or like those vision modifiers that turn the world upside down or looking back and after some surprisingly short time people start seeing normal again despite the modified optics.
IMHO its not that different from how our reality is skewed when spending too much time online, so neural networks are neural network no matter what the process I guess.
Yeah the mismatch with the inner ear and "seat of the pants" at they call it mismatch throws me off. It's such an important signal when I'm driving. I feel a driving sim weakens that neural connection.
Maybe a reverse of this (well, that's not quite right). I have had recurring dreams in the past of being in an enclosed space like in a mall or in the halls of a large college building where I can find no exit—just endless rooms, halls, etc. In the dreams it's kind of threatening but also kind of exciting: the endless possibilities. How I imagine Hong Kong, also, BTE. I've never been but would love to go there. Oh, and Kowloon City.)
This seems to have crept into the game, Glider (a game where you control a paper airplane through a long house), that I wrote over three decades ago. In playing some of the longer houses I start to get a little claustrophobic.
It could of course be a coincidence: the dreams, game design. It's also possible I am misremembering the period when I first had the dreams—perhaps they actually began after the first shareware version of the game.
I'd generalize it to digitalization of the world, especially since the free / unlimited bandwidth internet with high resolution content.
I personally am a little afraid because I now look at nature as if it was a screenshot to be looked from afar and then uploaded. It's a weird sensation that I'm not fully immersed in reality anymore and everything is just to be seen, shared and commented whereas before the web, reality was all you had to exist in, you had to touch, feel, play there was nothing else.
I wonder if anybody else ever had that state of mind.
ps:I often consider spending a month without any screen at all to try reset my brain.
I've been part of the crowd that said loud and proud that "no, video games aren't making you more violent, and aren't destroying your soul". But here we are with a whole list of people who report that it has had a negative influence on their driving etc.
Like everything else there’s obviously nuance in that discussion.
Is it harmful to have hyper-realistic, graphic depictions of violence fed into your brain for hours on end? What absolute moron would say “absolutely not” to that?
It’s ridiculous. It’s junk food for your brain. Yes, I like violent video games every now and then, I’m a well balanced adult. I enjoy in moderation.
Now take some kid who’s being pumped full of SSRIs since he was five years old because mommy and daddy didn’t want to spend time reading to him so they just shoved an iPad in his face. Is that “absolutely” the same calculation?
It doesn’t mean we need to legislate or get government involved in anything.
But, at least being honest about the nuance would be a good start. It has to be bad for some people. That has to be acknowledged.
I have had the experience of approaching or completing something potentially dangerous (merging on a busy street for example) and thinking I should “save” and sub consciously visualizing doing so internally. Very fleeting sensation and doesn’t happen consistently at all but it’s interesting when I notice it.
I believe it. After playing the game crackdown for a week or so, I started to constantly map out how to get up the outside of apartment buildings near me. Mirrors edge had a similar effect on me too.
Jonathan Blow's The Witness is a notable example (minor spoiler alert)! Past a certain point in the game, it becomes REALLY challenging to just walk through the IRL woods without over-concentrating on things.
Great point! After playing that game I and a few friends were trading real-world photos of spots where we'd found examples of the in-game thing you're talking about.
I've been an avid gamer my entire life -- and I have never experienced anything like the Tetris effect (or GTP). Not even close, and I play a lot of games (averaging 20-30 hours a week sometimes).
It's interesting because Tetris is a very simple game but revolving around logic and pattern based mechanics. So I can see how it can reinforce or enhance the brain through its own nature, without being some sort of cheat or gift.
Yeah the brain is a bit of an extrapolation machine isn't it. Try running on a treadmill for half an hour and quickly stop and see what happens with your vision :)
Some friends of mine who loved playing Counter Strike became somewhat agoraphobic, and stated looking for places a sniper could be hidden every time they were in open spaces.
At least it’s somewhat useful- you never know when a sniper will be after you.
Playing GTA V has made me more aware of car brands and suspension heights for a bit afterward, from hunting down specific rare cars in-game and customizing them. Normally I have approximately zero interest in cars and I don't drive, so it was pretty noticeable.
Not really what the article is talking about but once I was playing a shooter called Americas Army and there was a popular map called Bridge Crossing which is a bridge over a huge alpine canyon, I was camped on the edge behind a pylon and needed to cough up a loogie so I just turned my head and spat over the side. Couple of minutes later I realised I had in fact not spat off the bridge, but on my curtains back in real life
Well of course. This may not be exactly what the article is about, but regarding the general sentiment as per the title: For me at least, games give you a different world to escape to, same with any good movies, shows, books, and even music.
It was a big help for me growing up in a place where actual reality wasn't that exciting or even nice at all.
I wonder where the limit is. If I theoretically played a game in virtual reality for a year, with bodily functions managed by tubes and whatnot, would I be at Tom Hanks in Mazes and Monsters level delusion once I am removed from it?
I don't think this is specific to gaming, whatever new sport or feeling I experience, I "hallucinate" while trying to sleep.
Whenever I go skiing, the first few days I'll feel myself sliding while in my bed, the exact same feeling as on snow.
On the rare occasions I traveled by boat, I could still feel myself rocking in my bed later, while no longer at sea.
And just a few days ago, I picked up Elden Ring (a video game). That same evening after "only" 2 hours of play I could still see swords slashing, giant monsters leaping at me, and me instinctively rolling around to dodge that.
I just think this is normal, and part of the brain rewiring itself to be better at that task. Indeed, my second days of skiing/gaming are way better than the first. Obviously it could be problematic if this process happened to me in the street.
Anecdotal story:
A long, long time ago when Grand Theft Auto 3 was new, I played a 9 hour session without distractions. Immediately after this over indulgence was completed, my mind was completely optimized for real-world fastest path object retrievals. I had to do grocery shopping. No steps in my path were wasted. Nothing but the items I wanted to buy were even seen to me. In what usually takes 30-40 minutes, I completed in 17, with nothing forgotten.
My friend Dave Taylor (programmer on Doom / Doom 2 / Quake / Abuse) was famous for marathon gaming sessions when he was at id. He told me it almost killed him after a session because he was driving and saw what he thought was a Quake rocket ammo box and he instinctively swerved the car at speed to "pick it up", but it was in fact a concrete pylon securing a guardrail by a drop-off. He narrowly swerved back into the road.
On a lighter note, I played far too much GTA: Vice City on PS2 in college, to the point that when driving in real life I forgot to check my side and back mirrors at stop signs, and instead realized I was squeezing my middle fingers on the steering wheel instead of turning my head to look.
Even closer to the mark—I used to play Carmageddon with some of the engineers at Apple when work was wrapping up for the day. Yeah, you had to come down from that very quickly when you got into your actual car then to begin the commute home.
There are lots of other non-videogame related versions of this too! The one I'm probably most familiar with is Parkour Vision, where practicing parkour enough leads you to view the environment completely differently, seeing a kash vault here, a kong to precision there. It's quite enjoyable! I imagine skaters have a similar thing. From the little bit of skating that I did I mainly just got to appreciating smooth areas of road or path.
On the game side of things, the strongest I've ever got this was during/after playing The Witness. It's an incredible (and incredibly addictive) puzzle game that will have you seeing puzzles everywhere in the real world if you play it enough. The game even alludes to this effect in one of the endings!
Interesting, anecdotally I would say all my more serious gaming friends hit this at some point. But it takes serious consecutive hours in game.
Something interesting about VR gaming is the very heightened sense of spatial involvement. If I play a game on the screen I remember it as if I played it on a screen. But if I play in VR my instinct when reflecting on it is that I was there, in the game world. It can feel silly to talk about with people who don't play VR, but all the ways in which you remember experiences in the real world are the same. When you talk about it you can't disconnect them without just adding "in VR" to the end of everything. It's never that your character did the thing, it was you, you were there.
I've had the opportunity to drive on race tracks that exist both in VR and in real life and the spatial relationship is 1:1. So your brain is blending the two experiences seamlessly as you drive around, and you apply all the same spatial cues from VR onto the real world.
I also think VR takes this to the next level. In VR, for example, you can often move slightly through walls, since they are not there, so you can cut corners a bit. After long sessions on my meta quest, I sometimes get the idea that I can do this in real life as well, with predictable results.
This reminds me that I need to try out Subnautica in VR.
I think this effect might not be limited to video games - I remember when I was learning 3D modelling and rendering a few decades ago I started to break down scenery in my mind automatically, a permanent "how would this be made or faked in a program if you were to do it".
I think excessive concentration on a new skill can just create that pattern in your mind, no matter what the source.
General lore is that if you're creating training sets for visual recognition you can make about 2000 judgements a day. I've occasionally done about twice that and found my visual system misbehaving.
From what I understand the tetris effect is not caused by the video game itself, but by playing it for an inordinate amount of time. The "tetris effect" has been there way before tetris, any monotonous activity done for an excessive amount of time will cause a tetris effect (i think a lot of people are familiar with hypnagogic hallucinations while falling asleep after driving all day, for example).
> playing it for an inordinate amount of time
I think I disagree. I've had this phenomenon happen to me with a card game, 'Set' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(card_game)). I for sure did not play this game for an inordinate or excessive amount of time, yet I started to combine everyday objects around me to compose a 'set' in my mind. I think during the game you can just enter this hyperfocus state and try to be faster than your opponents; a 'skill' easily leaked to outside the game itself.
As a member of the western community of player who practice Tetris the Grand Master (a series of arcade version of Tetris that focus on speed) since its beginning in 2004-ish, I can attest that the Tetris effect happens when you're beginning to seriously play but then disappears relatively quickly. With well over 2000 hours of play across versions and counting, I don't have any of this effect.
The same can be said Bemani-style rhythm game (Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, ...): when listening to music I could imagine potential sheet music I could play in the games, but it's no longer the case (and I don't have clocked as many hours on it).
Sure, factory work can be the same.
Video games can alter the perception of reality. TFA is about the "Tetris Effect", which is nothing new per se.
Perhaps the new elements is that studies confirm its existence, and that it could be leveraged to prevent or mitigate PTSD.
On a side note, this works even with chess. At some point I played Chess a lot, and I noticed I started to interpreting people's movements, behavior, intentions even, as chess piece moves and tactics. Must be weird for actual chess GMs.
Any experience can alter your perception of reality, it doens't change reality. That doesn't mean it can't be a problem that needs to be addressed. It can also be a benefit and help people experience situations that would be dangerous to experience in real life so they get the skills to deal with them without being in danger. Think airline pilots practicing airplane failures in a simulator. The professional airplane simulators are so detailed, it really looks and feels like being in a plane.
This is one reason I no longer enjoy driving simulation games as much since I started driving real cars. It feels like re-learning driving as my physics engine in my head need to adjust to the new physics each time.
Also quit playing PUBG because after a few hours I find myself processing my real environment as if I'm in the game, feeling like my instincts trigger to things that remind me something from the game.
Maybe it's like the way how people get adjusted to modified bicycles that turn to the other direction instead of the expected one or like those vision modifiers that turn the world upside down or looking back and after some surprisingly short time people start seeing normal again despite the modified optics.
IMHO its not that different from how our reality is skewed when spending too much time online, so neural networks are neural network no matter what the process I guess.
Yeah the mismatch with the inner ear and "seat of the pants" at they call it mismatch throws me off. It's such an important signal when I'm driving. I feel a driving sim weakens that neural connection.
Maybe a reverse of this (well, that's not quite right). I have had recurring dreams in the past of being in an enclosed space like in a mall or in the halls of a large college building where I can find no exit—just endless rooms, halls, etc. In the dreams it's kind of threatening but also kind of exciting: the endless possibilities. How I imagine Hong Kong, also, BTE. I've never been but would love to go there. Oh, and Kowloon City.)
This seems to have crept into the game, Glider (a game where you control a paper airplane through a long house), that I wrote over three decades ago. In playing some of the longer houses I start to get a little claustrophobic.
It could of course be a coincidence: the dreams, game design. It's also possible I am misremembering the period when I first had the dreams—perhaps they actually began after the first shareware version of the game.
> I've never been but would love to go there. Oh, and Kowloon City
I have some unfortunate news for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City_Park
Yeah, sorry, I know it is no more. I see how I joined that with Hong Kong though to make it sound like I want to visit it. :-)
Have you ever played the bizarro dungeon RPG "Kowloon's Gate"? Navigating through that madness might be right up your alley.
I'd generalize it to digitalization of the world, especially since the free / unlimited bandwidth internet with high resolution content.
I personally am a little afraid because I now look at nature as if it was a screenshot to be looked from afar and then uploaded. It's a weird sensation that I'm not fully immersed in reality anymore and everything is just to be seen, shared and commented whereas before the web, reality was all you had to exist in, you had to touch, feel, play there was nothing else.
I wonder if anybody else ever had that state of mind.
ps:I often consider spending a month without any screen at all to try reset my brain.
Interesting reading the comments in this thread.
I've been part of the crowd that said loud and proud that "no, video games aren't making you more violent, and aren't destroying your soul". But here we are with a whole list of people who report that it has had a negative influence on their driving etc.
Like everything else there’s obviously nuance in that discussion.
Is it harmful to have hyper-realistic, graphic depictions of violence fed into your brain for hours on end? What absolute moron would say “absolutely not” to that?
It’s ridiculous. It’s junk food for your brain. Yes, I like violent video games every now and then, I’m a well balanced adult. I enjoy in moderation.
Now take some kid who’s being pumped full of SSRIs since he was five years old because mommy and daddy didn’t want to spend time reading to him so they just shoved an iPad in his face. Is that “absolutely” the same calculation?
It doesn’t mean we need to legislate or get government involved in anything.
But, at least being honest about the nuance would be a good start. It has to be bad for some people. That has to be acknowledged.
I have had the experience of approaching or completing something potentially dangerous (merging on a busy street for example) and thinking I should “save” and sub consciously visualizing doing so internally. Very fleeting sensation and doesn’t happen consistently at all but it’s interesting when I notice it.
A similar thing happened to me, not with a video game, but with chess!
Started seeing a chessboard overlayed everywhere, and thinking what the next move for me and other "game objects" would be.
This was after just getting into chess and playing it many times a day, almost every day.
It was a very weird feeling. Luckily, it passed after a while. I stopped playing chess after a while too, and kinda been avoiding it since.
I believe it. After playing the game crackdown for a week or so, I started to constantly map out how to get up the outside of apartment buildings near me. Mirrors edge had a similar effect on me too.
Clearly the solution is to build more captcha style games of games to harvest all that brainpower.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/19/gamers-succeed-wh...
Jonathan Blow's The Witness is a notable example (minor spoiler alert)! Past a certain point in the game, it becomes REALLY challenging to just walk through the IRL woods without over-concentrating on things.
Great point! After playing that game I and a few friends were trading real-world photos of spots where we'd found examples of the in-game thing you're talking about.
I've been an avid gamer my entire life -- and I have never experienced anything like the Tetris effect (or GTP). Not even close, and I play a lot of games (averaging 20-30 hours a week sometimes).
It's interesting because Tetris is a very simple game but revolving around logic and pattern based mechanics. So I can see how it can reinforce or enhance the brain through its own nature, without being some sort of cheat or gift.
Yeah the brain is a bit of an extrapolation machine isn't it. Try running on a treadmill for half an hour and quickly stop and see what happens with your vision :)
Or watch the full credits scroll by after a movie. Once they stop, the whole world scrolls in the opposite direction.
It seems like the visual cortex is especially quick at adapting to patterns and needs a second to "unlearn" again.
I hear stories of hallucinating productivity software, cad monkeys seeing construction lines, deconstructing reality in render buffers.
For me it was Rainbow Six Siege. I started heavily focusing on sight lines in every room I was. It was very unpleasant and I soon stopped playing.
Some friends of mine who loved playing Counter Strike became somewhat agoraphobic, and stated looking for places a sniper could be hidden every time they were in open spaces.
At least it’s somewhat useful- you never know when a sniper will be after you.
Ever felt the impulse to steal a car after playing GTA?
Playing GTA V has made me more aware of car brands and suspension heights for a bit afterward, from hunting down specific rare cars in-game and customizing them. Normally I have approximately zero interest in cars and I don't drive, so it was pretty noticeable.
I'm now reconsidering whether I should play Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.
Not really what the article is talking about but once I was playing a shooter called Americas Army and there was a popular map called Bridge Crossing which is a bridge over a huge alpine canyon, I was camped on the edge behind a pylon and needed to cough up a loogie so I just turned my head and spat over the side. Couple of minutes later I realised I had in fact not spat off the bridge, but on my curtains back in real life
Well of course. This may not be exactly what the article is about, but regarding the general sentiment as per the title: For me at least, games give you a different world to escape to, same with any good movies, shows, books, and even music.
It was a big help for me growing up in a place where actual reality wasn't that exciting or even nice at all.
interesting. sounds a lot like something i experienced for a long time, where i was unable to differenciate between dreams and reality
the photo of the gameboy playing tetris in this article is so iconic. I can feel the gameboy in my hands right now.
I wonder where the limit is. If I theoretically played a game in virtual reality for a year, with bodily functions managed by tubes and whatnot, would I be at Tom Hanks in Mazes and Monsters level delusion once I am removed from it?
I don't think this is specific to gaming, whatever new sport or feeling I experience, I "hallucinate" while trying to sleep.
Whenever I go skiing, the first few days I'll feel myself sliding while in my bed, the exact same feeling as on snow.
On the rare occasions I traveled by boat, I could still feel myself rocking in my bed later, while no longer at sea.
And just a few days ago, I picked up Elden Ring (a video game). That same evening after "only" 2 hours of play I could still see swords slashing, giant monsters leaping at me, and me instinctively rolling around to dodge that.
I just think this is normal, and part of the brain rewiring itself to be better at that task. Indeed, my second days of skiing/gaming are way better than the first. Obviously it could be problematic if this process happened to me in the street.