Psychologists Claim Games Alter Personal Reality

Yoshemo

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Jun 23, 2009
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Earnest Cavalli said:
one of the 15-year-old respondents described once seeing health bars above the heads of real people.
Theres a big difference between having new, abnormal thoughts and hallucinating. Get that kid some help!
 

claymoreguy18

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Jan 3, 2011
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Sometimes after playing fallout for a while my mind goes into V.A.T.S mode. Also after playing something like call of duty I consistently look around for places I can use as cover. Its the same as books or movies though if you watch a horror flick you're going to see monsters around every corner. Its just one of those things the mind does to screw with you.
 

Avistew

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Jun 2, 2011
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It's not unique to gaming. When I was working at McDonald's, I kept thinking of everyone as customers, and after using my computer all day (not for gaming) I'm frustrated I can't use the "search" feature in my bedroom.
 

Pearwood

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Mar 24, 2010
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Tombaugh said:
I understand it well enough but the whole thing easily comes across as wrong which is why I dismissed it as such. Off the top of my head they could have tested against other similar mediums of entertainment such as movies or reading.
It just seems like the writer is just attempting to single out or prosecute, but to be fair I'm not sure if that was the researchers intentions or just the writer of the article.
I don't think it was that big a study, like I said it sounds like something someone did for their doctorate not a major study comparing all forms of media against the norm. I'd be surprised if there weren't similar papers on dissociative effects of TV, films, music, books, etc.
 
Feb 26, 2011
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Happens to me all the time, especially after playing Just Cause 2.

I'll be walking down the street, see a tall building and think 'I should really get up there'.

I've even raised my hand to fire my non-existant grappling hook several times before I realize I don't have one in Real Life. Then I spiral into depression. -_-
 

Couch Radish

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Mar 28, 2011
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I've had the Tetris Effect on me twice.

When I played Mirror's Edge for about 6 hours straight, at school I always thought of how I could climb onto the roof.

And when I played Thief, I'd always look for escape routes and avoid being spotted by cameras.
 

AngryMongoose

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Jan 18, 2010
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I was worried a few days ago when I was walking down the street looking at which cars would be worth stealing. I had been playing a lot of GTA 4. Not sure what my reaction would be to one I would consider worth it, 'coz no one on my street owns a lamborghini or a Subaru Impreza.
 

Von Strimmer

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Apr 17, 2011
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HMMM I've been playing an awful lot of bulletstorm recently... I suppose thats why I want to kick things into people and give it an interesting name. You all thought I was going to say I was going to rape someone... shame on you!
 

antipunt

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This happens to me from time to time, but :

1. I have to have played this game non-stop for many hours

and

2. the effect wears off after a couple of hours.

So really, as a young adult, it rarely ever happens to me anymore. Just not the perky kid I once was T___T
 

Beautiful End

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Feb 15, 2011
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Oh gawd. I am so tired of scientists and researches always trying to find something wrong with video games!

Yes, they can be addicting!
Yes, they can sometimes mess with your head!
Yes, there are retards out there who take video games one step too far!

NO, THEY ARE NOT THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL!

Pardon the caps but it's getting annoying now. What is their goal? To ban video games from existence? To rally people with pitchforks and torches and destroy them? This 'discovery' is irrelevant. This article seems like just another small attack. (Note that I hate the content, not the publisher or whatever)

I'll admit I've done that before. After playing Dragon Age for hours, I would then talk to my friends of family and I'd see a series of possible answers for each dialogue. After playing Need for Speed, I sometimes feel like a cop car is gonna come out of nowhere chasing me.
But come on, they're assuming all gamers are as dumb as fuck, pardon my French. In my case, I don't feel the need to put the pedal to the metal and crash against cars after playing NFS. I don't feel the need to grab a sword and campaign across the land in an effort to rally troops to destroy the world's evil. So if anything:
-The article is somewhat true.
-There's nothing wrong with that. I'd say about 1% of the people take it to the extreme.
-It happens with everything, from TV to movies to books. I've also felt like this after watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean in theaters or reading Harry Potter (Shut up, it's an example!).
 

Mendaceum

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Jan 18, 2011
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...Can I just go ahead an say: No shit, Sherlock?

I think it's been pretty damn well proven that any activity you do, and anything that happens to you alters your perception of reality, with the more frequent, or emotionally stirring the event, the greater the alteration.

Next up, water is wet.
 

Lightning Delight

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Apr 21, 2011
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I agree with this study completely. After beating Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, I kept looking at walls and ledges and thinking, "Yep. I could totally climb that."
 

Guestyman

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Nov 23, 2009
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This is hardly a gaming specific phenomenon, and TV Tropes has documented the Tetris Effect long before the Swedes got there. After reading books with archaic language for a lengthy period, I often talk like the characters. After watching "Jumper" I was sizing up the best places to teleport to to get home quickly. Kinda interesting that they're applying a scientific eye to it, but they're doing it with too narrow a focus, and coming to the game way too late. They seem happy enough to have 'discovered' that it happens, something we all already knew, and don't seem to have much to say about *why* it happens.
 

DanDeFool

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Aug 19, 2009
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And that's why little Jimmy Cratmer slaughtered his entire class after playing Bejeweled.

See, after playing Bejeweled for an entire weekend, he got to class and started perceiving all his classmates as different colored jewels. So he started shuffling them around in his head, but when he made a match and the jewels didn't disappear, well, let's just say he had to remedy that situation...

In all seriousness, I've experienced this effect myself. After playing Thief for a few hours, I would find myself wanting to stalk through the shadows so people wouldn't see me. It was weird.
 

TheTurtleMan

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Mar 2, 2010
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This actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. People are always being influenced by outside factors and experiences like advertising and movies so with a medium like video games, where one of the points is to be interactive, more influence should bleed through.

For instance, I started to think more about efficiency in what I carry around because of playing Fallout games and dealing with the weight limit. Although I've also considered the best random object around me that could take out a zombie so that might not be as practical in real life.
 

Rusty pumpkin

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Sep 25, 2009
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Well, glad to see this didn't take the well trod route of "video games are bad influences!".
Also, I can alter my personal reality at will, it's called having a imagination.

*What if it cures canine leukemia?
 

Hithlain

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Nov 25, 2008
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I can understand that. When I read books by different authors and I get really into them, I find that I think, talk, and write in that author's style for about a day or two after I stop reading. I can tell because one of my favorite authors has a really stream of consciousness style that just rambles and rambles; diary entries on days after reading those books tend to be rather... odd.

I can see how immersing yourself in a game could do close to the same thing.
 

BehattedWanderer

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Jun 24, 2009
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Oh, so you mean what happens after a stretch of Portal 2, and you notice and enumerate how many surfaces in your domicile are portalable?

Or how a four story building with some nice ledges and loose brickwork looks climbable after playing Assassin's Creed?

Or how the broken parts of a sidewalk are the equivalent of gaps in the world for 2D platformers?

How after a protracted session of Prototype, you have to wonder if you should eat people for their knowledge/have the urge to try and run up buildings and kick helicopters out of the sky?

Or how you could hang from a ledge and silently drop down like the goddam Batman after enough Arkham Asylum?

How about when a Guitar Hero song comes on, and you instinctively move your arms to the "holding a small plastic guitar" position, and see chromatic lines of notes and chords scrolling past on the ground before you? Does that count?

Maybe it manifests itself after playing Just Cause 2, and you know that you could jump out of your car down the highway, hookshoot to someone else's, surf atop it, shoot out someone else's tire to stop up the cops who aren't yet on your trail, throw the guy out of the car, and get away scott-free?

Still, it's nice to have a name for it, if only for casual conversations sake. "Aw man, I'm totally tripping on this Game Transference right now. Everything looks smaller than me, and I have to remember not to try and roll it up! Damn you Katamari!"
 

CargoHold

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Sep 16, 2009
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I know I'm probably not the only one to have jumped at the sight of a dude in a navy hoodie with the hood up. Too much Left 4 Dead for me.