Consensual Hallucination

September 26, 2011 7:36 PM

Every gamer knows that strange feeling when videogames start bleeding into the real world. Some call it the Tetris Effect (Wiki entry), but a new study calls it 'Game Transfer Phenomena'. Sally Adee argues that this property, which she calls 'everting', could pave the way for a new integration with the Internet and the physical world. (This has nothing to do with this Eversion)
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn (115 comments total)

I remember when I stepped off the boat in Honduras, fresh from playing Far Cry and Crysis. I had something akin to PTSD for a few minutes I think, and the urge to find cover.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:38 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

Rock Paper Shotgun just covered this too.

I've assigned point values to cars, and I tend to dream about videogames I'm interested in.

I too look for save points in life.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:41 PM on September 26, 2011

Mm, most interesting.

*Post to Metafilter: +250 lifetime happiness! Do-diddly-de-daddly-daaa*
posted by Kandarp Von Bontee at 7:51 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Bring back L.P. Hatecraft!
posted by grobstein at 7:51 PM on September 26, 2011

Somewhat similarly, before I visited San Francisco for the first time in real life I had spent countless hours in the virtual SF in the Grand Theft Auto videogame. So I would turn a corner and feel absolutely sure that I had been there before, but it was only my recollection of playing the game (although it felt like traces of a previous life, given how immersive the game was). Freaky.
posted by chinston at 7:51 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I am not a gamer by any means, but I did go through a rather rabid Katamari Damacy phase. A week or two into it, I started thinking "you could just roll that up" rather regularly while driving (where "that" was some object smaller than my car). I am glad there's a word for this bizarre experience. It's just too bad "everting" is the word.
posted by /\/\/\/ at 7:55 PM on September 26, 2011 [11 favorites]

As a younger man, I played tetris once for about fifteen consecutive hours and then almost had a psychotic break when I went to the can and the tile floor started shifting and moving into place. It was three months before I could look at a gridded surface and not see it move on its own.

These days, I can barely look at a concrete wall without hearing Cave Johnson saying "Portal here, portal there, look at this baby go!"

So, yeah. I don't know if I want that to be a routine thing.
posted by mhoye at 7:59 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

Oh, yeah, and protip: if you feel like you need to cook something right after playing God Of War, just relax. Give it a minute.
posted by mhoye at 8:01 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

Wonder if tetris was particularly prone to lead to it. I had quite a serious case back in my tetrinet days, not just seeing the blocks falling when you closed your eyes, but the dreams as well.

Had/have rather unpleasant variants of it these days after long stints programming (complex HMVC stuff where you have to keep masses of inter-relations in mind, including occasional deep dives into the framework source code to see why it isn't doing what the docs say it should), not so much visual or expectant as with games, but more a mental variant of sleep paralysis. Where in the dream/hypnagogic state you have this problem to solve and it proves intractable, and recurses, faster and faster, and then it locks and freezes, and you feel like you, as an entity, are just going to STOP.

Still, at least the money's shit :D
posted by titus-g at 8:08 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I once got this effect from playing too much cards (namely Spit) so I guess that means that my real life was bleeding into my physical life? Or vice versa.
posted by hydrobatidae at 8:12 PM on September 26, 2011

I was using my finger to doodle in the condensation of a soda can once. I was reaching a part that required some more delicate changes. My finger touched the can too firmly, and the "doodle" was too dark in that area as a result. I thought at the can, "Edit-Fade Brush-50% opacity" but nothing happened.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:16 PM on September 26, 2011 [5 favorites]

You know what? That sounds pretty awful.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 8:22 PM on September 26, 2011

Portal has an uncanny ability to warp real-world perception this way. Every single concrete wall I saw for months after buying Portal (and then again, Portal 2) triggered a little part of my brain that saw it as a place to shoot an orange or blue portal. There is a forty-story building in Midtown West that has windowless concrete exterior walls only on the uppermost floors, and of course I spent way too long imagining where I could fling myself with that kind of momentum.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:24 PM on September 26, 2011

Also:

Using the car remote to try and open the front door of the house
Looking for the search function on (paper) books
Visualising these points as wolf based macros to post on tumblr as I write them.
posted by titus-g at 8:26 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I find myself getting really twitchy around movement after playing FPS games a little too much.
posted by yeloson at 8:26 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Just Cause 2 is making me want to take up base jumping and swimming.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:28 PM on September 26, 2011

I played so much GTA 3 in 2002 that after a sleepless night I swear I could see a blue arrow flashing above the nearest car.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:28 PM on September 26, 2011

Oh and this was a villain's 'power' on one episode of Misfits.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:28 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The first time I can remember this happening to me is feeling the urge to shoot trash cans and make them explode after countless hours of Doom. Later, I wanted to grind on rails after Tony Hawk 2. Which is weird because that's actually something I potentially could do in real life... but it just wouldn't have been the same.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 8:32 PM on September 26, 2011

titus-g's comment is spot on. I get this the worst from programming, or looking at too many maps or diagram. It's frequently kept me from falling asleep when my mind gets stuck on some endlessly looping problem in a half-awake state. I usually have to get up and walk around to escape it.
posted by zvs at 8:33 PM on September 26, 2011

After staying up all night playing GTA on a Playstation, I went out to meet a friend for lunch. As I walked past some kind of ridiculous yellow sportscar, I found myself thinking, "Triangle. Triangle."

I spent the next week with a strange urge to joy ride in every horrible, mid-life crisis car I encountered.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 8:34 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've definitely had some weird moments when I'm driving after a marathon Burnout Paradise session. "No, I really shouldn't try to flatspin off that ramp." "No, I really shouldn't floor it and see how many oncoming near misses I can get."
posted by kmz at 8:35 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I used to have this experience while driving in the winter, I'd have flashes of the winter scenes in Carmageddon.

Somewhat similarly, before I visited San Francisco for the first time in real life I had spent countless hours in the virtual SF in the Grand Theft Auto videogame. So I would turn a corner and feel absolutely sure that I had been there before, but it was only my recollection of playing the game..

Oh it could be worse. I lived in an area of downtown LA that was used frequently as a film location. So I could go see a movie like Repo Man, and be shocked to see the scenes not just of my neighborhood, but of what happened in my neighborhood when they were filming it a few months ago. And then I go home from the theater and recognize scenes from the movie, except it's in front of my house. Hey that's where he dumped the body on the bus bench. But there's never been a bus bench there. That stuff will drive you crazy.

And it can get even worse. Don't ever rent your home to a movie crew. It's bad enough seeing your home on TV, but the filming itself is insane. I remember one night I came home in the evening after renting my loft to a film, they were just wrapping up. I picked up my keys from the PA and holyshit what is that pile of machine guns doing in my living room?!? Oh, the armorer is supposed to pick those up in an hour, I have to leave, do you mind watching them for us? He'll come pick them up in about an hour. Bye! At about midnight, my girlfriend and I are sitting in my poorly secured loft in the middle of a high crime area, staring at a pile of Uzis and M-16s, discussing how we don't have licenses that allow us to possess fully functional automatic weapons, and how they're not loaded so we would be defenseless if someone tried to take them from us, and wondering if we should call the LAPD and ask them to take them off our hands. We decided that there was no way to call the police and tell them I had dozens of full auto Uzis, without getting killed by the SWAT team. So we both sat there all night, without sleep, and stood guard over the huge pile of guns. We didn't even touch them, in case something happened and our fingerprints would be on them. The armorer finally came about noon the next day and boy did I cuss him out.

So yeah, when videogames or movies bleed into the real world, especially around the production sites, it really sucks.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:36 PM on September 26, 2011 [19 favorites]

I only play one game, and it is the only game I have ever really played - that game is Bejeweled. But I play it so much, that even when I am driving down the highway, I am mentally rearranging the cars by color and shape so that I can clear a set.
posted by msali at 8:37 PM on September 26, 2011 [5 favorites]

The last time this happened to me was on a visit to Japan last year. We were in Harajuku and took an unexpected turn into a residential area. The crush of people was gone and when I looked around me at the gently curved, quiet street, I felt like I was in Shenmue.

Luckily nobody was around for me to bug about sailors and tattoos.
posted by Uncle Ira at 8:38 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, I had this happen in the 1980s. After taking acid and seeing Sinistar chasing me down 95th street. I think I broke the world record for a stoner running a quarter mile in elephant bells.
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 8:41 PM on September 26, 2011 [6 favorites]

I have a tendency to put random things I find in my pocket, thinking that they'll be helpful for the next obstacle or puzzle I encounter. This actually works sometimes. But mostly, I just end up with a bunch of junk on my nightstand.
posted by FJT at 8:44 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure this is a new thing, exactly, or that it requires a special term. Concentrate on any task for a significant period of time and it bleeds into the rest of reality. I'm reading Ballard's High-Rise at the moment and so anything more than a few storeys tall I get to thinking about what's going on in there. After watching a Terminator movie I imagine how cool it would be to punch through a wall. Listen to "Map of the Problematique" by Muse and I think rockstars are badass and I want to be one. Whenever I watch Deadwood I find that my language becomes a little more ornate, my syntax a little more complicated. See someone eating a nice looking bit of pizza and I think "Hmm, pizza is pretty damn good, I could do with a slice" (I couldn't). Life experiences, virtual or not, inform your life, and our brains are nothing more than an endless morass of influences and experiences. So, yeah, ten hours of Pac-Man and ping pong balls are going to look like pretty obvious things to eat.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:49 PM on September 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

I have a tendency to put random things I find in my pocket, thinking that they'll be helpful for the next obstacle or puzzle I encounter.

I can't do that in general, because there's just too much stuff, but if I ever end up in a room that's otherwise empty apart from a desk, and there's a pen on that desk, and that's it? You bet that pen is going in my pocket, because it's obvious I'm gonna be needing it.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:51 PM on September 26, 2011 [11 favorites]

I am constantly mentally pressing Ctrl+Z. It almost never works.
posted by hermitosis at 8:57 PM on September 26, 2011 [7 favorites]

Sometimes when I'm noticing a tree or a hill is in the way, I think I want to chop it down with a pickaxe.
posted by The otter lady at 9:00 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Every time after I play one of the Splinter Cell games for a few hours I find myself wanting to shoot out the lights when I enter a room.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:05 PM on September 26, 2011

I remember going to a play when I was little, and seeing floppy-haired lemmings walking along the edge of the landscape on the painted backdrop.
posted by HeroZero at 9:06 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's been at least ten years, but when I hear certain songs on the radio I flash back to Bloody Hills runs in Diablo 2.

Every time I play an extended session of a GTA and return to the real world I am *this close* to driving on sidewalks or stealing cars in front of me at red lights; one time I even contemplated doing ambulance missions.
posted by graventy at 9:07 PM on September 26, 2011

We were in Harajuku and took an unexpected turn into a residential area. The crush of people was gone and when I looked around me at the gently curved, quiet street, I felt like I was in Shenmue.

That sense of deja vu happens to everyone. Every residential neighborhood looks pretty much exactly like the last: dingy cinder block walls and crooked streets. I wasted embarrassing amounts of time wandering around trying to find various places and thinking I'd already traveled down this block before.

I had heard of this problem before my first visit to Japan, I read a recommendation that you should buy a little compass keychain fob so at least you'd know which way you were going when you left a train station. But I knew Japanese so I could read the signs, so I could find the East or West exits, etc. and could find the streets by name. But I knew plenty of total noob students at my school who were constantly lost because they couldn't read the signs, or even ask for directions. I took pity on one of them and gave her my compass. It didn't help her much.

Anyway, this is why GPS and car navi took off in Japan first. Everyone is constantly lost, unless they're taking a route they take every day. That's why FAX took off in Japan first, so people could send each other maps.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:07 PM on September 26, 2011

Anyway, this is why GPS and car navi took off in Japan first. Everyone is constantly lost, unless they're taking a route they take every day. That's why FAX took off in Japan first, so people could send each other maps.

I get lost very easily, and I wish every videogame had navigation that was as easy as my free iPhone GPS app.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:09 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I used to think that maybe, just maybe, I could be a legit pro skater after I pulled off an awesome run on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:09 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The quality of my driving took a dive after playing Crazy Taxi. That's all I'm saying.
posted by SPrintF at 9:14 PM on September 26, 2011

I also think and dream about things that have happened to me frequently.
posted by cmoj at 9:15 PM on September 26, 2011

But I did scare the shit out of my friends after I built a racing cabinet and was playing lots of PGR4.
posted by cmoj at 9:16 PM on September 26, 2011

Who here has had Doom dreams? Not dreams of being in that world or anything but dreams where the ground has that texture and your movement is uncannily smooth.

Anyway, I get this from movement-fantasy type games like Assassin's Creed or the like. I'll notice grab points on buildings or places to wall-jump, etc.
posted by neuromodulator at 9:18 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

To the people saying, "this sounds just like thinking about what you've been up to" or whatever, you haven't experienced it. It's recognizably not an ordinary thing when it occurs. It's like you've spent the last X hours training your brain to evaluate your environment for certain traits or whatever and it doesn't just shut off when you shut the game off. It's strange but kind of fun and doesn't last long (in my experience).

I think it has certain critical traits that separate it from "just thinking about what you read" or whatever; being visual and involving fake environments really seems to prime your brain in some way.
posted by neuromodulator at 9:23 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

To the people saying, "this sounds just like thinking about what you've been up to" or whatever, you haven't experienced it. It's recognizably not an ordinary thing when it occurs. It's like you've spent the last X hours training your brain to evaluate your environment for certain traits or whatever and it doesn't just shut off when you shut the game off. It's strange but kind of fun and doesn't last long (in my experience).

Yeah... like in Gears of War, if I don't find cover I WILL DIE. And its a pretty stressful game. So after playing for awhile I'm looking for wait high walls, doorways, etc. It even applies to other games, or dreams about GoW.

Oddly enough the RPS/Just Cause thing hasn't happened to me yet, despite the game infecting my brain.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:25 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I want to Ctrl-Scroll-Up and make everything bigger.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:27 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Right, LiB, punishment/rewards are associated with the behaviour, too. That's majorly significant.
posted by neuromodulator at 9:30 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Both the phenomena being described here have happened to me repeatedly. Gaming-wise, I've been playing a lot of Oblivion lately (messing about with mods), and whenever I put a key in a lock IRL, I get a little mental popup of that lockpicking screen from the game. Worse, sometimes I find myself playing the conversation game when talking to strangers (Hmm... doesn't like flattery or jokes... let's try intimidation! (Not a great idea, as it turns out.))

But it's definitely not just a game thing, it's habituation to any visual and motor skills-dependent activity, done for long periods. Try driving forty hours out of sixty and see how long it takes you to stop reacting to the world in general as if you're not driving. Or to stop seeing yellow lines when you close your eyes.
posted by MrVisible at 9:31 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I know the feeling: I finally got to play Heavy Rain a couple nights ago, and the next morning I found myself looking for a shower, a shave, to get dressed, and so on.
posted by chortly at 9:32 PM on September 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

When I was in the middle of Braid, I was out to dinner with some friends, and our appetizer had some number of shrimp that could not be divided evenly among us, and I caught myself thinking "no, we can fix this--first someone takes 2 shrimp, then we rewind to before the waiter dropped them off, ..."
posted by equalpants at 9:40 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

every time I see a Western I get Red Dead Redemption flashbacks
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:46 PM on September 26, 2011

So ahem.

This happens to me primarily in…intimate moments. There will be some kissing going on or whatever, and my brain will do this great thing where not only am I kissing, I am also leveling up. It's not just games either. If I've been programming or something, my brain decides that cuddling is the same as navigating the filesystem from the command line.

It is disconcerting.
posted by silby at 9:53 PM on September 26, 2011 [5 favorites]

Jesse Pinkman knows all about this.
posted by unliteral at 9:56 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Just a few weeks ago I fell asleep after another online chess marathon. I half woke up in the morning with a sore throat, and I remember lying there hallucinating that my throat soreness was an enemy king on a chess board. I moved my virtual throat pieces around for what seemed like hours trying to capture that wily Sore Throat King.
posted by dgaicun at 10:02 PM on September 26, 2011 [6 favorites]

Perceptions, only Tetris, that I recall. Ideas and impulses, all kinds of different games, from Vice City to Monopoly Tycoon, Red Dead Redemption, Katamari Damacy, Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge, and last but definitely not least: Minecraft.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:03 PM on September 26, 2011

Minecraft trained me to fear the night, and when I had to step outside, adrenaline started pumping, and then I discovered the hard way that the sound the skeletons make is recorded from a wooden wind chime.

Life imitated art just a little bit too much.
posted by -harlequin- at 10:03 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

Oh Oblivion, gods, the herb collecting. Everywhere I go, every floral display, every shrubbery island...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:04 PM on September 26, 2011 [6 favorites]

I live in Switzerland. The Swiss fly flags as much as Americans. Yep. That's right. Healing packs, everywhere. LOL!

But this phenomenon, I think, is the same thing I get from really getting in to a good novel. You start expecting the real world to work like the story world. I was in a valley with a river running down it, quite picturesque, recently. The feeling was amazing, and I joked to a friend: "Tell Elrond we'll be there for dinnner." The effect, of course, is strongest with really long, immersive works. I get the same thing from reading the Amber Chronicles (but I have an astoundingly strong identification with Corwin).
posted by Goofyy at 10:13 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I spent the next week with a strange urge to joy ride in every horrible, mid-life crisis car I encountered.

You know, I only ever experienced that with service vehicles. I distinctly remember coming off something like a 14-hour run of Vice City (no, it couldn't have been that long... yeah, I think it was) and walking past West Broadway and Blanca there was a cab parked diagonally at the gas station with no one in it and the driver's door open. Supreme willpower, I tell ya. Ambulances were a big temptation, too. I never got near enough to a firetruck to find out.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:21 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh Oblivion

Speaking of which, Check out this leather hand bound book a guy on reddit made of every in-game book.construction pics. Talk about a game leaking in to real life.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:32 PM on September 26, 2011

Seconding the immersive effect of GTA - took a trip to NYC this past June, after spending hundreds of hours dicking around in Grand Theft Auto IV (the one with Niko Bellic). It was almost as if I'd been there before - and the urge to open a cop car's door and drive around in it was palpable. Probably a good thing I didn't actually do that...
posted by WalterMitty at 10:38 PM on September 26, 2011

not only am I kissing, I am also leveling up.

Ding!

Umm...grats?
posted by ShutterBun at 11:01 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The first time I saw this building I had the sudden urge to start mining all the coal. In the following weeks I'd occasionally catch site of it out of the corner of my eye and get quite distracted - which is a bit inconvenient when you're trying to teach a bunch of already surly undergrads.
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 11:06 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

The Kid hooked up with someone after a long Bastion binge, the collapsing walls and weapon combinations distracting him from the woman in his bed.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:16 PM on September 26, 2011

This totally happened to me in college. I would have nightmares that someone was trying to snipe me through my dorm room window after playing long stretches of Unreal Tournament online, and I would shoot out of bed and close the curtain. That was such a great game.
posted by phaedon at 11:22 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I was going to make a Katamari joke about wanting to roll things up and then I thought someone would turn it into a rolling a joint joke and I said just forget it.
posted by IndigoRain at 11:29 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The first time I noticed something like this was when we were playing way too much Doom in college. I sometimes caught myself flinching when going around corners and/or leading with a quick head peek (I don't think I ever dodged back, but I couldn't swear to it). Others were noticing it too. And it wasn't just a reflexive physical response; you could also feel a quick spike of anxiety when going around corners (or when others unexpectedly emerged from around a corner).

That's when you know it's time to go play outside.
posted by Davenhill at 11:30 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The first time I noticed something like this was when we were playing way too much Doom in college. I sometimes caught myself flinching when going around corners and/or leading with a quick head peek (I don't think I ever dodged back, but I couldn't swear to it). Others were noticing it too. And it wasn't just a reflexive physical response; you could also feel a quick spike of anxiety when going around corners (or when others unexpectedly emerged from around a corner).

That's when you know it's time to go play outside.

Kids at my college played live action Counterstrike, with duct tape instead of guns.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:31 PM on September 26, 2011

It's been ages since I played Katamari Damacy, but to this day I still hear that countdown alarm when I'm running late. Worse, I sometimes catch myself wondering what the Hollywood sign says today. I don't really play video games anymore, and sadly it's probably for the best.

I only just stopped judging the size of objects by whether my car could roll them up.
posted by Space Kitty at 11:44 PM on September 26, 2011

Almost 70 comments in and nobody's mentioned wanting to favorite things people say out in RL?

Also, command/control+F.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:45 PM on September 26, 2011 [6 favorites]

Katamari Damacy. Fourteen hour marathon ends with girlfriend telling me it was time to go meet friends for breakfast and I was driving. I found myself veering at a mailbox on a post and estimating if my katamari was big enough to be able to roll it up. Scared her absolutely silly.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 11:46 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Damn you, Space Kitty!
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 11:47 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here's another one, but in reverse and not inspired by anything fun at all...if you've spent a lot of time in shiny new offices and the like, you might find yourself pointlessly waving your hands under your bathroom sink tap, hoping the water to turn on.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:55 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Almost 70 comments in and nobody's mentioned wanting to favorite things people say out in RL?

Not really, but I do get the urge from time to time to just FIAMO. Unfortunately, I can't :(
posted by daniel_charms at 11:57 PM on September 26, 2011

I've just played a little more Heavy Rain, and instead of ablutions, I'll spend tomorrow worrying about losing my kid in a mall : (    There's something comforting in knowing, in some corner of your brain, that you can't actually tetris the cereal boxes into disappearing. Much odder when a realistic game (or book) bleeds into reality and you not only get the two confused, you realize that reality has always been a series of overlapping transfer phenomena and there's no way out, no fading away. And it's supposed to rain tomorrow...
posted by chortly at 12:09 AM on September 27, 2011

This seems somehow relevant: Rémi Gaillard and Mario Kart in real life.

Youtube video 1

Youtube video 2
posted by tykky at 12:17 AM on September 27, 2011

The article talks about integrating the Internet in real life. How soon before I get goggles that let me know which Facebook friend is randomly talking to me on the bus?
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 12:20 AM on September 27, 2011

When I was a teenager, I bought a copy of Pokemon and played it like crazy for about a week. At that point, I walked outside and saw a pretty butterfly of an unfamiliar species, and it wasn't until my hand closed around empty space that I realized I'd just unconsciously reached for a Pokeball.
posted by Scattercat at 12:21 AM on September 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Anyway, 70 comments in, hardly anyone has actually commented on the links themselves. I think Adee's idea of everting Mario Kart is, mildly put, badly thought out. Making something like this work would presume that everyone shares your particular virtual reality - in this case, everyone would have to be familiar with Mario Kart, for otherwise, they'd just get mad at you for throwing junk at their car. It makes me suspect that her attempting to show that "we don't have to see it strictly as a negative psychological consequence" is more than anything else, motivated by the anxiety of having experienced this effect. It sounds like she had this experience and is now worried about her mental health so she's trying to rationalize it by trying to prove herself that it isn't all bad. Which it isn't, really; in and of itself, it's just a "thing", neither negative nor positive. It's our cultural background that makes us assign values to experiences such as hers. In fact, you don't really need to invent elaborate and convoluted games to turn things like dreaming about computer games or trying to apply computer game rules in real life into a "positive" experience; just treat it as an insight into how our mind works, or how the world in general works.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:24 AM on September 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

Anyway, 70 comments in, hardly anyone has actually commented on the links themselves. I think Adee's idea of everting Mario Kart is, mildly put, badly thought out. Making something like this work would presume that everyone shares your particular virtual reality - in this case, everyone would have to be familiar with Mario Kart, for otherwise, they'd just get mad at you for throwing junk at their car. It makes me suspect that her attempting to show that "we don't have to see it strictly as a negative psychological consequence" is more than anything else, motivated by the anxiety of having experienced this effect. It sounds like she had this experience and is now worried about her mental health so she's trying to rationalize it by trying to prove herself that it isn't all bad. Which it isn't, really; in and of itself, it's just a "thing", neither negative nor positive. It's our cultural background that makes us assign values to experiences such as hers. In fact, you don't really need to invent elaborate and convoluted games to turn things like dreaming about computer games or trying to apply computer game rules in real life into a "positive" experience; just treat it as an insight into how our mind works, or how the world in general works.

I dunno... I'd play sports of they had power-ups and flashy Mario Kart style effects, and I can only seem to exercise if something is giving me missions and maybe adding some gameficatoin. For better or for worse this is how people's minds work.

Hell I'm usually a nature hater, but I played enough Red Dead Redemption to start to care about the difference between a skunk and an armadillo. That could be expanded on.

I still thought she was talking about the Eversion game though
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 12:27 AM on September 27, 2011

Anyway, I get this from movement-fantasy type games

* goes to gamespot reviews *
* clicks on genre menu *
* does not find Movement Fantasy *
* sad *
posted by LogicalDash at 1:21 AM on September 27, 2011

It's been ages since I played Katamari Damacy, but to this day I still hear that countdown alarm when I'm running late.

If I ever drown, I fully expect the last few seconds of my life to be full of beautiful music. Like in Sonic the Hedgehog.

doot - dee - doot - dee - doot - dee - doot - dee
doot-dee-doot-dee-doot-dee-doot-dee-doot-dee-doot-dee-doot-dee-doot-dee
DOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOOTDEEDOO glub
posted by Spatch at 2:04 AM on September 27, 2011 [4 favorites]

I started to get that urge from the GTA3 games. That's a part of why I cut those kinds of games out of my life - I don't want to run around in a high-fidelity simulation of the world where my only method of interaction is to hit the "hurt" button.

I played through Jet Grind Radio once when it was released. To this day, I still find a part of my brain looking for grind chains whenever I get near a railing.
posted by egypturnash at 2:07 AM on September 27, 2011

I don't really have stuff from games bleed into real life, but games bleed into other games all the time. After finishing Stalker and then Call of Pripyat more or less back to back, for weeks I found myself unconsciously avoiding large metal objects in other games, in case they were radioactive.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:21 AM on September 27, 2011

Jesse Pinkman knows all about this.

I know right? How well-connected is that guy that he got an arcade version of Rage, with light-guns?
posted by tumid dahlia at 2:25 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Pfft. I was doing that 10 years before GTA came out. People would be crossing the road and if I waz passenger in the car I would yell out "POINTS!" and egg the driver on to run them over.

Does that make me more or less crazy?
posted by uncanny hengeman at 2:32 AM on September 27, 2011

This happened to me with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I was on my way to a PhD seminar in my department's conference room at the university...which happens to be located just past a huge window looking out onto the industrial airshaft at the center of the building where all the ventilation equipment is.

I found myself thinking "Okay, I can get out onto that air conditioner, then jump over to that water pipe, avoiding the anti-pigeon net, then..."

Then I realized that I'm a pudgy forty-year-old academic and instead of being Ezio Auditore while looking all cool, all I'd accomplish would be getting a headline in the next day's Daily Mirror: "DAFT YANK THINKS HE'S SPIDER-MAN, PLUNGES TO DEATH".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:47 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think this kind of thing happens when you overfocus for long enough on anything.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:09 AM on September 27, 2011

I realised I'd been playing too much TF2 when I was walking through the local shopping centre and realised I was unthinkingly taking all the corners very wide and strafing slightly, just in case there was a Pyro hiding round the corner.

There has never been a Pyro round the corner.

Yet.
posted by ZsigE at 4:55 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sally Adee argues that this property, which she calls 'everting',

To clarify, Sally Adee is not the first person to name this phenomenon "everting" - as far as I can tell, the term was first used in this way by William Gibson in his novel Spook Country (as Sally herself points out in the second paragraph of her article.)
posted by jet_manifesto at 6:30 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

But this phenomenon, I think, is the same thing I get from really getting in to a good novel.

Agree with this. I'm re-reading the Dune series on my Kindle at the moment and I find myself obsessively analyzing body language like some kind of Bene Gesserit adept.
posted by jet_manifesto at 6:33 AM on September 27, 2011

I too have had the weird pleasure of seeing all cars as jackable after a Vice City marathon.

Thanks to the Tony Hawk series, which I haven't picked up in years, a part of my brain -still- considers things like power lines and rooftops as legitimate avenues of transit. Just for a second.
posted by K'an at 6:38 AM on September 27, 2011

Weirdly I have mostly only had this happen with chess, imagining any number of objects moving like a knight.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:49 AM on September 27, 2011

Sometimes, at lectures, for a split second I think "how do I rewind that?" Please tell me I'm not alone.
posted by abcde at 6:55 AM on September 27, 2011

Interesting article - or at least, an interesting idea, even if it is a bit of a call to the LazyWeb.

This has happened to me, to varying degrees, with three games so far - Tetris, Katamari Damacy, and once with my most recent obsession, Glitch. Probably not so coincidentally, Katamari creator Keita Takahashi is now working on Glitch. (Previously)

All of which is my slightly awkward way of getting around to say, hey, did you hear? Glitch finally launches today! Yay!
posted by KatlaDragon at 7:00 AM on September 27, 2011

So come on, Internet of Things developers, let’s get Mario Kart to evert.

I'm guessing Sally Adee has never driven in Boston.
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:25 AM on September 27, 2011

I've also had this for other computer apps. We used PageMaker to make the university's newspaper and would stay up on Wednesday nights working on it for 10 -20 hours straight. By the time class came around the next day I'd show up after breakfast, sit down, and seeing the chalkboard had the previous class's material on it, reflexively reach for the mouse so I could select it and hit delete. When that didn't work, if I was tired enough, I'd try to set the text color to the board's color and place a new layer in front of it. Sleep deprivation and the act of sitting for a work like activity played a critical role though, and it went away after a minute.
posted by jwells at 7:30 AM on September 27, 2011

Victoria Station was a bad place to go after a night of Portal 2. Long white platform floor, ceiling made of white panels just about the right size and shape. Further along some of them broken or missing, revealing a rusty framework and all sorts of slightly decayed metal receding into the distance. Further still (I said it was a long platform) an area already splashed with a line of blue paint - actually it was plastic, something to do with repairs to the ceiling but... Then outside, there was a white tourist bus with a big flaming orange logo with a black centre. I'm sure there was.

But that was nothing compared to walking into the Shell Centre from York Road many years ago after playing Doom. The architecture, the ambience, even the statue in the middle fitted exactly.
posted by Segundus at 7:36 AM on September 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

After I saw David Cronenberg's Crash, I drove home and all the other cars had a lot of ... personality.

I think video games tend to be one of the faster things to get into your brain like this, but I think any activity where you get a lot of "flow" state going on can bleed over when you're done.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:50 AM on September 27, 2011

Oh, and, yeah, too much TF2 can mess with your threat assessment for situational awareness.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:06 AM on September 27, 2011

I forgot about Snood. I would close my eyes, and the game would be playing on the inside of my eyelids, as I tried to go to sleep. Coworkers, friends, and my mother had similar experiences.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 8:06 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

I regularly attempt to downvote my two-year-old.
posted by pajamazon at 8:17 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

From the days when I could regularly beat expert mode in under 200 seconds: Minesweeper dreams. Every night.

I recently attended a workshop for building housings for piezo disks out of bottlecaps (for inexpensive, sturdy contact mics). They had buckets and buckets of bottlecaps, and, for a moment, I considered running off with them so I could be the wealthiest wanderer in the wastelands.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:50 AM on September 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

ThinkGeek really needs to start producing cheap playback devices with Minecraft effects. Soft enough that you don't notice at first, and then you think you're hearing things. Groaning and arrow plinks for that office ventilation shaft (unless your coworkers are dragging bodies in there, Deus Ex style). Cows for the bathroom. Change system sounds on your colleagues' computers so that installing or removing hardware produces the creeper sizzle and boom.

Or you know, if those sort of shenanigans wouldn't go over well in your workplace, you can always just play the Minecraft midnight tune while your significant other sleeps, provoking Minecraft dreams.
You have hooked your household on it, haven't you?
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:52 AM on September 27, 2011

You have hooked your household on it, haven't you?

No sir. No sir, I have not. Because I know me. As it is, I'm having an increasingly hard time resisting learning how to mod Civilization V so I can finally realize my dream of leading the Equestrian civilization to victory from my bejeweled palace in Canterlot.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:05 AM on September 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have a couple of friends who were talking about a Black Friday sale: "You tank the shoppers," friend 1 said to friend 2, "while I go ninja the big TVs."
posted by Mister_A at 9:10 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

The first time I can remember this happening to me is feeling the urge to shoot trash cans and make them explode after countless hours of Doom.

I credit Streets of Rage for that time I kicked over a garbage can and ate all that chicken that came out. Also as the reason I believe there's only about 12 types of people on the planet, and you make crowds with palette swaps.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:26 AM on September 27, 2011

As a few other people have mentioned, it doesn't have to be videogames. I've experienced this phenomenon from playing Go: I'd walk into a classroom and see where everyone was sitting and immediately decide where the next person should sit for maximum defensive strength.
posted by baf at 10:02 AM on September 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

I remember putting a heavy gaming weekend in to complete Assassins Creed 2, as I wanted to finish it before we went on holiday for a couple of weeks.

The next day we flew to Dubrovnik.

Total. Mindfuck.

In order to get my bearings on arrival, I was already starting to move towards the first handhold when the Missus realised what was happening and broke the spell with a shout.
posted by garius at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Using the car remote to try and open the front door of the house

It is really embarrassing how often I do this.

In GTA, I used to love to hit motorcycles from behind and watch the rider go flying. I found myself getting a strong urge to do that whenever I'd be driving behind a motorcycle in real life, but the height and distance the rider would fly was always underwhelming.
posted by straight at 11:22 AM on September 27, 2011

" After taking acid and seeing Sinistar chasing me down 95th street."

RUN COWARD!
posted by harrigton at 11:45 AM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Always happens after a day of Nuketown during double XP weekend. I'm trying to snipe neighbors while they prune their yards.
posted by dhdrum at 12:21 PM on September 27, 2011

I remember putting a heavy gaming weekend in to complete Assassins Creed 2, as I wanted to finish it before we went on holiday for a couple of weeks.

The next day we flew to Dubrovnik.

What is it about Assassin's Creed? Mine was finishing AC1, and shortly thereafter finding myself climbing to the top of one of the two towers of Bab Zuwayla. I said to a guy I didn't know terribly well "Don't think about it -- no haystack", which I guess would make a certain absurd sense to anyone, but I could tell he knew exactly what I was talking about.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 1:33 PM on September 27, 2011

Never mind, equalpants has got it worse than me. Man, if the real world were like Braid. You could send your future self ahead to take care of the kids while you go to a concert. Try interviews over and over until you get the job. Rewind entire failed relationships.

Hmm, I bet there's a film option there.
posted by abcde at 3:52 PM on September 27, 2011

Since playing Deus Ex I now only ever travel via air ducts. I have been feeling quite itchy lately.
posted by tumid dahlia at 4:34 PM on September 27, 2011

kicked over a garbage can and ate all that chicken that came out

They're still finding "unpublished" Bukowski poems to turn into expensive books?
posted by tumid dahlia at 4:36 PM on September 27, 2011

When I was a kid I used to jump on manhole covers thinking they'd lead me into a secret world.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:42 PM on September 27, 2011 [1 favorite]