Video games can alter reality

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.