Video Games Intruding on Reality: ‘Game Transfer Phenomena’ [???]
September 22nd, 2011
Wow, if there was one for the top of your Not The Onion stack, this is it.
Via: New Zealand Herald / AP:
Some video-game players are so immersed in their virtual environment that when they stop playing, they transfer their experiences into the real world. A study found evidence of game transfer phenomena, which result in gamers doing things in the real world as if they were still playing.
The most extreme examples included reaching for a search button when looking for someone in a crowd and seeing energy boxes appear above people’s heads.
Half of the gamers questioned said they often look to use something from a video game to resolve a real-life issue.
In some cases these thoughts were accompanied by reflexes such as reaching to click a button on the controller even when it is not in their hands.
One interviewee reported seeing a menu of topics that were available for him to think about, while another created a list of possible responses in their head after being insult-ed.
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Also: Game Firms Set Sights on Female Market
Via: New Zealand Herald / AP:
Like many young Japanese women, Takako Suzuki says the first thing she does most days is think about her next boyfriend. Her choices: a cute millionaire, a butler or a samurai.
Whether playing the role of a teenager who fantasises about her five rich housemates or flirting with a civil war warrior, Suzuki says she can’t get enough of “otome” Japanese romance games geared towards women.
Suzuki, who says she once played 10 different titles concurrently, buys credit from Gree to pamper her avatar with virtual clothes or shoes and buy tickets for additional game chapters.
“When I wake up in the morning, I play these games for a while before I really get up,” said Suzuki, 28, an office worker. “I need to play otome games because I’m so stressed out by my nagging boss at work.”
Not a gamer myself, but I have on occasion mentally reached for the “save” button before realizing that you can’t, uh, do that in real life. I’ll be honest: I really only remembering this happening as I was about to bite into a badass sandwich I had just spent 15 minutes making. It didn’t make sense to have to duplicate work the next time I wanted a sandwich!
i have no personal experience with people who (are willing to admit they) see energy bars or things like that, but i have heard plenty of semi-joking, naturally-occurring references to game things IRL, as if said things existed (places, items, actions, etc).
gamers who are that serious do blur the lines. they’ll talk like they are in the game reality without even realizing it, and as they mostly talk with other gamers, the oddity of the behavior is never addressed.
escapism has been around forever, obviously, and is probably a necessary part of life to one degree or another, but when sh*t like this is happening, doesn’t it border on delusion? where is that line?
if only someone would regear teh potential here for massively successful visualization exercises. even w/out self-hypnosis the capacity for visualization is obviously overabundant, its just lacking any kind of imaginative circuits because gaming is almost entirely consumption and not creation, exempting a few outlier exemptions. also modern “graphics” meh
fyi visualization techniques are standard in olympic training if thats any indicator