Immersive Gaming Article

[Raiders Army]

Link

Real World Doesn't Use a Joystick


By Daniel Terdiman | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next »

02:00 AM Jan. 11, 2005 PT

After a recent three-day binge of playing the Japanese cult hit video game Katamari Damacy, Los Angeles artist Kozy Kitchens discovered that walking away from the game was not as easy as putting down her joystick.

In the game, players push around what amounts to a giant tape ball, attempting to make the ball bigger by picking up any and all objects in its path. Kitchens found that her urge to keep picking things up was not so easy to shake.

"I was driving down Venice Boulevard," recalled her husband, Dan Kitchens, "and Kozy reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and for a moment was trying to yank it to the right.... (Then) she let go, but kept staring out her window, and then looked back at me kind of stunned and said, 'Sorry. I thought we could pick up that mailbox we just passed.'"

While motorists and pedestrians shouldn't worry too much about rogue Katamari Damacy players, Kozy Kitchens' experience with having a difficult time separating her real-life consciousness from that of her game playing is all too common among hard-core gamers. It's so common, in fact, that game publishers might want to consider warning their customers that they may soon be unable to tell the difference between the game and reality.

"The weird thing was that last night in my half-sleep, half-awake haze, I thought I was playing Katamari Damacy, too, and I kept trying to roll Kozy up in my ball," said Dan Kitchens. "I think I got this just from watching Kozy play the game for hours."

Frequent gamer Alfred Weisberg-Roberts said he often feels lingering effects after playing games like Animal Crossing, in which the point is to collect as many animals and bugs as possible from a wide variety of locations.

"Once, my girlfriend happened upon a tree ... kind of like the round, thin trees in the game, and began to shake it -- one in-game way of receiving money, goods and bees," Weisberg-Roberts said. "When nothing fell from its branches, I think she quickly realized how this must have looked to the other hundred or so people in the park."

Chris Taylor, a staff writer at Time magazine and a regular game reviewer, said he thinks driving games and first-person shooters are particularly likely to make players lose track of reality.

"I just knew the first time I played Burnout 2, the crash part, that I probably shouldn't get behind the wheel of a car for an hour or so afterwards," Taylor said, "because you're expending so much effort on deliberately trying to make your car crash."

Taylor also said that after reviewing Quake III he had trouble getting his mind out of the game.

"I'd play it, then walk out into the office corridor and realize I was looking at my co-workers as potential targets," said Taylor. "I was so used to killing anything that moved."

Any addictive game can have a similar effect: The more someone plays, the more likely they are to stay mentally inside even afterward. And immersive games like Electronic Arts' The Sims are frequently to blame, given the countless hours players put into them.

"When I played (it) a lot," said Laura Martin, a devotee of the game, "I remember thinking, 'What percent of my bladder is full?' to decide if it was time to head to the bathroom."

To Robin Hunicke, a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University who studies video games, it's no surprise that people can have trouble distancing themselves from the games they play.

"Games are about verbs -- the things you do," Hunicke said. "The verbs are the things that you tend to focus on in a gameplay session. Good games focus that attention in a way that feels really satisfying.... So there you are, in your game world, doing your verbs, learning them, practicing and combining them in new ways. And if you do that long enough, there is a residue. Some stuff kind of sticks.... So later, after you put down that controller, you're walking around your apartment, or going to the store in your car ... and suddenly you do something similar, something that trips an 'opportunism' wire in your brain."

And Hunicke said that at that point, people conjure up the enjoyable experiences they've had.

"Maybe I should access that experience," she said. "Maybe there's some way to connect them and repeat -- or avoid -- the experience I had before."

The phenomenon of having difficulty defining reality after hours in front of the screen isn't at all limited to games.

Martin reported similar experiences after four days on an intensive Photoshop project.

"By the time I turned the project in, I was so sleep-deprived and delusional," she said, "that everywhere I looked I had the impulse to correct things, to move the world around in layers."

And Lisa Hoffman, a graphic designer who spends endless hours using various software packages, lamented finding it hard to determine where her computer ends and real life begins.

"I've been using the computer for so long, and command-Z works for undo in all the software programs," Hoffman said. "So whenever I find something in my life that I want to undo, I reach for the command-Z keys and I find it weird that it doesn't work."

Decent article, but some of the weirdness in there is what I call mono-gaming. I think most of the people play only one game, so that affects them in real life. I know I've thought about my FOF team, what level my bubbler is on City of Heroes, and/or my quest for the National Championship on NCAA 2005...but not to the extent that I go up a tree and shake it.

Has anyone else been affected to this extent?

[rkmsuf]

no, give me a break.

people who walk out and realize

I was looking at my co-workers as potential targets,"

have other issues.

[VPI97]

Originally Posted by rkmsuf

no, give me a break.

Heh...I remember one time after a GTA III binge, I had to think twice about passing a car by going onto the sidewalk. I nearly forgot that you had to use your brakes in real life

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

I do think about my NCAA Football team alot though. Like what they do on their off day and how their love life is going and of the future of my team and how I can keep my receivers happy when I plan on running the ball 40 x / game.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by VPI97

Heh...I remember one time after a GTA III binge, I had to think twice about passing a car by going onto the sidewalk. I nearly forgot that you had to use your brakes in real life

Same exact thing happened to me. After playing vice city a lot, I really had the urge to drive on the sidewalks, and I don't feel that I have 'serious issues'.

[KWhit]

I must have severly-serious issues then. I not only think about my fake football team, I even think about their cheerleaders:

http://www.fof-ihof.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3383

[SackAttack]

I think this amounts to a chicken and the egg argument. Do video games make people more likely to lose touch with reality, or is it simply that people who are inherently less connected to reality are more likely to report such disconnections after playing addictive video games?

[Radii]

I remember my old roommate and I having gran turismo conversations in traffic when we were both playing it a lot... "hey, just hit that guardrail at the right angle and you'll bounce right past all these cars"

GTA comparasions come easy as well, we made a few during the first 4 episodes of 24, espicially when Jack was driving the wrong way up an on-ramp.

But I'm not sure I've ever actually had an urge to do any of those things...

[rkmsuf]

Taking action on these disconnections is really what sets it apart for me. It's one thing to THINK about a fake team or something but it's another to actually drive on the sidewalk or shake a tree.

[Maple Leafs]

Has anyone plated Katamari Damacy? I've heard it's really quite addictive, but I've never seen it.

[AnalBumCover]

Her name is Kozy Kitchens?

[cthomer5000]

You wouldn't believe how many times I've caught myself before almost saying something to someone about my IHOF team. You know in a "How bout that Plague!" sort of way.

FOF is literally the only game I play, and IHOF is about 95% of that play, so I imagine that has a deep impact.

[VPI97]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

You wouldn't believe how many times I've caught myself before almost saying something to someone about my IHOF team. You know in a "How bout that Plague!" sort of way.

FOF is literally the only game I play, and IHOF is about 95% of that play, so I imagine that has a deep impact.

lol...when Kaeding (sp?) missed the kick for the Chargers against the Jets last weekend, I mentioned to my wife that he was going to get canned like Ike Settles. I covered my tracks by saying he was the kicker for the Bills when they lost to the Giants.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

You wouldn't believe how many times I've caught myself before almost saying something to someone about my IHOF team. You know in a "How bout that Plague!" sort of way.

FOF is literally the only game I play, and IHOF is about 95% of that play, so I imagine that has a deep impact.

Same here. Sometimes if I'm in a daze on the drive home from work, I'll get mad that they haven't said anything about the Condors on the sports talk radio station I listen to.

[Raiders Army]

Originally Posted by rkmsuf

Taking action on these disconnections is really what sets it apart for me. It's one thing to THINK about a fake team or something but it's another to actually drive on the sidewalk or shake a tree.

I think this is the definite line. I always thought those lawsuits against the WWE (WWF at the time), MTV (for Beavis and Butthead), and Doom for "making people act out their fantasies" was BS. There is a definite difference to think about something and then actually performing the act. Pretty much what SackAttack said:

Originally Posted by SackAttack

I think this amounts to a chicken and the egg argument. Do video games make people more likely to lose touch with reality, or is it simply that people who are inherently less connected to reality are more likely to report such disconnections after playing addictive video games?

[Glengoyne]

I remember back in my early everquest days, seeing a blue something or other on the side of the road, just in my peripheral vision as I passed. It immediately registered as a Blackburrow gnoll, and I wanted to spin around and take him down.

A couple of months ago Robert Coffee, who writes a column for Computer Gaming World, devoted his column to this. One of his anecdotes was thinking he could get something to his wife across town by having her recall him.

[Kodos]

I do find myself inordinately preoccupied with my IHOF team. Especially if I was doing something IHOF-related before going to bed, I dream about whatever I was doing. Same thing happens if I play Madden or NCAA before bed. And at work, IHOF is always infinitely more interesting than whatever I happen to be working on.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Pretty much what SackAttack said IMO.

Except for that "co-workers as targets thing" ... that part I experienced for years.
But gaming had little or nothing to do with that.

[Karim]

Any addictive game can have a similar effect: The more someone plays, the more likely they are to stay mentally inside even afterward.

I haven't had any reality blurring incidents but I have thought about my FOF/CM/EHM team even when not playing.

[Calis]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

Has anyone plated Katamari Damacy? I've heard it's really quite addictive, but I've never seen it.

Wish my PS2 still worked as it looks like an awesome and very original game. I've heard nothing but good things about it, and I think it retails for 20 bucks, so not much to lose.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

Her name is Kozy Kitchens?

All I needed to see was the name and "Los Angelese artist" to know we weren't hearing about someone sane. I think this article simply proves that people who live in fantasy worlds have trouble living in reality.

[Honolulu_Blue]

It'd be hard to imagine anyone who spends any decent amount of time playing computer/video games not to think about it while not playing. I do it all the time. Sometimes I am ticked off and I can't remember why and then I realize "Oh. Right. My Champ Man team is in the crapper." When I zone out in meetings, on calls, conferences, what have you, I always jot down starting line-ups, think of new tactics, strategies, etc. It's a nice way to pass the dull moments in life.

The worst I had it was during college when I was MUDing a lot. I didn't get a lot of sleep and whenever I would smile or shrug I would think in my head ":smiles." or ":shrugs." It was a dark time...

[aran]

after playing chess for an hour or two at a time, i would think about people as chess pieces. for example, when i'd be standing in a room with other people who were sitting down or standing up having conversations, i would think about how one of them was open to be attacked by the other who was diagonally straight from him.

[rkmsuf]

Originally Posted by aran

after playing chess for an hour or two at a time, i would think about people as chess pieces. for example, when i'd be standing in a room with other people who were sitting down or standing up having conversations, i would think about how one of them was open to be attacked by the other who was diagonally straight from him.

I heard Bobby Fisher would only have sex if he could go in diagonally.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by aran

after playing chess for an hour or two at a time, i would think about people as chess pieces. for example, when i'd be standing in a room with other people who were sitting down or standing up having conversations, i would think about how one of them was open to be attacked by the other who was diagonally straight from him.

I think you're probably right -- this isn't a video game phenomenon, it's an "anything you stare at and think about for hours at a time" phenomenon. It just so happens that very often these days, that happens to be video games.

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by KWhit

Same here. Sometimes if I'm in a daze on the drive home from work, I'll get mad that they haven't said anything about the Condors on the sports talk radio station I listen to.

And I am hardcore?
Right...