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Playing a game for so long you start to see it IRL...


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A few years ago after long days of EverQuest I would sometimes continue to have visions of it after going to sleep. Mostly after bad things, like failing a raid boss a few times, it would be like I was still playing, and it usually wasn't just the game aspect, sometimes my mind would go as far to imagine what was being said in chat and that kind of thing. Other times I would dream of getting long-wanted items, only to wake up and realize that I didn't actually get them (damn :lol: ).

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After playing a lot of Metal Gear Solid, walking down the streets at night in one of the safest areas in Australia no longer feels safe... I had the Rex's Lair music going constantly in my head, it has scared me more than once, even though I walk at night regularly and there's nothing there.

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Yep, it happened to me too if I play any one of my games for longer than I should do. The most notable ones that do that to me though are Elite Beat Agents (where I keep seeing circles closing in on me when I close my eyes) and Guitar Hero (where I keep seeing the highway and the note markers moving inside my head almost consistently and I end up suddenly air-playing just to get rid of it). :lol:

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The most annoying time this happened to me was when Tetris attack first came out. I played it so much I would hear and see the tiles popping when I closed my eyes or daydreamed.

I don't know if this counts but ever since I played Super Mario Bros. for the first time, when I'm a passenger in a car/train, I look out and imagine Mario running on and jumping over telephone poles, scenery and the horizon line.

Actually now that I think of it, that hasn't happened in a while now, but I used to do it all the time up until my late teen years.

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The only memory I have of this sort of thing was right when I bought Mirror's Edge. I must have played it for hours on end every day. One day I walked into work and immediately started looking for an escape route. "Jump onto the file cabinet, lunge to the pipe, climb up the pipe, into the ventilation shaft...." I stopped myself and realized maybe I was getting a little too into the game..

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So I guess the moral of the story is a) we're too imaginative B) we get too into our games or c) many of us have random bouts of hallucinations and insantiy....or d) all of the above.

That Mirror's Edge thing sounds awesome, I may have to force myself to try imagining that sometime.

Oh, and here we are: I've logged probably more than 800 hours into the Katamari games over the years. At one point, I was looking at random objects and calculating how big my katamari would have to be in order to pick it up, and planning my route to get to the biggest size the fastest. The worst time was going to Sam's Club...

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Quite often. Every time I have a "gaming binge", really. When it comes to FPSes, I tend to get used to that way of moving, so walking around normally ends up feeling weird.

Most recently I'd been playing Prototype alot. That naturally led to me sizing every building up, and looking for vertical "shortcuts" when walking around in town. Most bizzare. At least I didn't grow claws or toss cars around.

I don't know if this counts but ever since I played Super Mario Bros. for the first time, when I'm a passenger in a car/train, I look out and imagine Mario running on and jumping over telephone poles, scenery and the horizon line.

I still do that occasionally. I travel between my hometown and the town I study in alot, and that's a 2 hour bus ride, so I guess that's one way to stay awake. I've done that for as long as I can remember though.

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Last year in orchestra, I was really bored, so while I was playing some Pictures at An Exhibition, I kept feeling like I was playing guitar hero. Even though I've been playing viola for 14 years and guitar hero for about 1 or 2...

Also, when I went to the Medieval Faire in Ohio, I kept wanting to play Oblivion really bad.

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WoW has me on that. Pretty much every game I enjoy and have been playing a lot recently will do that sort of things. FF, Disgaea, Atelier Iris, Smash Bros,...

I'd either replay the entire scene/level in my head to see the possibilities on how to win, I'd have urges to use the in-game features/commands irl, or what annoys me the most, I'd think about something then the game will start "melting" in.

I sometimes get that from movies when I just came out of the theater too. I probably have a too vivid imagination.

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This happened with me once with the game Vagrant Story. One of the features of the game - a very cool one - is that you can combine weaker weapons in the game to create stronger weapons, and I'd spent all day trying to get a Katana in the game to combine and make a better two-handed sword. Anyway, I finally gave up and wandered over to one of my friend's houses, to discover a katana that he'd ordered online months before had finally arrived. I caught myself starting to run out the door with the sword to go home and combine it with the one in the game.

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Whenever I had been playing a lot of Diablo, it leaked into my dreams. Not so much story wise but in the sense that I saw my own health and mana bubbles, no matter if the dream was funny, nightmarish, sexual, or plain boring.

As far as real life goes, rhythm and repetition are probably the main factors for a game to do something like that to your brain.

Like combo chains in Tekken! There was a time where I couldn't stop pressing 10 hit combos into the air all day. You could call it an addiction to patterns i guess.

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Last time I played one ongoing game of Tetris DS for a week and a half (scored 22 million points before accidentally leaving the game unpaused and dying) I had the Tetris Effect going on for nearly 6 months afterward. That's the kinda thing that'll drive a guy crazy after so long of it happening.

I had no idea it was an actual effect though, I thought it was just one of those things that only happened to insanely addicted people like me :P

Oh, and back in elementary school, after playing Super Mario 64, I would always envision Mario wall-jumping his way around the classroom or my desk while I was bored. I still unconsciously do that sometimes.

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A good friend of mind played Morrowind so long that while he was working at a bookstore he tapped his finger on a pile of books twice. It took him a few seconds to realize why he was unable to pick up the stack of books.

As for me, it happens with Lumines, Tetris, WoW, TF2 (I look for things to set on fire, or alternate routes of flanking someone, or even prime sentry locations), and DDR mainly.

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Oh, and back in elementary school, after playing Super Mario 64, I would always envision Mario wall-jumping his way around the classroom or my desk while I was bored. I still unconsciously do that sometimes.

i still kinda do stuff like that, with various games

i like sizing up my surroundings and being like if i were ______________ what could i do to get where

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I work at Fed Ex as a package handler. Basically, I take the boxes off the conveyor belt and fit them together inside the truck.

It's almost exactly like real life tetris. I even have a system where I'll save a certain-shaped box for later until it will fit perfectly in my current row. I often take this perfection much too far, and it even gets me behind in my stacking...

Oh, and back in elementary school, after playing Super Mario 64, I would always envision Mario wall-jumping his way around the classroom or my desk while I was bored. I still unconsciously do that sometimes.

That sounds like

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