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The real consequences of blurring video games and real life..


Steben
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I was sitting in my Analysis II class the other day. Now, my professor runs the course in more of a open discussion fashion than a lecture. This is odd for a math course, but it arguably is better for the students in the class to learn how to answer questions on their own, rather than being told how to do everything.

In any case, our classes often run like this: someone tries to prove an open theorem in the class and the professor will try and find fault with it, even if it is correct. It's up to the presenter, or someone else in the class to defend the proof.

So yeah. I've been playing a bit of Phoenix Wright recently... Two days ago, I was in class, watching someone give their proof on the board. It wasn't a very polished thing, but it was essentially correct. But of course our professor was playing devil's advocate, and tried to convince us that the proof was unsound by an example. This example, of course, contained a contradiction.

!!!

I slammed my hands on the table, and nearly yelled this.

...

Of course, after a short moment of awkward silence, I apologized for "accidentally" hitting my desk so hard, and pointed out the flaw in his reasoning.

So yeah. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else had a similar situation, where you were playing a video game for a while, and you accidentally reacted to real life as you would have in the game. Partly because I'd feel better about myself, as a person, but also because I'd bet there are some funny stories out there.

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I think videogames (and the internet, perhaps to a greater extent) have had more of an effect on us than most of us realise, or would like to think.

I've been hearing alot of non-gamers use the word 'own/pwn' recently, and it really annoys me. An obvious hyperbole, but Pure Pwnage is another example of how language has developed and is used as a result of games. (Yes, my friends and I often use alot of gaming language in everyday conversation; sometimes seriously, other times to take the piss out of it)

Also, we go to LazerZone (Dunno if you've got that elsewhere in the world; lazertag/light gun kinda version of paintball) and treat it alot like an FPS.

Chances are there are other examples I'm not aware of..

/geek =)

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Years ago when I was playing a lot of AoE/AoK (like 98 or 99), I kept accidently *almost* saying "elohel" instead of chuckling when something was humorous but not really enough to laugh. Now I do it just to annoy people.

I'm more of a "lawl" guy. But I'm a bigger culpret of using "zee oh em gee", "pee el zee", and "es ar es el why"... always when I'm being sarcastic, of course?

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Not to a great extent, but I almost said "LOL" in response to a joke. Thankfully, nobody noticed, but I would have had quite the time explaining that one (back in '99, before Chatspeak was popular).

Someone else I know uses FTW and Pwned. As far as actual video games, though, I have yet to see or hear anything that's a direct reference.

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I tried to press triangle to steal vehicles in non-GTA games. Even on systems without triangle. Not the same thing, but still.

I think I once tried to hit R to drift (like Mario Kart) while actually driving.

The Vampire Killer whip may be able to defeat Dracula, but a leather belt used as a whip only defeats my own sense of dignity.

Wii Sports made me realize that I cannot actually bowl. Two totally different things. Which I should have known, seeing as how my Dad owns a bowling alley.

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Wii Sports made me realize that I cannot actually bowl. Two totally different things. Which I should have known, seeing as how my Dad owns a bowling alley.

I second this with a vengeance. I went bowling with some friends last week, thinking that I do alright in Wii Bowling and I should have no problem at least keeping a respectable score, breaking 100 easily. Oh god, I was wrong. So very wrong.

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Personally, it really annoys me when people use web jargon in real life. There is this one guy that is just soooo obnoxious. He thinks he is real funny saying thingls like "lawl, or raw-ful" all the time. Today the little wang says "Wow!" when he overheard some of my friends talking about a crazy thing that happened. Then he quickly said "World of Warcraft!" in the same tone. It made me wanna just smack him. But yeah, maybe it's his fault i have such low tolerance for the use of game lango in reality.

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This example, of course, contained a contradiction.

!!!

I slammed my hands on the table, and nearly yelled this.

...

Of course, after a short moment of awkward silence, I apologized for "accidentally" hitting my desk so hard, and pointed out the flaw in his reasoning.

Dude, you should have kept on rolling with it:

"That's very clever of you Mr. Professor, but any decent mathematician would know..."

*Do Phoenix's pointing pose*

"That such and such math thingy is impossible because of such and such math rule!"

*Fold arms over chest and stand imposingly*

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I'm not gonna lie; when Phoenix Wright first came out, I was so into it that I found a rip of the Overtaken! theme and put it on my phone. Whenever anyone would say something contradictory, I would pull out my phone, play the song, and start the courtroom drama.

Needless to say, I got some weird looks, but it was totally worth it.

--Jack Kieser

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I like this thread :D

I study taekwondo, and before a sparring match starts I often joke around and do some poses from Street Fighter characters and/or yell stuff like "hadoken!" and "shoryuken!" (while doing those moves) to uhm...intimidate my opponents.

Unsurprisingly, I get my ass kicked most of the time.

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Dude, you should have kept on rolling with it:

"That's very clever of you Mr. Professor, but any decent mathematician would know..."

*Do Phoenix's pointing pose*

"That such and such math thingy is impossible because of such and such math rule!"

*Fold arms over chest and stand imposingly*

That is an easy way to get him pissed off at you. Mathematicians hate know-it-alls.

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I remember a couple of iterations of this thread back, someone was talking about how they used to play Tribes (can't remember which one, maybe the first) religiously. The story went something like this:

In Tribes, when people died, they dropped medpacks. Obviously, these were sought after prizes, so if the other team was smart, if they came across a body with full health (they didn't need the medpack themselves), they'd lay a mine under it. So, the response by the other team was usually to shoot any corpses with the spinfuser before looting them. Okay, enough backstory.

Basically, the guy was driving down the highway, when he notices a dead cat in the road... before he knew what was happening, he had turned on his windshield wipers trying to find the "switch weapon" key.

Yeah, yeah, I've done silly things like thinking I could do dangerous things in real life if I saved beforehand, yada yada.

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I almost got in an accident once trying to find the button to pause so I could look at a map. Yeah...

I also regularly use "pwn" and "n00b" with my friends (as a joke).

What's even worse, though, is something that has nothing to do with video games. I go to an engineering school, so 9 out of 10 people that I know are engineers-to-be. When put in situations with 'normal' people from other schools, it is easy to use terms like "net work", "mean value", and other technical terms to describe everyday things.

One of the worst cases of my inner-computer engineer coming out was when my three housemates and I had a half-hour discussion of what would happen if God 'open-sourced' the universe. That was awesome.

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