Video games bleeding into real life

Firstly I've been playing quite a lot of shadow of mordor.

So I was driving back to work tonight and a bat flapped across my car, and the first thing I thought was 'shit I need that for the hunting challenge'. Only for a split second but it made me think. I'm sure this has happened before but I can't remember the specifics.

Anyone else ever experienced this?

Sure. Years ago, I was walking down the street once and a nice red car drove past me. My right middle finger instinctively twitched as I was playing GTA III at the time and had mapped the right mouse button to Enter/Exit Vehicle.

More recently, I was nearly hit by a car, and my first instinct was to block it rather than get out of the way. Too much Street Fighter, I guess.

As a kid, my mind was blown when I tried that SMB2 USA "crouch and then jump to jump super high" trick and it worked. Granted, I wasn't flashing like the game's characters, but you get what I mean.

Nah, never had an experience like that. But I used to play a lot of call of duty and my dreams constantly woke me up because I would just dream in fps mode like I was in a match, and it would last all night and I'd get no damn sleep

A few years ago I was at work and extremity tired. Every time I would look at the walls I would see the full cover/half cover shield icons from XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It made for a very interesting day.

One of the only games that did this to me was Picross 3D. I played it a lot over a summer break back when I was a student, and it stuck to my every thought.

It reached a point where I could only see Picross blocks whenever I closed my eyes. Hell, even a second long blink made me see those damn blocks.

It's a damn fine game, probably one of the best games for the DS, but holy crap does it stay with you.

When I play a lot of Portal, I start seeing the world in terms of portalable surfaces.

Yes!, holy shit, i had basically the same feeling a while back as well,

Tetris Effect in EFFECT!

I get the tetris effect alot myself, seeing puzzles and thinking about puzzles.

Watch Dogs actually gave me a little of that, with my eyes drawn to hackable objects in the world and my finger twitching around a non-existent controller. Also, when I'm driving in real life, I occasionally imagine a racing line around corners. Don't engage, but damn if I'm tempted.

Not really, other than having a strange spinning effect on my vision, like after spinning around in a chair or something, after playing Guitar Hero, Tetris and similar games. Not seeing blocks or anything like that, just having my vision still trying to track the moving playfield after turning away from/shutting down the screen, making it look like stationary objects are moving.

I have been driving a few times and thought, 'Oh, that person's about to merge right into me. Ah, well...', before remembering that car accidents have actual consequences.

And while not exactly video game-specific, several years ago I was up all night programming in GameMaker, and the entire next day I was translating muscle commands into GML code. E.g.: obj_r_arm(self.x+1,self.y); image_angle(self.angle+1);

I sometimes find myself in Japan late at night looking for sailors in dive bars.

Yup, few years ago I played A LOT of Battlefield 3 and I'd always be thinking I saw someone hiding on some rooftops or industrial areas.

Something you could relate this discussion to is PTSD in soldiers, except to the nth degree. I used to live in a firehouse for 3 years, and whenever i'd visit home I would think I heard the alarm going off and actually react for a second. It made me realize that this was a fraction of how PTSD must be in soldiers.

Not a video game, but I was up all night trying to finish a programming project for school one time. I couldn't sleep for ages afterwards because it felt like my brain turned into a computer, I just kept going over programming stuff in my head constantly. It was horrible.

I've been the afghan twice and after the first time I was extremely jumpy around loud noises, like car backfires and fireworks. Nothing like serious PTSD though, that would suck.

I notice this especially regarding games which have special traversal gameplay in them. Most recently it's happened with Sunset Overdrive, but Crackdown, Jet Set Radio and Portal definitely come to mind as well.

After playing a lot of gta v in fps mode I find myself automatically scanning for fast cars to steal for a split second whenever im walking\biking IRL and get the idea its taking too long haha.

As in: Shit im taking to long, gonna be late for work!!..... OR I could just walk in front of that driving Ferarri to make it stop and pull the person out to get to my destination faster!

Whenever I was big into CoD 4 I'd often find myself checking out my surroundings with the same cautious attention to detail as I did in game. I had no idea why I did it, but it's funny to think about how we perceive reality differently from video games. Also, if you've ever played a lot of DDR, or anything like it, closing your eyes and watching ghost arrows scrolling up the back of my eyelids is pretty weird.

Assassin's Creed 2 did that for me. I saw walls in a whole different light.

If I mainline WoW i see the mage UI popups in my vision sometimes. After playing a ton of GTA first person I walked up to a barricade in real life and my first thought was to press the button to mantle it and get over. I still hear the sound that plays when you kill a minion in League of Legends.

When I was playing portal 1. I would think in portals something like this: "Okay i've gotta get over there, so I'm just going to shoot the purple one unto that wall over there and then one under me" or "I wonder if that tree is wide enough to fit a portal unto it"

After playing early Assassin's Creed games, I'd survey the environment when I went out and think "I could totally climb that shit".

I played a ton of Burnout 3 when it came out, and got to the point where if someone got too far ahead of me I would restart the race, and I'd get these nervous itches when I was neck and neck with them. When people pull up next to me on the highway, I get a little bit of that rush. It's much worse when someone cuts me off.

When I was a kid, I would hear the music from Pokemon Red for hours after I turned the Game Boy off.

A while back I had trouble with mice in my house, and their scratching around in the walls kept me up pretty much all night. I also happened to be playing a lot of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood at the time, and the combination of that and sleep deprivation resulted in me catching myself trying to use eagle vision while chasing the fuckers 'round the house with a broom.

That was a low point, I must admit.

At one point, back when I was sort of obsessed with Resident Evil I would visualize stuff like "Will you pick up the Black Pen?" in my every day life. That was weird. I also occasionally visualize things in terms of my life having a Mass Effect style dialogue tree.

I found myself wanting to draw circles over bare trees during Autumn, after playing way to much Ōkami.

I had trouble falling asleep because I could not stop doing block puzzles in my head after playing way too much Catherine.

Only when I'm in traffic and seen an empty sidewalk. The thoughts come up.

Tetris Effect in the works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

I didn't happen to me personally, but waaaaaay back in my high school days me and my friends basically spent an absurd amount of time playing Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and it started to mess with them a bit. One friend reported that he instinctively tried to input the button command to launch his aircraft when in history class a teacher started to talk about nuclear missiles, and the other said that in a class a teacher said "unit loss" and he had to fight the temptation to look around to see where his units were being attacked.

Shortly after, we stopped playing Red Alert every night. Go figure.

That is super interesting! I've had that happen. Did not know it had a name.

When I was playing Sleeping Dogs did weird things to my driving. Specifically when looking at oncoming traffic. I wasn't great a driving then.

In my WoW days, I swear I would see certain things when I was very tired. Mainly wyverns out of the corner of my eye flying above me. It was weird.

I'm deep into re-playing Fez on PS4. Saw a street sign that really fucked with my head for a second while driving yesterday... so much that I pulled over and took a photo.

After playing Sniper Elite:Nazi Zombie Army2, I'd survey the environment when I went out...