Entering "The Zone"...

[Copter400]

TF2, I sporadically enter fits while playing the Pyro where the range of my flamer seems to stretch onwards towards oblivion, taking everything with it. It once made me take down an Engineer hidey-hole full of various structures as well as a few Engineers who tried to stop me.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

The only time I can really recall doing it was on GHII 360 version. On one of the downloadable songs (Bury the Hatchet on Expert) I managed to nail the intro without missing a note. If you youtube the song, you'll understand my shock.

 

[Dudemeister]

happens to me a lot iin TF2

 

[stompy]

Cooper42, you're suggesting a sort of 'muscle memory' thingy? I suppose so. I mean, that would allow for the person's conscious in question to 'take the back-seat', and let their muscles do the work for them, through retaining their skill. That seems plausible.

 

[xMacx]

From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.

Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove.

Really interesting phenomena - and great when it happens.

The first time I remember that feeling was playing Galaga when I was very young - the minute I realized I was doing something different it was over - I lost all my lives in short fashion after that.

Used to happen a lot playing Enduro as well.

 

[Cooper42]

Cooper42, you're suggesting a sort of 'muscle memory' thingy? I suppose so. I mean, that would allow for the person's conscious in question to 'take the back-seat', and let their muscles do the work for them, through retaining their skill. That seems plausible.

Something akin to that - the wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory seems to suggest so.
Though it's not just muscular. I think xMacx found something about right, though I persoanlly feel it's a lot more non-conscious than the article suggests.

 

[VonKludge]

Happens most of the time in games with great enviroment, and these days I must say it's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that's bringing me into the zone most of the time... pun not intended. I also found out I no longuer need a crosshair, and feel like a videogame addict for it.

 

[Conqueror Kenny]

Happens most of the time in games with great enviroment, and these days I must say it's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that's bringing me into the zone most of the time... pun not intended. I also found out I no longuer need a crosshair, and feel like a videogame addict for it.

ah yes this has happened to me a few times whilst playing gears i find myself giving headshots without aiming at all and im just like "wow".

 

[xMacx]

I think xMacx found something about right, though I persoanlly feel it's a lot more non-conscious than the article suggests.

Depends how you're defining non-conscious. If you're referring to learning a pattern of activities over time, to the point where you're not serially attending to sequences of activity, you're probably talking about the chunking of procedural memory that accompanies expertise in a particular area. Personally, I don't think this would explain the phenomenological experience most people are talking about in this thread. You could develop great expertise in a combination of button presses (which most of us do), but the experience of heightened awareness/drastically improved performance wouldn't really explain this. Chunking of actions tends to follow either a slope or a more of a drop-off (like a cliff)in terms of speed or accuracy - this type of spike in performance doesn't follow with the chunking of physical activity as part of a larger procedure.


Muscle memory usually refers to nuerophysical linking for particular actions; people get this confused with procedural chunking, often linking mental, skill-based activities with the nebulous concept of "muscle memory" without recognizing that users have chunked mental procedures together over time.