This has happened to all of us, you get so into a game that hours go by like minutes, but have you ever been so into a game that when you quit, you felt... high? and I don't mean because you just smoked a joint or ate some 'shrooms, but somehow tapped into the natural endorphins in your brain? This has happened to me a handful of times in my gaming, starting with the first time I played DOOM 3 [http://www.idsoftware.com/games/doom/doom3/] at the grand opening of a new internet cafe, and again today as I played through the first few hours of Dead Space. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/333-Dead-Space]
Now the first time around the setting was pretty much perfect, the room was lit only by blacklights and monitor glow, and they had purchased really friggin' good gaming machines and 3D Surround headphones, so the game looked and sounded amazing. The fact that I only died a couple of times all the way through completely immersed me. When I was done, my friends had already closed the place and were on their own machines playing multiplayer. So I joined them and spend a few more hours running around on Mars.
By the time we were done it was after midnight and I was high as a kite, I don't know if it was endorphins, adrenaline or both, but being completely immersed in that world and coming back to our own triggered something, because I hadn't felt a natural high like that since my triathlon days, and even then that was born out of freakin' PAIN, this was from a different place altogether and lasted for a good 45 minutes.
I just went through the same thing with Dead Space, (Yeah I saw Yahtzee's review but I bought it anyway.) I went through the first 3 hours of the game before I croaked, which involved some pretty immersive playing and some pretty tense moments when you're playing in a darkened room with really good surround sound.
Although not to the same degree, I walked out of my office and into the kitchen where there's natural sunlight and woo. There's that same almost just-got-back-from-out-of-body experience again.
Without a doubt it's adrenaline, just as people experience when they go to see a horror movie, but because I'm actually a character in these games, and so completely in the zone that I manage to get through the game without dying for a long time, perhaps its just the brain's way of making sure you're ready for action because it believes you're really in danger. Then once the threat is over, (i.e. you turn off your machine) you still have all these natural chemicals pumping through your system, and the endorphins kick in as kind of a "reward" for surviving what your brain thought was a real threat.
Combat soldiers will tell you about this feeling after a firefight. I've been in some situations involving guns and to quote Winston Churchill: "Nothing is more exhilarating than to be shot at without result." and yes, I knew about that quote long before Call of Duty, thankyouverymuch. Why shouldn't the same thing apply to really immersive video games dealing with the same primal insticts?
I mean with a killer gaming machine, huge monitor and 3D Surround speakers or headphones, you can completley put yourself into the environment of the game, and I'd say its possible that in some primitive, subconcious way, the part of your brain that controls your fight or flight instinct kicks in and gives you the adrenaline boost to your system when it thinks you need it, like when you have to run like hell and fall back before you kill all the bad guys. Everyone has experienced an adrenaline dump while playing a video game, what I'm talking about is an endorphin dump, the kind of thing you experience after sex. Or after a marathon. Or after marathon sex
So am I the anomoly, or have any of you ever gotten an intense, long lasting, natural endorphin high from an immersive video game? Any other theories as to what could trigger it?
Now the first time around the setting was pretty much perfect, the room was lit only by blacklights and monitor glow, and they had purchased really friggin' good gaming machines and 3D Surround headphones, so the game looked and sounded amazing. The fact that I only died a couple of times all the way through completely immersed me. When I was done, my friends had already closed the place and were on their own machines playing multiplayer. So I joined them and spend a few more hours running around on Mars.
By the time we were done it was after midnight and I was high as a kite, I don't know if it was endorphins, adrenaline or both, but being completely immersed in that world and coming back to our own triggered something, because I hadn't felt a natural high like that since my triathlon days, and even then that was born out of freakin' PAIN, this was from a different place altogether and lasted for a good 45 minutes.
I just went through the same thing with Dead Space, (Yeah I saw Yahtzee's review but I bought it anyway.) I went through the first 3 hours of the game before I croaked, which involved some pretty immersive playing and some pretty tense moments when you're playing in a darkened room with really good surround sound.
Although not to the same degree, I walked out of my office and into the kitchen where there's natural sunlight and woo. There's that same almost just-got-back-from-out-of-body experience again.
Without a doubt it's adrenaline, just as people experience when they go to see a horror movie, but because I'm actually a character in these games, and so completely in the zone that I manage to get through the game without dying for a long time, perhaps its just the brain's way of making sure you're ready for action because it believes you're really in danger. Then once the threat is over, (i.e. you turn off your machine) you still have all these natural chemicals pumping through your system, and the endorphins kick in as kind of a "reward" for surviving what your brain thought was a real threat.
Combat soldiers will tell you about this feeling after a firefight. I've been in some situations involving guns and to quote Winston Churchill: "Nothing is more exhilarating than to be shot at without result." and yes, I knew about that quote long before Call of Duty, thankyouverymuch. Why shouldn't the same thing apply to really immersive video games dealing with the same primal insticts?
I mean with a killer gaming machine, huge monitor and 3D Surround speakers or headphones, you can completley put yourself into the environment of the game, and I'd say its possible that in some primitive, subconcious way, the part of your brain that controls your fight or flight instinct kicks in and gives you the adrenaline boost to your system when it thinks you need it, like when you have to run like hell and fall back before you kill all the bad guys. Everyone has experienced an adrenaline dump while playing a video game, what I'm talking about is an endorphin dump, the kind of thing you experience after sex. Or after a marathon. Or after marathon sex
So am I the anomoly, or have any of you ever gotten an intense, long lasting, natural endorphin high from an immersive video game? Any other theories as to what could trigger it?
