Poll: Have you ever had gaming-induced hallucinations? (Like the "Tetris Effect")

[JLrep]

The "Tetris Effect", for those who don't know, is a fairly well-documented phenomenon in which people who've been playing a lot of Tetris tend to see little falling Tetrominoes in their peripheral vision, even when they're not playing the game. I've never played Tetris enough for that to happen to me, but I've had some similar cases (for the sake of this post, I'm including cases where I found my way of looking at things warped or affected by the games I played, even if it wasn't an actual hallucination per se):

-Deadly Rooms of Death is a top-down puzzle game in which each character moves in discrete steps from one square to another. After playing DRoD for some hours, I thought I saw little objects moving in discrete steps in my peripheral vision.

-After pounding through some Morrowind, when I focused my vision on something interesting or gold-colored I found myself expecting to see its name, weight and value hovering over it.

-After playing a lot of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (wooo), walking around I could only see all the places I could do grinds, wall-rides, etc. (but a conspicuous lack of half-pipes)

-After several days of Halo, when I first got it, I started looking at the world in terms of what I could hide behind while my shield recharged.

I think I've had more that I don't remember. Life is fun. How about you?

 

[Disaster Button]

The only type of hallucination that's been game induced involved me hearing muffled sounds of a game: gunshots, explosions, some dialogue or small muscial cues. I don't know if those count.

 

[The_Decoy]

Yes. Many times, generally over games. Oblivion, Morrowind, Mass Effect...

But the worst occurred a couple of weeks ago, when I'd been doing lab reports on excel for 10 hours a day for 3 days.

I had the tetris effect with excel. Quite possibly the most boring hallucination one could ever imagine.

 

[MurderousToaster]

After being addicted to Team Fortress 2 for about two weeks, I kept hearing the sentry's bleeping sound everywhere.

More recently, I bought Bad Company 2 on Sunday, and it's been the only thing in my Xbox since. I keep hearing explosions and gunfire.

 

[Ymbirtt]

Myself, I've blinked and had a crosshair in the centre of my vision.

 

[dbmountain]

after playing a lot much BC2, i often hear motion sensors beeping

 

[Wolfram23]

Not so much, but I've had some crazy game-induced dreams. Like one night after playing MW2 a lot, I dreamed of being in a wooded area and making a ton of headshots with this crazy gun - it was like an old rifle but the barrel was pretty big like a shotgun. Also, there wasn't any gore lol.

 

[ma55ter_fett]

I had a dream that I was a Dark Angel sergeant who found a set of terminator armor in the vault of a planetary governor (similar to the Dawn of War 2 angel gate quests) I remember calling for a couple of servitors to help me out of my own power armor and into the terminator dregs.

Last thing I remember was loading a storm pistol and grabing a power sword.

That?s about the closest I have ever come to living a game? and it was awesome.

 

[SturmDolch]

Well, after playing WoW a few years back, I started not being able to see right. Parts of my vision would disapear (hard to explain), some parts of it would go all.. fuzzy. Then my arm went numb, like falling asleep, which spread to my face.

It was scary as hell. This happened a few times after, too, not even when playing WoW and one time my parents took me to the emergency room.

Turns out it's just Migraine Aura [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine_aura] but it was scary as hell.

Also, another time, I was playing some weird flash game into the night. I went to bed but kept seeing it and couldn't sleep for most of the night. I think I slept an hour and woke up with intense pain in my arm for some reason, which kept me awake for the rest.

 

[Meggiepants]

I've had a serious case of the Tetris effect after an all night marathon of Tetris 2 against my brothers.

We stayed up all night and went to the movies the next day looking like hell. I have no idea what the movie was, because all I could see on the screen was Tetris 2. That is the last time I ever did that.

 

[Darth Caelum]

Well, the Mass Effect style speech interface is slowly taking over my mind so yeah.

 

[ItsAChiaotzu]

After playing Guitar Hero it used to feel like everything was moving away from me

 

[Mr. Bojangles]

Not so much, but I've had some crazy game-induced dreams. Like one night after playing MW2 a lot, I dreamed of being in a wooded area and making a ton of headshots with this crazy gun - it was like an old rifle but the barrel was pretty big like a shotgun. Also, there wasn't any gore lol.

Same here. Lot's of dream based (loosely) on games.

An example would be a Halo dream and a Standard Army Squad Based FPS dream.
Too long ago to remember the details though. All I remember is the Halo dream somehow leading to a Giant Spider boss battle and my friends always played minor characters.

 

[SquirrelPants]

A few months back when I played a lot of Tetris I'd get that. I've also gotten the HUD from Borderlands all caught up in my vision after playing it for a long time. I usually get pretty mindfucked any time something scary happens, if that counts...I've actually got quite a bit of these sorts of things. Too many to sit around naming while I could be contracting MORE.

Mod Edit: Lazy posters that can't take the time to write down more but instead write that they aren't going to write more should not be allowed to ever write more about not writing more. And I bet you have visions of forum threads when speaking to people? Do they Report you with the imaginary Report button? Cause they should. Permabanned. -Kuliani

 

[notyouraveragejoe]

If I get bored I tend to start imagining everything in terms of a Video Game. More concrete example. My friend played Halo for 3 days straight. Then we went out to watch a movie. We're leaving the cinema and he starts raving "They're everywhere. Mini-Master Chiefs and mini-Elites. Get them away." Naturally we both got very drunk that night and played Gears of War 2. It was pretty funny to be honest.

 

[Zing]

I've seen the Grenade indicator while browsing the video store. I'm lucky I realized it was a hullucination before I went commando rolling to the side.

Also when I used to play wow, and dreamed about playing wow, I'd wake up waggling my middle finger trying to hit hot-keys >.>

 

[Lepre-Khan]

I dont know about the Tetris affect but whenever I played the flying sequences in God of War 3 I felt dizzy and disoriented.

 

[AvsJoe]

[HEADING=2]Minesweeper.[/HEADING]My God, Minesweeper is the worst for the Tetris Effect. Imagine an unlimited grid full of potential mines and no walls and you clicking away for several minutes without the ability to think of anything else. Not long after I had a Minesweeper marathon to beat my record 76 second score (which I failed to do), I Tetris Effected for over an hour while trying to sleep. I gave up Minesweeper the next day. It is only the second game that I am *officially* retired from (the other being Romance of the Three Kingdoms 7).