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Gaming Zone?
texchanchan writes "The BBC reports on a study by Dr. Costas Karageorghis, Brunel University (London): 'Recent research has suggested that it could be possible for a person immersed in a computer game to achieve the same level of meditative concentration' usually found in religious contemplatives and athletes in 'The Zone.' The article also quotes Dr. Karageorghis as saying 'It's a deeply pleasurable experience and it's something that's not very often experienced by people, rather it's something that often represents people's peak experiences in a particular area.'"
hmmmm. second too?
TRI POSTAGE!!
Don't drugs also let you achieve these higher states? How about a long, hardcore programming session?
Did we really need a study to confirm this? Just like in zen, sports, or whatever else, there exists a 'zone' for gamers.
I am terribly sorry for that outburst. I have apparently left the duck key pressed on my computer. Please excuse me for a moment while I correct this.
funny seeing this after waking up at 1 PM due to a 12 hour marathon nethack session last night...
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
It's pretty trivial to get "The Zone" while playing games. Perhaps everybody that sit down for an afternoon of games has dove into the night, went straight to school or work and came back to play more.
12, 14 hours or more awake, without eating, in front of a television or monitor. The gaming zone is without doubt the "worst" of them all.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Exactly what they're talking about. I remember playing CS and getting ripped on because everyone was absolutely sure I was using an aim/wall hack; when in reality it was me on a gaming "high" being able to loose a bullet with the hairs on someone's head within a half second of seeing an opponent.
It's rather hard to explain, but sometimes someone's level of interactivity with the game seems to put the person in their avatar's shoes. If this level of interactivity and concentration can be achieved in other environments (say, a car), you end up with prodigies and "l33ts".
Nothing new, really, just scientists noticing an ongoing phenomena.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
...any possible excuse to play more games, eh? I'd chalk this one up to pseudoscience.
As a longtime gamer, I could have told you that myself. But I'm still at a loss as to the common element between religion, sports, and gaming. I mean, the intensity is obviously similar, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why. Think about it. What exactly is so compelling about making little virtual characters/objects to virtual things on a smallish glowing box? Damned if I know, but it sure is fun. Anyone else have any ideas here?
In my experience, yes there is a "zone" when everything seems to work and I totally wipe the walls with anyone nearby.
:-)
However, what about the losing streaks? There seems to be another level where everything seems to go wrong, and I have to quit and try later.
I find it hard to believe anyone would be surprised by this article, though; it's the same for any activity that involves quick thinking and hand-eye coordination. Sometimes the neurotransmitters are extra zippy
...
Some of my friends play console games, like Frequency, where you have to move your fingers in complex patterns of complex rhythms at a mindnumbing speed. When playing the hardest boards in these games, my friends will often enter a trance-like state. You can yell at them or cut off your own arm, and they will still finish the board.
I've found a swift blow to the stomach or saying, "Oh shit, the pizza's here, dude. Gimmme your money," are the best ways to pull them out of it.
Alric.
Does anyone here ever *think* they achieve this Flow State while coding? I can definitely see the common ground between sports and video games... both require strong mental agility, the constant evaluation of possible strategies and split-second decisions and whatnot.
And, in light of that, I guess I answered my own question. Programming is more about careful thinking than quick thinking. But then if the key element to being in "The Zone" is concentration, the perhaps coding would apply. Definitely something for me to ponder sometime.
Oh yeah, and while I do agree with their thesis, that article (not to mention their hideous "cutting edge" methods) sounded just a bit hokey, don't you think?
This is why we have LAN parties... we've known this fact to be true already; when you get ten geeks together in a garage with a tub of caffeine and enough powerhouse computer systems to keep them happy all night long, guess what happens?
On Slashdot, we don't say "thank you." We say "that's enough..." -_-;
The best game for "The Zone" (at least for me) has got to be Tetris Attack for the Super Nintendo! (They also published a Pokemon-branded version for the N64, but I never played it).
Why shouldn't gamers be able to enter "The Zone" if sportsmen and the religious can? It's not as if gamers are greatly different, and gaming often requires the same sort of concentration as any sport; gamers do often have the same sort of traits as the religious, such as devotion (must login to Everquest/Planetarion/whatever soon!) and rote memorisation of concepts important to their game/religion (ooh, hit points, defence points, attack points!).
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
When i am in the thick of action - fragging opponents in Unreal Tournament at a mad pace and protecting the flag at my teams base - or crouching down with the German machine gun in MOHAA to take out the Allies coming towards me in a multiplayer game and crouching in a dark corner to reload - my reflexes are sharp - they better be or i am dead meat.
Also when playing UT for long periods(~2hrs+) or looking around in eerie corners of System Shock2, my hands become cold and almost the darkest shade of red and my face becomes so hot and to me the world ends and starts with the game in front of me - phone calls are ignored - door rings are ignored when i am in a clan battle - the PC is checked and double checked before those crucial games - and the reflexes have helped me in real life (trust me)...ok back to GTA3.
Atari
I'm in the zone now
Being concious of it though seems to have brought me round a bit though.
Is it just me, or is the "gamer" test subject pictured Rowan Atkinson? (Mr. Bean, Black Adder)
The "zone" is applicable to playing music as well. I think there are plenty of musicians who would testify to this. I play the drums and I have experienced it before (at least I'd like to think so).
quote source
Tastes Like Chicken
While I find the research quite interesting, as most of the posts on this thread have pointed out, this isn't particularly uncommon. Certain individuals have the ability to narrow-focus in the extreme when presented with the correct stimulus.
All of the individuals described (athletes, strongly religious people, and of course coders/gamers) are inclined towards extreme focus, high levels of motivation, and activities that lend themselves to those traits.
It would be interesting to see reseatch done to determine if there was any neurochemical basis for this type of hyper-focus. Do certain brains, when presented with a particular stimulus, produce certain chemicals/neurotransmitters that lead to this heightened awareness and performance?
Also, are there any side-effects? People have described elation, ecstacy, etc. Is this purely mental or is there a biological basis for it?
"Be proud to be a fighter" - Martial Arts Adage
"'Recent research has suggested that it could be possible for a person immersed in a computer game to achieve the same level of meditative concentration' usually found in religious contemplatives and athletes in 'The Zone.'" Just think what this will do for the online porn industry!
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
Is this really a science article? No, it's a 'Games' article. I have been trying to filter those, but I see they are getting through anyway under the guise of being a different topic. This is not the first time this has happened. Give me a break - Some of us do not care about games at all.
My experience with this is that it can apply to lots of different areas. I think the key is that you're working within a special set of rules, and at some point, you forget what you're actually doing. Normally you still know you're just sitting in a chair playing a game, or coding a program, or maybe throwing around a football. But at some point you just forget all that, and it's like in your mind, the rules of the game are the 'rules' of the real world. To you, there's nothing going on outside of what you're doing. Thinking about it that way, I see no reason it couldn't apply to anything that requires heavy concentration and operates on a set of rules that's different from those of every day life. I think most of us have experienced it in different contexts.
I think it's interesting that this is a phenomenon that a lot of us have discovered on our own, but they're just starting to understand why it happens. I'd like to see more research on this subject in other contexts.
--b.
hot foreign sheep.
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. "
./quake3.x86 +set fs_game osp +connect door 27960 +password imagination
:opening /dev/dsp
:...loading libGL.so: Initializing OpenGL display
:self.fetch_coffee.drink
:-)
*check*
"Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound."
*check*
"A dimension of sight."
*check*
"A dimension of mind..."
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh *check*
"... You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone"
why yes indeed
I don't know if I've been in the same zone the article speaks of, but some friends and I have come to a conclusion that the #1 symptom of being overly immersed in a video game is talking absolute nonsense without realizing it. You'll be staring into the screen, and you'll utter completely random phrases that may only loosely, if at all, tie in to anything that's going on around you. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?
Also, I've been in a state playing games where I repeat the same thought, image, or phrase over repeatedly in my mind until I accomplish the particular part I'm trying to beat in the game. This is pretty common, at least when I get to a point where I'm definitely "stuck" in the game. This thought doesn't necessarily have to do with the game, most often not, actually. Again, can anyone else relate?
I remember one fun session, where I was playing at a small R6 tournament at a computer cafe, and one guy thought it would be fun to throw a ball of paper at me to distract me (I had already won that game, we were just playing for points) and he, along with all the spectators and me went WOW! when I just grabbed it out of the air (it was comming at me at the most extreme angle you can see things at, almost straight into my ear) threw it back to him, grabbed the mouse and killed my two opponents with a frag
THAT was fun
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I feel like I'm in The Zone when we're playing mad 4 player Tekken Tag for hours.
what about programming zone? I sometimes have visions of Classes and Interfaces with Threads when I program my fav Java app.
Don't expect this Flow thing to take off big, as it is not something you can quantify, package and sell. Some people are like that.
But there's no reason why you should be.
The original nintendo tetris, level 19+. If you're very very good, perhaps level 22+. At that level, one mistake left or right, a piece over or under-flipped, and it's mayhem. Staying in the zone is a must, otherwise you can't even play. Those who've reached a sort of tetris-nirvana can make a mistake and not even flinch. I've known a person I'd call a "tetris high monk" who has gotten to level 29. All you can do is laugh while he plays since it's unreal.
I experience this most often when some friends and I engage in hours of play of The Next Tetris for N64. I'll be able to glance quickly up at the next 3 pieces and instantly recognize the best places to put them down. Once the pieces start coming down to the point where you get about .25 seconds to place them, you better be in the zone or you're screwed. Also, after playing the game for a few hours, I can still close my eyes and see the pieces falling into place, forming the ultimate, holeless tower - it seems the zone never wants to let go of me once I leave.
Though nothing can rip you out of the zone faster than seeing the exact piece you needed finally arrive after just giving up on it ever coming. That takes me out of "The Gaming Zone" and into "The Smash The Controller Into The Wall Zone". DAMN YOU STRAIGHT LINES!
I provide PC Support at Brunel's Uxbridge campus. Costas moved to my campus last week. I checked his PC myself to make sure it was mounting the network in his new office. Small world!
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
"If athletes use computer games, maybe to relax, and they do get into Flow, and they learn what that experience is all about, it may be that there is something they can extract from that experience and put into the sporting context,"
Good examples of this are NASCAR drivers, their racing series runs primarily oval tracks but about twice a year they run on a road course. Because many of them have limited experience with these tracks I know that some drivers use video games to help learn the layout, braking points, and passing areas.
A great way to achieve a 'flow' state is to play Dance Dance Revolution at the appropriate skill level. Which makes sense, since the game combines some elements of both video games and sport -- you receive the benefits of both mental concentration and exercise.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
it seems that the more complex the game, the more often people reach high concentrations.
:)
like i've seen people get really disconnected
while playing Homeworld or even something "slow" like Civ, but you don't see too many people going into trances playing solitare, now do you?
Meditation isn't some practice to achieve some 'state'. Buddhists and those who meditate who aren't just empty nirvana-seekers know that the practice of silent meditation is the easy part.
True meditation is to have choiceless awareness of all things(self and otherwise) seep into your life so that you are fully Awake moment to moment. This is the real work.
Game playing and sports training are just (Pavolvian) conditioning. Real meditation is pure awareness without goal-seeking.
I meditate and have been in the 'zone'. They are not the same thing.
A previous story claimed that video games were bad for the brain because they repressed beta wave activity. This supposedly leads to lower cognitive activity and that's supposed to be a bad thing. Well, zen monks and atheletes lower their cognitive thinking in order to practice their craft and here we call it a good thing: getting in "the Zone".
All this proves is that data can be interpreted in different ways. It has more to do with political "spin" than science. I want to know who is funding these studies. Computer gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry, so there is a lot at stake.
What do you mean by "Gaming is not a religion?"
FYI - what Dr. Karageorghis is referring to is Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's work on "Flow - The psychology of optimal experience" in which he describes the characteristics of enjoyable experiences. The following is an excerpt from the book, describing these characteristics:
;)
1. the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.
2. we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
3. - 4. concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.
5. one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
6. enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions.
7. concern for the self disappears yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
8. the sense of the duration of time is altered.
(Csikszentmihalyi; p49)
What's interesting is the similarity of these characteristics to some works done on computergames by Greg Costikyan ("I have no words and I must design"), Chris Crawford ("The Art of Computer Game Design") as well as works on games in general, such as Avedon & Sutton-Smiths "The study of games".
Csikszentmihalyi's work is !very! interesting if you're into the epistemology of computergaming, which - humbly - happens to be the topic of my graduate thesis
naah sig schmig
"Not now, I'm meditating.
In flow, I'm aware of reality, but not in a conscious way. It's a state where the "thinking, rational, conscious mind" has stepped aside and the "reactive, reflexive mind" has taken over. I've experienced this while coding, reading, watching a really good movie, and gaming.
When a neuron "fires", nearby neurons will in turn fire; they will trigger other neurons, etc. etc. Whether or not a particular neuron will fire in response to its neighbor's firing is dependent partially (largely?) on how strong the connection between those neurons is. A repeated experience strengthens the connections between sets of neurons, creating an "open channel" of neural connections in your brain. The more frequent or intense the experience, the stronger the connections become, and the easier it becomes to trigger the neurons involved.
So "flow state" is the repeated, near-effortless firing of a set of neural pathways that have been strongly connected by repeated experience. So strongly connected, in fact, that a tiny stimulus causes them to fire, in effect bypassing the "thinking" part of the brain.
It's like a reflex. When you touch a hot stove, you pull your hand back before you're consciously aware you touched a hot stove. When an enemy character appears on the screen, you shoot them before you consciously are aware that they were there. A tenth of a second later, as you're watching the gibs scatter, you become aware that you shot them. And then you might think to yourself, "Wow, it's like I shot him before I even knew he was there!" And in a way, you did.
-Thomas
I'm skipping church right now!
I read an article linked from someone's blog that suggested that the Zone could be achieved by anyone through drilling and training oneself to breath exclusively through the nose (assisted by the use of breathe-right nasal strips). Something to think about while you're gaming. I don't remember where it was linked; I saw it in someone's blog linked from the Is My Blog Hot or Not? page.
I think I managed to achieve the zone, or something like it, once or twice during typing tests in my high school typing class. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that concentration might have something to do with it too...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I bike a lot. The only people I know who spend more time on a bicycle than me are competitive races (I can't afford to do it). I bike at a high enough speed to sometimes pass people in cars. Anyhow, I was biking home from work one evening. There were two people on the sidewalk in front of me. I couldn't cut into the street, traffic was a bit heavy. I didn't want to have to stop if there was another way, so I swung to the right onto the grass. Problem was there was a tree in front of me. It looked like I could go right under it, but I couldn't see the lower branches because there were no leaves on them. As I got closer I realized that would hurt like hell. So I pressed on my breaks. Well, soon as I apply just a small bit of pressure, the front tire locks up hard. I take off - a good 5 and a half feet high and about 15-20 feet forward; right at the shoulder height of the two people on the sidewalk who were quite curious for the first few seconds as to why a person was flying through the air. I landed sprawled out, face down. And I layed there thinking "Hey, that was awesome! It kinda hurt, but damn was it fun!" The catch behind it was that I was able to sit here and think all of this, spend a few more seconds (as I percieved it - this whole account had to have finished within about a second from the time I hit the ground) laying on the ground, and still reach up and grab my bike out of mid-air with one hand before it pegged me in the back of the head. Not the same as being in the "gaming zone" really, or even the same you experience in an athletic event, but my mind had to be going WAY faster than normal to realize what was going on before I injured myself.
Before anyone says anything about how I shouldn't be on the sidewalks, I am an experienced bicyclist that knows how to handle the thing. I've never come close to hitting anyone, and frankly the drivers in my city aren't always nice to people on bikes. And a note to pedestrians: when you see somebody on a bike coming towards you fast - don't try to avoid it! I get people all the time who think they can help themselves by moving. But that's like driving unpredictably in a car. All they end up doing is going to one side, then trying to go to another leaving me confused and slamming hard on the brakes to avoid them. Anyhow...
SIG: HUP
First, there is what most of us mean by the "zone" as it pertains to video games. Everything just works. I destroy my friends at N64-Goldeneye (pistols, stacks, license to kill - the only way to play). They are screaming at me, hitting me, saying interesting things about my mother, and I just cap all their asses. My movements seem to be on a subconscious level.
Then I have creative "zone". By that I mean the (usually all night) zone of writing a paper you know is something you never could have written under normal circumstances. You read it the next day before you turn it in and say "Damn, this is good stuff, aside from the typos."
Music performance (I've played trombone since I was 10) is more like video games when you're just playing "straight" stuff - no improvisation. Improvised stuff is more like the creative zone.
Then, best of all, is the meditative/aesthetic experience. I hesitate to call it a zone. It can happen when meditating, listening to very moving music, or experiencing another profound art form. It's sort of a mental orgasm. Just like normal orgasms, they vary in intensity. I would say with very little hesitation that a really good mental experience like this is better than a mediocre physical orgasm - and yes, I really mean to say that!
Is anyone familiar with the game "Columns" for the Sega Genesis? Years ago, a friend and I were playing it, and managed to reach some positively obscene level. Then someone came into the room, saw us in our trance-like state, said something, and it all disappeared. We both lost about 3 seconds later, wondering how the frick we had actually managed to play at that level. Subsequent attempts at playing the game haven't been nearly as successful, and I still wonder how I was able to do that.
:)
I think that much like you can go speedblind while driving, your brain can sometimes "slow down" the game when you're immersed. It allows you to perform actions that wouldn't otherwise be possible for someone with normal human reflexes. I think anyone who has ever played Robotron religiously at an arcade knows what I'm talking about.
This also happens to me sometimes during a variety of activities... whoever said above that it happens to them while running: I used to have the same experience often when I did a lot of endurance running. There comes a point during the run when you simply lose any sort of meaningful consciousness, your legs stop protesting, and you feel like you're gliding on air.
Test taking, also. I used to be incredible at taking tests, even when I wasn't really prepared.
I don't know about quack science, but the human brain is definitely capable of empowering the body to greater feats than it would normally be capable of.
Pretty much any of the Tetris variants can induce the Zone effect; I managed to get the best examples of this with just plain old ordinary Tetris. Someone else mentioned Frequency; Rez is another good one. It's pretty much mostly in "twitch" games as they used to be called, though the concentration can help in other types like RTS and FPS games. Just my two cents.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Hell, I knew about this years ago when I would have 999 extra lives playing Star Castle on my Vectrex.
Hours would pass and I was off somewhere else in my mind not even paying attention to the game, and my movements were all reflex.
(If you know Star Castle, you know how much attention it normally requires)
This space available.
I wonder if reserarchers ever go into the zone while researching the zone? Would this be a meta-zone perhaps? Did these scientists reach that meta-zone? We should get some people on this quick!
.sig you are looking for.
This is not the
zen and the art of fragging
If you even wondered... those scenes for a Clockwork Orange have been filmed in the lecture theatre of Brunel University, Uxbridge, just north of Heathrow.
I have some great memories from studying Information Technology at Brunel during the day and project films twice a week in those same lecture theatre where they brainwashed the character from the film.
The report is interesting, but I saw no evidence Dr. Karageorghis used double blind or control subjects in the experiments to avoid Adaptive Thinking. That is, "The Zone" may be nothing more than an artifact of the way he conducted his experiments.
The simplest example of adaptive thinking is to flip a coin a large number of times and look for long runs of heads (or tails). You are sure to get them, but this is an inevitable result of a large number of independent trials, and not evidence of coin flips influencing each other or a "Heads Zone" where you are in an "optimal psychological experience" for flipping a coin heads-up.
He claims that "people performing at the peak of their abilities can experience an increased level of alpha brainwave activity." Well, even supposing they do, what about people performing at less than their peak? Or people performing poorly, or sleeping or eating breakfast? Can they also experience an increased level? I don't know, and the article never asks the question.
Can people perform at the peak of their abilities without an increased level of alpha brainwave activity? Do the two have anything to do with each other at all? I don't know, and you'll never find out by reading this article.
He looked for "flow state" in winners and found them, but what if he found it in losers as well? Or what if he found it in the winners while they weren't winning? Does this "flow state" have anything to do with winning, or is it about as relevant as the number of heads in a row you can flip on a coin?
I go into the "zone" when I play Breakout sometimes. I just go through the levels w/o even thinking about hitting the ball.
"I can't drive 55. It only goes 38."
This has as much to do with science as your local new-age scientoligist e-metering fruitcake.
Whenever I even get close to "The Zone" it's fscked up when I have to play hunt-the-missplaced-semicolon.
As for games [Unreal Tournament], I used to be the lame loser wherever I went. I was using a VooDoo banshee, AMD K6 400mhz, crappy logitech mouse too small for my big ape hands, 56kb modem.
Then I discovered "The Zone"... Within 2 weeks I was hittin the top spot on the scoreboard consistently, often with a few LPB's for good measure. :)
Now I only have one problem: I cannot connect to any fscking UT servers since gettin NTL broadband! Anyone else have this problem? _I_ wanna be the annoying LPB for once!!!
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Back in the "day", I remember playing MechWarrior 2 online via NetMech. My Clan would play for many, many hours against other clans. Let me tell you, a 3 on 3 game of Mech2 via dial-up was a brutal thing. After about 2.5 hours of playing in a hot apartment, you do kinda get into that "zone". It was almost like hallucinating and your hands and mind would be one. Very strange sensation coming outta that "trance".
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
In my opinion, this "state", "flow", or what ever you call it is not so much a matter of attaining something special, but the absence of - or ignoring - some higher level thinking. To put it simply, that is when I stop asking "what is it I am doing" or "What am I doing" or "What should I do next". In short, the cessation of analytical thought, and the taking over of instinctive thinking. Of course this can happen in wildly artificial settings, like a game, but still, the reactions are "natural", and not hampered by "rational" considerations.
Actually it is quite amusing that we think the "rational" thinking is the only kind that matters, and that it has some specific high status. Most of the things we do are not governed by it! We make a few millions of decisions every day, and only in a few isolated cases we can afford to line up the possibilities, and make a rational decision. The rest "just happens" - and this is (in my humble opinion) what happens in the "zone" or "state of mind".
Its nice to see validation of my intuition that repeatedly killing people in Quake was giving me the same benefits of hours of dedicated zazen meditation.
All your base are belong to us.
For great justice, I transcend to a higher level of cousciousness...
Very interesting article here.
:)
I'm playing a lot of Megaman since then
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
In Zen buddhism, and many schools of martial arts, you can find the following concepts:
...maybe the "easily flying game" is just because I've managed to scrounge all the best weapons and armor...
Isshin, "one mind", means extreme focusing on a single topic or a target. One archery master has written: "One life, one arrow. Use your entire life for firing one arrow."
Zanshin, cautious mind, means broadness of perception, being aware of everything that's happening around you.
Mushin, empty mind, is totally free of fear, distress, pain, and other distractions. "Mushin doesn't get entangled to anything, but flows as freely as a flowing water, finding its way in a riverbed."
The goal is to find a mental state where all three aspects combine.
Of course, martial arts teachers say that mushin can only be attained after years, if not decades, of practice. I don't know if that's true - they might be confusing superior mental state with actual superior performance, which is a combination of skill, physical prowess, and mental state, and might therefore not be relevant.
I believe these aspects are pretty common in about everything people do, not just martial arts, sports, computer games, or zen monk business. Some martial arts people, such as the sword master Mushashi, have said the same, when they have observed the same mental states in artistic performers, and actually in people of all professions.
Personally, I love computer games, and especially in first-person-shooters I often find moments where the game just "flies" with a deadly rhythm. There's definitely zanshin there, and possibly also isshin and mushin. Assuming that I'm right about the meaning of isshin and mushin, I might say that mushin is very common in playing, while isshin is less clear.
Such mental states do not of course quarantee success, because you're probably not the only good player there, and good skill, reactions, and especially items may usually give better results that any game Zen.
Games do resemble stimulant drugs. I just finished Baldur's Gate, which I started playing two weeks ago. When I started, I played 30 hours straight with almost no breaks. I didn't feel any need for sleeping or eating or doing or thinking anything else. It's same thing with all new games, usually I play them through in a weekend.
As a side note, I must say that attaining such states might be easier for some people. For example, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is often associated with super-concentration, one which is often compared in psychological texts to "a mental state common with top athletes". Go figure.
It was quite strange. Whenever I thought I was going soooo slow, I set a new record. This "flow" affects time awareness, everything slows down around you.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Funny, how so many people are quick to put on their CSICOP hats and debunk, debunk, debunk, yet when almost the same research said the same thing about achieving an alpha state while watching television in an effort to decry television there weren't so many skeptics.
It looks like the subject matter here is on trial and not the science. Video games must be bad regardless of the facts to some people it seems.
I'm an experieced meditator and have had a lot of time to play with sound/light and feedback machines. I can tell you with a straight face that if you park me in front of the local Galaga machine I will get into an alpha state after the first few levels and do very well until I break my 'silent concentration.'
That would be the day I accidentally trashed a very expensive database that we were building by sorting a hash table that was never meant to be sorted. After getting the BOFH to restore it from backup (whew), I told my boss and went home. I am glad I was not piloting an oil-tanker that day in that state. Can tanker captains and jet pilots take the day off becauase they are too far outside the zone?
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Anyone who has played enough of Robotron (in the arcade, stand-up form factor) can attest to the fact that you can occasionally get into the "Robotron Zone" where you can just go through level after level without dying. You stop thinking about where to run and shoot and it just happens. I knew a couple guys who could get into the Robotron Zone and achieve zone 300+.
hey, Marty, can I quote you? Send me an email if so.
I can get he same mental state while coding as I do on a Half-life run.
It would be interesting to see reseatch done to determine if there was any neurochemical basis for this type of hyper-focus. Do certain brains, when presented with a particular stimulus, produce certain chemicals/ neurotransmitters that lead to this heightened awareness and performance?
A guy with an almost unspellable name of Cziksentmihalyi has done a lot of work in this area. It'sa blend of nature and nurture, that is, neurochemistry *and* psychological development. Further information in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness . Perhaps most tellingly, most of the work in this area of psych is funded by the DoD -- they want super-alert soldiers who will stay sharp for days on end.
Searches for a simplistic neurochemical solution rather remind me of the Emergent's "Focus" neurovirus in Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky
Da Blog
This study is rather predictable. They take comparable symptoms and then ask people if they really thought it comparable.
The real question is what happens in the brain.
Just some suggestions to get started:
- the Japanese study hat was recently quoted here noticed that mainly the frontal lobes got the alpha waves.
- some meditation studies notice that some parts of the brain become quiet while others become more active.
I don't know what to make from that. But I do think that further research should be in that direction.
The latest view of consciousness is that we think we are experiencing a fully-detailed world at a constant rate, but researchers find this isn't the case; and when they probe the blind spots, they find the 'subconscious' makes stuff up to keep the 'conscious' mind in this state of belief. It's usually not a problem as we can always ask for more detail on an object that interests the conscious mind. The subconscious and senses will supply the true detail as needed.
So yes, the subconscious can handle a lot without attention of the conscious mind, otherwise touch-typing (for instance) would be impossible.
Postulate: in the gaming 'Zone', your conscious and unconscious mind are in a high degree of sync, the information flow from your senses translating into a workload split efficiently between them. (Tactics/mouse movements by subconscous, Strategy/opponent evaluation by conscious, in a CS deathmatch for example.)
This synchronization is broken by interruptions. It can also be broken from within the task at hand by a problem that is too difficult or surprising for the conscious mind to provide an answer in time.
Training obviously influences how deep you can be in the game and still be in the zone. Actions that used to require thought become instinctive. There's an interesting idea here that neurons are becoming dedicated to an action. Once the input/output pattern is refined enough, the layers of preliminary processing (corresponding to some degree of conscious thought?) can be stripped away and re-assigned.
disclaimer, i am not a scientist, just recalling some recent Discover magazines and going from there.
You're doing a graduate thesis and you don't know the difference between epistemology and phenomenology? Right on, dude!
Kaboom! for the Atari 2600 and Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar are the only two games for which I've ever entered a trance-like state.
:^)
;^)
With Kaboom!, it was an attempt to hit the 10,000 point mark. By the time I was at the higher levels, all there was in front of me was the TV - the rest of the room and the people in it faded into the background. It was cool.
With Tempest, you need strong focus to see past the flying pixels and giant "EXCELLENT!" that get between you and the baddies down the tube. The techno music helps a lot, too.
The only other game that's come close was WipEout for the PlayStation. With that game, though, it just got to the point of "need to pause before scratching nose."
-bill!
I used to regularly achieve a Zen-like state when playing the Robotron arcade game. As a matter of fact, Robotron plays heavily into my desire to create a MAME cabinet with two high quality (read: heavy and reliable) joysticks.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Dreams would be a lot like this, too, wouldn't they? I can't recall a single dream I had where I was thinking in English...they're always an "Understand->do" experience.
For example, I know I want to punch out Godzilla. I automatically fly into the air, dodge a couple of swings at me, and hit him in face.
Of course, there always seems to be a shred of reality (or is it just masochism?) that causes him to swallow me when I get close enough...
What's this Submit thingy do?
I understand that "flow". I've hit it in soccer in HS, and now I hit it sometimes as a sound tech (more on that in a bit.) I think that it's possible to hit in any area where total concentration can be achieved and is desireable and pleasurable. Just what that thing is for you depends on who you are, how you are wired, and what you do for fun and/or money.
Back to sound...
I've been mixing for a 9-member band. Full drum kit, bass, keys, lead guitar, percussion, two accoustic and one electric rhythm guitars, five vocals. 28 channels of instruments and vocals, two stereo effects channels. I'm tweaking levels, monitoring thier monitors and adjusting them, playing with the onboard EQs, playing with 6 offboard 31 band EQs, 16 channels of compressors/gates, and two effects processors. I've got more knobs to play with than I knew existed six months prior. I'm recording it all to a PC. I've got 1100 people dancing to it all around me.
Suddenly, I'm "There". I'm in the zone. The crowd is gone. I can only feel the board at my fingertips, but no longer need to see it. I'm maintaining eye contact with all 9 band members and reading what they are saying to me with miniscule eye movements for monitor adjustments. And the feeling was ecstacy. It was as good as an orgasm after an hour of lovemaking (though didn't feel like it, per se.) I was just, "There".
Five songs later I realized not only that my wife was in the building (I was not expecting her,) but that she had had her arm around my waist for 15 minutes and I didn't know she was there. That's the zone.
been out for 5 years, time to comment again...