Slashdot Mirror
Video Gamers Have Power Over Their Dreams
Ponca City, We love you writes "Live Science reports that researchers say playing video games before bedtime may give gamers an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, which could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma. 'If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice,' says Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada, who says that hardcore gamers represent the leading edge of immersion in virtual worlds that increasingly has come to define a large part of contemporary entertainment and communication. 'Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams.' One intriguing theory holds that dreams are a sort of threat simulation where nightmares help organisms hone their skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation. To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a study using independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports and found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something 'fun' for a gamer."
Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?
Other than testing the number of respawns.
DATABASE WOW WOW
How this differs from lucid dreaming?
Not all that surprising really. We rehearse coping with dangerous situations all the time (including public speaking ;-) ), so that when they actually happen we'll be better prepared to handle them.
FP.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I learned to fly... it makes nightmares non-existent as I know i'm sleeping, and just "neo" away from whatever is bothering me... Pretty fun stuff - this will sound utterly retarded, but I once flew so fast and so far that I broke through space and met two odd green creatures who were looking down at the universe within a globe. I don't remember our conversation. Doh.
But the key is to become aware that you are dreaming, and that you *can* do anything... It eliminates nightmares.
Usually I just end up dreaming about whatever game I was playing. That's hardly "control."
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I don't know about games, but last night I did an in-dream Wikipedia search on a piece of botany I encountered in a dream. It was pretty freaking weird. Very realistic too, as the wikipedia entry was quite inaccurate.
... and then they built the supercollider.
so this raises the question, what do electric sheep play?
OK, so this is going to be very corny in a karate kid / Bruce Lee "Enter the Dragon" sort of way, but my nightmares of running away from aggressors while my legs turned to molasses got much better after a few years of studying martial arts. They'd still catch up with me, but then I'd have some things to give to them in return and I'd wake up feeling good rather than miserable.
I probably don't play the right video games, but the dreams induced by L4D are mostly tedious rather than scary. Except when I spawn as the infected. Then I'm absolutely terrified.
As a teenager, I used to try controlling my dreams, and it actually sort of worked. I was sometimes able, in my dream, to realize it's a dream and decide about stuff happening in it, or decide waking up. I can't quite remember details now, but I do remember I was fascinated with all that was possible.
Video games didn't exist at the time.
I think this has nothing to do with video games, and everything to do with age and the mental ability and desire to experiment with stuff like that.
I admit that gaming and gaming themes have many times infiltrated my dreams. I remember a couple years ago I had an odd dream where there were zombies or something in them, and in the dream I was able to fight them off using powers similar to those of Paladins in games.
However, was I better prepared to handle this strange dream because of the influence of gaming, or did I dream about zombies in the first place because of games and horror films?
Secondly, if dreams are like scenarios that our brain plays out to practice dealing with threats, does that mean that those who immerse themselves in worlds of fantasy in science fiction entertainment (either in the form of television, movies, or games) to the point that they seep into their dreams end up training their brain to practice running through scenarios that are in reality a waste of the brain's time to consider?
Well... a waste up until the zombie apocalypse actually occurs, of course.
Ever noticed how once you gain interest in a field (lucid dreaming in my case) you begin to see it appear everywhere you go? Paradigm shifts... I shall go into intensive gaming to conquer my dreams.
How this differs from lucid dreaming?
Well, I'd predict that the first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies, and dream control that allowed people to actively influence or change their dream worlds – qualities suggestive of watching or controlling the action of a video-game character.
A second study tried to narrow down the uncertainties by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before, and focused more on gamers. It found that lucid dreams were common, but that the gamers never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves.
What's that you say? I just copied that from TFA? Well if you knew that was in TFA, why'd you ask?
TFA also mentions that the researcher in question was focused on lucid dreams until she saw her son kissing an NES box.
I don't know about you guys, but I always find my dreams quite entertaining. Even the ones that most folks would consider to be nightmares.
Blocks...Keep...Falling!!!
Dream world of the past:
Unicorns & Fairies
Dream world of the future (or Present):
Unlimited Minerals & Vespene Gas
Based on my experience dabbling with online FPS play, most of the gamers would sooner die that admit they 'felt threatened' by anything other than their Moms. And usually they will express such bravado while throwing in a few random epithets for good measure.
I wonder if the researchers had dream reports like 'Whatever dumbass. Only fags are afraid of dreams you noob. Don't be such a bitch you fag.'
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I'm running Lucid. I dreamed about fixing all the bugs with my USB floppy, Radeon r100, and Xconfiguration. Then I woke up and wished I was running Slackware.
Been a lucid dreamer ever since I started playing video games, around 20 years. It changes the nature of nightmares - when dreams are a story you're telling yourself, there's a certain point where you can just go "OK this is too far, it's my turn." The nature of nightmares then becomes indefinite fears, overcoming anxious situations gracefully (or not), and fear of the consequence of one's own actions, as these are fears one cannot just turn the tables on, even if one knows they are fake.
I find this alteration of nightmares is actually much better than the usual boogeyman/hunted dreams in adapting one for modern life. Facing anxiety is a much more important limitation than just getting hurt or hiding from a malicious force - desensitizing yourself to indefinite fears is much more adaptive than desensitizing yourself to monsters or gore.
Also, the expectation of 'fun' from exploration of the unknown is a much better expectation for modern things than it used to be. It really opens up one to learn more than a fear-based experience would be. It's part of why I love to see games being developed - the expansion of people's expectations, the expansion of experience in more people's minds. Books have offered a lot of that - but the exploration has always been new ideas exposed, as opposed to the true sense of open discovery.
Games aren't all good, of course, but I think this is a widely ignored benefit to the mindset that games allow to exist.
Ryan Fenton
Gamers smoke a lot of pot. Pot inhibits REM sleep.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So that settles the debate: simulated violence is good for you.
Obviously that applies at least as much to sex. Right?
Once the Devil approached a doomer saying: I will fulfil any your three wishes, then send you to the Hell; agree?
The doomer replied: 1) IDDQD, 2) IDKFA, 3) Send me to the Hell !
The Devil smiled siniously and sent him to the Hell. With the NIGHTMARE settings.
(c an ancient Russian joke)
Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of lucid dreaming doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit.
"dreams are a sort of threat simulation where nightmares help organisms hone their skills"
When I was in college, I used to dream in c++. God damn segfaults got me every time.
well this is strange then, I don't remember playing strip-poker.
You can't handle the truth.
As a gamer, I've discovered that not only can I control my dreams, but I've actually found several cheat codes that have allowed me to fulfill those dreams in real life. Example: I can cast fireballs from my fingertips in real life, so don't piss me off, ok?
Ob. Pet Peeve: (mis)characterizing all computer games with a rich video element as "videogames". Is WoW, for example, really a "video" game? Is the video the main point of playing the game, the thing that keeps people grinding away at for 30 hours a week or more, for years of their lives? I don't think so. The video component of the game isn't even close to being photorealistic, nor does it try to be...
But which has the most control over their dreams? First Person players or Third Person Players?
I had something very much like this happen to me last night. Before going to sleep I had been playing World of Goo as well a dose of the latest Pokemon game (MANCHILD ALERT). I remember my dream last night had something to do with me blowing out the tires on my new car and basically making a wreck of the whole machine. What I ALSO remember is explicitly telling myself, mid-dream, that "Oh well, at least it's just a dream. But it sucks that I have to deal with this wreck until I wake up."
Direct causation? Not even close. But still it's an interesting idea that control over our "synthetic" virtual worlds might also translate, to a certain degree, over to our more "natural" virtual worlds.
Actually, lucid dreaming has nothing to do with dream control. Lucid dreaming only means that you are aware of that you are lying in your bed dreaming. It does not necessarily mean that you have control over your dreams.
"Live Science reports that researchers say that playing video games before bedtime may give gamers an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams which could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma."
yeah... and it also provides the ability to get laid!! =D
Wow, who is modding this up? Many people have lucid dreams who are not involved in the nonsense mentioned in any way. The two, in fact, have no necessary connection.
my case is slightly different. I tend to pursue my daily gaming after I go to sleep, usually in the form of 'dream-gaming' : long, detailed sessions of the game I was playing while awake happening all in my dreams.
At some point when I was (admitedly) playing way too much texas-hold-em, I would keep playing in my dreams, often several hundred hands a night, and could even wake up knowing how much I had 'made' or 'lost' that particular night. I could also remember vividly most of the hands, my opponents' characteristics and the session's specific vibe.
used to be the same when i was playing (admitedly) too much UO: I would go as far as MACROING in my sleep sometimes.
Serious scientific research can be done on lucid dreaming and there might be something worth learning from it (e.g. how does it happen, why is it allowed to happen?) and just because it is tied to theology and other non-scientific aspects of the human experience is no reason to just toss it out as being uninteresting. Lucid dreaming is actually a phenomenon that we know happens, that we can record markers for in sleep laboratories, and that there is still a lot of interesting things that can be learned about it.
So because the manipulation of consciousness has played a role in shamanism, it's not "acceptable" to investigate? Not even in relation to new technologies and modern methods of constructing virtual worlds?
While your atheism sounds good in theory, in practice you're just being a wonder-killing, generalizing butthole.
P.S. Shamanism is probably better classified as animistic, not theistic. The ethnomedical component of shamanism has also been extremely useful for humanity in the many thousands of years before Western medicine, and remains useful in the treatment of culture-specific diseases (especially psychological ones). Out of body experiences are real psychological phenomena and worth studying as well.
I started taking a medication years ago that made my dreams more vivid, and for the last 4 or 5 years I have lucid dreams almost every morning right before I wake up. I find them very interesting, and I have often wondered about dreams and if their evolutionary purpose is to train us for potential threat situations.
So yes, I am interested in hearing more research on this topic.
I remember reading a previous slashdot story about dreams being "threat simulators" and a lot of people were quite skeptical that dreams could actually serve this purpose. Anecdotally, most people recounted dreams that seemed pointless and unrealistic. I would argue that those dreams could have actually been training them in many ways that those people don't realize.
Any time your dream changes in a way that is totally unrealistic, you learn to expect the unexpected. And if that's true, then dreaming really is an important area of human study.
Does this sound like something that an educated person would have anything to do with?
Well, while I was a student still, and was doing a paper on navigation systems in AI, I needed to do a lot of simulation runs stepping through the navigation algorithms with various environmental layouts (ie: set up different obstacles and mazes and figure out which ones break each algorithm) - since I trained myself to do the lucid dreaming thing years before that, it was easy, I just went to sleep, and used my dream to do test runs every night for a week. In the morning, I'd write out the results, and do the implementation to verify it - I managed to get good results from it. That sounds like a pretty serious academic application to me.
Of course, I never had anything to do with the "FREE Lucid Dreaming mp3 Audios" and crap like that, since I learned in the 80's and early 90's, before the mp3 and Spam existed. I had to do it the old fashioned way, asking myself if I was awake all the time, coming up with "am I dreaming?" tests, and writing down everything from every night's dream so that I had a chance of remembering it. And then burning it, because seriously man, I wouldn't want anyone reading that crap.
if one can prove that videogames affect the "subconscious", lawmakers could use this as a precedent that videogames "make people violent". it would hold as much weight as other experiences that affect a persons "subconscious", and by extension, their behavior.
This is one of the scariest arguments I've ever seen. You're saying we should avoid a topic because some crazies have taken a liking to it. An analogous argument is that because there are faith healers, homeopathic "cures," and the like, we shouldn't study medicine. Not only should we not study medicine, but any educated person would clearly avoid the discussion of medicine. Lucid dreaming exists. There's nothing mystical about it. The fact that there are crazies and disreputable individuals trying to make a profit off it doesn't diminish that fact.
I was in a raid of 25 entering the Frostwing Halls in Icecrown Citadel when all of a sudden a bunch of fucking Counter Strike hackers came out and blew our shit away. I mean - WTF?!
You still don't understand? World of Warcraft is not VAC secured .... that means the CS players can hack! .... oh, never mind!
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
While video games are good at allowing people fight off nightmares, is there any correlation between playing video games just before bed and having nightmares? Also, makes you wonder, how does this state of awareness in the dream world affect your actual sleep. I would think it would make REM and a good night's rest more difficult to achieve. But of course that's just a thought.
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
I don't see how stupid he sounds, even with your ridiculous replacement. Studying the "Teabaggers" certainly has merit: how does a populist uprising occur, how is it manipulated by large structures like the media and political parties, does racism factor in and how heavily, etc.
Another example would be belligerent idiots replying to posts to spout stagnant, myopic ideological nonsense. How can an anti-religious, anti-conservative fail at communicating his worldview to a group of people predisposed to his message? A case study is in order. Just hit reply!
WTF does this have to do with atheism? I'm an atheist, and I've had lucid dreams. It's a phenomenon, not a religion. Charlatans encroach on any phenomenon, doesn't make it any less real. Just like spammers selling fake viagra doesn't mean that real viagra doesn't work.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Lucid dreaming is mainly about being award that you are dreaming! Controlling the dream comes after that. But even without controll its a overwhelming experience!!
Try it your self (short howto):
1. First you have to remember your dreams. Otherwise you may not remember your Lucid dreams.
To train this just write down what you remember directly after waking up. This memorys will fade fast! But after writing it down for some time you will become better remembering it.
2. The best time to become lucied is the REM stage of your sleep. That would be the last 2-3 hours of your sleep. So set you buzzer to 5-6 hours. After that you get up(GET OUT OF THE BAD!) and wait for 10-15 min. Then you go back to bad.
So far, this seems to be one of the most succsesfull methode to get lucid.
3. Now you must learn to be award! Here are several ways to do this:
Read your dream notes and look for pattern. You may notice some of them in your dreams again.
If somethink isn't right look around you and see if everythink is like it is suppost to be. Any flying cats? Your hands look different? Why are you here? Yes how did you get HERE? Are you sue that THIS IS NOT A DREAM?
You also can use Triggers... like Water, or better somethink from your dream notes. Every time now you see Water you test if you are dreaming.
Want to know more?: http://dreamviews.com/
You may forgive my not so perfect english. But after all this is just a dream! Well... is it? :)
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of medicine doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
You see how fucking stupid you sound right now?
Right back at ya.
"Rebecca Turner is a successful online entrepreneur who created a website to teach people about lucid dreaming, aptly named World of Lucid Dreaming. She's been a regular participant in our discussion forums. After watching her openly share eBusiness tips with other forum members over a period of months, I asked her if I could interview her for my blog, so she can share what she's learned with many more people.
Rebecca used Site Build It! to create her website. Since many people are curious about what kind of real-world results can be achieved with Site Build It!, I asked her if she'd be willing to share specific traffic and income figures from her business' first year online, and thankfully she agreed. I think you'll find her results encouraging.
If you aren't familiar with lucid dreaming, a lucid dream is a dream where you become consciously aware that you're dreaming. With practice you can learn to do all sorts of amazing things in lucid dreams -- fly like Superman, wield a light saber, jump around like Trinity in The Matrix, create dream characters out of thin air, move objects by thought, defeat the Kobayashi Maru, and lots more. Erin and I are both experienced lucid dreamers."
You can understand how you are allying yourself with the worst sort of "believer". Come on...Kobayashi Maru? WTF? How can educated folk actually believe in this sort of transparent bullshit? This deserves the worst kind of derision and disrespect that we, as a culture, can dish out. But nooooo....let's all sign up for "Site Build It!" through the affiliate link! Then let's go to church! Praise Hermes!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You might want to run a search on the phrase "Association fallacy," Mr Science.
There's plenty of Grade-A bullshit surrounding the subject, that's for sure. But what has this article got to do with it? Nothing at all as far as I can see.
Please define how you're using "lucid dreaming", so we can figure out why your definition differs from the one used by everyone else in the world.
Personally, I hope for Unicorns & Elf Girls every night--the unicorns for fast travel in style, and the elf girls for why the fuck else would I want elf girls!?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I once had a CSS Nightmare. No matter what I tried I couldn't get the same layout in all the browsers.
This article screams out for an xkcd strip!
http://xkcd.com/371/
I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...
I was taking control of my dreams long before I ever saw a video game. I don't think I was much older than four or five the first time I did it. While having a nightmare, I realized I was dreaming and said "No! I'm going to wake up now!" And I did. This wasn't a difficult skill to master and I think most people should be capable of it. Video games might provide a context for your dreams that make them easier to recognize as dreams, but I don't think playing them is what makes someone able to take control over them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Something that have always had me interested about dreams, was the impossible ideas they contain. I'm not talking about flying or whatever, but things that are logically impossible.
Imagine an orange. Now imagine the orange not being there. Pretty straight forward.
Now imagine the orange both being there, and not being there, at same time. Perfectly possible scenarion in a dream.
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Teabaggers doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
You see how fucking stupid you sound right now?
I can play this game!
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of String Theory doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Medicine doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Archeology doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Economics doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Space Travel doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
"I know together we'll make the possible totally impossible" - Homme
Speaking of teh suck, follow my logic here: Lucid dreams are more common with gaming, and it seems some of you end up dreaming about the game you were playing. I'm going to download me some Leisure Suit Larry!
I hope you can understand that by calling yourself a "human," you are allying yourself with the worst dictators and fascists the world has ever seen? After all, Hitler was a human.
... and then they built the supercollider.
If everyone followed your example, then we'd stay far away from pseudo science debunkers because we'd think they must all be complete douchebags like you.
Again, you fail to argue that lucid dreaming isn't real. I know it is, because i've done it...these goofy websites you reference notwithstanding.
I had a dream that I visited the house of author Harlan Ellison. He had adopted two black children and they were sitting in a couple of large bowls of milk, screaming for corn flakes.
"Unca Harley, we want corn flakes and we want dem now! Corn-flakes! Corn-flakes! Corn-flakes!"
Harlan turns to me and says, "See, this is what I gotta put up with, feeding these niggers, these ungrateful jiggaboos. I spend all my hard-earned cash feeding these kids nothing corn flakes from sunrise 'til sunset, and I never have time to write stories anymore. I'm having Stephen King ghost-write for me now, that's how desperate I've become."
By now I knew this was a dream since Harlan isn't the racist type of person in real life.
Meanwhile these two adopted black kids, probably in their teens, are splashing around their giant human-sized bowls of milk and corn flakes, but never actually eating the cereal... just screaming at Harlan for more, more, more corn flakes. We want dem corn flakes, Harley, we want dem now!!
Finally he gets fed up with having to supply corn flakes to these two kids he adopted (it was never explained why in my dream, he just "did") and turns on the stove that the bowls of milk were sitting on the entire time. Then I woke up and it turned out that I had peed my bed, drenched in sweat from a fever.
True story.
Also, last night I had a dream that John Carmack was going to tutor me in advanced computer graphics techniues so that somebody -- I -- could take over his seat at id Software so that he could run full-time with his aerospace company. For some reason John Carmack was fucking 8 feet tall in this dream, and instead of teaching me anything, we'd fucking just play Doom for the rest of the dream while he sat in a normal-sized person's chair with his tall basketball-player-sized legs obstructing his view of the monitor in front of him.
Can anyone interpret the meaning of either of these dreams? Both of them seem to have had the theme of "something keeping me from doing what I'm actually doing", only neither of the people affected were me, but rather people I admire and look up to. So what's THAT mean??
... I'd go completely bonkers :)
http://slashdot.org/journal/250892/Dreams-a-lucid-one-of-20100523
http://slashdot.org/journal/249504/Dreams-Two-more-lucid-ones-from-20100426
http://slashdot.org/journal/249374/Dreams-Two-lucid-ones-of-20100423
(etc.)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I participated in that study! I volunteered for an interview/question period. I was even co-interviewed with Jane by a reporter. That was about... must have been about 3 years ago, since it was after my first year at MacEwan, but before my placement. It's kind of mindblowing to me that she's now publishing results and moving to a new level with the study.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Live Science reports that researchers say that playing video games before bedtime may give gamers an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams which could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma.
It's a good thing my throat was filled with only reefer smoke as I read that, instead of that big ass glass of chocolate milk, cause you'd have owed me a monitor AND a Model M.
While I have been a lucid dreamer since age four, I never expected the depth I got out of it during my teen years.
I had a girl named Katie living inside my dreams. Generic cute-girl name aside, she was certainly unique, being rather unlike myself. My waking life was for working on my craft while my dream life was for play. And oh hell did we ever play.
The surprising thing was how authentic the simulation turned out to be.
Time dilation is a wonderful thing when you can make a half-hour REM cycle seem like a whole day, especially when able to manage more than one such event per waking life night. Go to sleep in a dream with Katie by my side, tag an NREM cycle and wake up in the next dream.
When I started gaming, we'd even fight in a DOOM type environment together. That was pure fun.
I look at it as a way I kept myself from succumbing to the same thing that nabbed a bunch of my peers who traded their dreams (in the ambition sense) for small desires, knocking girls up in the process and royally nuking their lives.
It also explains why I didn't lose my cherry until I was near 23.
Whether this "Katie" has any significance or not, that mind trick kept me from going mad during a really weird time in my life.
If she's the one waiting for me on the other side after this life, the real fun has yet to begin and it's entirely worth waiting for.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Most of my dreams are in video games these days I play so much. The worst is if I've been playing a FPS and I see a crosshair in my dream. Then I know I've been gaming too much, and I start reading a book instead.
"I'm confused...now I'm happy! heh..." -from MST3k Pumaman
I usually have to fight to keep myself from realizing I'm dreaming. Otherwise I'll break the dream world and it'll be boring. Either that or I'll wake up right away.
If you dream that you are aware of the dream, are you really aware or just dreaming of awareness?
The problem with the dream as preparation theory is that the frontal lobes are basically switched off. This is why you do stupid things in dreams, or are unable to realize that you are dreaming despite all the weird stuff going on. So, if the parts of the brain that are involved in logical thinking and executive control aren't switched on, then I don't see if this can be much good.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Everytime I'm about to stick it in Paris Hilton's beautiful snatch someone wakes me up.... they have no appreciation for these moments and it frustrates me to no end!!
I've been a gamer since I was 8 or 9 and because I'm a girl, I'll assure you've I've played my fair share of fighting games: Oblivion, Fallout series, Doom, Duke Nukem, etc. But I have had ridiculous and horrifying nightmares for the past five years on an almost nightly basis. Maybe games are having the opposite effect on me? I'm far more aggressive when it comes to games than dreams (the latter in which I usually spend my time running away from some horrible demon, vampire, ghost, monster, ghoul, psychopath, serial murderer).
Finally, 2 topics I greatly enjoy.
I used to have "nightmares" when i was a kid. It wasn't video games that stopped that, (while maybe there was pong machines, this was pre video game console days), it was me realizing that whatever couldn't hurt me, and that it was more like a horror movie. Ever since then, I haven't had nightmares.
Now today, some 30+ years later, I am what you call a lucid dreamer I guess. And i'm also a big gamer.
Now my dreams are like some virtual world that I only go to, in my dreams. Not like it's different in every dream, because it's not. What i'm doing in my dream is different, but the world isn't. And I'm well aware of other dreams i've had, in my dreams. Lets say in 1 dream I told someone something, i would remember that in another dream.
I've heard things that you can't do in dreams, like reading, or someone in a post above mention light switches didn't work in there dreams. That has never applied to my dreams. I can read, do whatever. (though i can't recall ever having to hit a light switch, so who knows on that.).
What I can't do in dreams? Is fight or run. It's either I don't have good enough control of myself, or i'm in a molasses like movement, really slow.
I love dreaming and tend to remember what happened in my dreams when i wake up.
But the question remains. Am i aware i'm dreaming while i'm dreaming? Or have i just entered a state that remembers my other dreams and thinks they all belong together?
I would also like to point out that I figured out how to drive stick after driving a car in my dreams. I was having problems figuring it out, then dreamt how to do it correctly.
I've taken acid in dreams (lsd, for those that don't know), and had trips in my dream, that was cool. And sex in dreams are cool, unless it's like your sister or something.
Be seeing you...
...And you're going to find your power animal is a penguin named Tux.
Ummm control over dreams because violent threatening situations aren't as threatening to the gamer? A simpler explanation is that the gamer has been exposed to greater violence than the control and associates that violence with entertainment, is simply desensitized to the violence to a greater extent than the control group. Or, that the gamer is predisposed to thinking of violence as entertainment hence his choice of games over alternative entertainment. But, control over dreams?!
Huh? Who are the many quacks that you're talking about? The study of Dreams is considered a respectible field. Unless you think all Psychiatrists are quacks too?
Why do you want to have sex with the volleyball team full of Great Old Ones, though?
my body turned into an '@' and I could only move in turns.
I've been a hardcore gamer for years, currently don't play much anymore though. Now I am not really a lucid dreamer, since I don't feel like I have total control, but I do feel that I "nudge" myself in the dream from a passive role to an aggressive one.
Before I give some examples, here is a cool trick: I figured out a way to have real hardcore lucid dreams: Buy a pack 21mg nicotine patches, slap one on your bottom (low chance of getting a rash there) and go to sleep. Unless you normally smoke a pack or more a day, the nicotine will give you a restless night, meaning it is easier to take control of the dream and after you have a dream, it's a lot more likely you will remember them vividly the next day. I've experience a couple of really awesome dreams that way, that were far better then some drugs.
Here's an example of two scenarios I frequently play through (not lucid, but still with a feeling off taking limited control):
I'm having sex with a couple of really pretty big breasted women, everything is fuzzy and blurry (nice tits though) when all of a sudden a demon dog jumps in and starts tearing the ladies to pieces more monsters start to follow and they corner me. As they slowly come closer and I stand there all naked, I "think" a huge sword into my hands, from there on the butchering commences (although I sometimes slice everything up, including the pretty girls and everything ends up in a big red bloody mess, it's still better then getting ripped to pieces by the monsters).
Another one is that I am back as a kid in school and all my classmates are taken hostage and I'm hiding somewhere while the hostage takers are looking for me (sounds a lot like counterstrike this one doesn't it?). Just as they are getting close to me, I teleport out of the school building onto a nearby rooftop, with a machine gun in my hand and I start firing at them. I usually wake up at a point late in the gun fight, when I am almost done killing them.
I've had dozens of variations of these two themes, always switching into Godmode at some point and ending up with lots of gore and blood.
Sometimes they involve black or multicolored spider like rotating monsters and I wake up while getting ready to attack them. That really freaks my wife out, because for about 20 seconds I continue to "see" them while I'm awake (even if the room is pitch dark) and I'll start yelling at her to look at them.
A tadpole is a pollywog
Exactly what you describe is the most commonly described technique for astral projection that I've come across... with one additional step.
(Note: I sleep so deeply that I've never been able try it properly to see if it really works.)
When you day dream, you kind of... see the dream in your head instead of what's in front of your eyes. When you snap out of your day dream, you then become aware (again) of what is really going on around you.
Likewise...
When you have the "This can't be right" realisation in a sleep dream, then if you snap yourself out of your dream (but not out of your sleep), then you can see the non-physical world the way it really is.
The up side to gamer dreams:
...
From Freddy Kruger: I'm going to get you! I'm going to.... what the hell is that? BFG? What the hell is a BFG?
*WrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrWHUMP!*
From Freddy Kruger:
*Splat*
The down side to gamer dreams:
From You: OMG! An Orion Slave Girl from Star Trek in a thong!
*She moves closer to you.*
From You: So uh? You frag here often?
*Wake up*
From You: DAMNIT!
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
As far as I'm aware, Grant McEwan (in Edmonton) is a College, not a University. I'm not sure what that difference means in the U.S. of A., but in Canada they are fairly distinct. I have no idea what bearing this has on the story, either.
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As a kid I discovered that the easiest way to get out of nightmares (when you become aware of it) was to let yourself die. As soon as you die, your thoughts stop and you wake up.
The only problem is that the bad guys figured this out, and now they just refuse to kill me . . .
Bahahaha! Hahahahaha!
I'm not even trying to troll you; I literally laughed out loud when I read your comment.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What happens if I encounter a BSOD? :-(
"If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams," Gackenbach said. "But when they're aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top."
I wouldn't say it's aggression. It's just knowing what to do, knowing how to do it and then executing it perfectly. Not the same thing as aggression. Aggression can be blind. Perfect execution never. It is carefully thought and then manifested in the dream state. In the physical world it's much more difficult to do the same thing. In the physical world mastering of the mind is necessary and also the body. In the dream state the body is not the limiting factor and the mind can manifest it's intentions much more directly, resulting in seemingly mindblowing stuff being possible.
But this is interesting, this might explain the actions I took when I finally realized that I can fight back against my demons. I took out my great big samurai sword and cut them all in pieces, executing physically difficult sword movements with my dream body and cut down at least hundreds of light hungry demons with my trusty dream sword. At the same time I was thinking about the relationship (or lack of) with my father and letting go of the childhood traumas relating to those events, and accepting the fact that I don't need these negative feelings anymore, it's time to let go, time to kill them.
This was one of the great big turning points in my life at least, knowing I can fight back and show who I really am. I don't know if I can thank videogames for that, but at least they've thought me a great deal of 3d-thinking, martial arts moves, physics, geometry, music theory, heck, basically any subject that comes to mind, videogames have been there to help me realize how they work.
Of course nature is the best teacher, but I would rank videogames pretty high too :)
GeoKone.NET
Thank you dreams :)
That worked for me as well until I started playing Left 4 Dead. Now there are suddenly toilets everywhere. And pills.
The best lucid dream I've ever had was when I beat the living shit out of the entire cast of "Hair", all in bullet-time, all with matrixesque combat skills. I guess I'd been playing Oni all day. However, everytime I've had a lucid dream has been during high fevers, does anyone know how fevers relate to lucidity?
The icky situations in dreams are easy to handle. Just save before immersing yourself into the depths of the problem. If something goes awry, just load quickly and try again. The most annoying situations are quake-like elevators which always get stuck and return down as if there was something blocking it's path. q2dm1, edge, was one of those buggers that always intruded my dreams with its buggy elevator. Luckily I was well versed in the art of trickshooting, so travel was possible even with such hindrances.
-ex hc-gamer.
Or "conscious" dream whatever it is called. I play a lot of game, and it happened to me once every other month (sop not very often) I get this dream where the situation isn't right, and I am suddenly all like "shit I am dreaming". Very often it is limited to "follow the path" and nothing else. But two time I could *change* the dream the way I wanted it to. One time it was a minor change (nightmare in darkness changed to nondescript dream where nothing happens), the other it was pretty major (complete change of situation, and type of dream). I had often wondered what's the heck was with that , before somebody linked to wiki in the thread today.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
i have PlanetSide and Left4Dead dreams. One or two Borderlands dreams. Sometimes in dreams i feel powerless, or that what i'm doing isn't working. In recent years i've been better at thinking "no... i got a headshot on that zombie... it should be down". Sometimes i know it's a dream, sometimes i just know how things ought to work and WILL them to work despite my subconscious' desire to make me feel powerless.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
As a long-time lucid dream seeker and gamer, I've found that playing games before bed often results in what I consider "stupid" dreams of gaming. The context of the dream is the game, and you're running around playing it. It's a mix between waking physical reality and the game reality. There's usually not a lot of value to these dreams, I've found.
On the other hand, my dream self has become quite aware of himself as an personality in the dream world, with a continuing story from night to night, and has an understanding of the laws of the dream world and how to attain and maintain lucidity. I wonder if my love of games contributes to my ability to project myself into a new dream world or context or if it's the converse - my ability to project myself into the world of dreams contributes to my ability to enjoy video games.
There's no doubt dreams influence video games. The creator of Mario is a dreamer of some degree of lucidity. My first experiences flying in dreams came from taking progressively larger leaps into the air that led to flight. Fastforward a couple decades and Mario is doing the same thing in Super Mario 64.
Would using a brain-computer interface when gaming have the potential to increase this effect?
I mean once you get used to controlling your virtual environment using nothing but your thoughts...
Jack: This is Jack Thompson.
Gamer: What's this I hear about video games?
Jack: They cause violent tendencies! Gamer: In your dreams!
And they were both right. Sorry I doubted you, Jack.
-) I have to go, but afterwards I don't feel relieved.
-) I am somewhere high above ground and I don't care (I am deathly afraid of heights, in RL)
-) I am Ranma Saotome
-) I am the Scourge of the post-apocalyptic wastes
-) continue with any video game cliché you like
The high-above-ground-stuff usually preludes some fun boss fights, I tell ya.
Non-supporter of Online Activation and any other draconian DRM
I agree. Very serious research can be done in this field but I'm afraid that the current academic establishment is not prone to this type of research.
I've been somewhat successful to induce lucid dreams because I use unorthodox methods which are in large part described in some old books by what most people would call a cult, etc and . I think that it's still possible to use non-atheist methods as the comment grand-parent would say. But then we need to find people that are already predisposed for lucid dreaming which may be difficult.
As a game developer, I have always enjoyed nightmares. They become great learning experiences and often serve as design ideas.
anything but mind rot apparently :P
"But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
I remember playing so much Warcraft 2 in University that I had a few dreams of that.
This is complete and utter crap.
Seriously, what hardcore gamer actually spends enough time sleeping to have memorable dreams?
If you're sleeping that much, you're just wasting all that valuable game-playing time. You can get by with about half as much. Some hardcore gamer you are.
I can attest to this theory. Back in the day when I was playing Tribes--a game known for its use of jetpacks--, like 8 hours a day, I had learned how to fly in my dreams. All I had to do is, well, right click. This lead to me researching lucid dreams, and learning how to find cues within dreams, realizing that I'm dreaming, and not wake. This gives me a lot of control on how I participate in dreams.
interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
Of course the real tell-tale sign you are in a dream when trying to adjust a volume level is that the knob won't go to 11!
Straw man arguments are lies.