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bLUEbYTE

Long term effects of playing Doom on one's mind

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I can't help but think that playing Doom regularly must be reshaping our minds, for better or for worse. Like every decent FPS game, Doom can be VERY immersive and of course that's a good thing. But I am wondering whether folks here are noticing 'side effects' creeping back into real life.

Sometimes I find myself physically and reflexively dodging the revenant's missiles while playing.

I do feel that there is cognitive benefits in playing Doom in moderation; after a 30 minute or hour long session, I often feel refreshed. But I had the gut feeling that inhabiting these virtual worlds slaying daemons for hours a time, regularly, must have an effect on the mind. Because it's a virtual world which is perceived as 'real' during immersive play.

Do you think our perception in general gets 'skewed' permanently by it? I.e. the rules of the virtual world creeping over into our perception of the real world?

I'd like to clarify that I am NOT talking about possible behavioural, attitude or philosophical effects, but the cognitive effects only. I.e. depth perception, reflexes, that sort of thing.

P.S. I'm pretty sure there's been research on this. Feel free to link to them.

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For a moment i thought this would be a boomer article about "videogames cause violence." stuff

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1 minute ago, Dranyan said:

For a moment i thought this would be something like "videogames cause violence." stuff


Nope, it's not. I'm curious about the 'cognitive' effects. Pretty sure there are benefits on coordination, reflexes etc. But I'm interested to see a discussion on this, especially whether players have notice effects personally.

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Just now, NiGHTMARE said:

I often find myself looking at real world architecture and thinking about how it could be made into part of a Doom level, and in some cases I've actually gone ahead and done it.


Interesting. I'd probably put that on in the 'inspiration from real life' bin.

I should probably go first. In my 'younger' days, there were a few times I caught myself doing the same head-dodging reflex in real life :) Granted, that was immediately following long sessions (which might have been infused with a little bit of legal weed smoking). It was temporary though.

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I think that it helped my aggression and anger (well... unless I got killed, then I got angry) as a kid, during the last few years of my life that I had to deal with that (something that went away as I entered my teens).

 

Otherwise? It hasn't done much I think, other than develop muscle memory and so on.

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Playing video games tend to develop reflexes, problem-solving skills, and spatial awareness.

 

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/11/video-games

Quote

A 2013 meta-analysis found that playing shooter video games improved a player’s capacity to think about objects in three dimensions, just as well as academic courses to enhance these same skills, according to the study. “This has critical implications for education and career development, as previous research has established the power of spatial skills for achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Granic said.

 

Different kinds of games boost different kind of skills:

Quote

The more adolescents reported playing strategic video games, such as role-playing games, the more they improved in problem solving and school grades the following year, according to a long-term study published in 2013.

 

 

10 minutes ago, NiGHTMARE said:

However, in recent years I've often found myself looking at real world architecture and thinking about how it could be made into part of a Doom level. In some cases I've actually gone ahead and done it.

I think that would be more an effect of making maps than of playing them.

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Playing pretty much any game improves something. Be it coordination, reflexes, ability to read a map, problem solving etc. Depends on the game.

 

Gaming is a skill like any other. It can be learned, improved, trained, memorized and forgotten.

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I have a feeling that it might also be enhancing navigational skills, due to using spatial awareness + short term memory.
On the flip side though, because the rules of physics are 'fake', maybe it's messing up our real-life sports skills, for example, because the rules are 'off' from the real thing. Hope that makes sense?

I don't feel this much anymore but I remember performing worse in physical sport if I played a few hours of games earlier in the day. For example, was missing the ball more when playing tennis. That's what I remember, anecdotally from decades ago, so take it with a grain of salt.

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I'm not sure if this falls entirely within the bounds of what you're talking about here, but mapping (even to the modest amount that I have) has left me familiar enough with the stock Doom textures that when I want to use a different resource WAD, I have to retrain my sense of what textures/materials are available and the structures this enables.  "Okay, I need a 16-high STEP* texture for this steep staircase, I'll use an 8-high STEP* texture for this small change in the floor height; and this corridor has an animated blood floor, which of GSTONE2 or MARBLOD1 or PIPE1 best fits the area's theme and aesthetics?"  And then I load something like OTEX and I'm working from a completely different menu of textures and materials and in some cases there isn't a direct substitution available, so I have to rethink the scene or structure that I've built in my head.

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2 hours ago, NiGHTMARE said:

However, in recent years I've often found myself looking at real world architecture and thinking about how it could be made into part of a Doom level (even thinking "those tiles are 8x8", "that beam is 16 wide", etc). In some cases I've actually gone ahead and done it.

 

Yeah I've done that as well. I've been in buildings like hospitals and looked around at the lights, vents and how different parts join and how the architecture looks in general. I also check out what the texture situation looks like. I've also spotted a lot of stuff I think would look good as textures like concrete walls and such. In some cases I've taken pics of surfaces with my camera and turned them into textures... the biggest surprise there was how well some close ups of an orange-ish oak turned into a nice wood texture. I've had family / friends wonder why the hell I'm taking close up / macro pics of some gravel... I mean it's pretty rare that I go about taking pics of stuff for that purpose but I've done it in the past, for sure.

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I think the term you are looking for is "Muscle Memory", if you play games that require quick precise movement,(Like me) You over time get faster reflexes and can act on things quicker since you eventually learn to control your hands to do split second decisions without even thinking about it. I personally think the reason is Practice, Each time we play Doom or any game we are learning and practicing our strategies without realizing it, until eventually you can do things you thought you couldn't before- whether that's reflexes or memory.

 

(Also i'm probably the extreme case of playing doom for Hours on end straight, almost on a daily basis

)

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It probably helped with reflexes, perception and navigation. I suppose it would have an effect on anger management too if you can vent it in Doom.

 

However, I think much of it would come down to the person. Some people are more detached when playing games and others go so far as to see the character as an extension of themselves (possibly a big cause in some struggling to play a character outside their gender). What I mean by that is not everyone would learn the same thing due to us all being different.

 

For example, I never bought into the whole video games cause violence thing back in the 90's. But if someone already had anger issues or an underlying mental condition then I could see how it might.

 

I remember an experiment where they gave old people with dementia games to play, and their condition actually slowed down due to the learning process forcing the brain to create new neural connections and stuff. True, they were puzzle games but then navigating your way through certain Doom levels would fall into the same category (problem solving etc). Thus, it would have some effect on us in that regard.

 

Overall though I think the long term effects are positive for the average person. But as I said it may have a negative effect on some people (besides less physical exercise I mean).

 

 

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Yeah, I guess Doom affects us in some way. Sometimes I have dreams about certain maps that I've played and what I could have done to do better in them. Sometimes I actually test out the better strat I dreamed of. And just like the OP mentioned, I too find myself involuntarily and physically dodging projectiles in high-stakes moments. Been playing for quite a long time now and haven't noticed any negative long term effects. 

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I've found that playing any game at a moderate time per session leads to less hyper-activeness, in that it makes everything for me seem slow because of how action-packed and intense games can be. There is never really a time during DOOM in which you aren't moving and getting from point A to B without dopamine flowing through your brain, and for me (at least), some of that dopamine stays, so playing less than too much (too much being like 2 or 3 hours) can release less dopamine, so I'm not crazy and I can sleep at night. Also, DOOM can be a strain on my eyes, so looking away from the screen gives me better vision. 

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54 minutes ago, nostalgia said:

Yes. I'm suspicious of any out-of-pattern wall in the real world.

As long as you dont go humping any weird looking wall.

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6 hours ago, NiGHTMARE said:

I've been playing the games for over 25 years and I don't think they've influenced me in that way.

 

However, in recent years I've often found myself looking at real world architecture and thinking about how it could be made into part of a Doom level (even thinking "those tiles are 8x8", "that beam is 16 wide", etc). In some cases I've actually gone ahead and done it.

yo, for me as well this is pretty true. whenever i see a building or something, i look at it and then immediately start wondering about how the structure would be built in doom. and, random thing that kinda should be in here: like, i have minecraft, (please don't judge me) and whenever i see 2 different walls together I try to find a block that looks like a SUPPORT2 texture.

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I don't know if this counts, but playing Doom makes me feel good, mentally. Without getting into all sorts of personal issues, playing the game makes me feel like I have a purpose and I'm doing something that matters, even though it's virtual. Other than that, my reflexes get temporarily boosted after a play session.

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Games can influence us in many ways, like any other piece of entertainment, but I personally haven't been influenced by games in any way, for better or worse, apart from maybe making me more creative, in a time when I used to still be creative, nowadays I'm creatively bankrupt.

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    Sometimes if the sky is nice-looking I think "Nice skybox", or sometimes I wonder how the architects managed to build a multi-storey building without doing room-over room stuff.

    On a serious note, I suppose I am not the only one who has DooM as a regular element in their dreams (but there were threads about that).

 

    Maybe about long-term effects of the DooM community? I think it helped me to steer me away from some rather nasty political circles I used to frequent, seeing as there all sorts in this community, lots of different people and everyone is so welcoming to everyone. Or maybe I just haven't seen the nasty side of this site :-P.

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For me, I'm not much of a music buff, I'd say the average person knows more about music than I do. Most of what I know in music today is because of music in Doom WADs, largely the DWANGO WADs, so if I hear a song on the radio that I've heard in a Doom WAD, I'll think to myself, "Hey, that's MapX from WAD Y!"

 

The same goes if I hear a song that I swore I heard in a Doom WAD, I'll go look up the actual song and the WAD I suspected the song being in.

 

Also, sometimes I'll look at the walls and steps in my house as upper/middle/lower textures.

Edited by peach freak

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The more I run maps, the more I want to optimize my daily chores (but not cutting corners). I still finish in on par for quality, but I would think of better way to approach to finish them quicker, or less likely to cause mistakes.

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well the only effect doom has on me besides what everyone posted here (as i mapper too) i could say helped me with my ear i mean by locating stuff by sound. i can tell where are monsters by their sound sometimes that make me go crazy in doom maps when i can hear THEY ARE behind that wall but cant tell where they will come from or when.

 

outside doom well i applied that in quake 3 arena and give me a great advantage over other players because few people noticed that energy based weapons (lighting gun,  plasma gun, railgun, bfg) have a small engine sound (specially railgun thats goes huuum) thats something i liked in quake3 EVERYTHING make sound and in the place where is. doors, jumpads, players picking up stuff even player swichting guns. sometimes people though i was wallhacking because everyone liked to use energy based gun so as soon i heard a engine around i know there was a player.

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I have a feeling that playing Doom (even Heretic, Hexen, Strife, or non iD tech games like Legend of Zelda, etc) reinforces independent navigation while also encouraging paying attention to detail in the environment whether that's in other games or real life. I say reinforces independent navigation because I always thought being curious and investigating our surroundings, is a human thing. I think it's actually linear games that make people a little more dependent on following directions, while games like Doom doesn't impair us that much.

 

I've noticed that most of my past friends in real life loved to play modern first person shooters like Call of Duty which has a death grip on your hand and points to where you have to go in relatively smaller levels contrary to something like Hexen, where it doesn't tell you anything of what your goal is, and how you accomplish said goal. Maybe sidescrolling games like Mario to an extent has a similar effect of making people more dependent on directions because most of the time you only go in one direction?

 

When me and my friends played a new game that doesn't give you clear directions, they were always extremely unsure to what they're supposed to do (as am I), but they complained about the lack of directions, calling it a bad game, and they progress extremely slow. If there's any secrets, I'd find at least one while they won't even notice that they missed a key in the room next to them for a main door to progress in a level. I'm either always ahead or a little behind because I want to check out and explore every area. They just rarely investigated other parts of the level and barely think to go back.

 

I also involuntarily try to "dodge" projectiles most of the time, but I get that with any other first person shooter game that I'm really into or immersed in.

 

Obviously it could all be just placebo and we really have nothing but anecdotes to back us up when it comes down to getting REALLY specific about what exactly what video games has on us other than some generalized research papers. It's always interesting to think about though.

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It is just a game, dude, it doesn't really affect you. Well ... now that I think about it, I do take a step back from elevator doors so I can run into the elevator fullspeed without losing time. And I do tend to walk diagonally when I am in a hurry. Sometimes I also fiddle with walls when I notice their color is a bit off. But other than the above, I haven't noticed any effects.

 

 

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@Gez pointed out the studies I knew of and was gonna mention regarding improvements of reflexes, problem solving and spatial awareness etc. :-P

 

Personally I do find myself doing the dodge thing you mentioned or “hitting the brake” with my foot in racing games :-P Anecdotally I find my general awareness and reaction times a lot better after playing too! Unless I play for like 8-12 hours straight and then I sometimes find myself in a kinda dissociative like state where I feel somewhat detached from reality or half asleep or something :-P

 

All that said, maybe I’m just fucked in the head (well... definitely - I’ve even got the doctors note to prove it!) XD

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I tend to hear the Revenant's growling and other similar Demon sounds on my mind sometimes, as well with other kind of things actually.

So I think it has somehow influenced, yeah.

 

 

 

Help me.

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