Researchers at Grant MacEwan College have been busy conducting a series of studies on gamers and their dreams with great titles like Threat Simulation Theory and Video Game Play, Video Game Play & Dream Bizarreness, and Video Game Play: Effects on Nighttime Dreams. You can see a very cool PowerPoint slide show on the last one posted here on AuthorSTREAM. Jane Grackenbach, Ian Matty, and Beena Kuruvilla presented the latter study in 2007 at Futureplay and Grackenbach and Kuruvilla the first two at the International Association for the Study of Dreams (Montreal, 2008).They came up with some interesting findings. (Note: Findings and facts are defined differently in the dictionary.)
Using questionnaires (I know…I was hoping for wires and cranial probes too…) they queried gamers on their gaming activity and resulting dreams. They found that gamers are better equipped to handle nightmares than non-gamers. They pointed to the similarities between intense gaming and dreaming and concluded “that hard core gamers did not experience misfortune in dreams as much as norms nor did they have more aggressive dreams.” Besides the great use of the word “norms” it’s interesting in that Grackenbach and Co. are implying that gaming trains us to handle dream states better than non-gaming. Surely anyone playing a couple hours of The Path or Silent Hill 2 will be muttering and nodding their head.
You really should check out that PowerPlay presentation if only for some of the quotes from the questionnaires. Here’s one to whet your appetite:
….so I went outside with my cat and shot these criminals that were trying to eat my dad and they were on top of my dad trying to eat his arms and he was fighting them off, and they were trying to hold him down and bite his shoulders and there was blood and stuff…
Ah, sweet dreams are made of this.
I’ve got roughly 25 years of gaming under my belt, not counting many years before that playing pinball and other games to be found in taverns of my youth (the days when moms sent the kids to the corner to haul dad home for dinner, and dads gave kids money for pinball to delay the inevitable). I rarely have nightmares, and then I’d call them only mildly anxious dreams. Mostly, my dreams fall into 2 categories: normal sitcoms, which is to say alternate, but non-fanciful, versions of reality; and the day to day problem solving sort. I have even solved game puzzles in my sleep. Freud wouldn’t get much money, or publishable articles, from me.
I haven’t gone to view the PowerPoint yet, but I’d bet that my years of gaming have given me better than average problem solving skills, and the ability to remain calm in the face of chaos. And let’s not forget heightened attention to detail, but that wasn’t a focus of the study.
I used to have night terrors as a child. Inconsolable screaming, monsters everywhere stuff. I have really vague memories of them and anecdotal stuff from my parents. It was apparently kinda disturbing for everyone involved. The nightmares subsided as I aged. But now, when I have a nightmare I still wake up but I am utterly calm and almost bemused. I think, “Wow, that was weird.” Then I roll over and fall back to sleep. Time was I’d be lying awake, my heart hammering, things flitting in the darkness. Not sure if gaming did it or what but I almost never have bad nightmares anymore.
Weirdly, ever since reading this thread, I’ve been dreaming in a more video gamey way. Normally I dream weird stuff, like I’m brushing my teeth on hippopotamus-back, or I’m vacuuming my cat. Occasionally I get cool saving-the-universe dreams, but they tend to break down before I can really get a handle on the storyline.
Once some friends and I played through the entire co-op campaign of GRAW 2 in like 20 straight hours, and everything I dreamed that night – no matter how mundane – was viewed through a sniper scope. That was a little weird.