The following wired.com article was posted over on SA and it's definitely a good read whether you believe it or not.

In the cult hit Katamari Damacy, players must try to build a large ball by rolling it around and picking up any and all objects in its path. After a recent three-day binge of playing the Japanese cult hit video game Katamari Damacy, Los Angeles artist Kozy Kitchens discovered that walking away from the game was not as easy as putting down her joystick.

In the game, players push around what amounts to a giant tape ball, attempting to make the ball bigger by picking up any and all objects in its path. Kitchens found that her urge to keep picking things up was not so easy to shake.

"I was driving down Venice Boulevard," recalled her husband, Dan Kitchens, "and Kozy reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and for a moment was trying to yank it to the right.... (Then) she let go, but kept staring out her window, and then looked back at me kind of stunned and said, 'Sorry. I thought we could pick up that mailbox we just passed.'"

While motorists and pedestrians shouldn't worry too much about rogue Katamari Damacy players, Kozy Kitchens' experience with having a difficult time separating her real-life consciousness from that of her game playing is all too common among hard-core gamers. It's so common, in fact, that game publishers might want to consider warning their customers that they may soon be unable to tell the difference between the game and reality.

"The weird thing was that last night in my half-sleep, half-awake haze, I thought I was playing Katamari Damacy, too, and I kept trying to roll Kozy up in my ball," said Dan Kitchens. "I think I got this just from watching Kozy play the game for hours."

Frequent gamer Alfred Weisberg-Roberts said he often feels lingering effects after playing games like Animal Crossing, in which the point is to collect as many animals and bugs as possible from a wide variety of locations.

"Once, my girlfriend happened upon a tree ... kind of like the round, thin trees in the game, and began to shake it -- one in-game way of receiving money, goods and bees," Weisberg-Roberts said. "When nothing fell from its branches, I think she quickly realized how this must have looked to the other hundred or so people in the park."

Chris Taylor, a staff writer at Time magazine and a regular game reviewer, said he thinks driving games and first-person shooters are particularly likely to make players lose track of reality.

"I just knew the first time I played Burnout 2, the crash part, that I probably shouldn't get behind the wheel of a car for an hour or so afterwards," Taylor said, "because you're expending so much effort on deliberately trying to make your car crash."

Taylor also said that after reviewing Quake III he had trouble getting his mind out of the game.

"I'd play it, then walk out into the office corridor and realize I was looking at my co-workers as potential targets," said Taylor. "I was so used to killing anything that moved."

How many of you guys have had that thin line blurred after an all night LAN party or heavy gaming session. I can attest to having thoughts of nuking people with fireballs and almost closed eye hallucinations after playing a s***e load of WoW but its never ever got to the point where i've had to stop and go 'hold on this isn't a game anymore'. It does however give rise to speculation about whether or not after a serious binge on games a persons state of mind could be in that bad of shape that they do something completely out of character and logic defying (eg. that koren dude who killed himself after a 5 straight days of wow or something). I'd love to hear some discussion or personal stories on the topic because i find it all quite interesting.

To start i'll also say after heavy bout of cs i'm more likely to strafe around the house than turn corners :P

Closest I come is similiar to Katamari Damacy that the article refers to. I walk past hot chicks in the street and want to roll them up in my balls too.

closed eye hallucinations

when i get these i try to cut down .. but rarely do

other than that i tried to "front side 360" my car after playing too much SSX snowboarding...

pfft I played quake2 for like 9 hours a day and quake3 for heaps, and I play cs all day when I'm bored & don't feel the slightest urge to hide behind a crate & awp people in real life, nor do I see a box & say to myself "bet there's a camper behind that". Only weak minded fagets wouldn't be able to tell the difference between real and a game.

when i used to whore the scout back in my cs days, i can remember walking around and if i saw someone a certain distance away my automatic reaction was to zoom in and headshot the prick.

i seriously think that's the only thing that has affected me after intensively playing years of FPS games, my mind thinks my eyes have a built in zoom feature. thus i'm constantly disappointed by my lack of bionics :(

Only weak minded fagets wouldn't be able to tell the difference between real and a game.

agreed unfortunately this is probably a large portion of the demographic lol.

has anyone ever had a dream about a game?

it's easy for whoop to differentiate between the two, cos the only realities he knows are de_dust and his mommas basement.

just cos i shoot the chickens in cs_italy doesn't mean i want to shoot chickens in real life.


if anyone is negatively affected by games it sounds like they had mental problems before they played the games.

the most recent time i remember something like this happening to myself was after playing oblivion on the 360 for 9 hours straight, i got up out of my chair to go to the toilet, i forgot to turn the light switch on and i started wishing i had some torches so i could see where i was pissing.

ive also in the past remember day dreaming that my eyes had a hud and i could see peoples life bars.

oh and to this day after a marathon run of playing gta *the original* many years ago, when ever see a group of orange robed men i imagine running them all over just to get couragang, i dont think ill ever stop imagining that.

i also once knew a guy who would yell fire in the hole after he threw something, wether it be a piece of paper or a can or ball. it was quite funny, we use to throw a ball at him just to make him throw it back and yell it as he did it.

gouranga!

haha strex.

When i used to play raven shield i felt like i was betraying my fellow terrorists when trying to rescue hostages from them. That's why i used to sabotage the mission when i had the chance but I had to make sure no one was watching me (behind my shoulder in real life). I would instruct my team alpha to throw smoke grenades and flash bangs in a room full of team delta, then send in team alpha gun blazing whilst running over remotely controlled mines deployed by myself earlier.

It's no wonder why ASIO are after me :(

I've killed people to see what "loot" drops from them.

i long to headshot germans

closest ive ever come to doing something totaly stupid like that is asking my sister if she'd hand me a dagger. was in the kitchen making a sandwich and really wanted a knife.

so u could run faster??

few years back when i was working my way towards TA commander i would walk around the office D Gunning everyone and making lil mechanical noises as i pivoted around to get employees in my sites.

ROFL!

The closest I've come to what they are talking about is the playing a game for hours on end and going to bed and semi-dreaming of it before I goto sleep. 100% aware of who and where I was tho.

I've had, in my dodgy past, a dose or 2 of strong mind altering drugs and still was 100% aware of what was real and what wasnt. Seriously, it isnt hard to tell. I know a 7 year old who is very much aware of the differances in reality. I question these peoples states of mind that cant tell the differance.

Never had the urge to do anything, however stuff in my daily s*** will remind me of games. I remember when playing natural selection hardcore and walking around some of the blandly designed QUT buildings I'd be like "s*** there could be an alien hiding in that vent" then I'd lol to myself.

I remember I was out drunk in the valley and theres this homeless guy sleeping near those shops across the road from the mono and I said some s*** like "f*** get that noob, he is camping the spawn" and proceeded to laugh cause no one I was with plays or likes computer games.

So yeah it is mostly just nerdy wise-cracks between mates, not at the stage where GTA is an excuse for court cases.

last edited by ctd at 13:41:23 10/Apr/07

yeh always wanted to eat mushroom to get bigger and feather to be able to fly.... but i sort of got over it when i found out the princess was in another castle....

Me and a few mates ran down through scarborough street in southport like a bunch of terrorists once. twas fun.

This doesn't just happen to me in games, but also work. Infact more work.

When I worked at target I started on the registers, and I'd come home to sleep and in my half asleep haze I'd imagine that there was a line of people waiting to be served, and then happily remind myself that no, I can go to sleep and all is well. After this easter long weekend when I went to sleep I kept visualising people walking up the stairs and whether they should be let in or not.

My point is that this phenomenon isn't just exclusive to games, but any sort of repetitive activity undertaken for an extended period of time. Just take a break, relax, and it will go away.

last edited by fpot at 14:48:25 10/Apr/07

^^ wow your right man you just reminded me sometimes i get home after a s***ty day at work and will be lying in bed and i swear i sometimes hear my work phone ringing or dream about getting fkd up work orders in my inbox lol how bizarre

yeah that s*** does happen

when i was a courier driver i used to wake up in a sweat cos i could hear the job computer beeping and i couldn't grab it in time

not good

"I just knew the first time I played Burnout 2, the crash part, that I probably shouldn't get behind the wheel of a car for an hour or so afterwards," Taylor said, "because you're expending so much effort on deliberately trying to make your car crash."

I guess this didn't occur to Paveway.

This sort of thing happened to me from Tetris. When I first got it on the old gameboy back in '94 I used to see blocks when I closed my eyes, dreamed about trying to fit boxes and blocks in together, and then in real life if I were tidying or something, I'd be lining things up expecting something good to happen. True story.

Edit: Oh and sometimes I'll plot out how I'd break into something or steal something Morrowind/Oblivion style. It's more calculated that impulsive though.

last edited by Crizane Tribal at 15:02:43 10/Apr/07

If I've been driving a forklift all day I will go to beep horn at intersections when driving home due to beeping horn all day workplace safety s***.

I used to get it from Tony Hawk. Walking around and seeing almost anything and thinking that would be cool to grind/do a trick off.

werd mr hardware. courier'ing is f***ed
i lasted a month. stressful as

i used to wake up in a sweat cos i could hear the job computer beeping and i couldn't grab it in time

Does it have a button you need to push every 108 minutes?

I got into a real punchup and used my Wii Boxing skills to pwn them.

The closest I can relate to this sort of thing is hearing the order ticket printer at a restaurant in my sleep because it was a source of major stress for me when I was doing a cheffing apprenticeship. It is really not even remotely similar though, because im not an insane person - having a nightmare and putting your life in danger while conscious are different things :P

I honestly believe that you have to be mentally unstable to have problems like this. To not be able to see the difference between a game and life, even if you have some kind of bulls*** 'was in a trance' excuse. To have been in that state in the first place is evidence of mental disturbance. I bet psychs (ologist or chiatrist) would be able to pin any of these issues much deeper and im sure there would also be a statistical link between the gaming demographic who have experienced this and depression or other similarly 'minor' (or temporary maybe, I guess they can be serious) mental disorders.

Most people in this thread are posting about things where they have found comedy in relating a real world situation to a game but they still clearly saw the line. The article about f***ing 'kozy kitchens' (I cant believe thats a real name) gave an example where they seem to have had a mental break.

actually i had the most awesome Company of Heroes dream last night. i dreamed that my HQ had been leveled by the allies and i was the lieutenant of the reinforcing squad. i sent my pioneers to work when an allied mg set up and pinned the pioneers.

i (as lieutenant) urged them to continue their rebuilding efforts and i would flank the mgs. i took a squad of stormtroopers with me and we flanked the mg. i ordered them to throw a bundled nade and f***ed the mg right up. then my volks came through and fought off two squads of BARs.

i was hailed a champion commander. (and given a dragon bracelet.)

Eh, closest I've aside from nerdy wisecracks with friends, is the same as Lunch but it also stemmed from riding for years.
Just seeing things and making mental techy street stuff to grind/jump etc. on

The line between games and reality is hardly thin, its a pretty huge line actually. Its such a huge line, that when you're down on the same level as the line, you can't even tell its a line, you have to view it from a plane to actually see the line, thats how big it is.

If people are trying to drive their cars into inanimate objects to "pick them up" then I think theres deeper problems at work than just an addiction to katamari damacy. But I guess mentally unstable people trying to hurt themselves doesn't make for as good a story as games driving people insane.

I remember when I used to do the late shift at a place I used to work at with StreX and i'd have hallucinations of Medal of Honour and DoD in my mind ... seeing all these people in front of me thinking they the Axis ... I would reach to my belt and try to find my grenade ... phew lucky it was a dream or those damn biatches would be goners!!!!

my s*** still burn a week after binging on khels mum, damn nigga.

I remember when I used to do the late shift at a place I used to work at with StreX and i'd have hallucinations of Medal of Honour and DoD in my mind ... seeing all these people in front of me thinking they the Axis ... I would reach to my belt and try to find my grenade ... phew lucky it was a dream or those damn biatches would be goners!!!!

Did you also imagine that you would have to throw the 'nade on the ground to prime it then pick it up and throw it again?

I think some people needs to go outside and experience actual reality a bit more....seriously....

first up tell me all the quakers havent dodged a rocket in real life while playing the game. that one has happened a couple of times for me.

i sometimes picture css scenes in real life as a great spot for cover or offensive/defensive moves. but i guess ive always done that since the days of playing war with the neighbourhood kids. that was before the war....

only had one dream that had a game in it and it was a racing game but that was some strange strange dream that had EVERYTHING.

hrmmm... i'm pretty sure i posted this story before, but then the thread is so old that it's borked :(