Monday 5 November 2012

Electric dreams in action



The general idea that dreams often work as a sort of simulation to figure out and try out solutions has a lot of appeal to me. I frequently experience such dreams myself, repeatedly running the simulations of coping with physical threats, navigating inescapable situations, practicing difficult roles and relationships.  So, the post about "Teteris dream research" in IO9 immediately caught my eye. Mind you, I wasn't all that wooed by the Tetris aspect there (as a kid I didn't have immediate access to it and once I was able to borrow the game and try it out, I learned an important lesson about myself: "shapes and fitting - good, running against time - bad") but rather that they got around to study "the fact that gamers tend to have dreams that involve repetitively playing the same games that they do when they’re awake."

And when Esther confesses to having Tetris dreams herself and further inquires: "does this work for every game? Are drivers Mario Karting? And what about those people playing first person shooters?" I can safely say "Yes" about the games I play on regular basis. Although I've noticed that my dreaming mind can assign different purposes to these simulations. Sure, there are the "figure how to solve this difficult task" game dreams when I've got stuck and decided to sleep on it. Then there are the "safe haven" game dreams where the familiar gamescape works as home ground for whatever is going on (with the ability to reload if things go awry). And then there are the game-life crossover dreams where the game universes lend the stage for solving situations of real life origin. It's these last ones that I cherish the most.




No comments:

Post a Comment