As both a gamer and a student of neuroscience, this fascinates me. This Science article is from way before the birth of CrunchGear, but you know us: any excuse to post, right?
You may be familiar with the Tetris Effect: after playing Tetris (or Bejeweled, or Solitaire) for a while, you can’t get those pieces/gems/cards out of your head, and as you lay in bed they float in front of your eyes like ghosts of wasted time past. Well, some researchers were studying this effect (I know not why) and discovered that people with severe amnesia would also experience the Tetris effect — despite not remembering they’d ever played the game. I don’t think these findings are quite as applicable to something like World of Warcraft (it’s more the systematic and pattern-based nature of Tetris that makes it persist as a mental image), but just to be safe, no one tell Jack Thompson about it.
Nice Memento reference! That movie, seriously, changed my life. I have a new found respect for you now, Devin.
I play 2-3 Hours of DDR a day, these ghostly arrows really freak me out. Especially as they always travel downwards instead of upwards.
Nice idea but I never suffered from this and Tetris took-up about half of my childhood! I beat the game on several platforms even… that game is still amazing and I wish developers could take clues that even very SIMPLE games can be incredibly rewarding to play.
Jon
http://woodmarvels.com – Create Unique Memories