Memories are the fiction of the past we create, so it doesn't matter how fake or real the experience is on which we start building a memory. Many of our supposed real momories are based on false assumptions and wrong interpretations of what really happened around us. Our perception is always creating an idea of reality, but not reality itself in our minds, so it doesn't matter if what we perceive is really in reality or happens in a game or in a dream (like mentioned in the video). I would even say that the immersion in films and books could lead to the same level of feeling that one was there when it happened (just in a passive role and not in an active like in gaming), and thus creating a memory that can feel just as much like a real experience, but only if one gets to that kind of immersion.
Unlike on most shows I knew the answer to this one right away, real without a doubt. I would even go so far as to argue that the game experience itself was real. Of course I guess it depends a bit on how you define "real" but as far as I'm concerned simulated experiences and narratives have just as much claim to being real as paying taxes. We are all stuck viewing the world through the lens of our perception, and those things that we perceive in games, or in dreams, or in watching an author make up stories about the team he plays in FIFA are just as real as the time we tore our pants getting out of the van and had to play the first round of district quiz bowl wrapped in a blanket. This is a bit of a spoiler for a very old game, but Floyd's death in Planetfall still lives as one of the most powerful moments of my childhood. It was real at the time, and it is real in my treasured memory.
Yea, I feel like this one is trying too hard, if that's the best way of putting it. The 3 stages is what lost me. The experience is real. It's the experience of something in a videogame, but it's an experience nonetheless. Also, I believe it was mentioned in the video that other people can't confirm that the event was shared, but it literally can be. I share videos of me playing games all the time with my friends, and I play games with them too. My friends and I remember things in games the same way we remember things in real life.
When I get really into a game, I don't just form memories that seem real when recalling it later.. I also end up having VIVID dreams about those games, as if I was dreaming about a real-memory. I've actually thought about this a lot in the past.. When I was playing FF8 (the first big rpg I ever played), I had dreams about actually BEING those characters, exploring that world.. And it's weird, because every once in a while, in daily life, I'll have a dejavu moment, which reminds me of something or a place I've done/been in a game. It's weird because it's almost a unique form of dejavu, to me, as if I lived a past life, and were recalling that. heh, if that makes sense. I've also noticed that the games don't have to be first/third person experiences to cause this effect.. I STILL form these kinds of false memories, even from games that exist in realities/universe that aren't like ours. I remember having dreams about Tetris, as a kid, as if I existed in a universe of nothing but a 2D Tetris game. Or even weirder, I played around with Gmod wiremod for a couple years, and ended up having dreams that were nothing except Expression2 coding. It's weird having dreams about programing.. lol
If you haven't heard of it you should look up the 'Tetris Effect' but it sounds like that's exactly what you're describing, even down to the game involved! I used to have really disturbing dreams of and from playing that terrible Quidditch Game Boy game late at night. Thankfully I've also had more pleasant dreams of being in FFVIII.
I've had dreams about me playing Civilization 5 or Europa Universalis 4. I was actually playing the games, like I was seeing the screen and everything, but I was also in the first person view of it, like I was down in the city telling people to do stuff and getting reports.
I usually split my time between a half-dozen or so games at a time, but when I've gotten hella into a specific game, thinking of Fallout 3 right now, I tend to start dreaming about it every night. I can remember several Fallout 3 dreams, some set in actual locations in the game and some set in areas that felt like Fallout, but that didn't feel right - like when you dream of your house, but you walk through the front door and everything is different. Joseph Schmitz Civilization 5 dreams are the strangest! I remember having one after staying up until 8am in a multiplayer match with my brother. I was essentially playing the game, but I had all kinds of actions that weren't in the game at my disposal.
haha I am the same way!!! When I wake up from dreams like that all I can think is. Damn it why did it have to end? Because so many times I wish my life was like the life of the person I am playing because its seems like alot more fun then my life!
I remember watching my dad play Super Metroid when I was a kid. When I was about 10, I finally picked up the controller myself and played the game. I even took the exact same route as my father did. When I finally beat the game, I felt something...so surreal. The Metroid hatchling's sacrifice had left a profound effect on my mind, and I can even recall laying out in the backyard, watching the summer sun begin to set while reflecting on the game's bittersweet ending. To say none of it was real is blasphemy. I experienced it, therefore it exists.
My favorite gaming memory: I was at my 2nd Smash Bros tournament on March 4, 2009. There were 22 people in the room and we organized a draft crew battle of 11 vs 11. I was the 3rd last person sent to fight in front of everyone. I was kind of nervous having a crowd behind me for my 1st time, but soon enough learned to love it. It felt awesome having a bunch of people cheer for me
The game series that will never leave my mind is Mass Effect. I didn't play the mass effect series until the 3rd game was already scheduled for release. I did a full play through all 3 games, defeating Seren, romancing Liara, fighting the collectors, and finishing off the reapers feel as real as any experience that i was actually there for. The game's flow makes me feel like I am Commander Sheppard. Its as it bends my own reality.
After playing Assassin's Creed 2 I explored a lot of San Gimignano. When I went to the same town in real life a year or so later, I remembered it from the game. It was a weird feeling, remembering somewhere I'd never actually been! Of course, the town had changed a lot in two hundred and fifty years, but it was recognisable, and some things were in the same places!
This isn't really related to the topic discussed, so apologies in advance. I've *always* suspected that gamers are always so *passionate* and *angry* when discussing & arguing about video games because the experience is so *_intense_* and.. *_personal_*. (My arguments over movies (Interstellar is boring) is nowhere near as heated as arguments over video games (The Last of Us is boring). The difference is huge.) Unlike watching movies or reading books (where you're _passively_ enjoying something) gaming is a more *active* experience; you're practically stepping into a different world with different rules. This is (to me) probably the reason why we gamers are so passionate/emotional about our silly little hobby. (Maybe gaming memories feeling like "real memories" is another reason? I dunno)
agree thatz gamers are passionate about games, but disagree that movies and Books don't evoke as strong emotions! Books are for a long time praised to make people 'experience' things they couldn't experience otherwise. This might not be the case for you but anyone who cried at a characters death, screamed at a book because the protagonist just did something really stupid or laughed so hard they had to put away the book for a moment to be able to go on reading will tell you that these feel pretty real too! You are still active reading abook or watching a film in that your brain interprets what you see or read, it will makeyou BE that character and thus you can cry and laugh with him. It feels like you are doing the stuff, although, unlöike a game, you don't actually do anything. It's all in your head. Oh, and just listen to some diehard fans of their franchise have a heated discussion, they definitely get a agitated as gamers do.
89taklung It's..*different*. I'm not denying that books or movies can't evoke strong emotions from us, because of course they do. Some of us react *negatively*. Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fanboys, for example. The Harry Potter books were so good, they got kids, who otherwise wouldn't go near books, to read them as soon as they were released. No, I'm just saying that, *in general*, the _average gamer tends to overreact a lot more than the average moviegoer/reader_ . For example, I recently posted a YT comment about how I thought the Game of Thrones books tended to have their characters die in a "cheap" manner (a main character gets killed by some one-dimensional character that we barely get to know). You know what happened? People who replied to me were so *nice* about it. All of them _disagreed_ with me, of course, but they acted much more nice/mature than the average gamer would. Of course, *sometimes* I'd get gamers (who _disagreed_ with me) that would engage me in an interesting & calm conversation. SOMETIMES. TLDR; This is all just my personal experiences, both online and in real life. I have no proof/statistics to back any of it, so it could all be BS on my part.
Well I do know that gemers can be pretty rough (nice for as*****s) but I remember some of my most heated discussions about books. There was for example a girl who was about to kill me because I explained to her why I think Twilight isn't such a great book... Well of course you need to have people that are totally emersed in the respective movie or film to get that reaction, if you are a fan that writes fanfictions and draws characters and basically in their head completes the story they actually make it their own and seeing an episode for the first time is very much part of their memory. I like playing games but no matter the game, I would never get angry over it or shout at someone because of it. So I kinda doubt its because of the medium
***** Maybe. I think it's movie audiences that tend to be *young*, though. You know, the ones who love movies like Transformers or Hunger Games or Twilight or Frozen. *Everyone* watches movies. (At least on tv/cable, if not at the theaters). Always seemed, to me, that gamers were *usually* college kids or older. But yeah, you could be right. Maybe it's because gamers are a "younger" group.
I'll always have those memories when I was a kid playing Secret of Mana. Wandering through the crystal ice forest or finally making it to the Pure Land and finding the Mana Tree. I can hear the music that was the playing and the wonder I had while exploring these new places. I can say the same when I went on a trip to Chicago with a bunch of photographers. There is music that I listened to with people that takes me back to those moments, wandering downtown, listening to my ipod with one ear bud because my friend had the other one in and every time that I hear those certain songs, it immediately takes me back. They will always be real experiences and places for me despite the fact that one is completely digital and the other was an amazing experience that helped mold some deep friendships. They are equally as important to me as the other.
This made me think about how many people mention parts of films/television shows that they vividly remember, but don't remember what they're from. It seems to be a similar thing - you don't remember what you were doing, or what you were watching it on, but you still remember the imagery and how it made you feel.
I actually like the "Game memories are a lot like Dream memories" thing :) I remember this one time I was playing Day Z with a friend, we were just trying to do our best to survive so we took shelter in a concrete building. Suddenly, we noticed that blood started dripping from the ceiling almost like that scene from Silence of the Lambs. When we peeked across the way, we noticed there was another user nearby with an axe...we started freaking out! "What do we do?? If he spots us he'll kill us!" We didn't have anything that could take him out from a distance, so we figured we'd try and sneak out before he could find us. But it was too late! He spotted us and began a chase, and in all the commotion I panicked and accidentally pushed my friend over the railing on the inside of the building! He died instantly....I tried to run away from the axe-wielding maniac, but I didn't get very far at all. I did shortly after. I blame myself really; not just because I accidentally killed my friend, but it was also me who hesitated in killing the other guy to begin with. I was so worried about whether or not he was innocent that I ended up costing both of our lives.
I still get nostalgic when I think about my early experiences with Final Fantasy XI. In those first few months I gained some of my first MMO friends (some of whom I still talk to on occasion), and had some of the best experiences I will likely ever have playing an MMO. And some of the worst. My first character was on a roommate's account. A roommate that I had a falling out with, and moved away from, but who was still kind enough to let me say farewell to my game friends. And it was just as painful as saying farewell to the friends I have in the physical world. So, in answer to the question in the title of the video: Yes, "game memories" are "real memories". They evoke the same feelings, and can have the same meaning as so called "real memories". I may not have actually, physically cast Firaga on a large group of crawlers in West Sarutabaruta, but I still felt the excitement associated with it and with successfully doing so and not eating dirt. I felt the same loss when friends left (or I left). I felt anger when someone would trail dozens of monsters past a bunch of us n00bs, resulting in all of us dying. I remember those things just as well as I remember flying off the front of my bike and breaking my jaw. Or graduating from college. Or flying an airplane for the first time. A memory is a memory is a memory.
Something else I would mention is how a lot of times games can be linked to audio or visual cues that trigger intense memory recall, something you don't get as much from non-interactive media. For instance, any time I hear the song "On Melancholy Hill" from Gorillaz I get all sorts of vivid memories of playing Minecraft, without any of the visuals of me playing the game. Just what happened in the game. But if I hear the theme to Jurassic Park, I remember seeing the movie but can't instantly recall any of the times I saw it in the theater or on tv.
same with me,although for me its tied to tv shows whenever a certain episode of certain show comes on, ill almost always remember the exact experiences of the exact games i was playing the first time i saw it
Related: Why we are nostalgic for music from our adolescence: www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/musical_nostalgia_the_psychology_and_neuroscience_for_song_preference_and.html
my memories of video games come mostly from minecraft, but are strong memories none the less. when i go around my verious worlds i have created i can vividly recall what i was doing at the time of play, for example one night while building onto a city of mine i was texting a friend who was having relationship troubles, now everytime i go by that part of town i was working on that text conversation comes to mine. these memories stretch all the way back to 2012 for me and im sure even further back for many others
I think LP's actually help make a point here. Someone else made a comment about how passionate gamers are when discussing a game because the experience is so personal to you. If you watch a LP's of a game I think you will be less likely to remember what happened during the game. The actual RUclipsr you are watching has a part in it as well. I never played Heavy Rain but I clearly remember watching Pewdiepie play it. At the same time I watched Pewdiepie play episode 1 of The Walking Dead and I haven't the foggiest what decisions he made in that game and I think it is because after watching it I bought the first season of The Walking Dead and I clearly the remember the choices I made but nothing of what he did in the game.
Yes! I didn't get to this, but I think that LP are a form of collective memory making. It turns the solitary act of playing a game into something done in public.
PBS Game/Show This would be super interesting to explore--with rare exceptions, when I watch a LP, I'm way more interested in the person playing than in the game itself. For instance, I watched ever LP of The Stanley Parable and Little Inferno I could find--I had already completed both games, and knew how they went, but I *loved* watching people react to their plot twists. I dislike GTA, but I love watching groups of LPers play it together anyway, purely because of the way they interact with each other. I would never play Alien: Isolation, because I am a big wimp, but I love watching other people play it. Even when I was a kid, I would watch my brother play video games. We played together a lot, too, but if it wasn't a game I was interested in, I would sit in his room and watch him, sometimes for hours, and we'd have a great time.
As a good example of this concept, I remember talking to a friend who was dealing with whether or not to cut ties with her abusive mother. We had played The Walking Dead: Season 2 recently and I remember bringing up Kenny as an example of someone that you care about but can't afford to have in your life as if he was a real person we both knew. For the both of us at that time, Kenny was a friend of ours that we cared deeply about.
I suspect this varies a lot from person to person--even when I get really immersed in a game, I don't walk away feeling like I was "there"; I feel like I played a really cool game. It gets filed away in the same vein as having memories of a movie, book, or perhaps even memories of playing pretend as a kid. There's always a very clear emotional line for me between experiences I have in the real world and experiences I have in a game. In-game memories do get more powerful to me if there's a strong multiplayer element involved. If I'm sharing the moment with other people through some form of chat, but particularly voice chat with friends, now it's something we did together. I have tepid memories about achieving things in my Minecraft single player world; I have great memories of collaborating with friends to build something ornate, or just fooling around with nonsense in creative mode, or hosting events on our server. But it's the human connection there that mattered to me, way more than the specific things happening on screen.
I'll always remember playing the original Tribes about 10 or 15 years ago. In particular, there is one sequence of events that I can remember perfectly. I ran into the opposing base and ambushed player after player and to finish the sequence; I remember falling from the top of an elevator shaft onto an unsuspecting enemy and my chain gun spinning up to full speed getting ready to rip them to shreds.When I think about this experience, it makes me think that comparing video games to dreams isn't getting video games the right amount of credit. My memory of the event is still vivid after almost 15 years; I've never had a dream where I remember the details so closely that I'm able to remember them years after I have them. I think video games are more powerful because you are in control of how the memories are formed. In dreams, it takes a lot more effort to actively participate. I literally have control over how I form my reality which is amazingly close to reality. The only real difference is the physical actions you take in reality are complex compared to being limited to button presses.
You said that game memories are not experienced, but when I think of a great game memory, I think of all times i play games with my friends, or when i beat my friends in smash. those are the memories i remember the most.
The vast majority of my most remembered gaming experiences have been ones that I've shared with friends. Like my friend Rob showing me how an emulator worked for the first time, or the first time I played Smash Bros with my friend Chris, thinking I was pretty unbeatable and getting my ass kicked because he was on a whole other level than me, or trying to unlock EVERY Silent Hill ending with my friend John, or that time during a sleepover with a bunch of my friends we all sat around and beat Final Fantasy 9 together. Even if I made incredible progress in a game or raised my skill level in a game I was playing by myself, that memory is nowhere near as important, or even as memorable to the most mundane events that happened while playing games with friends.
I think another aspect of game memories that comes to mind strongly for me is the nostalgia aspect of games, and especially how remakes/replays might play an unusual part in that. One example is that I remember my younger cousin playing Ocarina of Time on the N64 but I never played it myself until the remake for the 3DS came out, yet once I came to the few scenes that I did know, I felt a really strong memory recall. In a way it probably helps that it was so wonderfully remastered from the original. But then something weird happened to me when I played Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. I have spent some incredulous hours playing both Pokemon Emerald, the generation from 10+ years ago that was remade with the ORAS release, and Pokemon Y, whose style the remakes rely heavily upon and has only been out for a year. It felt, simultaneously, like both a nostalgia trip and just playing the same thing from last week. Eventually it reconciled into the former as I tried to remember the places and events that kept faithful to the original, but because there is so much new added content/features (unlike OoT) it feels less like reliving old memories and instead like creating new ones. But then again, what does replaying the exact same game several years apart do for our memories? As someone who doesn't really do that often (I mean there are cases like Smash Bros that don't really count), I'm fairly curious about it now.
It might have been a novelty at first to tell friends I was going to Los Santos that night, but after a while the line between "playing GTA" and "going to Los Santos" blurred. My adventures were very real to me. I hadn't experienced immersion like that before in other games, where saying that I got chased by the cops through Paleto Bay really felt like something that had happened rather than something I did in a game. I think there's differences in our interactions with games that make a difference. Narrative experiences don't come across as real to me because I understand this is a story I'm guiding a character through, but my GTA Online character effectively is me (down to my clothes and hair, other than my beard being larger) so the things I do in game really feel like an extension of me and my recall of those actions felt like my actions.
My best memories of games come from local gaming, like tournaments or competetive moments, social fun times like mario party, or hotseating a game like who can survive 6 stars longest in GTA. Which did have some pretty funny ones because you are intereacting with people around you wheres the games is a presenter. But my most ingame memory ever in the sense where the only memory where everything else does not matter comes from the look and feel in my favourate game ever, Alundra. I remember its vibrant apealing colors, difficult sweat inducing puzzles, pretty damn mature story and etc. From when i was a kid who couldnt beat it, to a grown up who now can. Specificaly the first part of the game and its intro is my best memory of specificaly in a videogame and nothing else.
A couple points - I don't know how many people truly ascribe their videogame actions to themselves in a "real" way. "I killed that dragon" is shorthand, it's understood that you mean "My character killed that dragon" or even, "I made my character kill that dragon". It's the same shortcut in speech when you have an auto accident and say "He hit me" as opposed to "his car hit my car" The car is an extension of yourself while driving, and the character is an extension of yourself when playing a game. But there's no true conflation of the two going on, save in certain outlier cases where a person may truly have a problem distinguishing reality from fantasy. So we're not remembering false events as much as we're remembering our personal experience of an immersive dramatic performance. I too remember the events of Chrono Trigger in great detail, but I don't recall them as events that happened "to me". I remember beating major bosses in games, but more because of the time and luck it took to do so by making the right strategic choices. And as part of that, I dispute that a film of book cannot be as deep or "real" remembered experience as a real event. Again, we don't remember them as real, but we remember how we feel, how we reacted to the events, and how the actions of the characters affected me in the moment, and moving forward. It's not a "real" event, but reading/watching it is an experience. Consider this - if a friend tells you about something that happened to them, and you remember the story, is it a "real" memory? You didn't experience the event, but if the story is told with enough detail, it can be remembered in as great a detail as if you experienced it. They're all "real" memories; it's the source of them that differ, and as long as one can rationally identify the source as...let's try "actual" and virtual", all is well.
Most vivid gaming memories, hmm? What I can remember pretty prominently from when I was younger was the Legend of Dragoon for PS1. I remember that game mostly from the experiences I had watching others play it (my siblings, who deemed me "too young" for it because there was some swearing.) What I can remember more clearly is something like Journey, which I played for myself. (light spoilers ahead.) I can remember this wanderer that came with me on the final stretch of the game, chirping back and forth with them and warming each other through proximity. I remember a time where they were spotted by an enemy and ran toward me, getting us both hit-- I was kind of upset about it. The next time, he ran away from me instead and I kind of felt bad for him, though I was happy to see this complete stranger worrying about me virtual wellbeing. That was-- and is-- a good game. To those reading, if you haven't played Journey, I invite you to do so.
I remember being a werewolf in skyrim, being in the Soul Cairn, at one the towers, and I threw one of the seeker dudes off the tower and watched him fall off. It was humorous because I only knew he died when I couldn't see his health bar xD
I have to favorite gaming memories that come to mind, one was in GTA IV where I drove a flaming car off a ramp, landed upside down, hit a second ramp and started flipping end over end. Then the car crashed into a building, exploded, and then landed in the water bellow, best video game death ever! The second one is in Driver San Fransisco when me and my friend Marc were playing split screen. He drove a truck off a jump just as I drove up the ramp on the back of the truck and my car went flying higher then I had ever made it go before, then it inevitably crashed back to earth but it was a great moment with a good friend.
The thing about memories is that we will "fill in" details that we don't recall automatically. Things like the exactly phrasing of sentences, or the color of someone's shirt, maybe. But when you experience something, you do remember it, and you remember it perfectly, even if you don't recall it perfectly. False memories happen when you are led to believe that you experienced something that you didn't. this is particularly effective after things like a trauma, when you'll have a very difficult time recalling memories with accuracy. But, game memories? You may not actually be experiencing going through a desert, but you are experiencing playing a game in which you explore a desert. You may not remember the controls or the setting, but you remember that it happened, and that it was a game. That is a real experience. As you noted, you consolidate it with real emotions, and you recall (more or less) what happened, with those emotions. So, yeah. Game memories are real, because you did actually experience playing the game, and you do actually remember that, even if you don't remember what have become autopilot functions- after all, if you remember something that happened while you were riding a bike, do you remember all of the details about pedaling and turning, or the familiar setting of your neighborhood? Or do you remember the thing that you were focused on- whatever event was happening?
I don't really remember the details of the individual Smash matches, but I remember who wins. Sometimes I'm even like "Remember that time Captain Falcon just beat you up mercilessly?" "Which one?"
This discussion reminds me of one of my favourite Harry Potter quotes. Harry: "Is this real, or is this just happening inside my head?" Dumbledore: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
I'd say they are. I had an insatiable wanderlust as a child, Spent every day walking through the woods just a little farther than the last time to see what's out there, and every time my family brought me to an urban environment I'd manage to get lost looking around warranting more than a few rides in police cars to meet my irate grandmother at the station. I have similar fond memories of some games, TES 3 and 5 in particular. Oblivion fell a bit flat for me, but morrowind and skyrim are just packed with random odds and ends that you have no reason to bother with. They didn't feel like a quest to get done, but a weird place to do whatever in. My screenshots of the sunrise over Vivec give me the same warm fuzzy feeling as the countless single use cameras I filled as a child. Maybe less intense without the tinge of "Holy crap, I could have died doing that" but warm and fuzzy all the same.
I just want to mention that Ghost in the Shell raised a similar question in 1989 (well it might have been raised earlier by someone else already, but that's the earliest date that I can remember).
One of my favorite game memories is in Fallout New Vegas. Where the NCR and the Legion are battling for the dam and out of nowhere the boomers fly over and blow everyone up. Thats was amazing.
I think there's something about how in the moment of gameplay there's a tie between your actions and thoughts (pressing this button, etc, which option to choose) with the narrative or mediated events. So the two become conflated then, which makes it an easy step to other situations where you made decisions and acted and experienced a subsequent response Walking into the kitchen, seeing bread, putting it in toaster - those series of movements did happen, but did they happen virtually or meatspace? How you're interacting with the world isn't that much different so I see how it could pass reality distinctions. I could have made hundreds of cupcakes according to the customer's order. I feel like I have. Because I spent time working on perfecting a set of movements that would be most successful until I made cupcake after cupcake. And then I repeated those movements over and over until they became naturalized. It get confusing with "smaller" events like that I think, because there are so many memories of similar situations, that the game version becomes just another one in a long list making it harder to delineate. Like I "know"* I haven't stolen escape pods to fly to another planet where there's a special gun that let's me kill a half-spider-half-giraffe. That's just far removed from my other experiences that it wouldn't be able to fit it. It sticks out as abnormal and so it can't be reasonably incorporated as a "true" memory. But when a game includes things I have done, like talking to a stranger on the street, or checking my messages, or I don't know, I'm having a hard time thinking of sufficient examples. But what could be called the more "everyday" stuff. There's so many more memories of that experience, a mediated one, like from a video game, would have an easier time passing with the others. I know when I'm doing laundry sometimes I'll forget as soon as I walk out of the room if I actually turned the machine on. Because I've done it so many times, the experience becomes a lot harder to pull out of pile in recall. The memory looses individuality in that way that I think would easily facilitate the conflation of game memory and real memory. I think, to combined the two subjects, Let's Play videos complicate this even more. Because then you're not even the one catalyzing the event, is it still a memory then? It's an interesting question if watching a video of or playing changes the relationship to this murky memory answer. Anyway, this episode's question was really interesting, that's why I rambled so much. It grabbed me! Thanks for the great content. *keeping away from meta-physical, alt realities, universe ideas bc like, too complicated.
Commander Shepard... This might be delving more into the category of Being your avatar , but i think it hold a valid point none the less. When asked about my experience playing mass effect, a game that was so successful in engrossing so many players in its world and characters, people grew real attachment to the universe as a whole. And looking back at the choices made, its not what "Shepard" chose to do, Its what "I" chose to do. My choices saved Tali, it was my choices that caused Kaden to die. When a deep emotional attachment is made to an event, whether fiction or nonfiction it changes us, and in remembering the event we can remember how it changed us.
Right now? My two most vivid video game memories are from telltale games, the first when Snow's head gets delivered in The Wolf Among Us and then when the young lord gets shanked in the Game of Thrones one. After that... the ending of Mass Effect. Vivid, vivid memories.
I had an interesting experience when I went to Barcelona. I was stood at the top of the Museu Nacional d'art de Catalunya, looking out across the beautiful city when I had a strange feeling of deja vu. But this wasn't like any deja vu I had felt before, I had definitely been here before. I could even point to specific locations as to where things would be, like the entrance to the subway etc.. But how could this have been possible? This was the first time I had been to Barcelona. Then it hit me... About a year prior to the trip I had been playing Left4Dead 2 custom maps, in particular a map called Warcelona. The modellers had done such a fantastic and accurate job on the map that it actually made me feel like I had been there before, and in a way I guess I had, all be it blasting zombies with a machine gun and running away from Tanks. To me this memory I have from a video game is as real as any other memory I have.
Awesome! greetings from Argentina! i'm glad you liked it here! At first the question sounded like something Jaden Smith would tweet but after watching the video i gotta say, some of the most emotional memories of my life are related to gaming somehow, be it simply a very meaningful ending of a game or a very cool moment i shared while playing with my sister or my friends. I tend to think of games as real experiences, not in the sense that i've actually killed a thousand nazis but in the sense that when you are really immersed in the game, you... kinda forget that you're not a supersoldier or a billiant football player or a... really fast hedgehog i guess, so in a way, you are actually experiencing the events of the game, or at least if the game is good, your brain thinks you are.
I certainly remember emotions that games evoke as feeling real to me. Persona 4 is a prime example. I find myself growing attached the characters as I get to know them (progress through their social links) and I find myself playing the game more to get to know them than to explore dungeons better. On the flip side, years ago, I remember fighting Lavos for the first time at the end of Chrono Trigger. It felt epic, it was tense, my fingers felt twitchy, my heart racing. And then... I failed. I died and got the bad ending for the game. It left me feeling empty, like I had let real people down. While I have since beaten the game, the cry of Lavos still haunts me.
I think there is a huge difference if you are playing a game from first-person perspective or if you are playing as an observer. I'm a huge Sims player. I've been playing Sims since gen 1. Yet, I doesn't really have any vivid memories of my game play. I get nostalgic hearing the music of the old gens but that's it. On the other hand, I doesn't invest a lot of emotion into my gaming, other simmers do and get attached to their creations. I get more a attached to characters in book. If they are characters of my own creation and living in a story I'm writing I can remember very clearly everything I've done to them.
My most vivid memory of a videogame I have played was with Diablo 2 LoD, I was playing an assassin and realized that both Burst of Speed, and Tiger Strike, both work with EVERY MELEE WEAPON. I focused on just those 2 skills, got to act 2, got my horadric cube. Diamond + Staff + Kriss + Belt = Savage (polearm) [rarely gets suffix]. I proceeded to do that until I got at least +150% enhanced damage. 150% enhanced damage + 1440% damage for tiger strike. with a very fast attack speed, with pole-arm damage. you do the math.
Two of my most vivid gaming memories comes from my very first full play through of The legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time . The first one was sitting in my room playing though the Infamous Water temple and fighting Dark link and beating him I remember it vividly and even remember some of the events that happenes a few minutes before or after picking up the controller and putting it down . The other memory is the feeling of accomplishment of beating Gannon in OOT and the feeling that I Saved Hyrule , OOT was the first video game I ever played that gave me a world that I really felt like I wanted to protect it What with the npc`s that I came to know and all I felt like a real hero when I saved Hyule that first time .When the game cut to the scene of link dealing the final blows to Ganon it felt like I was dealing thous final blows and that my quest was finally complete. And the my friends is why Ocarina of Time is my favorite video game Of all time .
I have a lot of memories of playing EverQuest that blur the lines. MMOs require a lot of investment, which means emotions run high, which in turn forge stronger memories. I remember clearly doing actions, I don't remember the UI or "game" aspects of the events... Just the events like stealthing through areas far higher than my level, raiding alternate planes with friends, and celebrating personal loot victories with them from both the real world and online. I've never really thought of those memories as being false as you mentioned, they're tied to emotions. They're even shared experiences, triumphs or failures achieved through my group giving it their all. Strange that anyone would thing to trivialize these experiences because the physical body isn't present.
I can relate to this on a crazy level. I play games with music playing in the background. Whenever i hear that song outside of a game, i think of that experiance such as a c4 chopper takedown in Battlefield, to a singularity in Infamous: First Light
Some of the memories that feel realest to me happened to be from videogames, like that kill streak I got in Interstellar Marines, and (spoiler alert) retaking Project Purity in Fallout 3, so I can easily say that game memories are real memories.
Hi. Good reference to the dreams, because I have a different memories of dreams, than of games (as long as I don't play like on a holodeck). In dreams I am the actual protagonist (mostly, sometimes I'm an non-corporeal observer). Things in dreams happen to myself, I can feel it. In that case being in a dream is the same as being in the real world (in all but one dream I'm not aware I'm dreaming). In games I steer an avatar and am aware of that. Many of my memories of gaming (nearly all of them) include the setting of the real world. I can recall where I sat at the moment and played that game. It's still a real memory (up to an including the action on screen), I was there and played and it's very important to my life. Dreams are also very important to me and I know (when waking up that is), that it's a "fake" memory (beside once in my childhood, where it took half a day for me to figure out a memory I had was a dream from last night (and in reverse I once remembered something and thought it to be a dream only to get told: "Dude, that was totally real!"). That never once happened with games. Fascinating is, when I dream of being in a game (which happens from time to time). I'm in the game world, as the avatar I usually play and I still have my HUD and to engage certain actions I don't throw the fireball (for example) I have to trigger the button in the HUD. Weird! Just my view on the topic. Thanks for reading. P.S. Nice show, keep on!
I have weird memory with books, though. I'd read A Song of Ice and Fire before the show came out on HBO but once I grew accustomed to the characters on the show, I kept having memories of seeing "The Purple Wedding" (a lot better than was actually on HBO) before the episode ever aired AND with the Game of Thrones actors and actresses in place of the images in my head from the book. But I don't think I've ever "remembered" doing something that I'd done while playing a video game as if it were me. I don't have memories of raiding tombs or running 101 yards to score a game-winning TD.
While it perhaps falls into a different topic all together, I'd like to throw my two cents in with my connection to video game music. Being a glutton for atmosphere in gaming and life, I tend to listen to a lot of it, and appropriate songs at that (snow levels during the winter, beach levels at the beach, etc). Many songs end up having two layers to them that intertwine; the games context, and my own context. For example, perhaps a sad song from an event in a game that I've listened to during a sad event in my life; the song tends to bring up both memories, or perhaps the games context gives the song its own 'lyrics' to relate to, as it were.
I have a lot of video game memories, both good and bad, from catching my first Shiny Pokemon that wasn't the Lake or Rage's Red Gyarados to the many fails I had trying to defeat Gruntilda in Banjo-Kazooie.
This is a great topic for discussion. I firmly believe that the experiences I can recall from playing video games over the last 20 or so years of my life are as real as any memory I have of an experience that took place in my real life away from video games. I cannot deny those emotions, those accomplishments, those struggles, those good times, and those bad times. I also can't deny the way that video game music makes me feel, much in the way music from professional artists does.
The funny thing is; when a HD remaster is released it often looks just how you remember the game, except you know it isn't because the internet is full of side-by-side comparisons. Similarly, I remember playing Tony Hawk's 3 on the PS2 then going back to the previous game and being so surprised by how blocky it looked compared to how the sequel had effected my memory of it.
Whenever I play a game, it's often very much a role-playing experience. In my mind, the actions of the player character are not my own, but that of whatever character I'm pretending to be at the time. Even if I'm the one pressing the buttons, the personality of the character and the world they live in dictate what occurs on the screen and I'm essentially witnessing events unfold rather than experiencing them first-hand. These events may be real in the sense that they affect me emotionally and intellectually, but their relationship to me personally is still subject to at least some level of dissociation.
Some of my fondest memories with friends go back to a shared experience in a game. My strongest is having played splinter cell chaos theory's co op with one of my best friends. We still laugh and argue about who messed up a mission, or who cut the wrong wire when defusing a bomb. The game may have a 'fake' reality, but the shared moment of sitting in front of the TV with a friend, interacting with the game is real. The social aspect of games and their availability increases this realness. I may not have been with my friend when they were playing the last of us, but there is almost a form of empathy in that when they describe a difficult level, I can recall my own obstacles from my play through, same as if relating to a persons other every day experiences whether its being late to work or something more serious. The zombie apocalypse or secret spy world may be fake but our experiences navigating them is wholly real.
This is interesting because i just finished an essay last night for high school and it was about how my experience with playing Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time influenced and changed me as a person. In part of the essay i digressed about how games have more influence on our feelings than movies or books, because we are the character and we can make the character into whoever we want to be, but we also feel more repercussions if we make a mistake or are in a bad situation.
There's this idea in Human Memory called "transactive memory," which is the memory of who knows what and who we can use as a resource to reliably check for information or whether our memory is correct. It's a little.. abstract, but recently, researchers have proposed that technology (especially google) have acted as a stand-in for other people in our transactive memory. For example, if I ask you to recall a statistic, if you used technology to sort/categorize it, you'll remember how to access it better than you will the memory itself (research on this topic is just in its early stages and there are a LOT of questions remaining). Anyway, I'm curious if this extends to video games, both for in-game characters and people you play with in multiplayer games. Could having characters that we view as complex people with distinct likes and dislikes be a stand-in for real-life people, and if so, what level of complexity do we need to reach to achieve that?
It's about agency. We remember doing stuff in games because we kind of did. If we hadn't taken action, nothing would've happen. Even if the actions we take are translated into the context of the game and the repercussions of those actions are also only seen directly in the context of the game, they are still actions that we took. We don't remember film or book experiences in the same way since we don't have any agency. We can't change the outcome of a film depending on how we watch it, but in games we have agency. Humans are pretty good at recognising that certain things aren't really, truly real (even if we're more keen on, less consciously, adopting lessons, morals and values from media). This is probably related to how children play games and how we tell stories to teach lessons, which could have strong anthropological and evolutionary reasons (human children aren't the only ones that play games to teach important lessons and skills... cue the clip of a kitten pouncing on another kitten), since humans naturally play, we're distinguished tool users and we even seem to have biological cues for language (and thus information exchange and, possibly, story telling). So we perform the actions ourselves, we create the memories and we remember them as our own and all along we have this little sidenote on the memory that it was in a special context. It's still rather cool with certain games though. Some games offer more agency than others and in particular they offer more direct agency. In some games you tell your dude what to do and he does it. In some games you have a bunch of dudes acting roughly on your instructions. In some games you have an over the shoulder view and you constantly see that it's a different person performing all the actions... and in some games you control a single character very directly. Especially if the controls are smooth and responsive and you practice them a lot they can grow very unconscious and the controls and the character becomes and extension of yourself. Kind of like how when waving a stick around or writing with a pencil I rarely consider the pencil an object completely separate from myself, I don't think of how to move my hands to produce letters. I just look at the pencil tip and the paper and make the letters with my pen. What I find fascinating is that our brains are so very good at making such a strong and direct connection, even though there's so much that should be in the way of our immersion. Keyboard (in particular) and mouse is a very crude way to translate human motion, we mostly have a very limited field of view and a 2d screen and we only have audio-visual stimulation (no sense of touch of any kind) and just how alien and unbelievable a lot of our gaming experiences are and that we inherently understand that they are fictional contexts. There are so many things that should be in the way of our minds doing it perfectly, and yet it can and still maintain the fictional context. I realise that it's something that seemingly comes with a lot of practice and that most games feel awkward and, in lack of a better word, a bit disconnected at first and that there are plenty of other skills that work the same and that take a lot of practice to make so very natural, subconscious and intuitive (like writing or playing an instrument). From an evolutionary perspective it's impressive that we're so good at those things, since we originally didn't need them to that extent and by the time we did we had already kind of overridden evolution. It makes me wonder about the capabilities of other species if they just got a little push. Sorry, I'm kind of going further and further off topic, but thinking and typing are also things that are rather immersive and "connected" for me. The keyboard is just an extension of my fingers, just like the pen is.
Gaming memories are absolutely real. I don't think there's any question about that, even without getting into the science of it. Even though what HAPPENS in a game isn't actually real, the experience you have with it most certainly is. It's as simple as that. It all comes down to how much an experience resonates with you, whether that experience is virtual or reality. I think sometimes people simply fail to distinguish experiences from the people, places, and things themselves. "It's just a waterfall" does not invalidate someone's experience with a waterfall just as "It's not real" does not invalidate someone's experience with a game.
Exploring the Ruins of Alph done in Pokémon Gold, actually kind of feels like an odd mix of vivid in who I was with, I looked into its mysteries and went after all the different Unown. Or also exploring Cyrodil in Oblivion, finding many interesting things and sights.
I'd refer to the movie Avatar to make a comparison. In it, when you use your avatar you are doing something, but at the same time someone could say that you aren't doing that something. This is because we tend to think that a person is tied to his body, when in reality he is but not as much as we perceive. So when YOU do something through something that isn't your body, like an avatar (like in the movie, or like in a videogame), it seems confusing at first whether or not YOU're doing that thing. In reality it is actually YOU who is doing that thing, just using a tool that isn't your body.
This is a very interesting topic. I think what might be causing some of the issues here would be our definition of a "memory." I was hoping Jamin would clarify what he's calling a "memory" a little bit, because the working definition can change what we mean entirely. For example, from what I know about cognitive science and neuroscience, the brain stores the salient aspects of sensory input for later retrieval. When playing a game, the fact that you are playing a game is not relevant to a trained gamer, so it is largely ignored information. As a result, the experience that the gamer has is stored more directly as a sort of lived experience, but also with some amount of distance. In a similar manner to what Jamin explained earlier, It's not exactly a memory of something you did yourself, as you have a sort of distance from the event (this idea also seems to be reminiscent of the "Are you your character?" discussion from earlier on Game/Show. Similar to a dream, you aren't using your own body to accomplish the actions of a character, so the information contained within a memory of a game will not contain the memory of physically experiencing a live event. Yet, its not exactly dream-like, because your experience is still mediated through sensory processing of the world and it's not using the recurrent pathways meant to strengthen consolidation (at least, that's what one of the stronger hypothesizes of dreams might suggest). A non-gamer might also have a different experience with this. For them, the experience of a game might include the fact that they are playing it some some device. They may not be only experiencing the game, but the experience of *playing* the game as well. It's not particularly useful information, but the untrained brain doesn't know that, so it holds on to the information. Similarly, playing local multiplayer with friends and family may evoke both/either experience for a gamer--the experience of the game and the experience of playing the game with others are both interesting enough for the brain to retain as a memory. Maybe the question isn't "Are game memories real?" Maybe it's "When are game memories real?"
I totally know what you mean about remembering things in games like they actually happened to you. Several times before I've had a dream that I was doing something in Minecraft. I don't mean that I dreamed about playing Minecraft; I dreamed that I am Steve. I have also experienced how memories can change over time. I was sure that I had memorized I quote that I read in a book once, and over a few years, the part of the quote that I thought I'd remember the best wasn't even close to what I remembered it being.
Interesting theory but I don't see how this is just a gaming thing and not also a reading and watching movie thing. Ok before you all go on with 'you are more active in video games' and so on: Since long books were praised to be able to give you experiences that you couldn't obtain other wise. And you get just as emotionally invested into a good book or movie or even theatre play as you get into a game. Well maybe not everyone does, since everyone has their own preferences, but I bet anyone at least know someone who cried at a sad scene or laughed hardly when something funny happened or shouted at the screen or the book if the protagonist was about to do something really stupid. You get just as emotionally invested. And while, yes, in a book you hardly say 'I was doing this' as some people do with video games, It's still a very emotional experience. For example when ever I remember the tale of 'the little matchgirl' I get really sad, although it's just a tale and I didn't even SEE ist but only heard it. The same way, Bruno Bettelheim suggests, do fairy tales work for little children. They use them to cope with things just like they use dreams.
My most vivid memories don't come from the narrative of the story but more from cooperative play. The narrative has to do with character who aren't me. I can be emotional attached to them sure but in this sense it's no different from a film with characters I was emotional attached to. The memories come from me making my own narrative with real people that I can interact with. The most vivid memories I have are from multilayer sandbox games. Running with a 5 star wanted level in gta, going off to kill the ender dragon in minecraft, these are all felt real and important. In contrast when I played The Last of Us, I was always rooting for Joel and Eli but I never felt like I was Joel. In games like gta and minecraft I had my own agenda. I feel this is the way games are unique.
The memories are real sure, memories of playing games. Art is designed to cause emotion and emotional memories stick around more. Those memories affect you to, just like any art form. The play "A bench at the edge", gets me the exact same way as uncovering Cave Johnson's story in Portal 2. Neither of those stories are real, but both reference a familiar real world concept, sickness & death. The stories are both sad , angry and emotional. As a viewer though you would know that in those situations you would be acting differently. The difference between seeing a story about a thing and experiencing a thing is the same difference in how you remember a thing. Getting shot is a very different memory than remembering getting shot in a game. There is a reason CoD fans brag about their kill score and Veterans tend not to talk about their experiences. Real memories of combat are seriously traumatic, the memories are literally painful as PTSD is a very serious issue. The thing you remember from CoD is playing a game where you got shot. It isn't a different type of memory, it is the same memory you get when watching a play. Also to note cinematics in games for me tend to be the most emotionally intense experiences.
Side note 007Mr.Yang's comment could be a whole video on the TPP (trans-pacific partnership agreement). It is a treaty that aims to consolidate copy right between Asia ,North America and Great Britain (because they want to be popular). It's interesting because China and England keep trying to add in a SOPA-esque section, that has already been halted in the USA ( by extension Canada). This section has held up this agreement for 2 years. (The bill also plans to fix prices of generic drugs.)
Depending on the game, my emotion is binded to that specific moment. I do not feel accomplished in games that have to do with murder (Super Mario Bros., FPSs in general), but those games that have an emotional link to me do stay with me for a long time, such as the first death of Crono in Chrono Trigger, the growth of link in Ocarina of Time (also being my first game in the N64 during my teenage years), the death of characters in Final Fantasy IV (due to the emotional investment in them and then just DYING) or reaching 99 battles in Street Fighter against M. Bison (and continuously failing). So, either my link to games is through enraging impotence or emotional investment in specific times of my life. I could not play Wind Waker without remembering my ex and crying myself to sleep, for that matter.
I have to disagree with the idea that books and film don't feel personal. I assume this may be true for other people aside from myself, but I have very often experienced recalling a moment from a book as if it was my life and my actions. It was as if I was the character rather than myself. There was even a moment during a class in high school where I was fidgety all class because for a while I actually thought I was in the middle of some crucial quest and the class was getting in my way. I realized that quest was just in a book, but there were a few moments where is was my life and quest I was thinking about, not just a storyline.
I'd say the experience of playing a game is real, not fake like you said at 4:40 ish. It's a simulation of events, and the simulation of events is experienced. Take the difference from being in an actual war versus playing a COD game. One has a high chance of giving you PTSD, and is generally horrible and upsetting, while the COD game is remembered as being fun. Soldiers back from war do sometimes recount their experiences fondly, but a COD game is not going to give you PTSD, and riding in a humvee with a gun at your side might be exhilarating and frightening as doing so in a game, but the degrees are different. For another example, I'm a huge fan of horror games. I've played Silent Hill 1-4, The Penumbra Series, The Amnesia Series, Outlast, Lone Survivor, and I'm sure a few others. I remember those experiences as being terrifying, heart stopping, panic inducing, and with great fondness. I loved being scared, but if you put me in any of those situations in real life I'd probably just slit my throat and bleed out. I get scared in banal social situations. I'm fucked if Jason knocks on my door. The point is, the real experience and the simulated experience are different experiences with different memories. The memory of the simulated experience is just as real as the real experience's associated memory, it's just a different memory with different emotions attached. Both experiences are real, but even in a simulation of a real life event (the war on terror and COD) the experiences are very very different. I hope I made sense there.
Love this episode, it is one of the things that is a constant theme over my whole life. Those memories are real but to say that you don't remember the TV, maybe you don't but I bet that it contributed a lot to the experience. The reason we love games is because of the great games but also because of the environment we were in while playing them. The emotional environment, inspirational, whatever. The audio and visuals. When I listen to Metallica's Reload I want to play Halo 2, when I hear Chinese Democracy I want to play Unreal Tournament 3. When I go to my Nonna's house and play Donkey Kong Country it is more significant than playing it on an emulator, because of the smell of the house. Italian food! :D Memories are the best. So are magic mushrooms. It is all about the experience man!
I listen to Podcasts a lot of the time when I play games without dialog, which adds another layer to the composite memory. There are places or objects in games that are tied to unrelated memories: castles I built in MineCraft that bring back ideas from RadioLab episodes, or cave systems in Terraria that remind me of stories from Night Vale. I take the sociological perspective: Things are real if they're real in their consequences. Especially when it comes to shared experiences, like long distance, online friendships, there are a lot of emotional and social effects, and it's inaccurate and mean to say the aren't "real".
I don't remember games the same way you do, it's quite odd honestly. I do, in fact, remember the feel of the control devices as I play, especially the arcade ones.
I think it comes down to a question of agency. I consider the memories more real if the stakes in the game seemed elevated. Playing Telltale's Walking Dead seemed like a "real" memory because my actions had noticeable consequences. Playing a classic NES Mario title is more about the memory of experience. While I controlled Mario, I don't have same connection as I did with Lee or Clementine.
I have game memories and they are real to me. I can understand why some people feel they aren't real, but I can't recall discount myself that. Especially when videogames got me through some hard times.
Music in games helps recall big time like enter a zone in WoW or even turning on a PS1 to play FF9. Your back in the moment sort of... ALSO games like COD and Halo kind of have a Short Term Memory when playing online because of the countless games you have while a Campaign/story provokes a long term memory I think.
Game memories had better be real! The whole point of a game is that the player interacts with it and feels like they are a part of it in a way that doesn't happen with films, books etc. If I think back to the climax of Final Fantasy VIII and don't feel like *I* beat the evil sorceress and thwarted her (weird) evil plan to compress time then Square obviously didn't do a very good job. This is in spite of the fact that it was very obviously not me who did it but a group of fictional people in a fictional world. We, as players, expect to be provided with real experiences and real memories (bizarrely mainly of very un-real things) otherwise: "what's the point let's just go watch a movie". Regardless of whether we're "directly" involved (name/shape your silent protagonist) or indirectly (via Squall and the gang, or Lara Croft or whomever), we WANT the memories to be real. And if my quick scan of the comments is anything to go by, for most of us, they are. This does bring up an interesting point though. If our immediate reaction is "Yeah, of course they're real memories!" can we honestly also say "Nooo, violent video games don't ever affect us negatively in the slightest!"?
So when I was like 6 and my sister, brother, and I were sleeping over my cousin's house. And my cousin had a playstation. And she was playing Barbie Explorer. At the time I didn't really care about gender and was just watching the screen. As Barbie was running through a path in a jungle setting a camel comes out of nowhere and hits bumps into Barbie very quickly. It was so funny and that a camel could run so fast and bump Barbie that everyone started laughing. To this day I remember that experience. But now that I think of it was the camel going that fast or am I just remaking my memory. So in order to find out I took out my playstation 2 borrowed my cousin's game Barbie Explorer. And what I found was very surprising to me, maybe not anyone who read this. The camel that I remember in the game wasn't a camel. It was either an elephant charging or a chimp on monkey bars. Though I remember the chimp on monkey bars but I did not remember the elephant.
Saying that video game memories aren't real is like saying that you didn't make any choices in that game(assuming there are choices in that specific game)
I too had this question. I googled on terms like "game marques house", "game marquez house", "games look like limbo" and multiple others but can't find anything useful as of yet. Why are all assets listed, but not the games?
I 100% get the idea that he is trying to say, we do this, we have an emotional response.. Or a sort of an emotional response, and memory. But i would argue, do we? I don't think you could compare the emotions of, winning at your favourite game, or getting the winning touchdown, or scoring the last minute goal, or getting a whole in one. Those are just more intense, memorable experiences. Compared even to something like E-Sports, where the stakes are far higher than a Mario Kart 64, 12 player tournament in my front room, playing for money. Or going to a holiday destination.. BUT there again, perhaps thats just because those "real world" experiences are far more stimulating on your senses. You're walking in Time Square, you smell the sweet and salty pretzel stall, you feel the cold air, you see the bright lights, you hear the police car sirens and the hussle and bussle of the city. And i dunno, you might be eating one of those pretzels too. So you are stimulating all of those senses, which later on makes that memory far easier to recall than a video game, when you're there, pressing WSAD, and clicking a mouse. Or holding a controller. You are just as involved in that game, but not as stimulated. Even if, as he says memories change all the time, and are determined on your current emotional state, or your past emotional state. And memory is just about the most fallible thing that we have.
If one controlled something, the action was effectively committed by them alone; not some other individual. The memory is real; whether from real life, video games, or even dreams. All memories are real because you picture it as though you were there. The experience caused you to think and go through the same mental processes as it would in real life. Some memories may be inaccurate but they aren't any less real.
Memories are the fiction of the past we create, so it doesn't matter how fake or real the experience is on which we start building a memory. Many of our supposed real momories are based on false assumptions and wrong interpretations of what really happened around us. Our perception is always creating an idea of reality, but not reality itself in our minds, so it doesn't matter if what we perceive is really in reality or happens in a game or in a dream (like mentioned in the video). I would even say that the immersion in films and books could lead to the same level of feeling that one was there when it happened (just in a passive role and not in an active like in gaming), and thus creating a memory that can feel just as much like a real experience, but only if one gets to that kind of immersion.
Unlike on most shows I knew the answer to this one right away, real without a doubt. I would even go so far as to argue that the game experience itself was real. Of course I guess it depends a bit on how you define "real" but as far as I'm concerned simulated experiences and narratives have just as much claim to being real as paying taxes. We are all stuck viewing the world through the lens of our perception, and those things that we perceive in games, or in dreams, or in watching an author make up stories about the team he plays in FIFA are just as real as the time we tore our pants getting out of the van and had to play the first round of district quiz bowl wrapped in a blanket. This is a bit of a spoiler for a very old game, but Floyd's death in Planetfall still lives as one of the most powerful moments of my childhood. It was real at the time, and it is real in my treasured memory.
Yea, I feel like this one is trying too hard, if that's the best way of putting it. The 3 stages is what lost me. The experience is real. It's the experience of something in a videogame, but it's an experience nonetheless. Also, I believe it was mentioned in the video that other people can't confirm that the event was shared, but it literally can be. I share videos of me playing games all the time with my friends, and I play games with them too. My friends and I remember things in games the same way we remember things in real life.
When I get really into a game, I don't just form memories that seem real when recalling it later.. I also end up having VIVID dreams about those games, as if I was dreaming about a real-memory. I've actually thought about this a lot in the past..
When I was playing FF8 (the first big rpg I ever played), I had dreams about actually BEING those characters, exploring that world.. And it's weird, because every once in a while, in daily life, I'll have a dejavu moment, which reminds me of something or a place I've done/been in a game. It's weird because it's almost a unique form of dejavu, to me, as if I lived a past life, and were recalling that. heh, if that makes sense.
I've also noticed that the games don't have to be first/third person experiences to cause this effect.. I STILL form these kinds of false memories, even from games that exist in realities/universe that aren't like ours. I remember having dreams about Tetris, as a kid, as if I existed in a universe of nothing but a 2D Tetris game. Or even weirder, I played around with Gmod wiremod for a couple years, and ended up having dreams that were nothing except Expression2 coding. It's weird having dreams about programing.. lol
If you haven't heard of it you should look up the 'Tetris Effect' but it sounds like that's exactly what you're describing, even down to the game involved!
I used to have really disturbing dreams of and from playing that terrible Quidditch Game Boy game late at night. Thankfully I've also had more pleasant dreams of being in FFVIII.
I've had dreams about me playing Civilization 5 or Europa Universalis 4. I was actually playing the games, like I was seeing the screen and everything, but I was also in the first person view of it, like I was down in the city telling people to do stuff and getting reports.
I usually split my time between a half-dozen or so games at a time, but when I've gotten hella into a specific game, thinking of Fallout 3 right now, I tend to start dreaming about it every night. I can remember several Fallout 3 dreams, some set in actual locations in the game and some set in areas that felt like Fallout, but that didn't feel right - like when you dream of your house, but you walk through the front door and everything is different.
Joseph Schmitz Civilization 5 dreams are the strangest! I remember having one after staying up until 8am in a multiplayer match with my brother. I was essentially playing the game, but I had all kinds of actions that weren't in the game at my disposal.
haha I am the same way!!! When I wake up from dreams like that all I can think is. Damn it why did it have to end? Because so many times I wish my life was like the life of the person I am playing because its seems like alot more fun then my life!
Really impressed with your research and explanation on this topic. Also liked your set backdrop a lot! Keep it up!
Thanks!!!!
I remember watching my dad play Super Metroid when I was a kid. When I was about 10, I finally picked up the controller myself and played the game. I even took the exact same route as my father did. When I finally beat the game, I felt something...so surreal. The Metroid hatchling's sacrifice had left a profound effect on my mind, and I can even recall laying out in the backyard, watching the summer sun begin to set while reflecting on the game's bittersweet ending.
To say none of it was real is blasphemy. I experienced it, therefore it exists.
My favorite gaming memory: I was at my 2nd Smash Bros tournament on March 4, 2009. There were 22 people in the room and we organized a draft crew battle of 11 vs 11. I was the 3rd last person sent to fight in front of everyone. I was kind of nervous having a crowd behind me for my 1st time, but soon enough learned to love it. It felt awesome having a bunch of people cheer for me
The game series that will never leave my mind is Mass Effect. I didn't play the mass effect series until the 3rd game was already scheduled for release. I did a full play through all 3 games, defeating Seren, romancing Liara, fighting the collectors, and finishing off the reapers feel as real as any experience that i was actually there for. The game's flow makes me feel like I am Commander Sheppard. Its as it bends my own reality.
playing Journey on acid. most memorable gaming experience ever.
After playing Assassin's Creed 2 I explored a lot of San Gimignano. When I went to the same town in real life a year or so later, I remembered it from the game. It was a weird feeling, remembering somewhere I'd never actually been! Of course, the town had changed a lot in two hundred and fifty years, but it was recognisable, and some things were in the same places!
This isn't really related to the topic discussed, so apologies in advance.
I've *always* suspected that gamers are always so *passionate* and *angry* when discussing & arguing about video games because the experience is so *_intense_* and.. *_personal_*. (My arguments over movies (Interstellar is boring) is nowhere near as heated as arguments over video games (The Last of Us is boring). The difference is huge.)
Unlike watching movies or reading books (where you're _passively_ enjoying something) gaming is a more *active* experience; you're practically stepping into a different world with different rules. This is (to me) probably the reason why we gamers are so passionate/emotional about our silly little hobby.
(Maybe gaming memories feeling like "real memories" is another reason? I dunno)
agree thatz gamers are passionate about games, but disagree that movies and Books don't evoke as strong emotions!
Books are for a long time praised to make people 'experience' things they couldn't experience otherwise. This might not be the case for you but anyone who cried at a characters death, screamed at a book because the protagonist just did something really stupid or laughed so hard they had to put away the book for a moment to be able to go on reading will tell you that these feel pretty real too! You are still active reading abook or watching a film in that your brain interprets what you see or read, it will makeyou BE that character and thus you can cry and laugh with him. It feels like you are doing the stuff, although, unlöike a game, you don't actually do anything. It's all in your head.
Oh, and just listen to some diehard fans of their franchise have a heated discussion, they definitely get a agitated as gamers do.
me too, tales as well, I still almost cry just remembering 'the little match girl' T.T sooooo saaaaad
89taklung It's..*different*.
I'm not denying that books or movies can't evoke strong emotions from us, because of course they do. Some of us react *negatively*. Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fanboys, for example. The Harry Potter books were so good, they got kids, who otherwise wouldn't go near books, to read them as soon as they were released.
No, I'm just saying that, *in general*, the _average gamer tends to overreact a lot more than the average moviegoer/reader_ .
For example, I recently posted a YT comment about how I thought the Game of Thrones books tended to have their characters die in a "cheap" manner (a main character gets killed by some one-dimensional character that we barely get to know). You know what happened? People who replied to me were so *nice* about it. All of them _disagreed_ with me, of course, but they acted much more nice/mature than the average gamer would. Of course, *sometimes* I'd get gamers (who _disagreed_ with me) that would engage me in an interesting & calm conversation. SOMETIMES.
TLDR; This is all just my personal experiences, both online and in real life. I have no proof/statistics to back any of it, so it could all be BS on my part.
Well I do know that gemers can be pretty rough (nice for as*****s) but I remember some of my most heated discussions about books.
There was for example a girl who was about to kill me because I explained to her why I think Twilight isn't such a great book...
Well of course you need to have people that are totally emersed in the respective movie or film to get that reaction, if you are a fan that writes fanfictions and draws characters and basically in their head completes the story they actually make it their own and seeing an episode for the first time is very much part of their memory.
I like playing games but no matter the game, I would never get angry over it or shout at someone because of it. So I kinda doubt its because of the medium
***** Maybe.
I think it's movie audiences that tend to be *young*, though. You know, the ones who love movies like Transformers or Hunger Games or Twilight or Frozen. *Everyone* watches movies. (At least on tv/cable, if not at the theaters). Always seemed, to me, that gamers were *usually* college kids or older.
But yeah, you could be right. Maybe it's because gamers are a "younger" group.
I'll always have those memories when I was a kid playing Secret of Mana. Wandering through the crystal ice forest or finally making it to the Pure Land and finding the Mana Tree. I can hear the music that was the playing and the wonder I had while exploring these new places. I can say the same when I went on a trip to Chicago with a bunch of photographers. There is music that I listened to with people that takes me back to those moments, wandering downtown, listening to my ipod with one ear bud because my friend had the other one in and every time that I hear those certain songs, it immediately takes me back. They will always be real experiences and places for me despite the fact that one is completely digital and the other was an amazing experience that helped mold some deep friendships. They are equally as important to me as the other.
This made me think about how many people mention parts of films/television shows that they vividly remember, but don't remember what they're from. It seems to be a similar thing - you don't remember what you were doing, or what you were watching it on, but you still remember the imagery and how it made you feel.
I actually like the "Game memories are a lot like Dream memories" thing :)
I remember this one time I was playing Day Z with a friend, we were just trying to do our best to survive so we took shelter in a concrete building. Suddenly, we noticed that blood started dripping from the ceiling almost like that scene from Silence of the Lambs. When we peeked across the way, we noticed there was another user nearby with an axe...we started freaking out! "What do we do?? If he spots us he'll kill us!" We didn't have anything that could take him out from a distance, so we figured we'd try and sneak out before he could find us. But it was too late! He spotted us and began a chase, and in all the commotion I panicked and accidentally pushed my friend over the railing on the inside of the building! He died instantly....I tried to run away from the axe-wielding maniac, but I didn't get very far at all. I did shortly after.
I blame myself really; not just because I accidentally killed my friend, but it was also me who hesitated in killing the other guy to begin with. I was so worried about whether or not he was innocent that I ended up costing both of our lives.
You might like this piece I did on nightmares, dreams, and games a while back: killscreendaily.com/articles/scare-tactics/
PBS Game/Show Oh thanks! :)
I still get nostalgic when I think about my early experiences with Final Fantasy XI. In those first few months I gained some of my first MMO friends (some of whom I still talk to on occasion), and had some of the best experiences I will likely ever have playing an MMO. And some of the worst. My first character was on a roommate's account. A roommate that I had a falling out with, and moved away from, but who was still kind enough to let me say farewell to my game friends. And it was just as painful as saying farewell to the friends I have in the physical world.
So, in answer to the question in the title of the video: Yes, "game memories" are "real memories". They evoke the same feelings, and can have the same meaning as so called "real memories".
I may not have actually, physically cast Firaga on a large group of crawlers in West Sarutabaruta, but I still felt the excitement associated with it and with successfully doing so and not eating dirt. I felt the same loss when friends left (or I left). I felt anger when someone would trail dozens of monsters past a bunch of us n00bs, resulting in all of us dying. I remember those things just as well as I remember flying off the front of my bike and breaking my jaw. Or graduating from college. Or flying an airplane for the first time.
A memory is a memory is a memory.
Something else I would mention is how a lot of times games can be linked to audio or visual cues that trigger intense memory recall, something you don't get as much from non-interactive media. For instance, any time I hear the song "On Melancholy Hill" from Gorillaz I get all sorts of vivid memories of playing Minecraft, without any of the visuals of me playing the game. Just what happened in the game. But if I hear the theme to Jurassic Park, I remember seeing the movie but can't instantly recall any of the times I saw it in the theater or on tv.
same with me,although for me its tied to tv shows
whenever a certain episode of certain show comes on,
ill almost always remember the exact experiences of the exact games i was playing the first time i saw it
Related: Why we are nostalgic for music from our adolescence: www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/musical_nostalgia_the_psychology_and_neuroscience_for_song_preference_and.html
If I hear a song that was also used in GTA's radio stations, it takes me back to driving around San Andreas.
my memories of video games come mostly from minecraft, but are strong memories none the less. when i go around my verious worlds i have created i can vividly recall what i was doing at the time of play, for example one night while building onto a city of mine i was texting a friend who was having relationship troubles, now everytime i go by that part of town i was working on that text conversation comes to mine. these memories stretch all the way back to 2012 for me and im sure even further back for many others
I think LP's actually help make a point here. Someone else made a comment about how passionate gamers are when discussing a game because the experience is so personal to you. If you watch a LP's of a game I think you will be less likely to remember what happened during the game. The actual RUclipsr you are watching has a part in it as well. I never played Heavy Rain but I clearly remember watching Pewdiepie play it. At the same time I watched Pewdiepie play episode 1 of The Walking Dead and I haven't the foggiest what decisions he made in that game and I think it is because after watching it I bought the first season of The Walking Dead and I clearly the remember the choices I made but nothing of what he did in the game.
Yes! I didn't get to this, but I think that LP are a form of collective memory making. It turns the solitary act of playing a game into something done in public.
PBS Game/Show
This would be super interesting to explore--with rare exceptions, when I watch a LP, I'm way more interested in the person playing than in the game itself. For instance, I watched ever LP of The Stanley Parable and Little Inferno I could find--I had already completed both games, and knew how they went, but I *loved* watching people react to their plot twists. I dislike GTA, but I love watching groups of LPers play it together anyway, purely because of the way they interact with each other. I would never play Alien: Isolation, because I am a big wimp, but I love watching other people play it.
Even when I was a kid, I would watch my brother play video games. We played together a lot, too, but if it wasn't a game I was interested in, I would sit in his room and watch him, sometimes for hours, and we'd have a great time.
As a good example of this concept, I remember talking to a friend who was dealing with whether or not to cut ties with her abusive mother. We had played The Walking Dead: Season 2 recently and I remember bringing up Kenny as an example of someone that you care about but can't afford to have in your life as if he was a real person we both knew. For the both of us at that time, Kenny was a friend of ours that we cared deeply about.
I suspect this varies a lot from person to person--even when I get really immersed in a game, I don't walk away feeling like I was "there"; I feel like I played a really cool game. It gets filed away in the same vein as having memories of a movie, book, or perhaps even memories of playing pretend as a kid. There's always a very clear emotional line for me between experiences I have in the real world and experiences I have in a game.
In-game memories do get more powerful to me if there's a strong multiplayer element involved. If I'm sharing the moment with other people through some form of chat, but particularly voice chat with friends, now it's something we did together. I have tepid memories about achieving things in my Minecraft single player world; I have great memories of collaborating with friends to build something ornate, or just fooling around with nonsense in creative mode, or hosting events on our server. But it's the human connection there that mattered to me, way more than the specific things happening on screen.
I'll always remember playing the original Tribes about 10 or 15 years ago. In particular, there is one sequence of events that I can remember perfectly. I ran into the opposing base and ambushed player after player and to finish the sequence; I remember falling from the top of an elevator shaft onto an unsuspecting enemy and my chain gun spinning up to full speed getting ready to rip them to shreds.When I think about this experience, it makes me think that comparing video games to dreams isn't getting video games the right amount of credit. My memory of the event is still vivid after almost 15 years; I've never had a dream where I remember the details so closely that I'm able to remember them years after I have them. I think video games are more powerful because you are in control of how the memories are formed. In dreams, it takes a lot more effort to actively participate. I literally have control over how I form my reality which is amazingly close to reality. The only real difference is the physical actions you take in reality are complex compared to being limited to button presses.
You said that game memories are not experienced, but when I think of a great game memory, I think of all times i play games with my friends, or when i beat my friends in smash. those are the memories i remember the most.
The vast majority of my most remembered gaming experiences have been ones that I've shared with friends. Like my friend Rob showing me how an emulator worked for the first time, or the first time I played Smash Bros with my friend Chris, thinking I was pretty unbeatable and getting my ass kicked because he was on a whole other level than me, or trying to unlock EVERY Silent Hill ending with my friend John, or that time during a sleepover with a bunch of my friends we all sat around and beat Final Fantasy 9 together.
Even if I made incredible progress in a game or raised my skill level in a game I was playing by myself, that memory is nowhere near as important, or even as memorable to the most mundane events that happened while playing games with friends.
I think another aspect of game memories that comes to mind strongly for me is the nostalgia aspect of games, and especially how remakes/replays might play an unusual part in that. One example is that I remember my younger cousin playing Ocarina of Time on the N64 but I never played it myself until the remake for the 3DS came out, yet once I came to the few scenes that I did know, I felt a really strong memory recall. In a way it probably helps that it was so wonderfully remastered from the original.
But then something weird happened to me when I played Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. I have spent some incredulous hours playing both Pokemon Emerald, the generation from 10+ years ago that was remade with the ORAS release, and Pokemon Y, whose style the remakes rely heavily upon and has only been out for a year. It felt, simultaneously, like both a nostalgia trip and just playing the same thing from last week. Eventually it reconciled into the former as I tried to remember the places and events that kept faithful to the original, but because there is so much new added content/features (unlike OoT) it feels less like reliving old memories and instead like creating new ones.
But then again, what does replaying the exact same game several years apart do for our memories? As someone who doesn't really do that often (I mean there are cases like Smash Bros that don't really count), I'm fairly curious about it now.
It might have been a novelty at first to tell friends I was going to Los Santos that night, but after a while the line between "playing GTA" and "going to Los Santos" blurred. My adventures were very real to me. I hadn't experienced immersion like that before in other games, where saying that I got chased by the cops through Paleto Bay really felt like something that had happened rather than something I did in a game. I think there's differences in our interactions with games that make a difference. Narrative experiences don't come across as real to me because I understand this is a story I'm guiding a character through, but my GTA Online character effectively is me (down to my clothes and hair, other than my beard being larger) so the things I do in game really feel like an extension of me and my recall of those actions felt like my actions.
My best memories of games come from local gaming, like tournaments or competetive moments, social fun times like mario party, or hotseating a game like who can survive 6 stars longest in GTA. Which did have some pretty funny ones because you are intereacting with people around you wheres the games is a presenter.
But my most ingame memory ever in the sense where the only memory where everything else does not matter comes from the look and feel in my favourate game ever, Alundra. I remember its vibrant apealing colors, difficult sweat inducing puzzles, pretty damn mature story and etc. From when i was a kid who couldnt beat it, to a grown up who now can. Specificaly the first part of the game and its intro is my best memory of specificaly in a videogame and nothing else.
A couple points -
I don't know how many people truly ascribe their videogame actions to themselves in a "real" way. "I killed that dragon" is shorthand, it's understood that you mean "My character killed that dragon" or even, "I made my character kill that dragon". It's the same shortcut in speech when you have an auto accident and say "He hit me" as opposed to "his car hit my car" The car is an extension of yourself while driving, and the character is an extension of yourself when playing a game. But there's no true conflation of the two going on, save in certain outlier cases where a person may truly have a problem distinguishing reality from fantasy.
So we're not remembering false events as much as we're remembering our personal experience of an immersive dramatic performance. I too remember the events of Chrono Trigger in great detail, but I don't recall them as events that happened "to me". I remember beating major bosses in games, but more because of the time and luck it took to do so by making the right strategic choices.
And as part of that, I dispute that a film of book cannot be as deep or "real" remembered experience as a real event. Again, we don't remember them as real, but we remember how we feel, how we reacted to the events, and how the actions of the characters affected me in the moment, and moving forward. It's not a "real" event, but reading/watching it is an experience.
Consider this - if a friend tells you about something that happened to them, and you remember the story, is it a "real" memory? You didn't experience the event, but if the story is told with enough detail, it can be remembered in as great a detail as if you experienced it.
They're all "real" memories; it's the source of them that differ, and as long as one can rationally identify the source as...let's try "actual" and virtual", all is well.
Most vivid gaming memories, hmm?
What I can remember pretty prominently from when I was younger was the Legend of Dragoon for PS1. I remember that game mostly from the experiences I had watching others play it (my siblings, who deemed me "too young" for it because there was some swearing.)
What I can remember more clearly is something like Journey, which I played for myself. (light spoilers ahead.) I can remember this wanderer that came with me on the final stretch of the game, chirping back and forth with them and warming each other through proximity. I remember a time where they were spotted by an enemy and ran toward me, getting us both hit-- I was kind of upset about it. The next time, he ran away from me instead and I kind of felt bad for him, though I was happy to see this complete stranger worrying about me virtual wellbeing.
That was-- and is-- a good game. To those reading, if you haven't played Journey, I invite you to do so.
I remember being a werewolf in skyrim, being in the Soul Cairn, at one the towers, and I threw one of the seeker dudes off the tower and watched him fall off. It was humorous because I only knew he died when I couldn't see his health bar xD
I have to favorite gaming memories that come to mind, one was in GTA IV where I drove a flaming car off a ramp, landed upside down, hit a second ramp and started flipping end over end. Then the car crashed into a building, exploded, and then landed in the water bellow, best video game death ever! The second one is in Driver San Fransisco when me and my friend Marc were playing split screen. He drove a truck off a jump just as I drove up the ramp on the back of the truck and my car went flying higher then I had ever made it go before, then it inevitably crashed back to earth but it was a great moment with a good friend.
The thing about memories is that we will "fill in" details that we don't recall automatically. Things like the exactly phrasing of sentences, or the color of someone's shirt, maybe. But when you experience something, you do remember it, and you remember it perfectly, even if you don't recall it perfectly.
False memories happen when you are led to believe that you experienced something that you didn't. this is particularly effective after things like a trauma, when you'll have a very difficult time recalling memories with accuracy.
But, game memories? You may not actually be experiencing going through a desert, but you are experiencing playing a game in which you explore a desert. You may not remember the controls or the setting, but you remember that it happened, and that it was a game. That is a real experience. As you noted, you consolidate it with real emotions, and you recall (more or less) what happened, with those emotions.
So, yeah. Game memories are real, because you did actually experience playing the game, and you do actually remember that, even if you don't remember what have become autopilot functions- after all, if you remember something that happened while you were riding a bike, do you remember all of the details about pedaling and turning, or the familiar setting of your neighborhood? Or do you remember the thing that you were focused on- whatever event was happening?
I don't really remember the details of the individual Smash matches, but I remember who wins. Sometimes I'm even like "Remember that time Captain Falcon just beat you up mercilessly?" "Which one?"
Vivid gaming memory: when my first raptor, Dodo Murderer, died in Ark Survival. Truly a sad moment and I will never forget it :'(
This discussion reminds me of one of my favourite Harry Potter quotes.
Harry: "Is this real, or is this just happening inside my head?"
Dumbledore: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
I'd say they are. I had an insatiable wanderlust as a child, Spent every day walking through the woods just a little farther than the last time to see what's out there, and every time my family brought me to an urban environment I'd manage to get lost looking around warranting more than a few rides in police cars to meet my irate grandmother at the station. I have similar fond memories of some games, TES 3 and 5 in particular. Oblivion fell a bit flat for me, but morrowind and skyrim are just packed with random odds and ends that you have no reason to bother with. They didn't feel like a quest to get done, but a weird place to do whatever in. My screenshots of the sunrise over Vivec give me the same warm fuzzy feeling as the countless single use cameras I filled as a child. Maybe less intense without the tinge of "Holy crap, I could have died doing that" but warm and fuzzy all the same.
I just want to mention that Ghost in the Shell raised a similar question in 1989 (well it might have been raised earlier by someone else already, but that's the earliest date that I can remember).
One of my favorite game memories is in Fallout New Vegas. Where the NCR and the Legion are battling for the dam and out of nowhere the boomers fly over and blow everyone up.
Thats was amazing.
I think there's something about how in the moment of gameplay there's a tie between your actions and thoughts (pressing this button, etc, which option to choose) with the narrative or mediated events. So the two become conflated then, which makes it an easy step to other situations where you made decisions and acted and experienced a subsequent response Walking into the kitchen, seeing bread, putting it in toaster - those series of movements did happen, but did they happen virtually or meatspace? How you're interacting with the world isn't that much different so I see how it could pass reality distinctions. I could have made hundreds of cupcakes according to the customer's order. I feel like I have. Because I spent time working on perfecting a set of movements that would be most successful until I made cupcake after cupcake. And then I repeated those movements over and over until they became naturalized.
It get confusing with "smaller" events like that I think, because there are so many memories of similar situations, that the game version becomes just another one in a long list making it harder to delineate. Like I "know"* I haven't stolen escape pods to fly to another planet where there's a special gun that let's me kill a half-spider-half-giraffe. That's just far removed from my other experiences that it wouldn't be able to fit it. It sticks out as abnormal and so it can't be reasonably incorporated as a "true" memory. But when a game includes things I have done, like talking to a stranger on the street, or checking my messages, or I don't know, I'm having a hard time thinking of sufficient examples. But what could be called the more "everyday" stuff. There's so many more memories of that experience, a mediated one, like from a video game, would have an easier time passing with the others. I know when I'm doing laundry sometimes I'll forget as soon as I walk out of the room if I actually turned the machine on. Because I've done it so many times, the experience becomes a lot harder to pull out of pile in recall. The memory looses individuality in that way that I think would easily facilitate the conflation of game memory and real memory.
I think, to combined the two subjects, Let's Play videos complicate this even more. Because then you're not even the one catalyzing the event, is it still a memory then? It's an interesting question if watching a video of or playing changes the relationship to this murky memory answer.
Anyway, this episode's question was really interesting, that's why I rambled so much. It grabbed me! Thanks for the great content.
*keeping away from meta-physical, alt realities, universe ideas bc like, too complicated.
Commander Shepard... This might be delving more into the category of Being your avatar , but i think it hold a valid point none the less.
When asked about my experience playing mass effect, a game that was so successful in engrossing so many players in its world and characters, people grew real attachment to the universe as a whole. And looking back at the choices made, its not what "Shepard" chose to do, Its what "I" chose to do. My choices saved Tali, it was my choices that caused Kaden to die. When a deep emotional attachment is made to an event, whether fiction or nonfiction it changes us, and in remembering the event we can remember how it changed us.
Right now? My two most vivid video game memories are from telltale games, the first when Snow's head gets delivered in The Wolf Among Us and then when the young lord gets shanked in the Game of Thrones one. After that... the ending of Mass Effect. Vivid, vivid memories.
I had an interesting experience when I went to Barcelona. I was stood at the top of the Museu Nacional d'art de Catalunya, looking out across the beautiful city when I had a strange feeling of deja vu. But this wasn't like any deja vu I had felt before, I had definitely been here before. I could even point to specific locations as to where things would be, like the entrance to the subway etc..
But how could this have been possible? This was the first time I had been to Barcelona.
Then it hit me... About a year prior to the trip I had been playing Left4Dead 2 custom maps, in particular a map called Warcelona. The modellers had done such a fantastic and accurate job on the map that it actually made me feel like I had been there before, and in a way I guess I had, all be it blasting zombies with a machine gun and running away from Tanks.
To me this memory I have from a video game is as real as any other memory I have.
Awesome! greetings from Argentina! i'm glad you liked it here!
At first the question sounded like something Jaden Smith would tweet but after watching the video i gotta say, some of the most emotional memories of my life are related to gaming somehow, be it simply a very meaningful ending of a game or a very cool moment i shared while playing with my sister or my friends.
I tend to think of games as real experiences, not in the sense that i've actually killed a thousand nazis but in the sense that when you are really immersed in the game, you... kinda forget that you're not a supersoldier or a billiant football player or a... really fast hedgehog i guess, so in a way, you are actually experiencing the events of the game, or at least if the game is good, your brain thinks you are.
I certainly remember emotions that games evoke as feeling real to me. Persona 4 is a prime example. I find myself growing attached the characters as I get to know them (progress through their social links) and I find myself playing the game more to get to know them than to explore dungeons better.
On the flip side, years ago, I remember fighting Lavos for the first time at the end of Chrono Trigger. It felt epic, it was tense, my fingers felt twitchy, my heart racing. And then... I failed. I died and got the bad ending for the game. It left me feeling empty, like I had let real people down. While I have since beaten the game, the cry of Lavos still haunts me.
I think there is a huge difference if you are playing a game from first-person perspective or if you are playing as an observer. I'm a huge Sims player. I've been playing Sims since gen 1. Yet, I doesn't really have any vivid memories of my game play. I get nostalgic hearing the music of the old gens but that's it. On the other hand, I doesn't invest a lot of emotion into my gaming, other simmers do and get attached to their creations. I get more a attached to characters in book. If they are characters of my own creation and living in a story I'm writing I can remember very clearly everything I've done to them.
My most vivid memory of a videogame I have played was with Diablo 2 LoD, I was playing an assassin and realized that both Burst of Speed, and Tiger Strike, both work with EVERY MELEE WEAPON. I focused on just those 2 skills, got to act 2, got my horadric cube. Diamond + Staff + Kriss + Belt = Savage (polearm) [rarely gets suffix]. I proceeded to do that until I got at least +150% enhanced damage. 150% enhanced damage + 1440% damage for tiger strike. with a very fast attack speed, with pole-arm damage. you do the math.
Two of my most vivid gaming memories comes from my very first full play through of The legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time . The first one was sitting in my room playing though the Infamous Water temple and fighting Dark link and beating him I remember it vividly and even remember some of the events that happenes a few minutes before or after picking up the controller and putting it down . The other memory is the feeling of accomplishment of beating Gannon in OOT and the feeling that I Saved Hyrule , OOT was the first video game I ever played that gave me a world that I really felt like I wanted to protect it What with the npc`s that I came to know and all I felt like a real hero when I saved Hyule that first time .When the game cut to the scene of link dealing the final blows to Ganon it felt like I was dealing thous final blows and that my quest was finally complete. And the my friends is why Ocarina of Time is my favorite video game Of all time .
I have a lot of memories of playing EverQuest that blur the lines. MMOs require a lot of investment, which means emotions run high, which in turn forge stronger memories. I remember clearly doing actions, I don't remember the UI or "game" aspects of the events... Just the events like stealthing through areas far higher than my level, raiding alternate planes with friends, and celebrating personal loot victories with them from both the real world and online. I've never really thought of those memories as being false as you mentioned, they're tied to emotions. They're even shared experiences, triumphs or failures achieved through my group giving it their all. Strange that anyone would thing to trivialize these experiences because the physical body isn't present.
I can relate to this on a crazy level. I play games with music playing in the background. Whenever i hear that song outside of a game, i think of that experiance such as a c4 chopper takedown in Battlefield, to a singularity in Infamous: First Light
Some of the memories that feel realest to me happened to be from videogames, like that kill streak I got in Interstellar Marines, and (spoiler alert) retaking Project Purity in Fallout 3, so I can easily say that game memories are real memories.
Hi.
Good reference to the dreams, because I have a different memories of dreams, than of games (as long as I don't play like on a holodeck). In dreams I am the actual protagonist (mostly, sometimes I'm an non-corporeal observer). Things in dreams happen to myself, I can feel it. In that case being in a dream is the same as being in the real world (in all but one dream I'm not aware I'm dreaming).
In games I steer an avatar and am aware of that. Many of my memories of gaming (nearly all of them) include the setting of the real world. I can recall where I sat at the moment and played that game.
It's still a real memory (up to an including the action on screen), I was there and played and it's very important to my life. Dreams are also very important to me and I know (when waking up that is), that it's a "fake" memory (beside once in my childhood, where it took half a day for me to figure out a memory I had was a dream from last night (and in reverse I once remembered something and thought it to be a dream only to get told: "Dude, that was totally real!"). That never once happened with games.
Fascinating is, when I dream of being in a game (which happens from time to time). I'm in the game world, as the avatar I usually play and I still have my HUD and to engage certain actions I don't throw the fireball (for example) I have to trigger the button in the HUD. Weird!
Just my view on the topic. Thanks for reading.
P.S. Nice show, keep on!
I have weird memory with books, though. I'd read A Song of Ice and Fire before the show came out on HBO but once I grew accustomed to the characters on the show, I kept having memories of seeing "The Purple Wedding" (a lot better than was actually on HBO) before the episode ever aired AND with the Game of Thrones actors and actresses in place of the images in my head from the book.
But I don't think I've ever "remembered" doing something that I'd done while playing a video game as if it were me. I don't have memories of raiding tombs or running 101 yards to score a game-winning TD.
Ok so this is bugging me so hard right now… DO YOU ACTUALLY WEAR GLASSES or do you remove lenses to avoid flares?
he does were glasses irl but for the vids he doesnt use lenses
I swear I see this exact same question every video.
I think he's even answered this question in a video (exactly what Oddjob X said).
ruclips.net/video/WbV_KT1iGao/видео.htmlm32s
PBS Game/Show Why not just not where them, Do you feel naked without them? ;)
While it perhaps falls into a different topic all together, I'd like to throw my two cents in with my connection to video game music. Being a glutton for atmosphere in gaming and life, I tend to listen to a lot of it, and appropriate songs at that (snow levels during the winter, beach levels at the beach, etc). Many songs end up having two layers to them that intertwine; the games context, and my own context. For example, perhaps a sad song from an event in a game that I've listened to during a sad event in my life; the song tends to bring up both memories, or perhaps the games context gives the song its own 'lyrics' to relate to, as it were.
Yay Argentina! :D (I'm from there)
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" - Dumbledore
I have a lot of video game memories, both good and bad, from catching my first Shiny Pokemon that wasn't the Lake or Rage's Red Gyarados to the many fails I had trying to defeat Gruntilda in Banjo-Kazooie.
This is a great topic for discussion. I firmly believe that the experiences I can recall from playing video games over the last 20 or so years of my life are as real as any memory I have of an experience that took place in my real life away from video games.
I cannot deny those emotions, those accomplishments, those struggles, those good times, and those bad times. I also can't deny the way that video game music makes me feel, much in the way music from professional artists does.
Were did you get that awesome clouds sword in the background?
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
The funny thing is; when a HD remaster is released it often looks just how you remember the game, except you know it isn't because the internet is full of side-by-side comparisons. Similarly, I remember playing Tony Hawk's 3 on the PS2 then going back to the previous game and being so surprised by how blocky it looked compared to how the sequel had effected my memory of it.
Whenever I play a game, it's often very much a role-playing experience. In my mind, the actions of the player character are not my own, but that of whatever character I'm pretending to be at the time. Even if I'm the one pressing the buttons, the personality of the character and the world they live in dictate what occurs on the screen and I'm essentially witnessing events unfold rather than experiencing them first-hand. These events may be real in the sense that they affect me emotionally and intellectually, but their relationship to me personally is still subject to at least some level of dissociation.
Some of my fondest memories with friends go back to a shared experience in a game. My strongest is having played splinter cell chaos theory's co op with one of my best friends. We still laugh and argue about who messed up a mission, or who cut the wrong wire when defusing a bomb. The game may have a 'fake' reality, but the shared moment of sitting in front of the TV with a friend, interacting with the game is real. The social aspect of games and their availability increases this realness. I may not have been with my friend when they were playing the last of us, but there is almost a form of empathy in that when they describe a difficult level, I can recall my own obstacles from my play through, same as if relating to a persons other every day experiences whether its being late to work or something more serious. The zombie apocalypse or secret spy world may be fake but our experiences navigating them is wholly real.
Finally I found another Jamin. I can die with no regrets.
This is interesting because i just finished an essay last night for high school and it was about how my experience with playing Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time influenced and changed me as a person. In part of the essay i digressed about how games have more influence on our feelings than movies or books, because we are the character and we can make the character into whoever we want to be, but we also feel more repercussions if we make a mistake or are in a bad situation.
There's this idea in Human Memory called "transactive memory," which is the memory of who knows what and who we can use as a resource to reliably check for information or whether our memory is correct. It's a little.. abstract, but recently, researchers have proposed that technology (especially google) have acted as a stand-in for other people in our transactive memory. For example, if I ask you to recall a statistic, if you used technology to sort/categorize it, you'll remember how to access it better than you will the memory itself (research on this topic is just in its early stages and there are a LOT of questions remaining).
Anyway, I'm curious if this extends to video games, both for in-game characters and people you play with in multiplayer games. Could having characters that we view as complex people with distinct likes and dislikes be a stand-in for real-life people, and if so, what level of complexity do we need to reach to achieve that?
It's about agency. We remember doing stuff in games because we kind of did. If we hadn't taken action, nothing would've happen. Even if the actions we take are translated into the context of the game and the repercussions of those actions are also only seen directly in the context of the game, they are still actions that we took. We don't remember film or book experiences in the same way since we don't have any agency. We can't change the outcome of a film depending on how we watch it, but in games we have agency. Humans are pretty good at recognising that certain things aren't really, truly real (even if we're more keen on, less consciously, adopting lessons, morals and values from media). This is probably related to how children play games and how we tell stories to teach lessons, which could have strong anthropological and evolutionary reasons (human children aren't the only ones that play games to teach important lessons and skills... cue the clip of a kitten pouncing on another kitten), since humans naturally play, we're distinguished tool users and we even seem to have biological cues for language (and thus information exchange and, possibly, story telling).
So we perform the actions ourselves, we create the memories and we remember them as our own and all along we have this little sidenote on the memory that it was in a special context.
It's still rather cool with certain games though. Some games offer more agency than others and in particular they offer more direct agency. In some games you tell your dude what to do and he does it. In some games you have a bunch of dudes acting roughly on your instructions. In some games you have an over the shoulder view and you constantly see that it's a different person performing all the actions... and in some games you control a single character very directly. Especially if the controls are smooth and responsive and you practice them a lot they can grow very unconscious and the controls and the character becomes and extension of yourself. Kind of like how when waving a stick around or writing with a pencil I rarely consider the pencil an object completely separate from myself, I don't think of how to move my hands to produce letters. I just look at the pencil tip and the paper and make the letters with my pen. What I find fascinating is that our brains are so very good at making such a strong and direct connection, even though there's so much that should be in the way of our immersion. Keyboard (in particular) and mouse is a very crude way to translate human motion, we mostly have a very limited field of view and a 2d screen and we only have audio-visual stimulation (no sense of touch of any kind) and just how alien and unbelievable a lot of our gaming experiences are and that we inherently understand that they are fictional contexts. There are so many things that should be in the way of our minds doing it perfectly, and yet it can and still maintain the fictional context.
I realise that it's something that seemingly comes with a lot of practice and that most games feel awkward and, in lack of a better word, a bit disconnected at first and that there are plenty of other skills that work the same and that take a lot of practice to make so very natural, subconscious and intuitive (like writing or playing an instrument).
From an evolutionary perspective it's impressive that we're so good at those things, since we originally didn't need them to that extent and by the time we did we had already kind of overridden evolution. It makes me wonder about the capabilities of other species if they just got a little push. Sorry, I'm kind of going further and further off topic, but thinking and typing are also things that are rather immersive and "connected" for me. The keyboard is just an extension of my fingers, just like the pen is.
Gaming memories are absolutely real. I don't think there's any question about that, even without getting into the science of it. Even though what HAPPENS in a game isn't actually real, the experience you have with it most certainly is. It's as simple as that. It all comes down to how much an experience resonates with you, whether that experience is virtual or reality. I think sometimes people simply fail to distinguish experiences from the people, places, and things themselves. "It's just a waterfall" does not invalidate someone's experience with a waterfall just as "It's not real" does not invalidate someone's experience with a game.
Exploring the Ruins of Alph done in Pokémon Gold, actually kind of feels like an odd mix of vivid in who I was with, I looked into its mysteries and went after all the different Unown. Or also exploring Cyrodil in Oblivion, finding many interesting things and sights.
I'd refer to the movie Avatar to make a comparison. In it, when you use your avatar you are doing something, but at the same time someone could say that you aren't doing that something. This is because we tend to think that a person is tied to his body, when in reality he is but not as much as we perceive. So when YOU do something through something that isn't your body, like an avatar (like in the movie, or like in a videogame), it seems confusing at first whether or not YOU're doing that thing. In reality it is actually YOU who is doing that thing, just using a tool that isn't your body.
This is a very interesting topic. I think what might be causing some of the issues here would be our definition of a "memory." I was hoping Jamin would clarify what he's calling a "memory" a little bit, because the working definition can change what we mean entirely.
For example, from what I know about cognitive science and neuroscience, the brain stores the salient aspects of sensory input for later retrieval. When playing a game, the fact that you are playing a game is not relevant to a trained gamer, so it is largely ignored information. As a result, the experience that the gamer has is stored more directly as a sort of lived experience, but also with some amount of distance. In a similar manner to what Jamin explained earlier, It's not exactly a memory of something you did yourself, as you have a sort of distance from the event (this idea also seems to be reminiscent of the "Are you your character?" discussion from earlier on Game/Show. Similar to a dream, you aren't using your own body to accomplish the actions of a character, so the information contained within a memory of a game will not contain the memory of physically experiencing a live event. Yet, its not exactly dream-like, because your experience is still mediated through sensory processing of the world and it's not using the recurrent pathways meant to strengthen consolidation (at least, that's what one of the stronger hypothesizes of dreams might suggest).
A non-gamer might also have a different experience with this. For them, the experience of a game might include the fact that they are playing it some some device. They may not be only experiencing the game, but the experience of *playing* the game as well. It's not particularly useful information, but the untrained brain doesn't know that, so it holds on to the information. Similarly, playing local multiplayer with friends and family may evoke both/either experience for a gamer--the experience of the game and the experience of playing the game with others are both interesting enough for the brain to retain as a memory.
Maybe the question isn't "Are game memories real?" Maybe it's "When are game memories real?"
Ultima Online back in the day. Thats all.
Hi, do you know the name of the game appears at 0:52? Thanks!
I totally know what you mean about remembering things in games like they actually happened to you. Several times before I've had a dream that I was doing something in Minecraft. I don't mean that I dreamed about playing Minecraft; I dreamed that I am Steve. I have also experienced how memories can change over time. I was sure that I had memorized I quote that I read in a book once, and over a few years, the part of the quote that I thought I'd remember the best wasn't even close to what I remembered it being.
Interesting theory but I don't see how this is just a gaming thing and not also a reading and watching movie thing.
Ok before you all go on with 'you are more active in video games' and so on:
Since long books were praised to be able to give you experiences that you couldn't obtain other wise. And you get just as emotionally invested into a good book or movie or even theatre play as you get into a game. Well maybe not everyone does, since everyone has their own preferences, but I bet anyone at least know someone who cried at a sad scene or laughed hardly when something funny happened or shouted at the screen or the book if the protagonist was about to do something really stupid. You get just as emotionally invested.
And while, yes, in a book you hardly say 'I was doing this' as some people do with video games, It's still a very emotional experience. For example when ever I remember the tale of 'the little matchgirl' I get really sad, although it's just a tale and I didn't even SEE ist but only heard it.
The same way, Bruno Bettelheim suggests, do fairy tales work for little children. They use them to cope with things just like they use dreams.
This is so Vsauced episode. Great!
My most vivid memories don't come from the narrative of the story but more from cooperative play. The narrative has to do with character who aren't me. I can be emotional attached to them sure but in this sense it's no different from a film with characters I was emotional attached to.
The memories come from me making my own narrative with real people that I can interact with. The most vivid memories I have are from multilayer sandbox games. Running with a 5 star wanted level in gta, going off to kill the ender dragon in minecraft, these are all felt real and important. In contrast when I played The Last of Us, I was always rooting for Joel and Eli but I never felt like I was Joel. In games like gta and minecraft I had my own agenda. I feel this is the way games are unique.
The memories are real sure, memories of playing games. Art is designed to cause emotion and emotional memories stick around more. Those memories affect you to, just like any art form. The play "A bench at the edge", gets me the exact same way as uncovering Cave Johnson's story in Portal 2. Neither of those stories are real, but both reference a familiar real world concept, sickness & death. The stories are both sad , angry and emotional. As a viewer though you would know that in those situations you would be acting differently.
The difference between seeing a story about a thing and experiencing a thing is the same difference in how you remember a thing. Getting shot is a very different memory than remembering getting shot in a game. There is a reason CoD fans brag about their kill score and Veterans tend not to talk about their experiences. Real memories of combat are seriously traumatic, the memories are literally painful as PTSD is a very serious issue.
The thing you remember from CoD is playing a game where you got shot. It isn't a different type of memory, it is the same memory you get when watching a play. Also to note cinematics in games for me tend to be the most emotionally intense experiences.
Side note 007Mr.Yang's comment could be a whole video on the TPP (trans-pacific partnership agreement). It is a treaty that aims to consolidate copy right between Asia ,North America and Great Britain (because they want to be popular). It's interesting because China and England keep trying to add in a SOPA-esque section, that has already been halted in the USA ( by extension Canada). This section has held up this agreement for 2 years. (The bill also plans to fix prices of generic drugs.)
Shout out for Palermo, and Sicily in general
Depending on the game, my emotion is binded to that specific moment. I do not feel accomplished in games that have to do with murder (Super Mario Bros., FPSs in general), but those games that have an emotional link to me do stay with me for a long time, such as the first death of Crono in Chrono Trigger, the growth of link in Ocarina of Time (also being my first game in the N64 during my teenage years), the death of characters in Final Fantasy IV (due to the emotional investment in them and then just DYING) or reaching 99 battles in Street Fighter against M. Bison (and continuously failing). So, either my link to games is through enraging impotence or emotional investment in specific times of my life. I could not play Wind Waker without remembering my ex and crying myself to sleep, for that matter.
I have to disagree with the idea that books and film don't feel personal. I assume this may be true for other people aside from myself, but I have very often experienced recalling a moment from a book as if it was my life and my actions. It was as if I was the character rather than myself. There was even a moment during a class in high school where I was fidgety all class because for a while I actually thought I was in the middle of some crucial quest and the class was getting in my way. I realized that quest was just in a book, but there were a few moments where is was my life and quest I was thinking about, not just a storyline.
I'd say the experience of playing a game is real, not fake like you said at 4:40 ish. It's a simulation of events, and the simulation of events is experienced.
Take the difference from being in an actual war versus playing a COD game. One has a high chance of giving you PTSD, and is generally horrible and upsetting, while the COD game is remembered as being fun. Soldiers back from war do sometimes recount their experiences fondly, but a COD game is not going to give you PTSD, and riding in a humvee with a gun at your side might be exhilarating and frightening as doing so in a game, but the degrees are different.
For another example, I'm a huge fan of horror games. I've played Silent Hill 1-4, The Penumbra Series, The Amnesia Series, Outlast, Lone Survivor, and I'm sure a few others. I remember those experiences as being terrifying, heart stopping, panic inducing, and with great fondness. I loved being scared, but if you put me in any of those situations in real life I'd probably just slit my throat and bleed out. I get scared in banal social situations. I'm fucked if Jason knocks on my door.
The point is, the real experience and the simulated experience are different experiences with different memories. The memory of the simulated experience is just as real as the real experience's associated memory, it's just a different memory with different emotions attached. Both experiences are real, but even in a simulation of a real life event (the war on terror and COD) the experiences are very very different.
I hope I made sense there.
Love this episode, it is one of the things that is a constant theme over my whole life. Those memories are real but to say that you don't remember the TV, maybe you don't but I bet that it contributed a lot to the experience. The reason we love games is because of the great games but also because of the environment we were in while playing them. The emotional environment, inspirational, whatever. The audio and visuals. When I listen to Metallica's Reload I want to play Halo 2, when I hear Chinese Democracy I want to play Unreal Tournament 3. When I go to my Nonna's house and play Donkey Kong Country it is more significant than playing it on an emulator, because of the smell of the house. Italian food! :D
Memories are the best. So are magic mushrooms. It is all about the experience man!
I just wanna say, you are the best!
:)
Greetz from the Netherlands.
I listen to Podcasts a lot of the time when I play games without dialog, which adds another layer to the composite memory. There are places or objects in games that are tied to unrelated memories: castles I built in MineCraft that bring back ideas from RadioLab episodes, or cave systems in Terraria that remind me of stories from Night Vale.
I take the sociological perspective: Things are real if they're real in their consequences. Especially when it comes to shared experiences, like long distance, online friendships, there are a lot of emotional and social effects, and it's inaccurate and mean to say the aren't "real".
I don't remember games the same way you do, it's quite odd honestly. I do, in fact, remember the feel of the control devices as I play, especially the arcade ones.
I think it comes down to a question of agency. I consider the memories more real if the stakes in the game seemed elevated. Playing Telltale's Walking Dead seemed like a "real" memory because my actions had noticeable consequences.
Playing a classic NES Mario title is more about the memory of experience. While I controlled Mario, I don't have same connection as I did with Lee or Clementine.
I have game memories and they are real to me. I can understand why some people feel they aren't real, but I can't recall discount myself that. Especially when videogames got me through some hard times.
Definitely real! Especially inside VR, this will only get more "real" as we further delve into the increasingly immersive worlds of games.
guess i'm odd in that I don't feel that way when I think of my memories with games.
Music in games helps recall big time like enter a zone in WoW or even turning on a PS1 to play FF9. Your back in the moment sort of...
ALSO games like COD and Halo kind of have a Short Term Memory when playing online because of the countless games you have while a Campaign/story provokes a long term memory I think.
this is incredible thank you for this movie
Game memories had better be real!
The whole point of a game is that the player interacts with it and feels like they are a part of it in a way that doesn't happen with films, books etc. If I think back to the climax of Final Fantasy VIII and don't feel like *I* beat the evil sorceress and thwarted her (weird) evil plan to compress time then Square obviously didn't do a very good job. This is in spite of the fact that it was very obviously not me who did it but a group of fictional people in a fictional world.
We, as players, expect to be provided with real experiences and real memories (bizarrely mainly of very un-real things) otherwise: "what's the point let's just go watch a movie". Regardless of whether we're "directly" involved (name/shape your silent protagonist) or indirectly (via Squall and the gang, or Lara Croft or whomever), we WANT the memories to be real. And if my quick scan of the comments is anything to go by, for most of us, they are.
This does bring up an interesting point though. If our immediate reaction is "Yeah, of course they're real memories!" can we honestly also say "Nooo, violent video games don't ever affect us negatively in the slightest!"?
Depending on the game, the act of controlling can be a real element of my memory of it
So when I was like 6 and my sister, brother, and I were sleeping over my cousin's house. And my cousin had a playstation. And she was playing Barbie Explorer. At the time I didn't really care about gender and was just watching the screen. As Barbie was running through a path in a jungle setting a camel comes out of nowhere and hits bumps into Barbie very quickly. It was so funny and that a camel could run so fast and bump Barbie that everyone started laughing. To this day I remember that experience. But now that I think of it was the camel going that fast or am I just remaking my memory. So in order to find out I took out my playstation 2 borrowed my cousin's game Barbie Explorer. And what I found was very surprising to me, maybe not anyone who read this. The camel that I remember in the game wasn't a camel. It was either an elephant charging or a chimp on monkey bars. Though I remember the chimp on monkey bars but I did not remember the elephant.
Love the serial reference
Saying that video game memories aren't real is like saying that you didn't make any choices in that game(assuming there are choices in that specific game)
What is that game at 2:14?
I too had this question. I googled on terms like "game marques house", "game marquez house", "games look like limbo" and multiple others but can't find anything useful as of yet. Why are all assets listed, but not the games?
I 100% get the idea that he is trying to say, we do this, we have an emotional response.. Or a sort of an emotional response, and memory.
But i would argue, do we?
I don't think you could compare the emotions of, winning at your favourite game, or getting the winning touchdown, or scoring the last minute goal, or getting a whole in one. Those are just more intense, memorable experiences.
Compared even to something like E-Sports, where the stakes are far higher than a Mario Kart 64, 12 player tournament in my front room, playing for money.
Or going to a holiday destination.. BUT there again, perhaps thats just because those "real world" experiences are far more stimulating on your senses. You're walking in Time Square, you smell the sweet and salty pretzel stall, you feel the cold air, you see the bright lights, you hear the police car sirens and the hussle and bussle of the city. And i dunno, you might be eating one of those pretzels too. So you are stimulating all of those senses, which later on makes that memory far easier to recall than a video game, when you're there, pressing WSAD, and clicking a mouse. Or holding a controller. You are just as involved in that game, but not as stimulated.
Even if, as he says memories change all the time, and are determined on your current emotional state, or your past emotional state. And memory is just about the most fallible thing that we have.
Where are the lenses for your glasses?
You could say that it depends on your definition of "real" and "experience", but ultimately the memory of the illusion of immersion is real.
If one controlled something, the action was effectively committed by them alone; not some other individual. The memory is real; whether from real life, video games, or even dreams. All memories are real because you picture it as though you were there. The experience caused you to think and go through the same mental processes as it would in real life. Some memories may be inaccurate but they aren't any less real.