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I heavily played GTA: Vice City during the time I learned how to drive. After I got my driver's licence, I remember one instance where I clearly noticed how my

by lqet 8y ago

I heavily played GTA: Vice City during the time I learned how to drive. After I got my driver's licence, I remember one instance where I clearly noticed how my brain drifted into GTA mode while I was driving through town. I had to actively remember myself that this is a real environment and that I cannot just drive over the street lamp post without anything happening. I talked to a classmate about this and he had had a similar experience, but with Mafia (which had a very realistic car handling, you could even activate an expert mode where you had to shift manually iirc). I stopped playing GTA for a while after that.

mises 8y ago
This has been part of my concern with such things. I don't know that the alarmism about "violent videogames create young terrorist-wannabes" is correct, but it's hard (especially as games become increasingly photorealistic and physics become more and more accurate) to distinguish, I'm sure. It's a little scary to think we might have a guy run someone else over, and plead insanity saying "I thought it was a videogame". This strikes me as another manifestation of the same problem we will have to deal with concerning things like Google Duplex: is it okay to have robots that can impersonate humans? Games that can impersonate the real world? There was a discussion the other day on how online dating apps are causing a large percentage of men to end up "involuntarily celibate"; some people proposed sex-bots as a solution. Can we really live with ourselves as people and as a society if these things come to pass?
- taneq 8y ago
  That's the thing, though. It's not "I thought I was in a video game, officer." (In fact that's often used as a strawman.) It's "my reflexes were slightly perturbed by the amount of time I've spent practicing an activity that looks very similar to this activity but has very different rules in some circumstances."
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I'm surprised you developed connections between the two - I've been playing computer games a longtime, and find the cognitive load and muscle memory of real world activities to be markedly different than something like GTA, but I only was playing Need for Speed 2 as I learned to drive, so maybe that didn't quite meet the realism requirements, not to say Vice City is some VR masterpiece, but it was credible in its day.
- lqet 8y ago
  if you drive down a straight road in a quiet town at constant speed and don't have to shift, I don't think the cognitive load is much bigger than driving around in GTA. After all, you are basically just scanning the environment in front of you for obstacles. It also seems to go both ways: when I returned to playing GTA after a few months, I was driving much more carefully in the game.
dangero 8y ago
I crashed my car this way, but the game I was playing a lot was need for speed underground (I drove my exact car on the game). Was getting onto the freeway in Palo Alto, drifted right into the side of the onramp. As I was about to hit the wall my mind snapped out of it and I realized I can’t slide off the wall in real life, but it was also too late to stop.

by lqet 8y ago

mises 8y ago

This has been part of my concern with such things. I don't know that the alarmism about "violent videogames create young terrorist-wannabes" is correct, but it's hard (especially as games become increasingly photorealistic and physics become more and more accurate) to distinguish, I'm sure. It's a little scary to think we might have a guy run someone else over, and plead insanity saying "I thought it was a videogame". This strikes me as another manifestation of the same problem we will have to deal with concerning things like Google Duplex: is it okay to have robots that can impersonate humans? Games that can impersonate the real world? There was a discussion the other day on how online dating apps are causing a large percentage of men to end up "involuntarily celibate"; some people proposed sex-bots as a solution. Can we really live with ourselves as people and as a society if these things come to pass?

taneq 8y ago
That's the thing, though. It's not "I thought I was in a video game, officer." (In fact that's often used as a strawman.) It's "my reflexes were slightly perturbed by the amount of time I've spent practicing an activity that looks very similar to this activity but has very different rules in some circumstances."

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

I'm surprised you developed connections between the two - I've been playing computer games a longtime, and find the cognitive load and muscle memory of real world activities to be markedly different than something like GTA, but I only was playing Need for Speed 2 as I learned to drive, so maybe that didn't quite meet the realism requirements, not to say Vice City is some VR masterpiece, but it was credible in its day.

lqet 8y ago
if you drive down a straight road in a quiet town at constant speed and don't have to shift, I don't think the cognitive load is much bigger than driving around in GTA. After all, you are basically just scanning the environment in front of you for obstacles. It also seems to go both ways: when I returned to playing GTA after a few months, I was driving much more carefully in the game.

dangero 8y ago

I crashed my car this way, but the game I was playing a lot was need for speed underground (I drove my exact car on the game). Was getting onto the freeway in Palo Alto, drifted right into the side of the onramp. As I was about to hit the wall my mind snapped out of it and I realized I can’t slide off the wall in real life, but it was also too late to stop.