When you switch off a video game, a really involving and engrossing video game, sometimes it doesn’t go away. Not straight away. Instead, it can linger in the mind, overlaying the real world.
At least that’s according to new research from Nottingham Trent University’s International Gaming Research Unit. Recently published in the Journal of Cyber Behaviour, Psychology and Learning, it suggests that players often hear game sounds such as explosions, screams and laser fire, long after they’ve left a game.
This is the latest study into what the university calls “game transfer phenomena”, a range of cognitive quirks that can follow extended gaming sessions. Previous research has concentrated on visual distortions and effects – Tetris players seeing falling shapes when they closed their eyes, for example. The new paper is the first time that specifically auditory experiences have been analysed.
For the study, the Nottingham Trent team visited games forums and collected anecdotal evidence from 1,244 gamers about GTP experiences. 12 per cent of those spoke of re-experiencing game audio outside of the game environment – hearing sword slashes, electronic beeps and Super Mario’s falling coin sound were all reported.
“There were lots of examples of players hearing the game music, in the same way as you continue to hear music in your head when you’ve stopped listening,” said psychology researcher Angelica Ortiz De Gortari, who is leading the study. “Some players heard voices, some heard game sounds. Often it happens when you’re trying to fall asleep – players would look for their computer or console because they thought they’d left the game on.”
The most interesting examples, however, are those that seem to be triggered by real-world cues that relate to in-game situations. One player reported hearing sounds from the first-person puzzle game Portal when passing specific buildings that reminded him of the game’s world. De Gortari also discovered more disturbing examples: “There was a gamer who, whenever it was dark, would hear the sound of the crackling radio signal from Silent Hill, warning him that monsters were coming.”
There is plenty of skepticism around GTP. The research is currently drawn from a very small base of players speaking to their peers on forums where exaggeration is always a possibility. It may be difficult to recreate these phenomena in a more accurate and controlled experiment. However, experiences similar to GTP have been studied since the early nineties. In 1994, Wired ran an article entitled “This is your brain on Tetris”, detailing University of California research into the effect that the popular block-sorting puzzle game had on the brains of players.
The Nottingham Trent University team is very early in the process of understanding what’s going on. De Gortari has theorised that GTP is about the way the brain assigns meaning to sensory inputs. “These sounds have a meaning, a purpose in the video games – and their meaning affects how players can respond in real life,” she said. “Players hear the sound in their head or ears, or they externalise it. The research tells us about how the brain forms associations, and how easily they can be confused. It shows a lack of control over auditory experiences – they can be disturbing, annoying or even funny.”
One of the goals of the project is to demystify GTP for players who have been frightened by the experience. The phenomena tend to last a few hours or days, and follow intense or very long gaming sessions. “We want to identify, classify and explain these experiences,” said De Gortari. “But this research also tells us about how the mind works, and how it creates associations, how we learn from associations - this may be useful in the learning of new languages, for example.
“There’s a lot of research into the effects of music, but not a lot into sound. What are the ramifications? There is lot to learn.”
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Have you ever experienced game transfer phenomenon? Let us know in the comments section.