Research Status Update and Dreams for Comment

This is a paper to be presented at the annual Psiber Dreaming Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Sept. 2010

Video Game Play and Dreams: What are the Important Questions?

 
Jayne Gackenbach
Grant MacEwan University

          It’s been five years since I participated in this online conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. At that point my research program into the dreams of video game players had just begun. In looking at my presentation from 2005, I see that I offered some of the empirical justification for this work. This year I thought I would begin by very briefly summarizing what we have found over the intervening years. Then I’ll pose questions, through illustrative dreams of gamers, that I’d appreciate hearing your impressions and ideas about.
          The potential negative effects of video game play have long been studied. What is now becoming increasingly clear, is that there are various positive educational and psychological effects as well. There is no doubt that video game play represents a complex experience of childhood, and now of adulthood, which is not easily reduced to simple condemnations or accolades. Video gaming is one of the fastest growing entertainment industries with revenues arguably the same as, or greater than, the movie industry, depending on how you count. Thus, gaming is too wide spread to reduce to purely self selection. Not only is there something enticing about interacting in and with virtual worlds, there is increasing social pressure to play.
          Studying video games and dreams informs various areas of inquiry and ways of thinking about dreams. I initially made the argument that gaming inquires were important because they represent the most commonly accessible form of virtual reality (VR), which has come to dominate the media landscape. Since making that argument some years ago, it has become clear that there are other compelling reasons to study gaming and dreams. For instance, gaming participation is a type of social consciousness, which allows the collective acting out of archetypal myths. Video games are increasingly being used by sleep and dream researchers as a pre-sleep stimuli to study memory processes in sleep. These experiences of virtual worlds while awake may inform inquiries into the potential evolutionary function of dreams. Various elements of metacognition in dreams seem to result from gaming, including lucidity and dream control. Finally, studying gaming and dreaming allows us to ask questions about the felt sense of being there, or presence as it’s called in the VR literature. We all take this for granted while awake, but our sense of reality is challenged by various media experiences and their impact on the felt sense of reality in dreams.
Summary of Findings to Date
          These reasons for studying dreams of gamers occurred to us in our lab at Grant MacEwan University as our research program progressed. Initially we looked at lucidity and control in the dreams of gamers and found an association, which we have replicated several times. Here is an example [italics in all quotes are my comments]:
once Jean Grey [a marvel comic and video game character] got loose and started killing people, I was like this is really weird this is probably a dream and it was like right after that she showed up and I told myself that I need to wake up.
          In our latest study we found that while lucidity/control was most strongly associated with gaming, it was also associated, if less strongly, with other media experiences. This finding points to the idea of gaming as only one type of VR which affects dreams. All of us are interacting in some sense with these various virtual worlds, from cell phone texting to watching a big screen movie, and they are affected our dreams.
          It occurred to us that the awareness of the dream while it was ongoing, and the often associated dream control, could have other consequences. And indeed through several content analyses of gamer’s dreams, using the classic Hall and Van de Castle system, we found that gamers dreams less often had misfortunes. We were surprised to see that gamers were less often aggressive in their dreams, but when they were aggressive they were more violent. Here is an example:

I went outside … with my cat and shot these criminals that were trying to eat my dad and they were on top of my dad trying to eat his arms and he was fighting them off, and they were trying to hold him down and bite his shoulders and there was blood and stuff. And it was a very graphic shootout for a dream; it was very blood and guts ya know? And when I ran out of ammunition there was like pistol whipping and stuff going on and that one sticks out in my mind because it was very graphic.

          We wondered if this combination of less misfortunes and more aggression, when it occurred, would have an impact on nightmares. The answer seems to be yes. We found that gamers reported either fewer nightmares or, if no difference in incidence, they reported that their nightmares were fun.
          The third area we have been examining is dream bizarreness. On the surface it does not seem surprising that gamer’s dreams are more bizarre than their contemporaries. After all when we found that there were more dead and imaginary characters in their dreams, it seemed only reasonable. After all, weren’t they fighting zombies or vampires or were wolfs all day, like this dream:

I dreamt I was a character is Underworld 2, it was a werewolf character and then I became a 3rd person. It was the two main characters, it was the vampire girl and a hybrid werewolf character and I was another werewolf character beside them and we went into a vampire coven and we got to the weapons section of the vampire coven and then I woke up

          But when we controlled for the number of hours they played a game the day before the dream was collected, we found that gamers still had more dream bizarreness than those who do not game as seriously. In our research this was associated with higher creativity among gamers. But of course this is one of the allures of gaming, you can create new worlds. But really it’s an allure of our attraction to all increasingly digital media. We are all producers or creators of products and information. So perhaps it’s just that the amount of time, or the nature of the creative acts of gaming, accounting for this association to creativity.
          In our most recent work we have been looking at game incorporation into dreams and the question of presence in dreams versus games. But our lab is also examining various other elements of consciousness and gaming. For instance, we found an association between mindfulness, a type of meditative state, and those who prefer first person shooter and action/adventure games. We also noted, as have other gaming labs, a positive association between gaming and flow, the balance between challenge and skill that elite athletes and expert musicians report.
Interesting Cases Result in Interesting Questions
          I’d now like to share with you several interesting dreams from gamers which we have collected. Hopefully your discussion will help to answer the questions that these cases create.
          The first case was collected a few years ago as part of one of my students honor’s thesis. While not all gamers dreams are so startlingly pardoxical, they do happen. This is a particularly dramatic example which asks the question “Is this detachment, in the classic meditative sense, or practice from gaming?”
          This is a dream from a male hard core gamer, who had played from 4 to 7 hours the day before this dream and had watched several violent cartoons. The games he played were first person shooters, including Half-Life 2 and Halo 3. From an archetypal perspective, both games could be considered Hero’s Journeys and perhaps Vision Quests. What is interesting about the first person point of view (POV) games is that they do not always allow a third person perspective. However, the real self is actually in third person while playing a first person shooter and thus hours of being in that perspective may have helped to mediate the dream ego’s view:

I was in a desert. I looked bad, dusty. I saw my tiny silhouette against a large sun, meaning I was watching myself, in 3rd person. While I looked bad I didn’t feel bad. I was indifferent to the “my” feelings. I came upon a carnival, but it gets sketchy at that point. Eventually I’m driving a car, again not at a real POV [point of view], but following behind the car. It didn’t matter to me that I was crashing into other cars or walls. My car caught fire, I saw it melt from within. I died not trying to escape.

Gamer reported an interesting detachment from the dream events:

As the car was burning I opened the door and leaned out to leave but made the decision to stay inside instead because I was curious to see what I would look like burning alive. While I felt the heat, smelt the smoke, I didn’t feel any pain. I felt detached from the feelings, but recognized that they were my own.

He also reported that this dream was not a nightmare. He was not scared, but he acknowledged that it was violent. He also said that the dream was not lucid and that he had no control. When asked “did you feel any emotions during the experiences?” he commented:

Sort of. I knew what the person I saw as myself felt, but didn’t share those feelings. Throughout the emotions of disgust, loneliness, or excitement were all ones I thought best fit the “character” of myself based on the situation.

Then he was asked “Did you think about what you were doing?” and he wrote:

I was constantly thinking about my every move, making sure that whatever I did was in my best interest. If anything was off-putting (the carnival owner, the desert) I simply moved on.

Then he replied to this question “Did you think about what was happening around you?” by saying:

I was constantly analyzing my surroundings…At the city where I drove my car, I noticed the simplicity of the environment, which seemed to be constructed out of simple polygons. Obviously that was a video game environment, much like Grand Theft Auto.

While it seems simple to conclude that he thought he was playing a game, the 3rd person POV which he stressed along with the emotional detachment of the dream ego seems to echo the descriptions of witnessing dreams that previous research has found among meditators. It’s these sorts of experiences reported by gamers that inform and motivate our ongoing inquires into the nature of consciousness developed by gaming. What do you think?
Gaming as Nightmare Protection
          These next cases call to mind the hypothesis that we have developed that gaming might act as a sort of inoculation for the nightmares associated with trauma. We do NOT mean that there wouldn’t be nightmares associated with trauma, only that the control and empowerment we have found in the dreams of gamers might offer some protection. To this end we are currently collecting dreams, as well as information about gaming and trauma history, from gamers who have served in the military or who are currently serving. Before reading these dreams, most of which depict combat, keep in mind that non-military gamers who play combat type games also dream about violence and aggression.
          Here is one example from a 28 years old soldier, who is on active duty with the US army, and who has been deployed twice. In his deployments he reported that he felt in great danger of being wounded or killed. This young Mexican American soldier plays video games one to two hours a day. He reported this dream from the night before filling out the survey :

While I was walking down a street I found myself encountering Freddy from the movie since I had just watched the latest film. There are trees from on both sides of the road and I see his figure in the street. In my head I am thinking WTF? As he approached me the first thing I did was blink away similar to a mage would in WoW [World of Warcraft is a popular role playing game]. However he still caught me, I then asked him, “If this is my dream and I can do whatever I want, why is it that you pose a threat? He laughs and than I am sitting down in a Chili’s restaurant. I can’t remember who I am with but I do know all the women that I have asked out are in the room. Some guys walk in and a projection screen scrolls down in the front of the restaurant. As they look around one of them notices me and announces “Oh my God, ******* [gaming alias is given here which is deleted to preserve anonymity] is over there” referring to the priest I play in the game. The head guy then brings over a keyboard and tell me to log into the game. I try and explaing I can’t since I don’t have my authenticator on me. He tell me not to worry about it since they have called Blizzard [a game producing company] and have grnated my a one time easement to logon without my authenticator. He than explains to me he is going to hold everyone hostage inside the restaurant until his son is ran though all the instances and raids within WoW. Once I accept the terms and I put my hands on the keyboard I am whisked away and I see my blue eyed Mexican redhead with an English accent, I have no idea what part of the world I am in all I know is I need to chase her.

The ingredients of lucidity, and control, as well as incorporation of game play, are easy to identify in this dream. However, the outcomes are not as clear. While this soldier used a gaming technique to try to get safely away from Freddy, it didn’t appear to work. Freddy laughed at him. But the game theme continued with his getting special access, authenticator waived, and once accepting the game terms a reward, the Mexican redhead. Gaming is not in all the dreams of these young military gamers. This same young soldier offered this dream as his most impactful dream while in the military:

I was a passenger in a HUMVEE driving down one of the raods in Iraq. Out of nowwhere there is a load boom and I see a cloud of dust in front of the vehicle. The impact of the exploxsion is felt as my head is forced back in a whiplash fashion. I remember being asked if I was okay, there are no injuries, people are shaken up by the event. We continue on after doing checks, after that the dream ends or that is all I can recall.

Gaming had no apparent direct influence on this dream. However, he reports about this dream that he did not feel separation, rejection or loss and indeed felt vital, energetic and alive. He reported feeling moderately successful in obtaining his goals in the dream. Yet before awakening he responded that to some extent, he felt like crying.
          Here is another case of a married enlisted black man on active duty who has been deployed into combat with the US Army. This 40 year old plays video games daily. He reported this dream as his most recent:

I had a dream about my game i was playing lastnight before bed.. I dreamed I was an enforcer in my game and I kept having problems reloading my weapon. All I can see is my weapon jamming after reloading. It is a semi automatic handgun. I am also underfire while this is happening. I can hear the rounds passing by me.

While the game play is evident in the dream it does not seem to empower him in any way that is apparent. Yet the rounds are “passing by” which is certainly a better outcome, if not safe. Another daily gamer who is a 25 year old, Caucasian, enlisted man in the US military, on active duty, but has not been deployed, had this dream:

Sometime after the North Koreans blew up the Cheonan, I had a dream that war broke out and I had to flee from my home and complete certain goals before I could leave the area. So I ran around the map (much like a video game I play, called ArmA II) and complete objectives such as rescuing my fiancee, to collecting food/fuel, and forming and following a route to Pusan for my escape. I remember feeling some fear, but also I was sure my experiences in the military and training would get me through the trials that were set before me. Once I had made it through the initial set of tasks to escape the city I’m in now, I felt relief and when I woke up I was sweating and clutching my fiancee out of fear of losing her.

          Here we see an interesting combination of empowerment from the game play translated into the dream, completing objectives and relief, yet he also seemed to experience fear upon awakening.
          Finally these types of comments are also taken from this set of military gamers dreams which we are currently in the process of collecting. They are similar to ones we have seen in our earlier gamer data sets:

• At this point, my dreaming self was dissatisfied with the situation, and then “rewound” the episode.
• I am always going from being myself in the dream to watching it like a movie and it bounces like that trough out the dream.
• i was part of the fellow ship of the ring.. and i was travelling in the woods fighting a dragon casting magical spells..it was awsome!!!
• often wake up as i did from this one on some kind of adreniline rush, feelings similar to winning in sports or doing well during moments of intense concentration during computer games

          In conclusion, while we don’t yet understand entirely the role that video game play has in influencing our dreams, clearly it is one that is important to investigate as more and more of our lived lives are in VR environments, like this conference!

Bibliography

          Gackenbach, J.I., Kuruvilla, B., Dopko, R. & Le, H. (2010). Chapter 5: Dreams and video game play. In F. Columbus (Ed.), Computer Games: Learning Objectives, Cognitive Performance and Effects on Development, Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, p. 127-136.

          Gackenbach, J.I. (2008). Video game play and consciousness development: A transpersonal perspective. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 40(1), 60-87.

Now that “Inception” is released………

The beauty of the film “Inception” by Christopher Nolan is that it supports public interest in dreams. Those of us in the dream community are all thrilled by its release and positive reception. You can find reviews and commentary from dream workers all over the net including on the International Association for the Study of Dreams website (www.iasdreams.org/Inception ). There is a part of the movie making process that is yet fairly unknown. That is, there is a splendid documentary shot to accompany the movie when it comes out on DVD. The documentary is about dreams and features some of the leading lights among dream researchers. It was directed by Academy Award nominee Roko Belic. One of the leads from “Inception”, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is the announcer in the documentary and is featured with Roko making a call for input in this online video from members of www.HitRecord.org. In fact, you can go here to see both bits of the documentary and a time-sensitive plea from Roko to get visuals for use in it:

http://secure.aintitcool.com/node/44967

Another online video that was used as a viral marketing tool for “Inception” is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEItJLwvsF0

In this clip I am the second scientist interviewed. The first one is Bill Domhoff from the University of California, Santa Cruz. I thought I would say a bit about the documentary and my experience as a “talking head”. I’ve been in my share of documentaries over the years but never with the production value and sophistication that was brought to bear on this project. Bottom line Roko did his homework and it showed not only in his questions but in the final cut which flows smoothly and offers a fascinating first glimpse into the world of dreams. He also included a brief bit at the end of the documentary on my research into video game play and dreams. Included was footage of two of my students in our gaming lab here at MacEwan. From my perspective, that inclusion was especially gratifying as it dovetailed so nicely with the commentary in the documentary by Nolan, DeCapprio, and Gordon-Levitt on how dreams inform their creative process and how they saw movies and dreams as conceptually related. As much of a movie buff as I am, I have to admit that their comments certainly broadened my perspective on my gamer-dream research. Deirdre Barrett, another dream scientist, also spoke of this relationship between dreams and movies commenting on how in the early days of movies they were called dreams.

Gamers in the military needed

Video Game Players Currently or Formerly in the Military

Researchers at Grant MacEwan University have been investigating the effects of video game play on various elements of consciousness. They have found that gamers have empowering dreams and experience the “reality” of the virtual worlds of gaming in unique ways. This research has also linked feelings of deep absorption and flow to gaming.

All of these provocative and positive findings are being further examined by this research group. You can find out more by contacting (gackenbachj@macewan.ca). Or you can sign on at:
 
bit.ly/du2iKi
 
If you qualify, this research consists of six questionnaires asking about your general demographics, your video game playing history, your personality, your history of trauma, two of your dreams, and the impact of one of the dreams on you. It will take about 1 ½ hours to complete.
 
You must be 18 years of age or older to participate in this research. Any questions can be directed to the lead researcher Dr. Jayne Gackenbach, gackenbachj@macewan.ca

gaming, meditating, lucid dreaming…..so????

That the active brain creates phasic REM idea nicely supports our research on gaming and lucid dreaming. Gaming, which is very active mentally, before sleep might then create a more active brain in sleep. This is very broad and vague, I know but that’s the beauty of a blog I can say such vague things and basically think… I would add bizarre dreams of meditators and creativity in meditators we have also found with gamers – Now does that make lucid dreams any less potentially spiritual or enlightening (in the sense of waking up), NO – I think a case can be made that some forms of gaming can be viewed as a type of meditative practice (especially the aborbed attention and the flow experiences of gamers) and indeed there is now a set of fascinating work looking at the stress reduction of casual game play on various measures – additionally the most recent issue of The Review of General Psychology is devoted to the positive outcomes associated with video game play with two articles heavily critiquing the quick to assume violence affects – they happen but are specific to some individuals – I understand that people are quick to reject the idea that games might be good for you (of course there are problems with excessive play) no less the idea that it could be a fairly simple meditative type practice but I think a case is increasingly being made.

I think what is important here is that lucid dreamers, meditators and video game players, among other activities, which for instance could include shamanic journeying, learn to move in “imaginal spaces” or virtual realities – the advantage of gaming here is obvious, and pointed out by Joan Preston, a VR researcher, that VR allows experiences of high absorption not normally available to individuals who do not have this skill.
An often argued point in the dream studies literature argues that “ many lucid dreamers attempt to avoid a dream’s message by attempting to control the dream . Instead of facing the issue presented in the dream, the lucid dreamer runs off on an adventure, such as flying into the sky, dominating other dream characters, or having sex with a dream companion.”  I have long agreed with this perspective BUT my work with gamers and dream control has shown me a different blush on it – they have rehearsed so much during the day during game play how to fight an enemy that when confronted with threat in sleep they automatically fight back – now is that psychologically healthy is another question, it is very similar to the various dream rehearsal techniques to deal with nightmares from trauma –  it’s a difficult and tricky question.

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Gaming/dreams research – overview questions

An insightful reporter from Brazil just sent these questions to me to answer for an article he is writing and I thought I would post my answers as they are ones I often get and sometimes in the writing itself things come together, which did in this case for me. Here are his questions and my answers:

1 – When did you become interested in video games as a subject for study?

when I bought my son a Nintendo game console in the early 1990′s – when I saw how passionate he was about gaming I started to read the research into gaming and saw that gamers developed better spatial skills (can imagine an engine and where the knock is, or don’t get lost in the city or the woods, or can mentally rotate objects) – I had been studying lucid dreams for many years at that point and spatial skills was one of my major findings – that is lucid dreamers has superior spatial skills – so I wondered if gamers had more lucid dreams – so by the late 1990′s I slowly began this research and really got going by 2004

2 – Did you start to play video games after the research? How would you
describe your relationship with this kind of media?

well i was playing with my kids on our computer and when I got my son a console i would play with him for years until he got so good that even giving me 10 extra lives he still beat me so badly that I got boring to play with – i continue to play but i play casual games most of the time – I enjoy games and sometimes wish I had the time to get really involved in some online role playing game – mostly I use games to relax and that works very well for me – I do game every day for an hour or more but it’s in the evening when i’m too tired to work or don’t have other committments – i’m a pretty much stay at home kind of woman so gaming helps me slow down from the activities of the day

3 – You’ve done a lot of research on this subject. What can we “definitely”
say at the time? Do gamers have more control over dreams?

dream control is one of the strongest findings we have come to in our research laboratory – that should be qualified – first you can control your dreams without gaming it’s just rarer and harder to come to – gaming allows practice in controlling an alternative (nonreal) world like dreams – thus by the time you get to a dream and a familiar, game like, circumstance emerges it’s no surprise that gamers take control especially if it’s a threatening situation – dream control is often linked to lucid dreaming and if you know you are in a dream while the dream is ongoing you can opt to control but you do not have to be lucid to control a dream

4 – Is there a particular game genre that can be more “effective” when
related to dreams?

well anything you do a lot during the day will show up in your dreams and especially if it is emotionally impactful – so games that draw strong emotions from players I would expect to show up in dreams more often and the effects, like dream control to be there, also games that take a lot of focused attention (like first person games – driving or shooting) would be more likely to result in lucid/control type dreams – we are only now beginning to look at genre and results in dreams – our original research did not find any genre differences but lately we are seeing it and are in the process of investigating this component

5 – In all of these years collecting stories, have you found some unusual
testimonial or something that really has got your attention?

o’shoot yes – one of the most remarkable ones was from a long time gamer who had gamed for about 6 hours the day before this dream – in the dream he was in a car which exploded and was on fire – he was in the 3rd person perspective during the dream so he watched himself in the car as this unfolded – as he was getting out of the car to escape he thought to himself “I wonder what it’s like to burn alive?” – he (the inside and outside dream self) decided to stay in the car and watched himself burn to death – he said he felt no pain – the control is evident in that he was deciding to leave the car and then decided to stay in their to have this unusual experience – the 3rd person perspective evidenced here is like that of witnessing spoken of in the meditative traditions

there are many more examples

6 – What are you aiming for in your future research?

there is a list of ongoing projects under the laboratory tab

7 – “Do these preliminary results imply that lucid/control dreaming will
become widespread given the saturation of media?” – it is a very interesting
question from one of your own articles. Is it possible to have an answer or
is it too soon?

well maybe – there are lots of qualifiers -

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connections made between gaming and dream control by gamer

This is a very interesting letter I just got from a long time gamer explicating how he sees the connections between his gaming and dreams. I was impressed by his insight and especially the point about if too like the real world it gets harder – i’d really like to hear from gamer readers if their experiences echo this young man’s:

I’ve been able to control my dreams at a very young age (around 8 years old) and I was never able to explain people how it worked. My brother had very bad nightmares (he his younger than me) and he was the only one in my family (except from me) to be able to control his dreams. I’ve often wondered why the two of us were different than the others but I had never thought of what you are suggesting: we are both the only gamers in the family.

The two of us were exposed to videogames around 3 years before developing the ability to control our dreams.

As mentioned in this article, the only way that we were able to modify the dream world was by controlling our dream avatar. I tried for the past 25 years to control the dream environment without using my avatar without success. The only thing that I’ve been able to achieve was to summon any kind of objects in my hands. I guess that the fact that most of them were weapons can be explained by the influence of video games.

Another interesting part of the article mentions the ability to withstand higher levels of aggression and fear. Unlike the potential war veterans that could join your study in the future, I had to opportunity to control my dreams prior to some events that could have been traumatizing. As a student, I was working in a grocery store and we got robbed a few times. Twice I had a gun pointed at my head at very close range. Many of the employees were in a state of shock after the incidents (even if they were less involved than I was) but I wasn’t. Maybe all that exposure to video games and being able to control my dreams and confront nightmares actually helped me to get through a very difficult situation without trauma.

All of this makes me think of something else. What if we were able to create video games where we do stuff that doesn’t necessarily involve fighting nightmares. It could be very interesting if we could gain control over our dreams to increase our awareness to other things, or to enhance the way that we learn new abilities.

One problem that I have with that is that the more realistic the dream is, the hardest it is for me to gain control over the dream. If I dream about myself sitting in a classroom doing some mathematics, I’m going to struggle much more to gain control over what is happening than if I’m just fighting monsters.

Thanks a lot for giving me more answers about what is happening and more importantly on how it is happening.

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gamers and nightmares

I’ve been having a different media experience in that a story on livescience about my labs work on gaming, dream control and nightmares has gone viral (http://www.livescience.com/culture/video-games-control-dreams-100525.html). That’s nice but what is really meaningful is the letters I’ve been getting from soldiers who game. Here is part of one I just got from a man just returned from being deployed. He writes:

I’m also a veteran in the US Army twice over and just recently got back in April 2010 and I have so many soldiers that went over seas and became videogame players due to the work tempo and stress.

Meaning that by the end of the tour there were more videogame players and in many cases that was the only way they could ‘escape’ from each other and the worries of home. I’m a Sgt and you can see my uniform on my profile and personally I’ve seen videogames help those that are mentally and
physically depressed.

Thanks!

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