Sign in to follow this  
Cordeos

Real life things you have done because of video games

Recommended Posts

This topic came up on the latest Crate & Crowbar

 

Two that spring to mind are playing Liar's Dice in real life after playing it a ton in Red Dead Redemption and traveling to Morocco partially because of the Hitman level. I was trying to decide on somewhere to travel to and Hitman 2016's Marrakesh level reminded me of a desire to travel to North Africa.

A friend learned how to play an ocarina because of Zelda, i assume this was pretty common.

What about yall?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I attempted to garden after playing Stardew Valley. Nothing survived.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I spent a few weekends as a lovecraftian monster slayer after playing Bloodborne but the medical bills got too high so I quit chasing deer around with an axe once a ran out of the LSD.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was going to go on a multi-paragraph thing about how video games got me to where I am in life, but in keeping with this thread:

 

Cats do not respond well to attack orders like Pokemon do.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In high school during the winter I was out walking while it was snowing pretty heavily. This is in southern sweden btw. I haven't seen a single person while outside either, and I swear I started hearing the phendrana drifts theme playing.

 I was not wearing headphones.

 

Similarly I was working in the kitchen and went down a couple of stairs to get stuff from the dry storage. The electricity had cut out so I had to go get a candle, when I got to the door to dry storage I had this weird feeling, in this basement the dry storage was converted from a sauna, so when I pushed open the door I was pretty much in a wood themed zelda dungeon with every can, box and knick knack casting moving shadows all over thanks to the swaying candle (lantern). It was pretty good.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

After devoting hundreds of hours to Guitar Hero and Rock Band I got back into the real guitar after dropping it in high school. I continue to play Rocksmith with it, but also just PLAY now and I love that it's something I can do. For my school's Canada Day celebration, my 5th grade class and I learned a bunch of voyageur songs together and had a sing-along day. Wouldn't have been able to do that without those games getting me back on track musically.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like the idea of this thread! Sadly, I can't think of anything significant I've done in real life because of video games. On paper I suppose this means they have been a tremendous waste of time.

 

The idea of living vicariously through games - of games as escapism - is kind of unfashionable at the moment, but it has always been important to me. So it's more often the case that I'll have wonderful experiences in games and then think: there's no way in hell I would want to try that in real life. 

 

Perhaps I'm being too literal. I can say that whenever I've doing anything that involves corners (mopping, vacuuming) I hear the voice of Captain Price from Call of Duty 4 saying 'CHECK THOSE CORNERS' in my head. You've got to check the corners.

 

Breath of the Wild really does give me the something of the same feeling I get when I'm up a hillside somewhere, walking alone. But I like that in Zelda because I like it in life. Firewatch is the same in that regard. I sometimes wonder how I would cope in a situation similar to Henry's; the prognosis is not always great…

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I pulled out of a slip and spin on an unpaved road driving in Canada purely on instinct because I'd been playing so much Colin McRae 2 on my force feedback wheel. Turns out that force feedback was pretty accurate! Only afterwards did I have to immediately pull over once I realised what had almost happened & it hit me.

 

Of course I may have been going a bit faster because of playing racing games so much as well. But it turned out well, luckily.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Mine's a biggie... I spent 16.5 in space research due to the early Elite games in the 80s and 90s! I got a PhD in high energy astrophysics, and invented a new way of identifying black holes; as a result, I spent 5 years black hole hunting for NASA, based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (a real nerd trifecta :p!)

 

Unsurprisingly, when Elite Dangerous was kickstarted nearly 30 years after the original came out, I went full tilt into backing it on day 1. I got to be a community ambassador for ED at E3 2014, and PAX East 2015... it was so cool talking space stuff with David Braben (co-creator of  Elite with Ian Bell)

 

Similar to miffy, I started playing guitar thanks to Rocksmith... I always wanted to learn to play, and I have a lot of fun with it. The downside is that I'm now ruined for guitar hero and rockband guitar, which is a real shame since I absolutely loved those games for years.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
10 hours ago, Dr Wookie said:

Similar to miffy, I started playing guitar thanks to Rocksmith... I always wanted to learn to play, and I have a lot of fun with it. The downside is that I'm now ruined for guitar hero and rockband guitar, which is a real shame since I absolutely loved those games for years.

 

Also this.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@Gorbles Well now I want to hear what your's was going to be!

Mine would probably be getting into camping and hiking because of Morrowind. I kept chasing that feeling of cresting a new mountain, hearing the theme of the Nerrevar, having your locations update..... And I realized that I just wanted to be up there myself. 

 

Getting into rock climbing because of Assassin's Creed and other mantling games. I'm pretty sure that's the genesis of that.  

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well @Rilen it's a bit trite, but, everything!

 

A long time ago (well, about 12 years ago) I got into Dawn of War in a big way. I was 16. Late compared to Relic Entertainment's established fanbase (I was "one of the DoW lot", hah); heck, I got "the Internet" quite late. But 16 is a very impressionable age, and I was getting into computers about then. So I decided in a very typical way that I wanted to be a games developer.

 

Everything I've done since then has had that in mind. I studied Computer Science, I helped some developers out with community moderation, I did some beta testing, I graduated into software development, and now I make games tech and other bits and pieces in my spare time. I mean I could write an awful lot more but the baseline is my enjoyment of video games (and specifically the one I had the best time with, and its developer) had an immense impact on my career path, general hobbies, and eventually outlook on life (it brought me here in the end, after lurking gamesdev Twitter for several years, which gradually informed me in terms of politics and culture as well).

 

I am quite literally who I am, in a large part, due to video games. It's brought me into various social circles (and great people I've met IRL, including folks from here!), and it's kinda awesome. There are, as always, pitfalls in that journey, but it's been great fun, and is continuing to be so :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's less that video games made me do anything and more that it provided direction and intensity to things I was already up to.

Skyrim was a big one, specifically the crafting system. I've always been a huge sucker for a resource collecting/crafting system, but there was something to that one, at that time in my life that made me want to use and expand on the basic sort of leatherworking knowledge I already had (one of my grandfathers repaired saddles and related horse gear and taught me as much as my stupid child brain could be arsed to pay attention to at the time) to the point where I could make something real, and a couple years later I was able to make a decent bit of money on the side doing custom work for hunting gear, mostly cheek-pads/round holders, when I was working at a sporting goods/bait shop/bulk fuel retailer. I haven't had the space to ever actually use it, but it's also the reason I now own a small anvil, kit for a small propane furnace and ~30 pounds assorted iron scrap. 

Outdoors activities are another one. We camped a lot growing up, but that mostly meant a fishing trip with tents, we didn't hike or anything like that. It was some number of open world exploration type games that made me ever think hiking or rock climbing or backpacking could be fun at all, and it turns out it is.

I grew up shooting guns just as a general leisure activity, but not really caring beyond knowing how to use them safely, but it was specifically Silent Storm and Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl that made me start considering them as a historical interest and as an engineering/ballistics interest, respectively, and it was that side of the hobby that kept me away from the more toxic side of that community, which probably helped me not become a worse person at least.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I definitely got my push down the road towards a history degree due to Civilization and Age of Empires.

 

God I wish I'd found those space-y games, a math or science degree from video games would have been so much more helpful.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Long Dark got me to switch from drinking coffee in the evenings to drinking tea. Apparently tea boosts your sleeping-intensity so you're well rested in the morning and better prepared to fight wolves. It works! I mean, I haven't had to fight any wolves yet, but I'm pretty sure if I ever found myself in that situation all that evening-tea-drinking will have served me well.

 

On 2017-06-13 at 7:53 PM, Dr Wookie said:

Mine's a biggie... I spent 16.5 in space research due to the early Elite games in the 80s and 90s! I got a PhD in high energy astrophysics, and invented a new way of identifying black holes; as a result, I spent 5 years black hole hunting for NASA, based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (a real nerd trifecta :p!)

 

Whoa, impressive!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got a job as a tester because of video games. As a result I started writing about video games as I met people who spent large amounts of time analysing games, and then Goobergate started making me re-evaluate my political beliefs (I guess the closest I would have been, circa 2012, was neo-liberal with a few left-leaning tendencies) and read more about philosphy, morality, and what things like patriarchy really meant.

 

Stuntman Ignition made me run very near things and jump down stairs for about a week as I considered everything a combo meter. One time I rode back from my friends house and had to stop cycling because I could still hear the sound of Streets of Rage, even though I was in the middle of the countryside.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this