Video Gamers Can Control Dreams, Study Suggests

My memory isn't very clear but I believe I was lucid dreaming before I ever played video games. I have played computer games in my sleep before. I remember playing one game for hours at a time during the day. When I went to sleep if I had not completed the game, my mind would narrate and communicate to me better moves to make or a better strategy. Sometimes my mind would communicate to me how I could have used a better strategy than the one I actually used. Of course this doesn't necessarily apply to only video games. I understand when the narration seems to come from my mind. When the person or creature seems to be speaking from somewhere else, that seems a bit strange whether it is an alien life form or an extremely advanced thinking AI from the future. I guess entering the alien's mind and seeing the alien's home planet may be considered a bit of third person perspective. I don't usually dream about taking over the minds of aliens though.

It's an interesting idea that lots of video gaming may help induce lucid dreaming.

As far as the level of violence in my dreams goes, I might agree that if I fight something I would use a level of force on occasion a lot greater than required. For instance being in a relatively peaceful dream but encountering a demon, I might have surrounded it in a force field, then set off a nuclear bomb blast inside the person size force field. I guess that might be like using a nuclear bomb to kill an ant. However it's more fun that way.

I remember a conversation with someone who didn't have lucid dreams said he had a violent dream. He said he actually got in a fist fight. That was his definition of violent. Meanwhile I'm using nuclear bombs, fighting wars in the past and future, invading the minds of bloodythirsty killers and anyone else I decide to and doing whatever I want to just for fun. One time I think I even dreamed about different universes but that was bizarre because our laws of physics did not apply.

[edit on 30-5-2010 by orionthehunter]

I've been gaming for nearly my whole life (Started with DOS games at the age of 4, I'm in my 20s now) and have also been able to control my dreams for as long as I can remember. This is very interesting to read, seeing how to two can be correlated.

I definitely do notice that I have more control over other peoples' actions in my dream if I go to bed right after a long gaming session.

My Daughter who is 8 years old told me recently that she is afraid to sleep because she said her nightmares are too scary. I told her that the next time her dream gets scary that she has the power to change whats going on if she focused on it hard enough to remember its a dream and she can control it.
She told me that she tried and tried but just can't due it. She asked me if I can do it and I told her that since my teens (my big gaming days) I could take full control of my dreams and can even reset my dream (like a save point) to a point before a terrible event and redo (that level) the dream so that I win or come out alive and unscathed,

It wasn't until I saw this thread and thought that, what it the reason I have this ability in my dreams is from playing many games when I was younger (I'm now 32 and still game once in a while). That might explain why my mind won't except my loss in my dream just like in a video game I can reset the dream or give myself an ability to fight, win, not die, or save a loved one in order to make my dream happier.

Also, When I was 15, I saw the movie A Nightmare on Elm's Street 3: The Dream Warriors. Where the kids found that if they could only realise it was a dream, that they had the power to do what ever they could think of in order to beat Freddy. I think that was the first time I thought that changing your dream might be possible.

reply to post by orionthehunter


I think you hit on a bigger concept to the correlation of dreams and their content when your mind has focused on something for many hours early that day or right before sleeping.

I find that if I've been playing chess alot in one day, I dream of chess moves and strategies and I get visuals of what moves I made and what moves would have been better. I also find that if I play hours of Tetris, I day dream pieces are still falling around my enviroment and I want to place them between cars, buildings and such.

I truely believe that while dreams have the ability to foretell your future at times, they also contain pieces of who you are, what your thinking, and help you to correct past mistakes by allowing you to redo the event over and over til you figure it out.

Just out of interest, I have been able to control my dreams since I was a young boy. If I have been dreaming of something and I don't want it to happen I can stop it.
One recent dream I was on a boat and fell into the sea, I knew I did not want to be in the sea so I put myself back on the boat so to speak. I did not just climb back aboard I just put myself back on the boat.

Originally posted by colec156
Just out of interest, I have been able to control my dreams since I was a young boy. If I have been dreaming of something and I don't want it to happen I can stop it.
One recent dream I was on a boat and fell into the sea, I knew I did not want to be in the sea so I put myself back on the boat so to speak. I did not just climb back aboard I just put myself back on the boat.

HAAAAAX!

for me it doesnt work

but anything I do a lot like studying or playing a game or involved in something for many hours in a day, it does have influence in my dream and it does have relationship to it

example: if I study like 10 hours in a day or something, I will be dreaming about it, like I was still doing it, and it is not cool ...

Originally posted by tetrahedron
Hah this report is definitely true.

When I was younger and went on epic Starcraft runs (6-7 hours), I would close my eyes and see the game being played out. Ditto Call of Duty.

"Virtual reality seems to induce the same kind of processes found in transcendetal meditation."

I wouldn't go that far. Video game dreams are typically very tense, i.e. the same images of incoherent bits of the game replayed; the competitiveness of the game is mimicked in the dream (which also IMO diminished the relaxing quality of sleep). Maybe if you play the zen monk game instead of a violent one you'll have nice dreams.

Starcraft did the same thing to me, same length run as well. same call of duty ROFL. Kept feeling as though these things were still going on and I was under threat

Funny, later on, the night I first read this thread, I didn't play any games that day. Now I can almost always lucid dream, but i had a hard time that night. I was reading a book on zombies, which lead to a zombie dream. I was holed up in my home with zombies just out side, checking on line for zombie sightings. It took for ever before I could somewhat lucid dream and shut down the zombie tracking website that was actually creating the zombies. I found it odd that after reading this thread, that as someone who has been lucid dreaming since I was small, couldn't seem to gain any control. over that dream

Originally posted by iwan2ski
My Daughter who is 8 years old told me recently that she is afraid to sleep because she said her nightmares are too scary. I told her that the next time her dream gets scary that she has the power to change whats going on if she focused on it hard enough to remember its a dream and she can control it.

Rather than tell an 8 year old what she can do, I suggest using subtlety to get it into her head that she is more powerful than whatever is in her nightmares.

I had awful nightmares for years about my family chasing me down and murdering me, (sadly there was some correlation in reality,) until I mentioned them to a friend. He was surprised, and told me I was much stronger than my family, and they couldn't hurt me.

That was all he said, just that one sentence, and I didn't feel any more confident when I went to sleep that night. But that night when the nightmare came back I stood my ground and fought off the bastards.

And since then I've had no trouble with nightmares.

It was not a decision I could make consciously at that stage, but my friend's faith in me did it for me.

There is a medical branch, specialised on addiction. Many of the people working in state the idea, that most addicts actual botch their life by botching their effort to self-medicate psychic scars and injuries.

I know I suffered from nightmares, when I was a child and was happy when I achieved some control about my dream worlds.
And I love videogames. And off course I count electronic sheeps when I close my eyes after 6 hours of herding them on the monitor and my self-consciousness may not go bust for a respectable time into the dreaming phase.
Ultimately, controlled dreams are far less exciting than spontaneous dreams. Which is nice, if you keep getting eaten alive by the thing under your bed every other life, but.. well... boring in any other situation.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create." - Albert Einstein

...its amazing to think what the future generations hold in their hands, or heads.

...good read

I had an amazing oblivion based lucid dream this morning so thought I would share it here.

The dream started out in an orientation room, where I had a friend there who I knew. I realized I was dreaming and started to explain to my friend that we were in a dream.

A dream character came up and started to prepare us for the game. I told my friend that there will be many things in the dream that will appear real, but not to worry that everything is simply thought-based virtual reality.

I tell him that the character giving us an orientation isn't real, that he is part of the game and is simply getting us ready to walk out of the orientation room into the actual game.

The room was blank, maybe 20 square feet. It was slightly blue-green in color. The person looked like an Oblivion character with the spiral hair style, short and wearing leather clothing.

As we walked out of the room, we stepped onto this beautiful organic scene with trees, water and beautifully rendered sparkles of light. I touched a tree and felt all the little leaves on the branches. It felt totally real, and I turn to my friend, "Unlike a video game that has no virtual reality qualities, a dream based version of a game can render in the same manner that we can experience physical reality."

There were these seeds similar to a dandelion floating in the air and I remember getting one in my mouth. I could feel the fluffy white part absorb moisture and stick to my lip and tongue. I could feel the texture and hardness of the seed at the end. I loved how real it felt. It was perfect.

My friend and I walked over to the start of a ruin. There was a covered sewage pipe, and another enclave that had a steel door. He opened the door and found a rusty dagger, I opened the sewer door and a large Oblivion sized rat charged at me.

"Figures you get the dagger and I get the encounter!", I told my friend as I grabbed the rat by the neck as it leaped at me. I could feel the fur and the resistance of muscle and bone as I snapped it's neck and threw it against the stone ruin.

"You certainly don't get any more real then this in any video game I know", I told my friend. "I could feel the bone give way when I cracked it's neck... that was sick! Clearly the game engine in a dream is far superior to what we have in reality.".

My friend ended up having an encounter of his own, another rat came out of the enclave and he attacked it with the dagger. He was also very wowed about the detail and realism.

A blond woman walked by and said hi to us, she was wearing a long blue dress and had her hair braided into large locks. I told my friend that she was another game character and most likely would feel as real as any woman if we ever decided to get her in the bed.

He laughed and decided to explore the ruin. I watched as he crawled into the enclave which was also a fairly small tunnel for him. I crawled behind him and he ended up killing something that I could not see, until he threw it behind me.

It was some weird looking goblin like creature that had rabbit ears and teeth. I remember examining it and again it had very real texture and realism. Knowing I was still dreaming, I just went with it because the Oblivion world was so spectacularly real and fun to be in.

We entered into a large room that was a living quarter, but it ended up having modern appliances like couches, TV and other modern age decor, I was a bit disappointed because it meant the Oblivion aspect of the dream was shifting.

In stead of adventuring forth, my friend made himself at home and rolled up a big fat joint and smoked it in one puff. I laughed. We sat and talked about how real the dream was. I wondered if he was actually real or another character. If we shared the dream, that would have made it even more spectacular, but I am not about to call him and find out.

A very fun dream version of Oblivion, and knowing I was dreaming the whole time made it totally spectacular! My only regret, I had to wake up.

What a circlejerk - anything to justify wasting life away on games I guess.

Sure after playing Resident evil 4 for 9 hours the day it came out meant my dreams would be vivid and I could control them.

But they certainly weren't fun dreams

Just noticed this thread.. i recently posted a thread in the dream section asking people to explain 3 particular dreams i have had at different stages so far in my life......

for quite a few years every now and then i realise that i am dreaming and can take complete control of a dream and have some fun :-)

the thing is i do play on my PS3 a lot aswell when i have spare time mainly on a night before bed (coincidence? just a thought .)

cool never guessed that, its funny i rarely remember my dreams but when i do im in control, to a certain degree, like in the matrix, before neos been trained up lol, whenever i try something wacky like flying my subconscious takes over and i forget in next scene and either wake up or forget the rest.

My first lucid dream was when i was playing mario kart and then realised i had a mega drive, i was 14 i made jenifer aniston appear in the room and the rest was ...

Originally posted by hippomchippo
Sure after playing Resident evil 4 for 9 hours the day it came out meant my dreams would be vivid and I could control them.

But they certainly weren't fun dreams

XD mine got to the point of being fun..... now they are just kind of boring. Been playing/watching zombie themed stuff for quite a while and.... damn near every night i recall dreams, theres always a zombie one nestled in there where I'm blasting at never ending waves of them..... usually resulting in me running.... and running. Usually those dreams flash by me pretty fast these days since I haven't been trying to. I'm even writing out my own game system/story for a zombie themed game that if produced would stomp out L4D, curb stomp XD.

I really wish I was less lazy and worked on my dreaming better, the few dreams where i'm flying are so nice..... some so realistic and just beautiful, if i could make that happen at least once a week and remember it, that would be fantastic XD........ would of been able to fly up to the space ship i saw in a dream the other night.