Have you ever experienced dreams strongly inspired by a video game you recently played? There’s a scientific explanation for why this happens!

I can’t count how many times I’ve played a strategy or survival game, only to relive the experience all night long. Sometimes these dreams were stressful, while others were relaxing, but they always revolved around the theme of the game I had just played. As it turns out, it’s a fairly common phenomenon, linked to how invested we are in our favorite video games! So if you’re wondering why your dreams are so strongly influenced by your recent digital adventures, here’s the explanation.

Tetris Effect

While many gamers intuitively understand that deep involvement in a game can cause elements of it to appear in dreams, they don’t fully understand why this happens. This phenomenon is called the Tetris Effect – a psychological phenomenon in which a person, after prolonged mental activity (like playing Tetris for hours), begins to perceive elements of that experience in situations not directly linked to the source.

Simple mobile games, especially puzzle games, can be an excellent medium for this phenomenon. I sometimes enjoy relaxing before bed with puzzle games, where you match letters to create as many words as possible. After doing so for a while, I noticed that I try to solve these word challenges even when I’m no longer playing the game – for example, during the hypnagogia stage (when a person switches from a state of wakefulness to sleep). However, I somehow don’t dream about mobile games at night, so it seems this phenomenon requires a bit more involvement in the game. Or maybe more time?

Dreams and Video Games

As one player shares on Reddit, “This only happens to me when I get really into a game/play it all the time. I remember when Fire Emblem Awakening came out, I was having dreams about being in battle as a tactician lol.” Another says, “I’ve been playing Bloodborne for the last two weeks and every night, I dream about being stuck in that world.” Isn’t this intriguing?

According to research, the presence of video games in dreams is associated with pre-sleep stimulation. And although the duration and involvement in such stimulus exposure are still not thoroughly investigated, we can learn that “engaging with moving visual media (e.g., films, video games, virtual tasks) has moderate effects on dream content, including on the incorporation of media-related elements into dreams.”

According to Jayne Gackenbach and colleagues, “If you are in an artificial reality for hours a day, is it any surprise that you recognize something similar when you are in another one at night?” As we can read in their paper, “the bizarreness in gamers’ dreams may be due to gamers’ creativity and a history of media use in the form of gaming and not due to day before media use.” Moreover, Gackenbach notes that gamers have more control over their dreams than non-gamers or casual players. As if that weren’t enough, some gamers can use familiar gameplay features to wake up from nightmares.

Gaming and Lucid Dreaming

Players’ opinions confirm that it is indeed possible to switch to lucid dreaming to get rid of nightmares. As Reddit user spongey1865 says, “Apparently, lucid dreaming is more common now because of video games. People are used to manipulating their surroundings outside of our normal reality.” Another shares that “whenever my dreams get scary, like when monsters start trying to est me, I can literally just open the same menu from COD BO1 and select ‘leave game’ and I just do out and wake up.”

According to The Lucid Guide, “the correlation between gaming and lucid dreaming is not simply based on playing the games, but is more about how you play.” In simpler terms, acquiring such power may require not only the will to win, but also complete immersion in the game. While this topic still requires further research, it’s clear at this point that video games can significantly influence one’s dreams.

Conclusion

We already know that video games help develop problem-solving skills, creativity, critical thinking, coordination, and memory. As it turns out, gamers can use some of these abilities during sleep. Sometimes it’s just to experience more bizarre dreams, other times to escape nightmares – but both are closely linked to pre-sleep stimulation and immersion in gameplay. And while that’s still a pretty mysterious area of human life (mainly because gaming is still relatively young and researchers need more time to explore the topic), it’s fascinating that we, as gamers, can experience this phenomenon firsthand.

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