After months of collecting and analysing a large number of gamers’ experiences, the first in a series of studies for identifying, classifying and explaining GTP has finally been published.

“Altered Visual Perception in Game Transfer Phenomena: An empirical Self-Report Study” focus particularly on visual experiences but also on body sensations related with visual video game effects.

Gamers perceived objects and environments distorted, real life objects were confused with video game elements, and images from the video games were seen in real life context.

In my previous post “Video games’ visual effects leaking into our reality” I wrote a short summary about the findings.

The article is published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. You can download a free copy until the end of March.

Abstract:

The aim of this study was to identify, classify, and explain gamers’ perceptual experiences referred to as Visual Game Transfer Phenomena (VGTP) to contribute to the understanding of the effects of post-video-game playing and encourage healthy and safe gaming. A total of 656 experiences from 483 gamers were collected from 54 online gaming forums. The findings suggest that intensive playing can result in misperceptions and visual distortions of real-life objects and environments, stereotypical visual experiences that arise from mind visualization, and pseudo-hallucinatory experiences with video game content. Gamers’ experiences can be explained by the interplay of physiological, perceptual, and cognitive mechanisms. Observation of video game features suggests that in most cases a relationship between the games’ structural characteristics, gamers’ VGTP experiences, and gamers’ playing habits appeared relevant. VGTP can occur while gaming, immediately after stopping play, or after some delay. Further VGTP characteristics and their psychosocial implications are discussed.