I noticed a funny thing about myself. Some habits from games followed me into real life without me even trying.
One habit came from The Last of Us.
I always check corners when I enter a room. Not because I expect danger. It just became natural after spending so many hours moving slow and paying attention to small details.
Another habit came from Skyrim.
I stop on quiet roads and look around at the sky or the trees. In the game I used to do it for calm moments. Now I do it in real life without thinking. It feels nice.
I know I am not the only one who picked up small habits like this.
What habit did a game give you?
Check for CCTV cameras
Same lol
I got that from Splinter Cell :)
Ah I see you play siege
Not at all, Metal Gear Solid
Over 1000 hours in payday 2 I do the same thing.
10 minutes in Payday 3 though right? Lol
Nope, didn't even buy it. After the god awful WW2 game beta I wasn't about to.
That's the game that I picked up the habit from, too
A surveillance camera?
‼️
lol, imagine going to cash your check and not shooting out the default cams at the local branch.
And then stand directly under them so they can’t see you
ZombiU moment
I get that reference to a game not enough people played on the console everyone hated.
I'm insane since I have it on the Wii U and then later got its PC version. I'm not that much of a fan of it but it's still an interesting little game. I'm actually doing a video on it though I don't know when I'm releasing it.
I steal everything from every room I enter and sell it or break it down for scrap, I learned it from Fallout 4.
It’s really been a lifesaver for me. When I was renovating my house I needed to add a new wall to separate the kitchen from the laundry room. I feel bad for all those suckers buying 2x4s and dry wall at Home Depot when I got the job done with two pencils and a toy car.
I throw ceramic pots around instead and look for green gems.
Exactly, Zelda taught me that you can simply walk into strangers houses in the middle of the night and smash all their ceramic dishes looking for money and they'll just say hi. Important life skill, that one.
Only green? Gotta find them reds man, that's the big money.
That is true. Every appliance that I dispose of, I strip it of screws and wire
Abiotic Factor gave me a weird trigger reaction any time I saw certain office supplies like staplers, fire extinguishers, rubber bands, a few other things for a while after I finished playing through it a few times. My mind would immediately identify these things as something I should consider grabbing. Always stopped myself lol but I did get rather annoying that I was seeing these random things as “resources” for no reason.
For a while when I was playing Katamari Damacy heavily I caught myself eyeing mailboxes while driving around, wondering if I had enough mass to roll them up yet. Kinda had to stop playing that game.
Never put that soundtrack on in the car.
Honestly, the one humble superpower I would want is being able to sell anything, to any vendor irl.
"Is this OK, or Cancel?"
Ah yes the game that taught me how properly administer all medicines: smash into sternum.
Do you also leave large amounts of dirt, trash, and panels of corrugated steel lying around your living space even though you've been living there for 20+ years?
lmao
I was gonna guess Witcher 3 but Fallout works too.
Unironically and not jokingly, looking up. Videogames taught me to look up when I walk into/out of a room. It’s wild how much is going on ABOVE your line of sight on a daily.
So where i work at (jimmyjohns) we have our straws and lids above the soda dispenser just slightly above eye level... the amount of people everyday asking where they are, is not small...
It’s crazy. You’d be amazed how much cool shit is going on on the sides of skyscrapers on a near daily basis in a lot of cities. Construction/window cleaners/ people literally repelling down. All kinds of cool stuff
If ever something can't be found in a kitchen, its either above eye level or was put away in the wrong spot
I worked at Chili's for like a year before i realized we had kitchen timers, because they were above my line of sight and obscured by my hat and nobody ever used them
Looking down (thanks skyrim) helped tons while working on a ship and other dangerous places
Now I just find money and lost things like airpods every now and then
Sure I could see beautiful things if I look up
But down? Its real free estate
I've always been tall and averse to eye contact, so my natural eyeline is a lot lower than it seems. I'm always seeing neat stuff on the ground when there's nothing to distract me. There's a lot of smaller wildlife around here that people miss.
There's an NPC in the original FFVII that you may relate to. Always talking about how useful it is to look down...
Then the Sector VII Plate fell.
Now he looks up.
I’m not sure if you’ve played The Last of Us part 2, but one character makes a comment about how their enemies never look up. I’m being vague on purpose to avoid spoilers
I periodically check all 3 mirrors while driving, like once every 5-10 seconds.
I call it checking the minimap.
Even if I’m not changing lanes or anything, I also think living in LA and having seen hundreds of crazy drivers, I feel like I need to be on my wits 24/7 (wasn’t born/raised here).
I’ve been working in facility maintenance for about a year now, and I’ve definitely started looking up a lot more since I started this job.
I recently watched a video about the game Anachronox, and there is one scene that jokes about this. You meet an information broker who is a flying insectoid alien. At one point, your character asks how he manages to get a seemingly impossible amount of info, and he says something to the effect of “You won’t believe how rarely people look up.”
If you look up during the game, you can basically see him flying around and eavesdropping.
I once won a game of hide and seek just by clinging onto a beam ~10ft (~3m) off the ground. I was ludicrously easy to see if you just glanced up, but nobody did.
I don't do this in real life, but I'm a movie buff, so I'm always watching the top of the screen in movies. Movies used to show ceilings all the time (back in like the 50's to 70's...), but now you rarely see them unless there's a monster or something on them. I'm always looking for snatches of ceiling.
Pikmin taught me how to multitask more efficiently., keeping track of multiple things going on at once and carefully turning your attention to each appropriately. It's "Start the laundry while lunch is in the microwave'
Queue forgetting lunch and finding it in the microwave hours later.
Better than finding lunch in the washer and the laundry in the microwave
Dandori!
When I sit at a computer my hands naturally come to rest on the mouse and ASD keys.
Don't forget to rest your pinky over Shift!
Of course!
And your thumb on space
It has permanently affected how I type. In school we were taught to rest on the little bumps and move from there, but it feels wrong now.
Qwer for me....
I find myself dodge rolling basically everywhere I go now.
Into a bunch of pots.
HAP! HAAAA! HAWP! HAAA!
I don't speak a word to anybody and still get the girl of my dreams
It's faster than walking!
Time to roll up the stairs!
Straight into every wall in case there is a fake wall
Thats to much for me. I like to go for the backwards run or side hopps.
I used to play a lot of Payday 2. I had developed a habit of immediatly taking note of every security camera when entering a store or other public building.
I also point to a police officer multiple times with my index finger and shout Guard!
I point at security guards and yell "GUARD!" whenever I see one.
Every time I see an armored truck I always say to myself “GET THE DRILL”
Reload after shooting only one bullet
Hard habit to break when starting Helldivers 2
HD2 taught me never to reload
Don’t have to rack your gun if you reload with at one in the chamber. Way faster!
Dont have to reload if you die every clip
For managed democracy!
I didn't break that habit. I just switched to lasers.
Tarkov will break this habit
Any love for SWAT 4?
Reload, chamber, reload to get the +1
The trick is that you only load a round or two in your gun. That way, you satisfy both groups by only reloading when empty and reloading after a couple of shots.
Not really a habit, but I noticed that driving while using a GPS is a lot easier for me than non-gamers because it’s just the in-game minimap brought to life. I was wondering why my father needed triple checks to see what road he was going to take, then it clicked! Gaming gave us the habit of constantly and efficiently checking a small map.
My non-gaming wife is the same way. I used to think there was just something profoundly wrong with her because of how bad she is at using maps and GPS and such, but it eventually clicked that I've just been doing that my whole life, and she didn't even have a smartphone until after we were married.
CONSTANTLY. LOOKING. UP. do you know, just how much STUFF is hidden away above you in games?
I’m a short person who used to work at a grocery store. Genuinely embarrassing how often I’d ask for my coworkers’ help finding something that was in plain sight on the top shelf.
small mirror on a stick?
haha that would’ve been smart. i was fully capable of seeing everything i needed to, i’d just straight up forget to look up
Routing. I’ll literally take 20 seconds before doing a set of actions to map the optimal path to do things in order, stacking things and double purposing certain actions. Makes me feel like I’m speedrunning chores
I speed run self checkouts
I quick-slide instead of walking.
Better yet, slide cancel.Frame advantage 👍🏽
Wavedashing through the mall
Teabag everyone I defeat.
“I got the promotion Bob! Suck it”
Same here. I have been kicked out of most of the recreational sports leagues in town. Though I can still play pickleball because that crowd seems to enjoy me teabagging their wives.
Halo veteran?
I press my body against every wall of every room I enter
I don’t fuck with chickens
I did that once and for the next couple of years everyone called me "chicken chaser"
Could be worse, they could call you Arseface
Better than clucker plucker. Or pecker pecker
I tried playing Skyrim one time. I fucked up a chicken the first chance I got, then I got beat to death...quit right there and never tried again. I spent so long on character creation to just quit. 😂
Sekiro, Zelda, or both?
Skyrim?
That would be foul
Or maybe it would be fowl
It would be cucco
I learnt to save money from playing games, mostly Skyrim. Saving up to get a house on Skyrim took me ages but the payoff was worth it. I have carried that on since being a child. I’m a saver not a spender. I set milestones just like I did in the game, when I reach the milestone I treat myself to something I’ve wanted for a while. Then save until I meet the next one. Rinse an repeat
I do that too! Not Skyrim (haven't played it yet) but I also save money by making arbitrary milestones: every thousand I reach, I try to stay on it for as long as possible (necessary expenses like lease, water, heating, yadda yadda, are paid asap). Set aside a pretty nice chunk of change after a year and a half tbh.
I honestly think that Animal Crossing has played a big part in my frugality - i learned how to save and only get the stuff I really wanted.
Hoard potions.
Not my potions. They are too strong for you...
I’ll take your strongest potion, potion seller.
You can't handle my potions.
Potion seller, enough of these games. I am going into battle, and I need your strongest potions.
Yea dude I got an assortment of poisons in the cabinet in my basement, never gonna use them but if I have to I’ll fucking do it
You joke, but how many prescription bottles do you have of meds you’re hanging onto just in case?
I’ll just say, your assertion that I’m joking may be incorrect
I always toss a flash bang into a room before entering.
I always yell “FLASH OUT!!!!” whenever I enter a room.
Do you pre-fire around the corner? That's also key.
I sometimes think I have to go and "equip" my clothes, I've not said it out loud yet, but I think it a lot.
Haha this one is stupid. I love it lol, will definitely say this to my wife now
I read any and all scraps of paper I find lying around in peoples houses. Best way to get their lore and world building.
Seeing that a game taught you to be present in nature speaks to how much has changed.
Games have made me better at managing systems of all kinds, although most of it I haven't made practical or monetized, haha
A game taught him how to “touch grass”, in a sense. Good for him
Yea, exactly- when I first read it I was ready to be snarky but the more I thought about it the cooler it seemed to me. I also grew up in the 80's so the thought that graphics can mimic reality enough to do this is still kinda of wild to me, lol
I have a bow and I’ve never been a good archer owing to a lack of practice and bad advice when I first started. The lack of an aiming reticule in Kingdom Come Deliverance taught me to aim a little better in real life. I can now hit the general vicinity of my target rather than the forest 20 feet behind it.
There is a video of a Ukrainian soldier saying that he's great with an underbarrel grenade launcher because he learned it from Stalker.
In a similar vein I whistle Henry's wee tune when working the forge to keep time
I flip and rotate items as I pack them away until the box is full, thanks to Tetris.
Looting the bodies.
I break every pot I see
I assume you dodge roll into the pots.
Double jump.
Every waterfall in real life i look behind for a treasure chest
You don't want to stand too close when I find a section of brick wall, coloured slightly differently than the rest.
Crafting leather satchels from small animal hides.
Lmfao so im not the only one that does the Skyrim world scan
I started journaling whenever something eventful happens because I was inspired by Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2.
The way he documents people, places, and stuff he did inspired to me remember and reflect on my own life kinda in a similar way.
This one’s nice. Good for you dude. Way to be mindful
Trying to knock people of motorcycles as they ride by so I can steal them if i didnt notice them approaching. Played wwwaaayyy to much GTA San Andreas one summer. Luckily all I would do was kind of twitch my hands like I was hitting the buttons on a controller, but it got me some wierd looks and my friends would laugh at me when I explained😆
I loot all the bodies that I kill, and sell everything as soon as I can.
In the first Soldier of Fortune FPS the equip animation for the MAC-10 was that it would get tossed upwards and then grabbed with the right hand in the air. That's how I equip everything I pick up from below shoulder level. Power tools, water bottles, blocks of cheese. Broke a shitload of stuff fumbling that too, but I feel it has made me a tiny bit more coordinated over the years.
Also, navigating with maps. Especially now that we have maps with GPS widely available, automap everywhere! Although blindly bee-lining toward the quest marker tends to have shitty consequences in real life, from people looking at me funny as I hug the walls of their property in search of a shortcut, to nearly losing my driver's license. Yeah, automap is awesome, but gotta follow reasonable paths in real life. It's not like there's scripted encounters waiting to happen there on the most obvious paths.
ever since playing Minecraft I've become so wasteful...
every time I do something with tools I make wooden ones and use them like 3 times before making stone ones...
got a basement full of wooden tools..
maybe I should start burning them now that its cold
When i stub my toe i instinctively shout "aaarrrgh, medic!", like the allied medic sfx from Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Edit: Also because of Quake, i use Rocket Launchers to Rocket Jump myself around the environment instead of blow things up.
And because of Left 4 Dead... when i scroll a mouse wheel down, i jump forward at an increasingly faster rate of speed. Which makes browsing online a complete nightmare.
Edit 2: ... Worth mentioning while I'm at it... because of Counter Strike or perhaps Left 4 Dead, i climb ladders at an incredibly fast rate when i look up at an angle. I don't know why that is, but it's handy when escaping the asylum.
I do exactly this but RTCW Axis medic lol
I learned precise musical timing from playing osu!
I've been drumming to some degree for 15 years now, but just to songs I like, I never really took lessons or anything. I also never used a metronome to make all the notes spaced tightly. In 2020 I played osu, and its timing window is way tighter than anything I've played before. Once I got to the point I could full combo OD 10 (the tightest regular timing window), it like fundamentally tightened my mental sense of timing. I think this happened cuz I was so bad at timing when I started and had to improve my perception of mistiming so much just to play moderately difficult maps. That translated seamlessly into my drumming precision
I’m quick saving constantly.
When I get in the car, when I open a door.
Just always be quicksavin
“I heard of this thing from video games called stopping and smelling the roses and I tried it rl it’s crazy. “
A simulation of nature inspired him to experience reality
Maybe simulation theory IS real
I played FFXI for many years. I credit that game for my ability to read a map. A lot of the times in the deeper areas of the game, you didn’t have a map unless you put in a ton of effort to get it. So you’d be looking at online maps and using those plus the environment to figure out where you are. It has definitely translated to real life map use.
I beat up dumpsters for food. It'll actually heal you from stab wounds.
I work at an airport so general awareness of my surroundings helps me every day. I think I’m safer than most because I’m always trying to avoid taking unnecessary damage.
This is gonna age me so hard…
Sierra Games taught me to Save Early, Save Often. I hit ctrl+S every two minutes or so; it’s reflex at this point. I’ve never once lost more than a sentence or two of my work.
I smash every piece of pottery I come across.
I steal a new car every time I have to go somewhere
I have an idle animation. When I'm just standing there, I look around like Diddy Kong from DKC2. I also do something similar to Link from OoT, where I check my shoes and look around a bit.
RDR2 taught me to be okay taking things slow and enjoying the moment.
NieR taught me that any piece of media can subvert my expectations in unbelievable ways.
The rogue like genre taught me that it's okay to fail when trying to do something because I will have learned something and probably do it better next time.
Make a ! sound when i hop into boxes
I romance everything.
Reading Maps! Its a skill thats pretty easily transferrable, esp if you consider the digital maps on phones are basically the same as minimaps in games
Teabagging noobs all day.
If I need to move past someone in a narrow hallway, I'll press my back against the wall like in Metal Gear Solid, and move along the wall.
I get distracted and avoid the main quest.
I always catch myself at work with my hands on the WASD keys by default
Min-maxing life
Main habit came from Bioshock infinite, Booker Dewitt the way he punches the elevator buttons in something I tend to do when I’m alone and calling an elevator cab.
Whenever I sit down at a computer, literally any computer.. my left had automatically goes to WASD on the keyboard. I find myself doing it everyday at work lol
Trying to optimize the order in which I do things.
Has probably saved me dozens of seconds over the years.
Saving before important decisions.
Looting every corpse I come across
Not a game, but I started stapling documents in a 45-degree angle after watching Aggretsuko, and thought "Huh, that makes so much sense"
Another one was from Fairly Odd Parents, where they said to knock and wait 5 seconds before entering a bathroom. It made sense, and it stuck with me.
I'm sure there are others but I may be doing them without realizing where they're from.
I think what you're describing (particularly the TLOU one) may be tangentially related to the tetris effect, but thoroughly assimilated.
Just don't start shooting hookers to get your money back.
My habit I get from gaming is spending too much time at inventory management as opposed to having fun.
Dive roll cancelling after sliding 🤣
After playing RuneScape for so long, I now embrace long grinds IRL and try to enjoy the journey more. Not everything needs to be a race. consistency is what really matters.
Gotta hit the apex in corners and throttle out
I unironically do this when walking or using a shopping trolley at the supermarket.
The world is my race track.
Look up
Randomly shout “Snake… SNAAAAAAKE!!!”
Fast travelling has been a real life changer.
Climb every yellow ledge that I see
Break pots
"Would you kindly..." Has become my go-to polite way to ask for anything and nobody has called me on it in nearly 20 years.
I look for a mini map in the corner of screens sometimes
I grew up on classic adventure games and have a habit of picking up odd bits and bobs just in case they might be useful. And my bag is usually stocked with little tools, pocket knife, nail clippers, rubber bands, USB cables, etc.
Which I do, on occasion, refer to as "my inventory."
I only buy something if I will be left with money equal to at least the item's cost. In other words, I must have at least double the amount of money that something costs before I buy it.
At one point I was playing F1 too much, I once moved my right thumb down while driving my actual car to look behind me when I realized what I did
You actually might be the only one
Respawn at last checkpoint after death.
I can't stop selling giant toes to barkeeps
You know the saying "gamers never look up" I memed about that enough playing games that I also started doing it more irl. There are some interesting ceilings around
Make sure I use iframes when dodge rolling oncoming traffic.
I always kill sex workers when I'm done so I can get my money back. Learned it playing Vice City at 13, and I've used it since day 1. When used thoughtfully, the same concept can be applied to many aspects of life.
When I first got to play Super Mario Bros on my m8's NES after school, on the walk home I pretended all the water/gas covers on the pavement where koopas... I did this for the rest of my childhood 👀
Quick saving
For a fair amount of time after playing Mirror's Edge as a kid, I hit elevator buttons with the side of my fist like the protag of the game does because I thought it looked cool, haha!
I check for treasure behind every waterfall I come across.
I have an entire room filled with wheels of cheese
You know that thing where you're going down a stairwell and at each floor, rather than turning the correct direction, you rotate other way and 180 the turn? Yea if no one is around.. 👍
Whenever I put on leather boots, I tap my toes on the ground like Link does in Ocarina of time. Tap, tap, pause, tap, tap, tap.
GTA 4: When rushing down stairs slighty angle your feet to the side. Niko does that too and it feels both safer and faster.
I started making my bed after doing it in life is strange 🥹
I have accidentally referred to "ingredients" as "mats" on several occasions.
Edit to add: Also just remembered the one time I saw a pond and my initial thought was wondering what the level requirement was to fish there.