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On "The Trance" Mad musings of a Retro Gamer.


potatohead

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Video games are addictive. Doubt that? Look around at us, and many others like us, who just won't give it up! 'nuff said. Why are they addictive? For me, the single biggest reason comes down to the trance state that often happens on an intense gaming session.

 

The trance is a state of gaming where the gamer reaches a change in their consciousness and is able to maintain it and play the game. Thought become motion, time slows down, and every element of the game is understood and seen as one moving whole instead of just bits 'n pieces.

 

This mode I'll call it, is not unique to gaming. A DJ working the board and spinning vinyl, all while doing afternoon drive can and does experience the same kind of thing, for example.

 

I can remember the very first time this really happened to me. I was playing Asteroids. Prior to that time, I played the game and did well, but could remember where people were, sounds, and thoughts that were not part of the game activity. Those distractions diminished how I played and usually my game runs were nice, but not enduring. A similar thing happens when reading a book.

 

There is reading, thinking, imagining, then reading again. Most of the time, people reading go through that cycle in short bursts. Read a little, imagine, then think, maybe fantasize, then read again, over and over. Like many still frames in a slide show.

 

Ordinary people playing a game do this same kind of thing.

 

If one were to speed up the still frames, it becomes a movie, and if it's fast enough and clear enough, you sometimes get there! Lost in the movie, immersed and unaware of your surroundings.

 

That's the trance, and when it happened the first time, everything went away. The game actually slowed a bit, and I found that it was easy to move and shoot because I knew where every rock was, it's vector of motion and where the empty spots would form, dissolve, and form again. Mastery!

 

I played to the limit that day, not requiring another quarter for hours. When I broke away, time had passed, and I felt calm, clean, pure. It actually took a while for ordinary reality to sink back in, penetrate my conscious mind and take hold like it usually does.

 

Gaming was never, ever the same after that! Of course, I wanted to do it again and again, and did it just like everybody else did!

 

Some games do not do this. Many modern games do not do this. They've got enough "easy to use" elements, and story breaks so as to break the experience up and leave a person not immersed in the experience, should they choose to get there. I find it very difficult to quantify this. I do know it varies by person. Different people can find themselves immersed in different experiences. Some of us CAN'T do DEFENDER, for example. The latency between hand and eye is just a bit too long, meaning they just don't operate quick enough to become immersed in that particular game. There are other examples, but I just picked that one.

 

A really good one that most people can trance on, and in fact, MUST trance on, is KABOOM for the VCS. This title is simply brilliant, and so very well realized. Truth is, that game is written to take a human right to the limits of perception and action. If it were much faster, huge numbers of people wouldn't get there. If it built slower, nobody would be challenged enough to get there, and if the levels advanced more slowly, or more quickly, people would be discouraged, or reach the state only to be denied it because they didn't get there and have time for it to settle in good. Absolutely brilliant.

 

If you try this game, do it on a real VCS and on a CRT television. If you make it to the upper level and just feel yourself drifting away, unaware of anything but the game, you are there. Takes about 5 minutes of good, solid play to do. Beware though! If you do this, you will probably want to knock out a round of KABOOM! every so often, just like I do. Love it. Office problem? Personal problem? Stressed? Just KABOOM! for a half-hour, get the trance and afterword feel just great.

 

No drugs, supplements and such required either. It just works.

 

The trance is a big part of retro gaming for me. In order for it to occur, you need a game environment that is somewhat abstract. I've had it happen on more realistic games, like war simulations though. Like I said, hard to quantify. Feel free to share in the comments, if you like. I love this topic.

 

I'm posting this because of a random Atari Chat topic that flew by while discussing Jeff Minter. (I had fun guys --thanks!)

 

Jeff Minter knows the trance. He knows it, craves it, and builds his trippy graphics around achieving it. You see, with Asteroids, it was about all the motion, the bright objects, dark screen and such. With something like Tempest 2000, it's about all of that, plus the huge pixellation.

 

Many players of a Minter game complain about the bending of reality he so often loves to do. I believe part of why he does it is that he is a synthesite. Person where senses overlap and are mixed --I am one of these with sound, color and motion. Some sounds literally evoke a color, or a strong sense of movement with me that's consistent and something I don't have control over. Words on paper, when bizarre fonts are used, trigger faces and emotions and such too. I think lots of us are this way to some degree or another, and Jeff is that way to a very high degree with visuals.

 

The bending of reality, the masking of game with effects, explosions, colors and such isn't an abuse of the hardware to look cool. It's actually an intregal part of the game experience. It helps to induce the trance. One element of achieving this gaming nirvana is having the mind work hard to sort things out. That stimulation can trigger stuff that literally opens a door and once you step through, those things just go away. You can still see them, I don't mean that. It's that your awareness of the game is so acute that even a pixel or two of good information is all that is needed to carry on. The intense graphics that you normally have to see through just don't matter.

 

That is why the guy puts them in there!

 

So that's the trance state. It's a lot of fun, and extremely addictive. It's very retro too, as the limits on what the machine could do meant very abstract games more often than not, and those boil down to simple movements, rules and dynamics that can just all meld into an experience where it's simply one continuous thing. And again, the only real solid thing I can associate with it is the mind being challenged to the limits in some way. Could be speed, colors, number of objects, rules of play, world, something. The other thing that I think really mattrers is a layered approach where a person can get mastery, then add an element and continue until it's all rocking.

 

A player then will either reach that state and punch through, or not and fail --game over. This used to be how timed games were done. Now it's more of a forced thing, done with structure and other higher level game elements. The advantage of the modern method is most people being able to enjoy and complete the game where the older method often meant a set of people simply couldn't play the game due to their human limits!

 

I'm sure it's a good thing to bring games to more people, but I also often wonder if the power of the classics in this way has a lot to do with very young people continuing to play these games we love. I mark mastery of a given game, not by reaching a specific score or level, but by whether or not I reach that state and can maintain it over an extended time. Thought becomes action, and I own that game.

 

A part of me hopes so, and another part of me fears the time when I get old and maybe can't trance again, or will just have to do it with a book or some other immersive thing that my limits then will find satisfactory.

 

If I've written on this before, sorry! I didn't see it, and figured it was as good of a time as any, given the chat thread we had and the question raised.

 

What do you call this state, if you call it anything? Have you achieved it? If so, on what game did it happen first? Does it still happen? Do you crave it? Let's talk about the trance some.

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I forgot something.

 

To take the movie analogy, going faster brings us the illusion of motion and the potential for the experience to be immersive. Size matters here too. It's hard to get immersed in a small screen. Colors and detail in movies help a lot with this too. With games, particularly a lot of modern games, this is a crutch.

 

The simple idea that if we bring enough eye and ear candy to the player that they will become immersed in the game is a false one. Just thought I would put that out there, and I would love to hear thoughts on that from others here.

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