Is Guitar Hero Making Me Crazy?
That is not a rhetorical question.
Ever since I strapped 16 inches of plastic around my chest, I haven’t been the same. At first I just humming some horrendous 70’s rock anthem that I had no idea where I picked up.
At night, when I closed my eyes, I seemed to be riding a colorful rollercoaster.
The worst part, however, came when I looked away from the TV after playing. The entire room was drifting up – or down – I’m really not sure. All I know is that it moves.
I can trace all of these symptoms to one grand event: My purchase of Guitar Hero 3 for Wii.
What can I say? The game is great. Despite mountains of hype, it’s managed to exceed my (always tempered) expectations.
But why did no one warn me about the side effects?
From a cough drop to a tissue, I can’t seem to buy anything these days that isn’t labeled with a list of warnings. And frighteningly, many of these are nowhere as addictive as GH3.
WARNING: If you play Guitar Hero you may randomly break into Foghat’s “Slow Ride.”
But it’s not the Tetris-like addictiveness that concerns me, it’s my darn eyes. I did a quick Yahoo! Answers search and am pleased to see that I am not alone, After playing two or three times, quite a few people seem to experience a total eye freak out when they look away from the screen. After a very long 10 seconds, your eyes appear to refocus and the room once again is the way it should be – still.
A harmless optical illusion or serious permanent damage?
Will an optometrist, neurologist or orderly please speak up? Cause I will not perform my encore until I get some facts.
See, it’s all fun and games until the Jack of All Blogs loses an eye. And while Guitar Hero is almost worth it, Foghat certainly ain’t.
I totally agree, I too have looked down at the coffee table during a GHIII session and found everything floating away from me. Even the loading screen doesn’t seem to sit still.
If someone could answer the question in regards to permanent damage, that would be great! until then … slow ride, take it easy …
Viginator said this on January 24, 2008 11:18 pm
I’m a grad student in psychology. If I remember correctly, the basic reason for this is that there are parts of your brain responsible for detecting motion. When you look at notes moving down the screen for a long time, the balance between the parts of your brain responsible for downward motion and the parts responsible for upward motion gets messed up. So when you look away, the upward motion neurons are firing more than the downward motion neurons, and everything looks like it’s going up.
I may have some details wrong, but that’s the idea.
It’s similar to how when you look at something really bright, you see a black dot in your vision when you look away. The eyes and brain have opposite processes going on, and the balance between them can get disturbed so that after seeing one thing for a while, you see the opposite thing when the first thing is gone.
Luckily it’s not permanent, and perfectly normal.
Phronk said this on January 24, 2008 11:50 pm
i think it is perminent or some sort of eye discomfort!
my eyes have been sore and i cant look at computer screen for long periods of time now, also a headacke every day since playing lots of guitar hero3!
im going to go to the optition to see how my eyes are!
hope everyones well!
matt framps said this on September 27, 2008 2:45 am