Yeti Corner: I have a disease

I have suffered from a gaming related disease.  I bet you have too.

Tetris Syndrome.

Maybe you’ve heard of Stockholm Syndrome.  Tetris Syndrome is similar, but the captor is a video game and the hostage is your brain.

Tetris Syndrome, as the name implies, is based on the game Tetris.  The premise is that you will start to see Tetris all around you as you play more of the game.  You start mentally piecing objects into space to form blocks or lines.  The syndrome can also manifest in your dreaming and reverie.

(Credit to The Perry Bible Fellowship comic!)

Thing is, Tetris Syndrome applies to many more games than just that seminal puzzler that we grew up with.  I’ve succumbed to Tetris Syndrome after playing many games.

My puzzle game in college was Snood.  It’s ridiculous.  The purpose is to shoot these weirdly geometric, colorful faces at other weirdly geometric, colorful faces to make combinations of three or more.  It’s a pretty standard puzzler based on angles, ricochets, and a lot of luck.

My favorite part of Snood was the puzzle mode.  You could play random levels, but I like the strategy in solving a problem that another human being derived.  There were several levels (maybe fifty) that progressively got more difficult.  To say I was addicted would be an understatement.

My first year of college consisted of lots of video games and very little college.  Amazingly my day job now is as a college professor.  Anywho, my roommate was my best friend from high school whom I’d played video games with since third grade.  We played some multiplayer stuff in college, but we were both RPG fanatics, so most of our gaming was single player.  This meant that about half of the time we were playing a game, I was actually playing Snood while watching him play.

I dreamt about Snood on multiple occasions.  I did not drink alcohol in college (what?!?) and have never tried drugs.  But I had some super trippy dreams about purple and orange faces flying about.  I literally solved puzzles in my sleep and was exhilarated when my dream solutions worked in real life.

I’ve had similar experiences with the games Collapse and Peggle, a recent personal favorite as listeners of the Gaming Uncensored podcast know.

I’ve also experienced Grand Theft Auto Syndrome^TM (<— That’s my trademark.  I just claimed it.  Eat it Rockstar!)  GTA Syndrome^TM is not the sudden desire to pick up a hooker, hijack an airplane, or run over a cop.  At least not for me – to each his own I suppose.

GTA Syndrome^TM for me is the sudden urge to drive recklessly the first time I sit down in a vehicle after playing GTA.

My aforementioned college roommate, Nathan, once busted up the axle on his truck while suffering from a particularly strong case of GTA Syndrome^TM.  And for only $3 a day you can help fund research so that other trucks will not needlessly be abused as a result of the dangerous disease… I digress.

The most recent case of Tetris Syndrome I suffered came after playing Metal Gear Solid 5.  It was bizarre.  It was nothing as exciting as wanting to snipe random people with a tranquilizer gun or hide in a cardboard box to avoid detection by my cat.  My overwhelming urge came every time I saw a shipping container.  You know, those big ones on trains or cargo ships.  In MGSV, you are rewarded with resources for fultoning any shipping containers you find.  For about a week, every time I passed a shipping container while driving, my first urge was to slam on the brakes, jump out of the vehicle, and slap a fulton on that thing.

So next time you need to move, spend a few weeks binging on Tetris beforehand.  Your brain will be primed to fit all of your belongings strategically into that moving truck that is obviously a size smaller than you should have rented.  Just be prepared for those blocks to haunt your dreams. 

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