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Brainwashing video games


BettyTheYeti

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Years ago (the 90s) there was an story going around about certain video games that would, after being played repeatedly, would start to have psychological effects on the gamers.

This was a widely believed rumour in this country, even going as far as making the national news. Parents were up in arms about the "brain washing", despite the fact that after repeated complaints the police found no evidence of this. The culprits was supposed to be the Sega Master System, and the number one game rumoured to get inside you head was none other that Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The story went that it wasn't the flashing screen that would get to you, but the endless looping music.

Effects were supposed to range from people "losing time" in a trance-like state, to people seeing apparitions, to (supposedly) numerous people all waking bolt upright at precisely 1:23 am every night.

Personally, at the time I thought with a game as popular as that everyone would know someone affected by this, but it was always "a friend of a friend". I put it all down to hysteria on the parents part!

Thoughts on this occurrence? And others like it? I remember ready about a game called Polybius that went along similar lines. Maybe whatever they were up to worked, and that's why everyone owns PS3s and Xbox360s.

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Whatever. I don't listen to garbage like that. The people who come up with this manure are often the same ones who screech that every line and squiggle is an Illuminati symbol.

None of this can affect you if you do not buy into their fear mongering.

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in 1982 i worked in the marketing division of a small publishing companys , graghic arts department .

when the work got slow , we very often would cut computer listings into seprate pages, and enter all the data on the pages into other data bases.

i asked what we were doing? and was told...

" you give me any set of qualitys ... and in 30 seconds , i can give you a list of people who have thse qualitys.

i can give you there street address , phone numbers , what their home is worth , what their monthly bills are...

any detail or aspect of their life ... "

in the 1980's this was common place in advertising ... we call them mailing lists .

in the 1970's supermarkets spent million of man hours looking at how people moved thru their stores .

nothing in a super market is done by accident ... ( may be in europe it is )... every thing is designed to get people to leave dollors in side the store .

in 1990's flicker rates were used to help people sit thru long movies... it helpped in bladder control .

they have used low freq noise to calm people... the color salmon pink is used in prisons to reduce violance with the side effect of homosexual behavior that is known to be residual .

in the 1700's the british crown passed laws makeing rum ratio's a seamans right.. to calm frictions aboard ship .

in 2000' american serviceman are regualarly give drugs to calm them down and help them make it thru their stressful day... these drugs have known residual side effects .

to suggest that vidio game marketing is not active in making their products addictyive.... is comical in the abserd.

OF COURSE THEY ARE!

Durrrr!

if you do not beleive they are not activly selling political massages and product specific advertising with in every game you touch.... your living in a frigging dream world ...

the only game makers that are not doing this activly... are the babys who are just getting started.

only because they have not learned how much money is involved .

of course this is going on... do you for one moment think that advertising is suddenly going to grow a halo and sprout wings ? residual advertising in movies and T.V. series has never been more than a fractional income stream ... of more than a few hundred million dollors ... but its off the books , and quiet money that no one reports or sees .

in vidio gamers... it can be the diffrence between the people at the top making minimum wage and bank .

the talent very likly will never see this , or even know that it happens...

the people who do this do not talk about how it is done or when it is done...

no one wins if it gets exposed... so it is not exposed ... does it happen.... does 3:09 happen ( twice a day! every day... like clock work)

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people "losing time" in a trance-like state

Anyone who has either played a video game they were really into or saw someone else do it has probably experienced this: not on some psychological fugue level, but just "gee. where did the time go?"

I'm not saying all this stuff is true at all, but I think any continuous or looped input experienced for multiple hours - sometimes the majority of waking hours - every day has some affect on people.

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Without any concrete proof, those are just baseless allegations.

like seeing coke , Dr Pepper , or pepsi in movies and t.v. series ... R.J.R renolds spends a good peice of change on advertising... where is that money going?

frankly speaking, finding it is not as easy . mind control in vidio games is not complex... but it is there.

i should add that books have low level advertising in it.

CTB mcGrawhill , the single largest student testing publisher in the world has guidelines

about graphic content in their tests... so meny black people , so meny hispanic , wheel chair or handi capped .... no tobaco products of any kind ( no cigars , no pipes , no cigaretes ) .

police will be taller than every one near them...

ctb McGrawhill writes the rules in texas.... and texas writes the rules for the united states... and the united states writes the rules for the world ...

... and the rule book is all about political correctness.... and subliminal massage

Edited by onereaderone
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frankly speaking, finding it is not as easy . mind control in vidio games is not complex... but it is there.

Do you have any evidence of this?
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I know movie theaters or at least one movie theater would flash popcorn on the screen to fast for people top be aware, but the subconscious noticed. And popcorn sales went up. But then people found out about this and the public flipped out so the government made laws making it illegal.

Just my random tidbit of knowledge. :su

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I think brainwashing with video games is kind of the nature of the beast. BUY MORE VIDEO GAMES......

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I know movie theaters or at least one movie theater would flash popcorn on the screen to fast for people top be aware, but the subconscious noticed. And popcorn sales went up. But then people found out about this and the public flipped out so the government made laws making it illegal.

Just my random tidbit of knowledge. :su

I read that later studies found this doesn't work and that the original study had serious flaws. I will try and find it later if I get time.

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I read that later studies found this doesn't work and that the original study had serious flaws. I will try and find it later if I get time.

Thanks if you do. I'd be interested in reading a updated study about it

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It just so happens that I am an expert at Sonic the Hedgehog 2

The game is fine, there is nothing wrong with it, there are no side effects.

now excuse me while i go grab these 50 rings so i can enter the code and turn into SUper SKeptic

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Really that game? I would think from Sega they would get angry

about the SplatterHouse games...

those were full of evil and demonic characters and music..

Sonic 1 and 2 were fun.. and probably the most innocent games for Sega....

I'd say Splatterhouse 2 and 3 on Sega were much worse !

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Splatter house was just silly pandering to a demographic. Now, GTA 5? That I could see, I know I've lost hours to it/

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Splatter house was just silly pandering to a demographic. Now, GTA 5? That I could see, I know I've lost hours to it/

On the other hand, GTA5 is believed to be the most expensive video game ever developed and will keep gamers occupied for much longer without buying other games for much longer than AAA titles that cost less to develop but cost the gamer the same cost and keep him occupied for less time before he goes out and splashes out $50 for a new game. Why sell gamers a $50 game every 3-5 years (like for example the newest Elder Scrolls or GTA games) which costs a fortune (Skyrim is believed to have cost $100+ million to develop and market and GTA5 is reckoned to have cost twice that) when you could be like EA and push out games much more frequently for the same selling price of $50 that cost a fraction of the time and budget to develop (like the next NHL or FIFA title) and where each game is an iterative improvement or change on the previous one?

I understand Rockstar's and Bethesda's goal to produce epic games that sell by the bucketload (I love the GTA and Elder Scrolls series) but given the costs to develop them and the time between major titles, it's obvious that psychological tricks to addict people to their product isn't their strategy. They let the scope and quality of their games (which justifies their budgets) do the talking.

Not to say that no games companies are involved in such tactics, but the games that are actually addictive the keep you immersed in them for months or even years before you buy the next title in the series are a bad example.

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IMO any game that has the playing chasing gold coins or bag's of "$" has a physiological effect that re-enforces want and desire for money.. It's a form of brainwashing in the sense that it conditions players to want something they can grasp with both hands in the real world.

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I think the societal want for money is something that existed long before video games.

It's the basic rising hero story used in almost everything.

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  • 2 weeks later...

IMO any game that has the playing chasing gold coins or bag's of "$" has a physiological effect that re-enforces want and desire for money.. It's a form of brainwashing in the sense that it conditions players to want something they can grasp with both hands in the real world.

but with sonic... the rings mainly gave him life.. in the respect that if he had none he would die, but if he had some he would just loose the rings and have to grab them again.

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Obviously before the invention of video games, no one had any desire of money or gold.

Edited by Rlyeh
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It is easy thing to implement some kind of 'trick' into a video game. What can infulence our subconscious mind?

Little suggestions, the ones that we arent even aware of but they 'find the way' to our subconscious mind.

If someone can proove that its impossible to infulence human subconscious - then i will say its impossible to have mind control. Joseph Murphy have few writings that really explain this ' mind tricks ' and the power of subconscious mind. As someone mention here, popcorn and cinema - small thing done but that did make people buy them popcorns :)

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Subconscious influence has been shown to be an ineffective tool for mind control though.

Product placements are a less expensive, more clean method for it

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  • 2 weeks later...

Years ago (the 90s) there was an story going around about certain video games that would, after being played repeatedly, would start to have psychological effects on the gamers.

This was a widely believed rumour in this country, even going as far as making the national news. Parents were up in arms about the "brain washing", despite the fact that after repeated complaints the police found no evidence of this. The culprits was supposed to be the Sega Master System, and the number one game rumoured to get inside you head was none other that Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The story went that it wasn't the flashing screen that would get to you, but the endless looping music.

Effects were supposed to range from people "losing time" in a trance-like state, to people seeing apparitions, to (supposedly) numerous people all waking bolt upright at precisely 1:23 am every night.

Personally, at the time I thought with a game as popular as that everyone would know someone affected by this, but it was always "a friend of a friend". I put it all down to hysteria on the parents part!

Thoughts on this occurrence? And others like it? I remember ready about a game called Polybius that went along similar lines. Maybe whatever they were up to worked, and that's why everyone owns PS3s and Xbox360s.

As far as I can tell, there is no other information anywhere on the internet regarding Sonic the Hedgehog 2, or any other Sega Master System game "brainwashing" people. I find it hard to believe a "widely believed rumour" that made national news would not be talked about online.

As for Polybius, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that this game ever existed.

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