Comments on: To Sleep, Perchance To Game

By: Taillefer

Taillefer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:16:16 +0000

No. The world still moves around you, things happen, new events, new experiences, your friends and family grows. You’d miss out on anything that happened the last 1/3rd of your life. A third of your life is potentially a few decades. Plus, I sleep less than 8 hours. :P

By: skalpadda

skalpadda — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:06:30 +0000

Dreams and sleep improving performance has been pretty obvious to me for a long time. I play the classical guitar and whenever I learn something difficult or something with new techniques I haven’t used before I absolutely cannot play it comfortably until I’ve had a good night’s sleep. the improvement and sense of comfort with something new is so definite that it’s pretty obvious that some sort of learning or process of getting familiar with techniques is taking place while I sleep and dream. When I remember my dreams I usually do dream of playing.

I’ve also composed some really amazing music, complete with fingerings with extreme clarity which made perfect sense in dreams, but sadly it’s really hard to get it down once I wake up and memories of dreams fade really fast once I awake.

I dream a lot about games I spend a lot of time with, but it’s hard to tell if it’s making me any better at them.

By: Railick

Railick — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:58:09 +0000

I feel that Masked Dave that is generally how I feel as well. It makes it hard to sleep some times knowing that you're more or less fastforwarding your life until you have to go to work :P

I agree with all the people that feel like sleep is a waste of time, I'd probably ditch it too if I could without dieing even though I do enjoy it a lot.

Anyone else have physic abilites in their dreams ? (like say, the ability to reach out and cause something to float to you or the ability to cast magical spells like fire balls?) In most of my lucid dreams I also have the ability to lift things with my mind, often I use them to impress the virutal people in my dream by lifting up an object and making it spin in mid air in front of me :P But sometimes I also use it as a weapon to toss people. What is weird about it, is that I feel some sort of connection in my mind to the object and use that to pull it, almost as if I could really do it in real life if I could only remember what I did in the dream.

By: Chris R

Chris R — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:58:05 +0000

My friends and I got into a discussion about this in university once:

Say there was a machine that could be installed in your room (cost of said machine is not part of this discussion) that could give you all the benefits from a full 8 hours of sleep, in the blink of an eye. You walk into the machine, and presto, it’s like you got a full 8 hours of sleep. The ONLY downside to using the machine is that it makes your life 1/3 as long as someone that goes to bed and gets a full 8 hours of sleep. (8hrs/24hrs = 1/3 of your life).

Would you use this machine?

By: Masked Dave

Masked Dave — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:50:59 +0000

I don’t mind sleep, but I don’t like having to go to bed. It means my evening has run out and all I have left is getting up for work in the morning.

By: Jazmeister

Jazmeister — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:08:40 +0000

I think sleep annoys me too, but I like the feeling of it. I think it’s more like being addicted to something, knowing you need it, but wishing that you didn’t.

By: WCG

WCG — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:45:33 +0000

I regularly play games – RPGs – in my dreams. They usually aren’t the game I’m currently playing, but brand-new games, and a lot better than any game I’ve ever played awake. Well, for one thing, they’re not on a screen, but more like I’m inside the game. I’m always disappointed when I wake up and discover that the game doesn’t actually exist.

And although I rarely know that I’m dreaming, I always know that I’m playing a game in my dream. So if something doesn’t go quite right, I “reload” the game and try again. And dangerous situations don’t bother me a bit, because it’s just a game, after all. It’s really a lot of fun.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:51:54 +0000

I have dreams about playing games that don’t exist. There’s a theory that dreams are a kind of threat simulator, but I guess it’s close enough for playtesting too.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:21:22 +0000

@noom This had me laughing like a madman as my supervisor was walking by my office.

By: ulix

ulix — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:03:28 +0000

The difference is, doom, that you can theoretically do everything and conjure everything into being when dreaming lucidly.

Want to bang a hot chick? No problem, just create one. Want to fly to arround? No problem. Want to stop the dream (might be a nightmare, or you might be wondering how late it actually is)? No problem, just end it. The possibilities are endless.

By: KindredPhantom

KindredPhantom — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:25:41 +0000

Interesting piece.

By: Hmm-Hmm.

Hmm-Hmm. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:31:49 +0000

Not to mention that you could even get all three of those. I mean.. sleep happens, right?