'Altered' Gameplay

Disclaimer:

ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR BODY

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR FUCKING STUPIDITY

You can always check here for reliable information.

Video games, at least to me, serve primarily as a poignant escape from reality.  It grants you the ability to master an abstract notion that literally did not exist before it's inception.  I mean, I understand that's a valid observation on almost anything that physically exists, but still, you're playing a game that someone else(s) made.  That's art, is what that is.

(pictured: art, minus the noisy dubstep)

The vast differential of perspective that video games offer is amazing to me.  I can't get over it, you can be anyone in the world, or out of the world.  Some sanguine alien monster with claws for arms, or a little worm that shoots a bazooka, it doesn't matter, you can play as anyone but yourself.
Now, that's not to say that video games are the only things that can do that to your psyche, and I'll do my darnedest to make sure that I can portray what I'm talking about in as concise and sensitive a manner as possible....

(ya'll need to play this game)

I can attest that playing video games in any state of being other than 'totally sober' is a different experience altogether. But some people truly go out of their way and do lots of adderol just to play a sharper game.  And that's not even fun, it might be pretty rewarding to poop all over everyone with your drug-induced hyper-sensitized reflexes, but it's not a good feeling to be all speedy like that, nor is it really healthy for your mind. 

If you are already of the experimental persuasion and must insist on doing mind-altering substances before gaming, you should be in the know about which drugs are appropriate for which games. So I've compiled info and a list of games made either for people on drugs or by them,  along with some things to know, or avoid.  Be smart and be safe!

1. Marijuana

(I swear to god, this is the last relevant FarCry 3 picture I could find)

I think it was a couple months ago that polls began to show that over half of Americans are in support of cannabis legalisation.  Most of you would probably do a double-take if you heard someone earnestly ask, "what's pot?" And, as the above picture shows, its even in video games.  It's so widely accepted, that it's not really too much of a wonder why couch potato stoners play a lot of video games.

Games of Choice:

Any and every game ever made in the entirety of the inconceivable vellum of space and time, except for games that require you to move around a lot like Wii Sports, or DDR.  And even then, still not really, to each their own. THC actively changes the way that light, and particularly sound are perceived, so any game with an amazing or meaningful soundtrack is going to tug at your heart strings.

Games to Avoid
You're pretty much set here, any game you can play normally, you can play stoned.  

2.  Various Hallucinogens

(I've beat this game like 9 times, and I still don't know what it's about unless I'm on drugs)

Okay, so for any of you who have done hallucinogens any more than a single time, you know that no two trips are exactly the same, and there're so many procedural elements that go into the different chemicals that cause the trips that it's hard to pin down exactly what drug/game I'm insinuating as a combo, not to mention there are some hallucinogens so physically impeding that you would simply be unable to use a controller.  We could go on for days with me writing about as many different forms of psychedelics as I'm aware of, and you wondering where exactly it was that I went wrong with my life, but instead let's just lump them all together as anything that makes you trip. 

Games of Choice:

As the picture above might indicate, there are a swath of games that seem to be solely purposed towards people under the wavy spell of hallucinogens, in the sense that they don't really have the ability to not be progressive.  A good game to play while tripping would be anything that helps instigate the altered sensorium of color and sound that is already being experienced, in other words, you want something on-rails.  A game that doesn't leave the navigating to you so much as the ability to be experiencing it.  On the same note, people tripping really hard have little to no concrete idea of win or lose, and if you get a 'game over' screen, you're likely to just go do something else.  So games that are perfect are ones that self-progress, are vibrant in both color and sound, and either can't be failed or don't have an objective. Particularly:

Child of Eden

R.E.M

Pokemon Snap

Journey

Flower

GAMES TO AVOID!!!!

There are some games played solely for the carnal thrill of murdering the total absolute shit out of someone in the goriest way possible, (Manhunt! Dead Space!) and other games geared toward keeping you scared screaming shitless for as long as sanely possible.  It's important to never play any games that you know would normally make you uncomfortable.  The drugs will not make it any less so, because when you're tripping, your emotional pretext is ratcheted up 1000 times, and that stuff will make you crap your pants.  Not 'might,' WILL. In fact, any game where you can be brutally murdered by something should just be avoided.  I cannot stress enough to not play violent horror games while under the influence of hallucinogens.

I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent on mushrooms one time, just because I thought it would be funny to see how scared I got.

It wasn't.  

3.  MDMA/MDA

Okay, firstly, what are you doing with your life if you're taking ecstasy and playing video games?  The primary concern for you right now is that you're squirming in your seat, unable to sit still and wanting to rub the keyboard against your face.  You're really not in a state to be playing video games, the seratonin reuptake inhibitors in your brain are pretty much completely disabled and you are absolutely just buzzing with the need to do stuff.  So you settled on video games, odd.  Well, lucky you.  You finally have a reason to play games on that stupid fucking Xbox Kinect.  ;)  

Games of Choice:

Oh!  Lights, dancing, energy!  If you do X and play video games, you should take the chance to use it as an excuse to exercise all that energy.  You want games with lots of color, that require movement of the lower extremities.   For this reason, games on the Wii, Kinect, and any dancing arcade machine are about to be your jam for the next 9 hours.  

Games to Avoid

Everything else, especially anything that involves sitting and paying attention to some kind of puzzle for anything more than a second or two.  Your mind is not going to want sit still, so don't encourage it to.

4. Cocaine

(and thats just the first floor)

Okay, lets be honest, if you're railing mountains of yayo, you're probably all not that into gaming.  But on the off chance that you are, be prepared to have a slew of very, very cocaine-esque games be presented unto you by myself.

So here's the thing, cocaine offers kind of an opposite affectual disposition to most of your bread-and-butter style hallucinogenics.  When you take LSD, for example, you experience a very marked and noticeable softening of the ego, which very nicely contemplates the feelings of 'oneness with people' that you will experience.   Cocaine on the other hand, does just the opposite, raising the 'ego slider' way up, and acting upon a small veining hub in your temporal lobe thats called VTA (I forget what the acronym stands for) and it literally shoots dopamine into your prefrontal cortex (conscious thoughts) and all over your brain. It's essentially your 'happy place.' And cocaine acts upon it to release a HUGE amount of it for a short amount of time, flooding your brain with 'feelsgood' and in turn making you feel like you are the absolute motherfucking god of everything in the material realm, and likewise, you'll be wanting to play games that virtually facilitate that belief into a constructive outlet for your newfound hubris.

(like this)

Games of Choice:

Specifically, games that let you just go on an all-out rampage for little to no reason are going to be your new best friend for the next hour or so.  Any game that has:

A)  Ridiculous number of enemies that respawn frequently
B) A near-obscenely powerful, or equipped protagonist
C) Very, very high levels of violence and destruction, and makes no apologies for it.
D) a non-linear plot progression that gives you liberty to do whatever you want, and direct your own rampage.
E) Meager at first, yet quickly building opposition in direct relation to the severity of your actions. 

Lucky for you, there is a plethora of video games developed every quarter on the sole principle of making the player feel like the most important part of the game.  It's a dull and ego-centric approach to interactive storytelling to be sure, but also extremely marketable. You won't have trouble finding any of these games. Here's a bunch:

Prototype 1 & 2
Every GTA game ever made, or that ever will be made.
Red Faction: Guerilla
Crackdown
Left4Dead series (great because you're not killing people!)
Rampage
Infamous 1 & 2 (& 3 soon!)



Games to Avoid
As a rule, if you are a person of great hubris you should take care to avoid what others might call, 'friendly competition.'  If you are a person a person of great hubris who has just consumed cocaine, this becomes a rule of necessity
Do not Do not Do not Do not play Mario Party with your friends whilst on cocaine.  You will kill your friends.   Any game that you don't like losing at, or in which your progress towards the goal can be impeded by other players (especially the ones sitting right next to you) should be completely avoided. Also, any game that stresses teamwork and cooperation is usually out of the picture.  You don't want to be that one late night news special about the cokehead that beat their friend to death over an E-rated game for children in the 90's.

5. Alcohol

Drinking has been the number one past-time of the human culture for as long as anyone can remember. The oldest recipe in the world is a 4,000 year old beer recipe.  So when Alcohol and Video Games exist simultaneously as two behemoths of cultural significance in the modern world, there were always bound to be some awesome combinations.

Games of Note:

Anything that stresses competition, or challenge.  I'm not even going to list anything, it's as applicable as pot, you can literally search "Video Games to play while drunk" and google gives you seventy-two million results a half second later. (I love the future) For continuity's sake though, let's say you need to know what type of games are appropriate for the feel.

Well, for starters, know that ethanol is an inebriant because it acts as a central nervous system depressant.  When you're consuming lots of it, you're nowhere near as coordinated as you could be, so whatever you're playing probably shouldn't be the most difficult game you own, because you're going to suck madly at it.  Likewise, if you're the kind of person who takes any pride in your statistical rating against other players, you probably don't want to muck those figures up with a bender of shitty drunken gameplay.

Side-note:   State-Dependent Recall is a well-researched module that applies to anything on this list, if you play Street Fighter IV long enough to learn the combinations and then play while drunk, you're automatically forming long-term neuron synapses that are preferentially accessible to that level of drunk.  You might even only be able to land a certain combo in that state.  Crazy stuff.  By extrapolation of that logic, the embargo on difficult games can be flexible according to both the skill and frequency at which you play a specific game drunk.





6. Ketamine

If you're doing K, you're not about to be walking around or operating machinery anytime soon, so video games are a great activity for you to be occupying yourself with.  Ketamine is one of the older substances on this list and has a satisfying medical history as well, it was developed in the mid-60's as both a derivative and replacement of phencyclidine (PCP), which had been tested for use as a medical anaesthetic after the second World War.  Doctors found properties of Ketamine far superior because of how dangerous and unstable PCP was.  It was put into active military use during the war in Vietnam, and began to be used recreationally in the States soon after.

The effects of ketamine are very comparable to that of copious alcohol consumption. Slurred words, poor coordination, and a general slovenliness that one would casually attribute to the average town drunkard.  However, it is also a functioning anesthetic with dissociative properties, and that makes it fundamentally different from alcohol.  We often tend to take certain associations for granted, for example, when you look at your hand, you never really question the ownership of it.  It's always your hand, and completely submissive to your control.  Under a heavier dosage, the dissociative properties of ketamine completely fuck that up.  It's not the worst sensation to question self-ownership, I mean, I wouldn't call it pleasant but it is certainly interesting.  This side-effect in low dosages is far less pronounced but matriculates into the experience more subtly.  In the sense that you'll sometimes forget that you're actually playing a game.

Games of Choice:

The sense of detachment from self is a powerful tool as far as dynamically changing ones perspective is concerned, and you're going to spend a lot of time getting lost or forgetting where you're going.  Because of this, clearing a dungeon crawler is likely to be more frustrating than fun, and you're far better off spending hours flying, sailing, or just floating around in a large open world where it's easy to get distracted.  Such as:

Just Cause 2
FarCry 3
Crysis games
Battlefield 3
Dirt
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker & Skyward Sword
Mass Effect: 3
Assassins Creed Series

Games to Avoid:

Quick moving colors and flashes of light are likely to be more than you can handle while on ketamine, games that require you to either 'be quick or fail' even more so.  But the most important thing to be aware of is that Ketamine is a tranquilliser and the more of it you do, the less you're able to move around.  Again, always be aware of what you're putting into your body because if you accidentally K-Hole yourself, you're not going to be doing much gaming, much of anything.   Except talking to aliens and Jesus.



7. Stimulants (Caffeine + Norepinephrine Modifiers)

It happens, the new game you've been waiting forever for comes out, and you finally have a chance to play it.  But gasp! look at the time!  It's far past your bedtime and you haven't even began to get your gaming fix in.  So now you're about to commit yourself to an all-nighter of epic proportions.  Firstly, please don't.  Nothing fucks up your schedule or appetite more than speed and you shouldn't do it.  No?  Alright, I tried.



Games of Choice:

Since this is a two-parter of sorts, lets start on Caffeine. 

It's the least regulated, and most popular psychoactive drug in the world, with something like 90% of adults in North America drinking it regularly.  Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant and wards off drowsiness as well as increasing focus.  As most of you should know.  However, the side-effects are more pertinent to gaming.  An increased need to piss frequently and a diminishment of fine motor skills make playing games that require long focus to overcome obstacles a hassle.  By similar logic, those 'slower' games are going to present less of a challenge to the caffeinated brain, and may not hold its attention.  The more fast-paced and attention demanding per shortest interval type game is the best.  And when I say that, I'm talking about a gaming experience that requires you to sustain an intense amount of focus for a short period of time, many times.  Games like this would include:

COD games

Halo

Battlefield 3

Assassins Creed

League of Legends

Fruit Ninja (iPhone)

Ruzzle (iPhone)

And now for the pills (stimulants that affect norepinephrine)

Much like people who take it and then manically clean and organise their lives in 8-12 hour bursts of fervid motivation, gamers on speed will focus in on tiny details of the games that they play.  Collection of achievements, collectibles, and crafting equipment all become goals to the person.

The reason why adderall and similar stimulants have been banned from tournament level events is because they affect norepinephrine (amongst other hormones) in the brain.   Norepinephrine is one of the major underlying hormones underneath the fight-or-flight response.  Because of this, people who are all speedy playing a game like COD will have a better perception of when to attack and retreat.  And things like 'Zombie Fever' (succumbing to the urge to run out of cover and try to kill everything) aren't as prominent in their play style.  In no way is that a definitive theory btw, that's just one of mine that no one's really touched yet.  Either way, it certainly makes first-person shooters a breeze, as well as anything else that rewards quickly coordinated motions with victory.

I'm remiss to use a wikipedia link but if you read that you'll understand that these stimulants actively modify the way that you think, and along with the fight or flight enhancement I postulated earlier on, states that the ability to predict patterns is acted upon.  So, again, first-person-shooters where you're always balancing probabilities and predicting enemy patterns are a perfect fit for this drug.  I'm not even going to list them.

(sleep is for the weak)

Conclusion:  Look, there are lots of perspective altering substances out there, and lots of them are really worthwhile, despite being either ethno or sociocentrically demonised or abused.  You can consider them 'evil' or 'dirty' or 'unhealthy'  but the truth is that the human body is a veritable train station of drugs.  As the great Dali once put it, "I don't do drugs, I am drugs."  We exist as a constantly shifting collaboration of chemicals, enzymes, and hormones.  As a Transhumanist, I think it's important to explore the relationships between these unquantifiable combinations of chemical reagents in the body and thats why I do stuff like this.  Also I fucking love video games, and with the exception of coke have played games on most of these, so I'm a pretty solid reference.