Recently, my fiance and I attended Bit Fest, an immensely nerdy event that takes place in the Aeronaut Brewery in Boston, MA. I came across a booth selling retro games and as I sifted through the PS1 section, I found Star Ocean: The Second Story. My heart sank, flipped, and felt to be performing numerous complex acrobatics. I grew up with this game. I have long since grown out of JRPGs, but this one left a mark on me. To this day I cannot find an equal to the superior combat mechanics that I remember this game having. Considering the rarity of the game itself, the perfect condition of the discs and the manual being intact, and the $30 price tag (it’s reached collectible status), I yielded my debit card immediately and counted down the minutes on the way home before I could jump back into a virtual world I haven’t been in for well over a decade.
But I’m not here to tell you how it’s as awesome as I remember it (it is), how happy I am it’s back in my life (so happy), or how many nerdgasms I’ve had playing it again (twenty seven and counting). I’m here to discuss the fact that despite my re-discovery of why I love this game, playing Star Ocean: The Second Story makes me depressed.
I don’t suffer from any kind of emotionally stunting inflictions like depression or bi polar disorder. But when I play this game that I grew up on and love, I saunter around my apartment in a sort of melancholy akin to a Tim Burton character. This game came out in 1998 and that was not a good year for socially awkward kids in middle school (what year is?). Consequentially, it wasn’t a good year for me. I was definitely depressed and lonely and played video games to feel like I fit in somewhere and had some control over things. And so, it’s with strong curiosity and exceptional ignorance about neuroscience that I present to you my findings in investigating this phenomenon and how playing video games might take part in recalling past emotions.
Hippocampus is Not a Place for Learning
The hippocampus is the part of our brains that retains memories and, contrary to previous thought, not a place where hippos go to college. Much what what we experience is stored there and damage to the hippocampus can lead to cases of Alzheimer’s. But some things we learn are hippocampus-independent, which means we are able to retain information and experience things that transcend damage to the hippocampus. According to this study, the act of playing and listening to music is at least partially hippocampus-independent and can result in the patient remembering certain events associated with that experience. But do video games fall under the same category? Can playing video games help us recall past events?
Fortunately, in my case, there is no damage to my hippocampus. Not to mention, there is no damage to my hippocampus. So, we aren’t observing memory loss. But when I feel depressed from playing Star Ocean, I can recall small details about my emotions from the first time I popped the game into my PS1. I recall these details just as one might recall a memory due to a familiar smell. Why is that? How does this work with video games?
When I found this study (trigger warning if you are a lab rat), I considered the possibility that perhaps my fear of not belonging to the real world around me provided the context of fear needed to use hippocampus-independent parts of my brain to store memories of playing video games. There are also studies proving that facial recognition can be hippocampus-independent. As well, the fact that operant conditioning allows for a more fortified sense of memory when taking into account reward and punishment.
Wait a Second, This Isn’t a Review
Considering that video games as a medium of entertainment occupy more sensory interaction than any medium otherwise such as music, film, or art, isn’t even enough to describe the heights at which one is connected to the experience. As gamers, we’re not just receptors of these pieces of art we call video games. As Torben Grodal puts it:
When a viewer is observing, say, how a monster is approaching a character, the possible
arousal in the form of fear is not linked to the personal coping potential
of the viewer, the viewer has to vicariously identify with the coping potentials
of the endangered film character. The viewer cannot personally come
up with specific coping strategies; like the rest of the audience, the viewer
can only hope for a positive outcome and eventually make some more personal
predictions. But a player of a video game is personally responsible for
the outcome of such a confrontation. It is the player’s evaluation of his own
coping potential that determines whether the confrontation with a monster
will be experienced as fear (if the evaluation of his coping potential is moderate),
despair (if he feels that he has no coping potentials), or triumphant
aggression (if he feels that he is amply equipped for the challenge).–Stories for Ear, Eye, and Muscles: Video Games, Media, and Embodied Experiences
We’ve all felt all kinds of emotions while consuming different kinds of media. Laughing at Seinfeld, crying at the beginning of Up, furious rage during Glee. Video games not only invoke those same emotions, we identify in some way to one or more of the roles involved within that game world. We may know those experiences are within a fictional world, but our reactionary emotions do not.
While there aren’t any studies I could find concerning video games invoking memories, it’s clear there are a number of associations our brains make with video games; muscle memory, sound, visuals all play a role in stimulating our brains. As video games become more and more immersive, our experiences within them are becoming more a part of our life experience and identity. Being such a new medium of art can most definitely be attributed to the lack of studies involving video games and how they affect our brains. While we all know video games have rewarded most of us with stellar hand-eye coordination, more abstract memory-related observations have yet to be made. This dialogue is young and waiting to see it’s best and worst.