Videos Games and their effect on Lucid dreaming

Video games have been increasing in popularity since as early as the 1970’s and with roughly 20% of the Americans playing over 10 hours of video games a week, a question has been raised for those of us who enjoy exploring interactive virtual worlds.

Do video games make it easier to have the ultimate gaming experience? Do video games help us have lucid dreams? 

Lucid dreaming is the ability to know that you are dreaming while you dream. This in turn opens up the possibility to control and explore the hyper realistic, fantastical environments of our dreams in real time. It allows you to go on remarkable adventures, set out to accomplish varied and creative missions and will place you directly in the center of a highly immersive scenario of pretty much any genre imaginable. Basically it is the ultimate video game experience.

So will playing video games help you have Lucid Dreams? 

Though the data is still extremely limited as of writing this, gamers have reported an increased number of lucid dreaming experiences, and a positive correlation has been shown between gaming and lucid dreaming. While that certainly points to gaming being good for current and/or potential lucid dreamers, the actual answer requires us to dive into this topic a bit deeper.

Various studies have shown that frequent video game play is related to increased lucidity but we need to ask ourselves why this may be the case. 

One reason may be due to the shared characteristics of both lucid dreamers and video game players. 

Lucid dreaming and gaming share several key characteristics. Both involve a higher sense of control over an interactive experience and both commonly involve an attitude towards challenges in which you overcome these challenges using creativity, rehearsal and/or the execution of a predetermined but effective technique/method. In addition to these commonalities both lucid dreamers and gamers benefit from improved spatial awareness, vestibular functioning and a single pointed focus on whichever experience they have become immersed in. 

In this sense it is possible that by playing video games you improve upon these aspects which would in turn aid in your abilities as a lucid dreamer.

But there is another aspect to the lucid dreaming - video game connection that is worth considering.

That aspect is the increased incorporation of game content into your nightly dreams.

Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to their dreams will have realized that our daytime experiences will to one degree or another work their way into our dreams and video games are by no means an exception to this rule. So the experience of video game-like dreams could potentially play a significant factor in increasing lucidity in frequent gamers.

Of course the amount of varied content, genres and styles of video games is vast and only growing more varied as the years pass by, so not all gaming content in dreams may have the same effect on the dreamer but what is common across most areas of gaming is an association with a greater degree of focus when interacting with your preferred gaming content. The association between a gamers preferred content and increased focus may then cause the gamer to become more focused at the point of this content's emergence in their dreams which will undoubtedly increase the odds of them becoming lucid if this is the case.

Certain games may also affect the gamers' response to nightmares. Games that promote an attitude of overcoming nightmares may help the dreamer become lucid in the dreams in which nightmarish scenarios occur, especially if those nightmare scenarios mirror the games in which they are familiar with playing. While many of us may become overwhelmed by the stress of a nightmare, it is possible that certain video games train a more logical/analytical approach to dealing with these nightmares. This type of response will easily increase the gamers odds of becoming lucid, especially when considering the increased sensory focus that is often generated with many (but not all) nightmare experiences.

This increase in the odds of lucidity could then be compounded when a gamers preferred gaming content more closely resembles lucid dreaming and dream control scenarios. Shooter games in which you view your avatar's experience through a first person perspective and control their physical movements directly seem especially good in regards to their relation to lucid dreaming, though this is just speculation. (A list of particularly dream-like games can be found here. If you’re looking for games that may help with your lucid dreaming that’ll have the added benefit of actually incorporating the idea of dreaming into your dreams that is a great place to start!) Regardless, by having game content that resembles lucid dreaming appear in your dreams, especially if the game content is dream based, the ease with which a person can recognize that they are in fact in a dream could potentially be increased significantly.

Unfortunately in contrast to my personal speculation on shooters, one study found that shooters, and even video games as a whole did not correlate to increased lucid dreaming (in the limited sample of gamers they studied). Though luckily they did find a correlation when looking at specific game types.

Physically interactive games (games such as Wii bowling, Tennis, etc) were shown to have the highest correlation between gaming and lucid dreaming, with a lower, yet still significant, correlation being shown in people who played music and arcade style games as well. This study further states that the correlation between physically interactive games was mainly driven by the studies' female participants and that there was a greater correlation between arcade games and lucid dreaming for women and puzzle games and lucid dreaming for men. Make of that what you will.

One hypothesis for this outcome is that physically interactive games are associated, and possibly even promote, a higher level of “presence and flow”, which are highly conducive states for lucid dreaming, and puzzle games increase logical thinking which again is conducive, arguably even essential, to frequent lucid dreaming. As far as music style games, they can often have those same elements of “presence and flow”, as well as having the obvious connection between creativity in musically oriented people. Arcade style games, often involving the use of steering wheel controllers, simulated weapons and things of that sort, also have many of the same benefits that have been previously mentioned. Puzzle games aside, all of the more significant relations between gaming and lucid dreaming, in this particular study, were shown to be physically interactive games, which may indicate that this style of game has the greatest benefit to lucid dreaming. Again this is just speculation and more research is needed to determine anything with certainty.

(Side note: Physically interactive games have the benefit of developing increased spatial awareness, which has been shown to correlate with lucid dreaming.)

This study also found that the level of engagement and the overall game time did not correlate with the frequency of lucid dreams which throws into question whether or not increased gaming actually helps with lucid dreaming. Of course this may indicate that the game genre may be the important factor or possibly that there is a point of diminishing returns on the benefit of gaming for lucid dreaming. More research is needed in order to answer these specific questions. What was found though, that I’m sure all gamers will be happy to hear, is that increased levels of game content being incorporated in your dreams was correlated with increased lucid dreaming. So there may be hope for lucid dreaming gamers yet. 

Ironically increased game time and engagement does in fact increase the likelihood that game content will make its way into your dreams, so in that sense increased amounts of gaming may actually help with lucid dreaming. 

You may be asking how no correlation could be found between game time and engagement while simultaneously increased game time and engagement increases a factor that is correlated with increased lucid dreaming.

A fair question. 

One significant reason for this is because of the individual differences between participants. Each person has varied life circumstances that will affect both their dream recall and the degree to which dream content becomes incorporated into their dreams. Simply put if you don’t remember your dreams you’re less likely to lucid dream regardless of how long you play video games. Also if you have more emotionally significant or engaging circumstances in your life, these will very likely outweigh the significance/frequency of game content in your dreams. If you’ve just gone through a divorce, or a loved one has just passed away, you are far more likely to experience dreams that focus on these rather than whichever game you play most often. 

Due to reasons such as these frequent video game players may incorporate less game content into their dreams even if they play games often, or in the case of dream recall they may simply not remember their dreams (dream recall is essential for lucid dreaming), which is one possible explanation as to why a person may game frequently and not lucid dream more but why there is still a positive correlation when the incorporation of dream content in the gamers dream is the focus of comparison.

Overall the study of gaming and lucid dreaming is still in the early days but as of now the evidence points to there being some form of connection, but some inferences can be made about which games you should play if you want to try and supplement your lucid dreaming practices with gameplay. As of now it seems three factors should be sought if gaming to lucidity is something you want to experiment with yourself. 

1. A game that engages you physically, which will promote flow, presence and possibly develop physical skills that seem to themselves be correlated with lucid dreaming (VR games seem a potential goldmine for this but I have yet to see any study that tests VR in relation to Lucid Dreaming)

2. A game that encourages and potentially develops logical thinking 

3. A game that's content will encourage lucidity when that content is incorporated into your nightly dreams.

While a connection between gaming and lucidity does seem a likely possibility, whether that connection is due to the development of lucid dreaming conducive skills, the familiarization of yourself interacting in virtual environments, due the training of a certain mindset through frequent gaming or due to something else entirely, is unclear. What can be said though is that gaming is not a substitute for learning actual lucid dreaming techniques, so if you want to have frequent lucid dreams, game as much as you'd like, but don’t forget that there is no better way to lucid dream than through practicing lucid dreaming.