I've noticed a peculiar phenomenon while playing videogames yesterday. As I was playing a tank based shooter game online, my awareness would fade as I executed the in-game maneuvers and engaged the opponents.

Here's how I can explain it:
When I'm aware, there's a certain train of thought which is connected to awareness. I know where I am, know what I'm doing and am aware of my surroundings (more or less).

In that game, I could maintain that awareness until I started to engage an opponent, especially in very close quarters. Awareness became replaced by a set of efficient pre-defined maneuvers and tactics. The inner voice stopped or thoughts shifted to the engagement at hand. The fact that I'm playing a game no longer mattered, the engagement drew all of my attention.

The interesting thing is that even after the engagement was over, I kept in that state, looking for the next target. The awareness did not restart itself until some time later, mainly when the things cooled down.


This was a shocking discovery, maybe related to lucid dreaming. First, if awareness can be maintained in such an intense state, it may be a good place to practice techniques like "All day awareness", etc. Second, it may explain why some of my dreams have good control without lucidity - these are pre-learned techniques used in engagements.

No matter how I tried, the awareness /attention of the surroundings disappeared at the moment of intense engagement.

Could this be what the military training is attempting to accomplish? To instill the set of tactics to be executed even when rationally thinking about them is hard/impossible?

To deal with the issue, I created a set of techniques that I tried to re-capture attention:
Affirmation: I will become aware after each shot. Did not work due to very short exposure
Attempting to predict the future: "I will lose awareness in this engagement"
Becoming aware during the calm periods and consciously analyzing the next move.

It is still difficult.

I would love to hear what those of you who play games think about this? Can you relate? Can you maintain awareness of the external world while doing good in games?