Video Game Memory Palaces

what many of the memory techniques enthusiast did not know is that, what can be imprinted into memory is what really impress into your subconsciousness such that you are somehow immersed into it. as a researcher in the field of neuroscience I later came to understand that the neurons(brain cells where cognition is stored as memory) in the brain don’t distinguished between reality and simulation. for example an horror movie can still make you frightened just as the same the real horrific real life scenario would. As for the game as a memory palace for an efficacy, the game has to be 3 D immersion game, motion enhanced graphically attractive and interactive. Not that its a restriction but because we live in that kind of immersion world where things are graphically attractive, think of the sky, the color of your house, the door of your car which you can interact with . your peripheral consciousness work well in 3 d immersion, we should not only use all this aid memoir but we should also research into consciousness. neuroscience is a good place to start from, quantum physics explanation of consciousness is also beneficial, psychology too will be advantageous. I used to use games location for a handy memorization of information.

Yep.

I’m sure if you look on youtube there will be plenty of walk-throughs, it was a very popular game when it came out. Before moving on to Fable as a source of memory storage space, i used buildings i know well in real life to memorize Sun Tzu the art of war and you are right, they are pretty much the same concepts, just a bit more general. The only draw back with using games like fable is you have to spend a small amount of time memorizing the space before you can start implanting info unlike real life where you think of your house and it all comes straight to mind in detail.

I havn’t read the 48 laws of power, but i will. The prince is a good read if you want power but it isn’t so good if you have principles that guide your behavior
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Symbaotechnic- With what you said in mind, do you think you could just make up a building from scratch and use that as a memory palace, as long as you can, in your mind, walk around it as if it were a real place you had been. With enough detail to be convincing, would walking around that artificial palace in your mind have the same effect as walking around a real building?

Hi,

I find this idea interesting to use video games for Memory Palaces. I could imagine that this works well and makes reviewing very easy.

I have not much experience with video games so far, I had a quick look into Minecraft and Second Life, but I find the block graphics of Minecraft quite disturbing and the quality of graphics in Second Life isn’t very good either (or might that be a problem of my computer?).

Are there other video games without fighting/violence that could be used? I must confess that I’m a real coward in this regard, who tends to be haunted by bad dreams like a little child. :wink:
Something with the graphical quality of Fable 3, where you don’t need to fight but just can stroll around, explore the world, perhaps solve some riddles… that would be great! Does anyone know about such a game?

Greetings,
Sunny

In nearly every game i can think of where you can just stroll around, you can either just avoid violence or violence has to be instigated by the player. Fable, Skyrim, maybe the GTA series. In fable and skyrim, you will encounter no violence in the cities.

Ah, that’s good to know! I thought if just walking around I would be attacked all the time or something like that.
Thank you for the info!

Hayden, thanks for suggesting “The Prince”. I somehow still haven’t read it, even though it’s been mentioned multiple times to me. Will definitely do so soon. Not sure what you mean by “The prince is a good read if you want power but it isn’t so good if you have principles that guide your behavior.

Check out this post.

Imaginary palaces work, but it’s too much effort(for me) for the benefit. Least effort(or most, whichever way you look at it) is probably just go walk outside somewhere, or inside a house, or a store. Next would be watching youtube videos or something similar. Then creating your own.
EDIT: Another way of saying that is Real Places>Places with a visual aid>Imaginary Places
It works, but why do you need it?

Sunny, I’m sorry but I don’t have any suggestions. There are usually ways you can play whatever game it is without any danger, “practice mode” or something similar. Just to explore the maps.

Bateman

Sunny: In my experience with using games, it works best when you invested some time in the game because you will have some sort of attachment to the games locations. If you just memorize the locations, that could work, but could be fuzzy or hard to remember. But when you see a place in your head and say oh yeah this is where the quest started or this is where my friend got stolen, it adds extra connections to the locations. Maybe it will work for you just to get the locations or maybe playing the game and actually getting invested in the story can help you remember that much better!

Hm, that’s a good point. I experienced this already with real world locations. Places where I actually DO something (post box, bench where I often sit down…) are much easer than places which I usually just pass.

So it would be good to have games with nice maps where the quests consist of other things than fighting. Weren’t they games like “Day of the Tentacle” in earlier times? Such a game in 3D would be perfect :smiley:

Bateman- I should have worded that better, The prince isn’t exactly a book that teaches you the honorable way to achieve power, “You have to be cunning as the fox to see the snairs and strong as a lion to scare away the wolves”
For anyone wondering about the efficiency of games for memory storage i have an example.
When i was at school, in geography my friend and i were tasked with using cardboard and such to create a birds eye view of the school, we were learning about contours and had to use multiple layers of card to depict contours of the terrain the school was surrounded by, but we took a giant leap further than just the school. At the time, GTA Sanadreas was the popular game out and my friend and i played it obsessively so in place of a Birdseye view of our school, we created a birds eye view of the entire map of GTA Sandreas from memory and could remember many of the street names. With repetition it isn’t hard at all to memorize virtual city or town.

For anyone questioning whether you can really memorize vast amounts of information using the memory palace. I memorized a book a while back and i am in the process re memorizing it in to a more efficient and spacious palace (My college) and from time to time, i will forget what i just read on the page but in in stead of just re reading it, my mind automatically jumps to the image and information i need in the old palace. Just something interesting i thought i would share.

I’m new to the group and have found method of loci of interest, and this approach of using virtual environments very useful, due to illness taking away a large amount of my past memories.
I have used the police station from resident evil 2 as my main starting route as it is rich and varied in all the rooms.
Games may lack some details a real environment has, but with enough imagination those can be filled in, I’ve put together a range of smells that I add to rooms as I mentally walk through them.
One obvious type of game that might be of interest to the group is, Room escape games, beautiful detailed rooms full of odd objects designed to be examined in detail.

That’s interesting. I had never heard of room escape games before.

I’ll add it to the wiki.

Hayden, I’ve started reading The Prince. From the very first page I love it. Fantastic book. A lot of the parts of it practically draw themselves onto your imagination, enabling you to memorize it very easily if you chose to. Take the first paragraph for example;

“Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious, or in which they see him take most delight: whence one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princes, worthy of their greatness.”

Very easy to imagine, and thus memorize. Would need a couple reviews to get the beginning part verbatim, but getting the gist is automatic from the image described.

Uncarved, I have played those in the past, and this hasn’t occurred to me. Perhaps I haven’t been playing the right games.

Parkour+Sunny, you have the right idea. I bet that’s one of the reasons why me using my palaces from video games are so effective. Other than just spending a TON of time in them, I have experienced lots of emotions, feelings, sounds, visual stimuli, etc, which is a lot more intense and memorable than simply exploring an empty cold world…

Bateman

'ello, friends.

Not exactly a video game, but I’ve just found a 3D virtual exploration of Anne Frank’s ‘home’ in Netherlands.

Maybe you’d like to add it to your artificial memory palaces repertoire:

All the best,
Emanuel

By the way:

http://www.surefield.com/tour-homes

Very good emanuel, thanks.

Bateman

Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible to create a game specially designed to become a good memory palace.

There are some map creators for FPS games around. And then there’s Google “Catchup” (Sketchup), that does a pretty nice work.