Some players call it the Zone. I've heard it called it the eye of the storm, entering the matrix, and perfect clarity. You're playing an FPS for so long (let's take Halo as the easiest example) and doing really well, when you enter this strange state of awareness. You're almost not even paying attention to the game anymore, but your hands, your reflexes, and your intuition seem to develop their own awareness, and begin performing on a level of accuracy and speed that's almost supernatural.

As near as I can tell most FPS players have experienced this phenomenon at least once, and it seems to be different for every player. Some people have only a sort of vague memory of what they did in that zone, some remember it clearly. Some players will get there and stay there for hours, and for others it's just a short lived advantage that even a spontaneous itch can knock them out of.

I've heard of some players being able to "enter the zone" with HUGE amounts of caffiene, (think shotgunning 2 Doubleshots back to back, followed by a healthy bottle of Jolt) or other methods, but for most it's something that just happens with no forewarning.

My most recent experience was playing Half-Life 2: Episode One on hard. I had just entered the hospital (where you basically get ambushed by Combine) at about 30 health, and had resigned myself to death, then figured "Eh, I'll see what I can do."

It was about the time I was pinned down by the gunship that it happened. I literally wasn't even paying attention to the screen anymore, but turning on every combine that was stupid enough to put his head out and blowing it off with the Pulse Rifle. I was bouncing grenades off walls with perfect accuracy to get behind their cover, or timing them just right to be under those trip mines when the Combine were near.

I don't remember a whole lot because I suppose I really wasn't paying attention, but the next thing I do recall was finishing off the last of the Combine in the bathroom at the end with the Crossbow, then getting the energy core for the Pulse Rifle, and wiping out the Toxic Zombie and all of his friends with it the moment they broke open those doors. I looked around me then now that the gunshots and the zombie moaning had stopped, and realized I had just left a TRAIL of corpses behind me, and was currently sitting on a nice, bright red 16 health.

Seldom have I felt more like an FPS player.

So, what experiences have you had with this strange gamer phenomenon?

I tend to get moments like that when I'm playing Demoman on TF2, usually when capping points on dustbowl. It's just like I'm not really looking what I'm doing properly and all the grenades seem to arc perfectly onto the faces of my enemies, once the regular grenades are gone time to use stickies and there's just enough time to lay as many as I need to kill the next respawn wave, but then there's a heavy left at the back and I've got one sticky left which I launch and turn to run, as I detonate it I realise it was a crit and the round is pretty much won. The thing with the stickies is that for most the time I'm pretty much aiming at the floor and the timing just seems to come off on its own.

This happens to me on Halo 1 occasionally.

It happens occasionally, usually when I'm armed with grenades or a Flak Cannon. The standard game-to-brain information transfer sequence for identifying and dealing with hostiles is thrown out of the window, and in its place is one simple, almost primal rule:

"If it's there, blast it."

It's almost as if I'm just reacting to the changes in colour on the screen. That can't quite account for the almost ungodly accuracy with grenades that occurs on those rare occasions, however. I guess that's just from experience and a preference for explosive weaponry.

Funny, Ive actualy encountered it while playing Chess (not something I do particularly well of often, mark you), or Magic, the Gathering. it's not reflexes. the board shifts and jiggles as you consider possible outcomes of any action, your brain cycles through ever option without you willing it, and in general, your are in a different sort of zone.

as for FPS, I'm sure I have, but I never really realize it at the time, and I've never managed it to a particular notworthy degree. and i live FPS

Playing CS:S (on dust) at 2 in the morning with some friends and talking to them over teamspeak. I had been loading up on caffeine for hours and the entire night i had been sucking, so when the round started i bought a deagle and ran through the building area to come straight out to the courtyard. As i was about to walk around the corner i heard a footstep, i didnt think, i didnt slow down, i didnt stop, i didnt even start walking so he wouldnt hear me, i just turned and fired before i even saw him, and sure enough as soon as i pulled the trigger, good ole toolsra came around that corner and got owned in the face. Right after that i went out into the courtyard and killed another 2 in about the same way, then i realized my eyes had been blurred the entire round, then i was killed. I sucked the rest of the night...

I did that in socom 2 once also, i killed an entire clan single handed right off the bat. I think this was probably more luck based. None of my teammates got a single kill, nor did they have the chance to die, i was the first one to move, and i went one way, they all went the other. Sure enough the way i went was the same way the opposing team (clan hisp) went, and the terrain favored me. After finishing off the last guy by there spawn my teammates finally got over to where the action was, it took me a second to realize i killed an entire team single handedly and only lost 5% health...

I was once playing COD2 with a friend and we BOTH got in the zone at the same time. We got guys coming from every side and we where like "THIS IS SPARTA!!!!" (not the qoute but the feeling) and we went back to back constantly running around each other just getting headshots in mid jump, double head shots pistol kills a streek of melees and we just didnt die. I lost count of how many guys we took out. We were so stunned when we looked back at the score board and the number of deadguys around us.

Now i sometimes get it on COD 4 again.

I once played Vice City so long on just one life that it seemed I was playing in bullet-time. I don't think it was so much "The Zone" as the limited hardware in my PS2 protesting so many tanks and squadcars and helicopters chasing me up and down the beach.

For some reason, the only time I can recall this happening to me is during Guitar Hero 2.

playing on UT3, smallest map, 15bots if i play too long i go into "the zone" and just forget everything else around me, its so peaceful and calm...

its expressed quite well here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/423101
(anyone want to tell me this forums tags for making a lazy link?)

I've had that a few times, but only in real life events..never in a video game. I saw it against me too. I beat a fighter who I should not have beaten.. it was like I knew what he was doing before he did, and moved to counter before he was even close..openings were just THERE when I normally wouldn't have seen them quickly enough.
On the flip side of that, I got beat pretty badly (kick boxing) by a kid that was notoriously bad. (we called him Rocky.. not because he won in the end.. because he always looked like hamburger after a fight and could take an amazing amount of punishment.) He whipped me pretty soundly for the whole fight... I couldn't hit him at all.
I could even see it in his eyes.. kind of a vague, far away look that seemed like he wasn't even paying attention to the fight and barely notice me. It was kinda spooky.

I've seen it many times in games though; watching my friend play TF (the original.. I'm old) way back when. He would just snipe the hell out of anything that twitched. Not me so much.. I just died.. alot...

I get in the zone with centipede. Not a virtual console version but the real cabinet with the trackball. I once played for two hrs on one quarter, but that was something like 23 years ago.

I get this all the time, regardless of what I am doing. I am a very fast sprinter due to being a stick on two elephant legs, and it first started for me back when I was a child. I could only hear my breathing and my feet hitting the ground and I would tunnel vision on the finish.

Now it happens when I'm pitching in baseball, when I play net in hockey, when I am fishing and yes, when I play video games. It's some sort of ancient hightened sense of awareness that society slowly breeds out of us. I think gamers are actually able to harness it better than others due to using our perceptive senses so regularly when playing fast paced video games that have a large number of variables.

Everytime I'm on COD4. Really, there is something about the colours (Or lack of them) that relaxes me into a state of awareness. But it's not really awareness, you just see a guy and shoot him. Perhaps a hightend sence of things.

It's not really that you're not paying attention. You are still paying attention, but it just feels different, like you are paying attention in a different way. Not agressive, almost like it's something that needs to be done, so why get angry? Hard to explain, but it starts about half an hour in when I game.

The Zone is very real. My buddies and I have discussed it at length. You become unaware of the interface between you and the game, your will is translated directly into action. Tactical decisions are made instantly and effortlessly. It's like your not even thinking at all. Your unstoppable, but anything can break the spell. I believe this is what martial artists call the state of 'no mind', what it means when they say 'true skill comes without effort'. Oh course, it does require great effort to get skilled enough at game to be able to enter the Zone! I don't know about caffeine, but some other drugs seem to help. The real skill would be the ability to enter The Zone at will.

I've gotten this a few times, though it's generally rare and doesn't seem to have any particular pattern to when it happens. I tend to label it some permutation of "zen" since for me it tends to represent a state of unnatural calm (I'm the nervous and excitable sort otherwise) where everything just gets processed immediately and actions and reactions seem clear as day and it all meshes up together.

I've had it in anything from first-person shooters to real-time tactics/strategy to even grinding in MMOs - going someplace where nothing but the moment exists and it's almost absurd how simplistic and focused everything seems.

It reminds me of that retelling of fights I've heard where people felt like time slowed down, their reactions peaked and pain goes to some far-away land. I'd imagine it's pretty much the same thing, some intense focus survival sense left from ancient times. Almost like all the thinking we do otherwise clutters up the mind 'til we clear it and just focus on the present.

I get it in CS:S a lot. Sometimes I'll log in and pick up a throwaway gun because I just want to goof off and then destroy with it. On cs_office I'll log in and pick up the TMP and proceed to annihilate the entire T team with an endless stream of headshots until I'm either accused of hacking or the server becomes so awp-filled that you can't even move around without getting a bullet in the head. On cs_crackhouse I'll log in and pull out the pump shotty and usually I can get 3 or 4 kills per round for a few rounds before the zone wears off.

The best "zone" moments, however, are on cs_assault because occasionally (I have no idea what causes it) I can join an assault server, buy an AUG and lay anyone low with a headshot without breaking a sweat. Going 20 or 30 something with single digit deaths where 4/5 of my kills are headshots only using the AUG has gotten me banned from so many servers I stopped complaining when it happens.

I've experienced this state, myself. I've read somewhere that it's an elevation of alpha brainwaves. It's pretty much the same effect as an athlete running or a monk meditating.

I've done it a few times in games, mainly FPS like Half Life. Sometimes i'm about to fail on Guitar Hero and then save the whole song by playing perfectly for about 2 minutes. Its happened a couple of times in real life, when i've been in a fight or while paintballing. I vaguely remember charging at an enemy base and watching one of their paintballs fly at me in slow motion, dipping my head just enough for it to miss, raising my gun, firing one shot and hitting the guy on the forehead (he was wearing a helmet so it was ok :P)

It happened to me during Guitar Hero 3, I'm sure of it, but I'm not sure which song it was. Either Even Flow by Pearl Jam or One by Metallica. I just switched off and my fingers took control, almost got a perfect as well, I missed about 2 notes.

My friend experienced it while playing Geometry Wars completely intoxicated, and I believe him because he absolutely r*ped my score! (Which at that point, everyone was trying to beat)

I would argue that "Zone" is not just limited to FPS's, but games in general. There are times when all gamers seem to put themselves on automatic and execute without thinking. While I've seen this happen to myself in TF2 and CS:S, I primarily play RPG's and even in the turn-based ones, on a particularly difficult fight where your timing and choices need to be perfect, you can experience this.

I usually get that when I'm playing futuristic racers (read F-Zero or Wipeout). It happens all the time when I'm playing basketball though.

I've had this happen to me quite a few times. I can always remember what I was doing at the time, but once I'm back out of "the zone" I think to myself "holy crap, how'd I do that?". It usually happens while I play an FPS, but I have had it happen in a few MMOs, and a few times in some RTS games.

I agree with those that say you go into a state of unnatural calm. I too have noticed this, it's as if your mind blocks out all inputs but the ones needed for the task at hand and focuses your extra brain power to achieving this goal. I'm sure it happens in other parts of life too such as martial arts, or when you hear about war heroes that took out a large amount of enemies.

It would be awesome to be able to enter it at will.

My 20-Point killing spree on TF:2 may be the only time I've ever 'Zoned-Out'. I never even realised, I was just playing, and the kills came naturally, fluidly, like I was only thinking about them, not actively seeking them out.

Indeed, getting in there isn't just for FPS', but it's the most obvious medium. I've seen my brother enter the Zone in Halo 2, but also in games like Skate and Fight Night - you're almost reacting to your opponent before they make their move.

Perhaps some games have access to some forgotten aspect of our mind? Perhaps the very best gamers possess ESP?

"The Zone" was how you beat Battletoads. There was no other way.

But seriously, the game I hit this in the most is DMC and it's sequels. Every so often I'm just... there. And stylish!

- J

I learned to control this by playing a wide variatey of generas of games.

It did happened to me once in UT2004 when playing that tournament "campaing" thing, when suddenly 4 bots attacked me, from behind. I was somehow able to jump on top the first one(I was armed with the flak cannon) I shot the primary fire and the secondary fire, killing 3 bots and I shredded the last one to pieces in once shot from behind.

I've entered "the Zone" in TF2 too, in a control point map with the soldier. I managed to survive long enough to make at least 4 kill and 2 captures.

But I don't exactly think that "the Zone" is limited to videogames anymore. I used to play volleyball and had DAYS of clarity and hightened reflexes. Somehow, I was good at doing anything in that time (regarding volleyball). But it was the only time it happened to me in real life.

I actually dedicated a bit more time thinking about this because, well, I'm crazy and I don't feel like working.

I get "the zone" in a lot of games even though the most noticeable moments are online in any of the many FPS's I've played over the years. In RTS's the zone is usually a state of hyper-focus which comes when I'm backed into a corner. The best examples were in Warcraft 3 when I was playing it online. I had this ability to set up impenetrable defenses when losing was inevitable. I remember one game where I was the undead and both of my partners had been torn apart but when all three of the enemies attacked me my graveyard/necromancer defense force annihilated most of the enemy before they were forced to run away and come back with flying units and siege weapons.

Half Life 2: In Ravenholm, when you're waiting on the gondala to come and get you into the church and the speed zombies start coming up the drainpipes. I grabbed the shotgun ammo, reloaded, and began to do a dance of death across the rooftop. Any zombie that showed an inch of flesh got it blasted of by buckshot. I was taking them out so fast I got to a point where there was about twenty seconds of calm. I think I only got hit twice.

FEAR: In the unfinished part of a building (think it was the office building) I was walking along, shotgun in hand when a body was flung out of a window in order to scare me. I flashed over to where he was, followed it along the screen, and pumped two rounds into him before I realized he was already dead. I shook my head to clear out the sudden cobwebs from the adreniline crash, looked at the TV, and my crosshairs were dead center in his forehead. I had managed to headshot a dead body twice as he was flung ten feet at high speeds.

FEAR again: In an office room in the office building (obviously) I was beset by a sqaud of Replica soldiers. I turned on Slow-Mo, shot two, then threw a grenade. Unfortunately, one guy was coming forward at the time, and he got right in front of the grenade. I turned and leapt out the open doorway at the same exact time the grenade blew. It killed the rest of them and got me the "Kill five guys in slow-mo at one time" Achivement.

Whenever I play Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. I try to not think about the game, and some primal thing just takes over and I get a kickass score.

I think the reason we go into the Zone is because we get so focused on what's happening that our brains block out everything else and devote more processing power, if you will, towards the problem at hand, the videogame. Essentially, we overclock our minds and gain perfect focus, control and ability.

And it's so much fun during Halo 3 online.

Anyone else notice that you sort of crash afterwards? Do really well, then do absolutely terrible.

It happens to me sometimes online in COD4, I just become an invincible killing machine for a few seconds. My most memorable moment though occured in real life a lady friend of mine sprayed me in the face with what she thought was water (It was actually rubbing alcohol.) and I could see the individual droplets as they came towards me and managed to close my eyes in time.

Anyone else notice that you sort of crash afterwards? Do really well, then do absolutely terrible.

Yes.

It's happened to me only twice in gaming. Both times were in Halo 3. Both times were online multiplayer and fairly highly ranked (I think the first was a Skill 30 and the second at Skill 40-something). I'm pretty good at halo, and its really the only fps ive ever played online, although i havent played it much. The first time I was playing Lone Wolves, and i was the lowest ranked there, i think i was 30 or 31 and someone there was a brigadier. At the lobby, I'm like, im gonna get pwned... But then once the match started, i just started killing, and didnt stop. I was at 18 kills in a row before all four of them ganked me and took me out. That was my only death. The match finished with me on 25, and the next person on 7. The second time was much the same thing.

It also happened once when I foolishly picked a fight with a guy 3 years older than me and a lot bigger and got in way over my head (this was a few years back when i was the kind of person that'd pick a fight at the slighest thing). I was getting the crap kicked out of me, then in a complete reversal i started to kick the crap out of him. He only hit me once more after that, and i hardly felt it at all. We both nearly got suspended though, so it probably wasn't worth it.

It was strange because, as you say, I didnt realise what was happening till it was over. And like someone said earlier, it is indeed as if your will is instantly transferred to the game. I'm not so sure if it is really possible to enter 'The Zone' at will though, unless you are a zen monk thats addicted to fps. It just something that happens, i think, and you briefly enter a heightened state of awareness. Because, again, as someone said earlier, it doesnt just happen with games. Perhaps it's a point past the 10% of our brain that we all can normally use.

I did it in real life once, playing badminton. Now normally I suck at badminton, but during this one game I played I did absolutely fantastically. No matter where my opponents hit the shuttlecock, I was there to return it. And I was playing against the two sportiest girls in the year (it was a mixed PE class, okay?). Managed to pull of all sorts of stylish volleys, jumps and even the odd dive. Ended up thrashing them. Everyone watching said it was some really good playing, even my partner who had actually done very little in the game.

I wonder if the fact that a really fit girl was watching had anything to do with it...?

Easykill:
Anyone else notice that you sort of crash afterwards? Do really well, then do absolutely terrible.

THANK YOU!!!

Thats what I wanted to say before to! I call it "Shawn Chambers Disease".

Yep, I know what you guys mean, though I never put a name to it until now. I 've only gone into the zone in FPS games, racing games, and Guitar Hero. It usually only happens to me when I'm tired though. I never really notice until it's over either. But every time it ends I just plain suck. It's like I have to balance out the stunning upgrade in ability with complete failure. For example, once I was playing team doubles in Halo and my team mate left the game right after it started. At first, I sucked and they got 3 and 1 kills on me. Then, out of nowhere I just started destroying the other team. It's like someone flipped a switch in my mind and I suddenly knew exactly how to crush them. I ended up getting 25 kills, 4 deaths. Afterward I couldn't even throw a grenade without hurting myself or someone else on my team for a whole week.