Poll: How Many Days Did It Take......

[SoulBlazer]

Hi guys, I wonder if you might be willing to help a friend of mine who is working on a term paper for his psych class in college.

Basicaly, the question is this -- in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Septe,ber 11th, 2001 how LONG did it take you before you felt like going back to a video or computer game?

And if you happen to recall, what did you play?

If you live outside the United States and your profile does'nt have a location listed, I would be thankfull if you could tell me that also.

It's a long story to explain what the paper and project is on, but suffice it to say he's looking at people's psycholocial and emotional responses, both short term and long, to tragic events -- mostly focusing on hobbies and sex lives and stuff like that. :)

I know for myself it took about fopur days before I felt like playing ANYTHING -- spent the whole week just talking on various online forums and chat rooms about it. The first game I DID play was just Madden. It took about three more days before I played anything else, and even longer before I went back to games which had killing, flying planes around, or shooting things.

Thanks in advance.

[Queen Of The Felines]

Later that night. I was getting too depressed from being bombarded with news on EVERY channel. I remember booting up the PlayStation but no idea what game it was.

I also jumped onto Ultima Online just out of curiousity and there were memorial services going on all over the place...kinda creepy actually.

Kristine

[Gnarkill]

I was accually visiting NYC (spent 3 days there, happen to be on 9/11) the day it happen and got stuck in the city all day... wasent rlly depressed just pissed cause advance wars came out that day and those ****in terrorist made me get stuck in traffic!!! :angry: :bad-words:

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I'm going to estimate something like two weeks - mainly because I work in the aforementioned news media, and it was literally about that long before I got my life back.

On the flipside, at least I got my life back. Can't say that for everyone.

Oh, the game was probably Pac-Man or Galaga on the Game Boy Color - a couple of restroom favorites of mine. All I had time for at the moment.

[GaijinPunch]

Took me a good 36 hours.

I live in Japan, so it was like 10PM when it happened here. I was still hungover from the weekend (yeah, I know... it was Tuesday night) and went to bed early - just as it happened. My crazy as Bosnian boss called me from Frankfurt at 1AM to wake my ass up to tell me what had happened and that I had to be at work at 6AM (I work in financial markets, and something like that has a BIG impact on my work -- it was the busiest day of my life until last week... we made a ton of cash though).

Anyways, my GF at the time (now wife) was visiting NY, my ex-girlfriend whom I'm in contact with still lives there along w/ some friends, and my mother is an American Airlines flight attendant. I was on the phone/awake for 4 hours (it's 5AM by now) until everyone I knew was accounted for.

Went through work, it sucked, was totally tired. Went to a friends bar with some other Americans to kinda get some male bonding in. Went home, went through another day of work, and was on a semi-normal basis, although I was watching a lot more news than I usually did.

Man, that was long.

[briskbc]

It took me a day. Granted I'm not American so I didn't feel it enitirely the same way but it happend the same morning I was getting ready to drive out of town for my grandmother's funeral. Your friend may want to take that into consideration.

The games can be a nice form of escapism in situations like these. I find that during periods of stress or grief that I NEED to take a short flight from reality and just focus on something else for 20 minutes or so.

[PapaStu]

Well, I heard about it at something like 7:15 AM PST (i dont remember the actual time, but it was just after the second plane had hit), and i woke up everyone in the dorms i lived in. By Noon after my first class and on the way to the second one, school was shutdown and my Weezer concert was canceled. Basically being stuck in the dorms, and bombarded by the same lack of info, and pictures over and over on tv, and having just gotten into a fight with the then GF who said that i should have been on one of those planes, i was in games by 1pm, i had escaped into games and me and a group of friends were on PS2 through the night.

[hydr0x]

uhhh i know i get killed for this post:

i was working when it happened but i started playing counter-strike (it was in my cs time) half an hour after i got home, to be honest, the whole tragedy didn't interest me at all, i see no difference to all the other terroristic acts that never interested the USA, there are over a dozen people dying every day in israel and noone cares, there are earthquakes that kill a lot more people than died in the WTC, and so on

[Mayhem]

Being in UK at the time it hit during lunchtime here, so we were essentially bombarded with info on a second by second basis round the office at work and everyone I knew across the world. Hence after several hours of that, I just wanted to shut myself off from the constant broadcasts when I got home, and either played some games or chatted with someone in Long Island cos she had relatives working in NYC at the time.

If you want to know what I played, sorry can't remember...

[Arcturius]

I was in Australia when it happened and had been playing 'Crazy Taxi' on the DC right before someone on the IRC chat said what had happened (it was about 11pm) so I went to bed right after I got up I'd probbally have played 'Super Bust-A-Move' or 'Rampage Puzzle Attack' on the GBA as we'd went out on a long shopping trip.

[Flack]

I would say two days, and it was almost definitely Ghost Recon, which I was really into then. I work for the FAA so it was pretty busy and stressful for a couple of days. 9/11 was the first day in our nation's history that all aircraft were grounded. I run the servers that most of the information FAA inspectors use to get their information, so it was pretty tense for a couple of days.

[Darth Sensei]

I was in shock the first day, but the continued news reply was nauseating so I stopped watching and listening to the radio and TV. The second day I distinctly remembering playing Mario and Zelda on my NES and I think it was therapeutic. Low violence, reminded me of my teens, better times... that kind of stuff.

D

[christianscott27]

less than 36 hours, at the time i was working in a skyscraper restaurent and we were closed for the rest of the week for obvious reasons. in fact after 9/11 the place never really hit its stride again and closed last year, anyways i had loads of time on my hands. i remember my wife just getting oversaturated with the coverage, she spent most of the day walking the dogs and reading. i was of course glued to the TV day and night until my wife was like, take a break from that, go play your games. i was playing syphon filter 2 at the time and then 989 studios delayed the launch of the third game, since it had "terrorists" in it...

[YoshiM]

To be honest I can't really remember but I'm pretty sure I played something that night. I thought it was tragic but the situation didn't really rattle me. It probably also helped that I was bombarded with 24/7 news coverage that probably help desensitize me as well.

[Keir]

Since I was on a business trip halfway across the country at the time it took me a couple days just to get home, so I couldn't have played games during that time anyway. After that I don't think my game playing was affected in any way.

[Garry Silljo]

Call me heartless, but I watched it happen on the news, or rather I woke up, went to turn on cartoons and that was on instead, and I said, "oh crap", and watched for 15 minutes until it started to repeat. Then knowing I couldn't do anything to fix it, and that TV would be nothing but that for hours if not days, I immediately hit the TV/Video button and "Hey hey lets make some CRAZY money!"

[Zubiac666]

1 or 2 hours cause I couldn't stand it nomore watching burning people jumping out of windows on EVERY channel.
good god.....they even showed that on kids-channels
I was so sick of it that I turned to channel 44 (my NES channel) and started a long "Star Tropics" run. My bro said I'm sick cause how could I play games when the biggest terrorist hit was just happening?
I wonder who is more sick: A person who plays games while it happens or
A person who watches it live on TV
clear answer for me

[AB Positive]

As I'm highly prone to anxiety attacks, I remember finishing my work day, going to my soon-to-be mother in-law's and just listening to the radio. When I got home I didn't want to hear any more about it so I vividly remember playing 720 via MAME. I didn't have a console to my name at the time, until that christmas when I got an XBOX


-AG

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm...I punched a wall at school when I saw the second tower fall, but I believe I was playing Counter-Strike later that day.

Nope, the Guerilla Warfare guys are just doin' their thing :P

There actually was some discussion about whether it was acceptable to join the Terrorist team during that month, though.

[tynstar]

I think I was back playing within 48hrs. After awhile I could see so much. I believe it was Two Towers that I played. Or maybe PSO.

[ddockery]

I played the second I got home that night. All day at work all anyone did was refresh cnn.com or whatever news site to get more info, and one of the news channels was being played in the lunchroom. I was so sick of seeing/reading the same thing over and over again that I just threw on some loud music, grabbed a couple of beers, and played SSX all night. I don't have much time for video games, and about half of the time I do play them it's a deliberate escape from all the other crap going on.

[Galsia]

I remember it well. The first game I played was the most inappropiate "game" ever. I don't even really want to mention the title but its pretty obvious.

[Raedon]

Hi guys, I wonder if you might be willing to help a friend of mine who is working on a term paper for his psych class in college.

Basicaly, the question is this -- in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Septe,ber 11th, 2001 how LONG did it take you before you felt like going back to a video or computer game?

And if you happen to recall, what did you play?

If you live outside the United States and your profile does'nt have a location listed, I would be thankfull if you could tell me that also.

It's a long story to explain what the paper and project is on, but suffice it to say he's looking at people's psycholocial and emotional responses, both short term and long, to tragic events -- mostly focusing on hobbies and sex lives and stuff like that. :)

I know for myself it took about fopur days before I felt like playing ANYTHING -- spent the whole week just talking on various online forums and chat rooms about it. The first game I DID play was just Madden. It took about three more days before I played anything else, and even longer before I went back to games which had killing, flying planes around, or shooting things.

Thanks in advance.



I was playing UT all day 9-11 happened and EverQuest all night.

[tholly]

Well, I am a Psychology Major at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa so I am more than happy to help a fellow Psych. student out. I really wasn't into video games as much as I am now back in 2001. I just played the popular games on the newer systems and didn't really touch any of the classic (although I keep them all.) Being that I wasn't really into video games too much it didn't really affect my playing habits at all. I don't really know when the first time I played after that happened was. Most likely that night after I had my homework done (it was my senior year at the time.) I most likely played Gran Turismo 3 on my PS2, but I'm not sure.

[nesman85]

911 didn't affect my playing whatsoever. i played some 64 that afternoon after school just like every other day.

[rjf385]

really, it didn't bother at all. Sure, i had to deal with it all day in school(GREAT FOR NO WORK). But sure i was downed about it.

[Sotenga]

I heard the news in school, and I never really gave it much thought, but I asked my mom a stupid question when I came home, and that was something like "Are any of our relatives dead?" Yeah, I was worried a bit, but none of my relatives or friends died. I think I went straight to the NES or Playstation after walking through the door. It didn't affect my gaming at all... I don't think you'll like hearing this, but it didn't affect me at all. I could understand the pain of others, but none of it was mine. I just gamed on, as I always do.

[Cmosfm]

Took me no time at all, I woke up at about 12:00 that day, heard about it, played games.

That may make me sound like an unpatriotic uncaring ass hole...but I supposed I coped with it by killing people in MGS 2.

[PyroPenguin]

I actually think I played Harvest Moon on my Gameboy that same day during class. Mainly because we didn't do anything in any classes except watch the news.

[ubersaurus]

I'm pretty sure I was playing something later that day, can't remember what exactly...I THINK it was king of fighters 98 on the dreamcast.

Not knowing anyone in NYC, nor having been there at any prior date, it didn't seem to hit closer to home then the terrorism in Israel or Ireland.

[SpasticFuctard]

I was too busy giving blood, picking up my sister from her high school which had been dismissed in the wake of the attacks across the river, trying to run down all my friends and relatives who worked in the towers, and generally being enraged to play video games. I went to the firing range the next day though. Very cathartic to empty clip after clip into paper targets of turban wearing terrorist types and homicidal postal workers with uzi's. It was probably a week before I found myself back on a console.

SF - Bang Bang.

[Balloon Fight]

I played games right after school that day. I watched the news to see what was going on, but I was sick of seeing people dying and buildings burning so I went and loaded up the N64. I was probably playing Mario Kart 64 that day.

[scooterb23]

I was working when everything went down. We closed around noon when they decided to evacuate downtown Columbus. I tried going shopping for a while, but the stores weren't exactly "open" so I went home, watched the replays a few hours. Got really depressed, and had a good old fashioned panic attack.

After calming down a bit, I turned on Crazy Taxi for a few minutes. Couldn't concentrate on it, so I turned on the Game Show Network.

Then I got in the car with my dad, and drove to Indiana because my grandma was having surgery the next morning.

I really guess my first serious game time was on Friday(Thursday was my complete nervous breakdown day) after work, when I finally sat down to get a little Tony Hawk 2 in...