The Tetris effect occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It takes its name from the video game Tetris.
People who played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time could find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf, the buildings on a street, or hallucinating pieces being generated and falling into place on an invisible layout. In this sense, the Tetris effect is a form of habit. They might also dream about falling tetrominos when drifting off to sleep or see images of falling tetrominos at the edges of their visual fields or when they close their eyes. In this sense, the Tetris effect is a form of hypnagogic imagery.
I find it interesting that this concept from the science world takes its name from a video game. It makes sense, though, since I feel like I've experienced this myself on a few rare occasions. It never happened to me with Tetris, but I think Virtua Tennis for Dreamcast was the one that got me the best...when I first started playing it, I would see volleys playing out in my head when I was daydreaming in English class the next day. Historically, I think Pong is another game that was well known to cause a similar experience on people.
Anyone else ever experienced this from Tetris or any other game?