Many games do already use some sort of video, aperture etc. effects. Screen
shakes are often coupled with heavy mis-convergence huge sudden chromatic
aberration. There are also quite a lot of screen tearing effects. But many of
these are either very digital (discontinuous) or way too smooth. As a result,
such effects are usually not used for gameplay elements. They are mainly an
overlay that should indicate some status (got hit etc.), but they have no say
in any gameplay. It's difficult to build screen effects that break up your
screen smoothly yet aren't trivial/boring (like a sine/wobble or similar). So
the question is; how to build screen effects that tear your screen in such a
way that you can still follow the action on the screen even while the screen
gets heavily distorted?

This question, phrased the other way around, i.e. "how do keep image
perception alive on a CRT while the video signal undergoes some heavy
distortions?", was one of the major questions once television was introduced.
In the earlier days of television (around the time of the Brit. 405 lines
system) there were no compensation to counter many of the potential
distortion. If the signal was weak, the image teared away in a sudden.
However, this situation was remedied by introducing more and more
sophisticated and clever analog circuitry to stabilize the signal and
circuits. Many of these circuits are so complex that you can't even compute
them fully in closed-form, because many components do have a non-linear
voltage-to-current relation making the whole system non-linear. The
engineering solution to this problem is to linearize this relation around
a given point known as the quiescent point (Q-point, bias point, operating
point). Analog systems are usually build around these points.

Now the interesting part (contrary do digital systems) is, that these systems
do operated in a certain range. The linearization process needs a certain
finite (small) interval in which you can operate the system. Within this
interval the system behaves as expected. The non-linearties, when operating
within this interval, are usually very small. However, if you start to leave
this interval then the non-linearities will rise and as such the dynamics of
the system will rise as well influencing other components in the same system
usually producing what's known as non-linear distortion. But the interesting
fact is that these distortions aren't produced all of a sudden, there is a
continuous range and many analog systems are build in such a way that they can
stand these distortions for awhile (overdrive, headroom). They don't break-up
suddenly. It's a continuous process with the dynamics governed by the non-
linearities of the system.

This is something engineers did for ages, building stable analog circuits
around the quiescent point while estimating the non-linear behavior further
away from it.

For video/television everything was done to build stabilizing systems which
won't break-up all of a sudden if you slightly leave the operating region
(with a bad signal for example). The effect of all those systems is that the
image quality holds up tied even while the video signal undergoes some heavy
distortions for some brief moments. For example, today, you can loose the H-
sync pulses for a couple of lines with virtually no effects seen on the
screen. Even if the sync pulses are missing for longer, or come-in in an
infrequent fashion, the image on the screen won't tear away all of a sudden.
It smoothly starts to degrade. The phase-looked-loops (PLL, a flywheel
mechanism) tries its best to sync the internal oscillator with these
infrequent pulses.

It was a real achievement in getting a stable picture on the screen from a
very weak signal out of analog technology. There is some real ingenuity
applied here.

End of story is that you get some very interesting (non-boring) image
distortions with you still being able to discern/tracking the image's content
up to a given point.

This is something which can be used for games as gameplay elements. And I
don't mean such simple gameplay/distortion elements which just makes you
blindfolded or tear the colors etc. apart.

It goes a lil deeper.

For example. With proper video distortion algorithm you can potentially
perceive a given gaming environment/world much better. For example, you can
link the geometric distribution of the environment with a video signal. You
can send out signals to scan the environment, or receive a signal from a
source from somewhere, all influencing your vision to a given degree, telling
you something about the environment while likewise creating a certain
atmosphere. You can create signal sources in a distance, an enemies which may
show its presents already by some distortions on your vision. If you close in
on the enemy the distortions may increase with you having to find ways to
shield yourself from it. The enemy may throw energy ball towards you which
could make you blindfolded for a brief second. However, the interesting aspect
here is that these incoming distortions will break your vision in a continuous
fashion and will also regain continuously. This will keep you connected with
the game, scene, situation etc., something which is hard to do with digital
distortions effects, they pull you out immediately because they set in rather
harsh and the image loses coherence right at the spot if the effect becomes a
lil more complicated.

Things can go so far that you may completely cut any link to video while just
using the effects in some ways for whatever fits your needs. A game artist may
completely "abuse" these things using everything just as a tool to create
something interesting. So it's not tied to video per se. For example, I have
some ideas to extrapolate these video techniques to 3d. You may have whole
scenes, objects etc. which may go out-of-sync whatever. Some new playgrounds.