The Neverending Story … of Games
Cracked.com has an unusually insightful and thoughtful writeup on the potential future of gaming…
Scientists, engineers, and futurists alike have been predicting the rise of a new generation of gaming for years. Embedded systems on a human body part? Truly self-creating video games? Virtual reality that (for once) rivals actual reality? These are all things that people have not only been predicting, but wanting for almost as many years as any of the precursors of the future have been around.
The Neverending Story? Didn’t it …end… though?
“Spore”, a computer game referenced in the writeup, is a game that self-generates and self-populates, and then shares your data across the internet with other people, so they can interact with the beings/worlds/situations you create. I can’t find it at the moment, but there was a video on YouTube a few months ago with Robin Williams (yes, the comedian… apparently also a huge gaming nerd) demoing it for a crowd at some gaming conference.
Take the concept of “world sharing” and combine it with the power and networking of XBOX360. Then apply it to a more advanced game like… say, Starcraft. Visualize it. Pretty impressive, right?
This is the direction Microsoft (at least the games division) is trying to guide the world-at-large into. It’s pretty obvious when you look at the facts: massive internal hard drive, more processing power than the average person’s desktop computer, a huge centralized internet-based network, and a graphics system that was under-utilized until Halo3 was released.
Don’t believe me? Think about some of your favorite games. Can you buy and trade items/characters/maps/other data? Can you communicate vocally with almost anyone on the network? Have you ever experienced a major crash of the network (besides the Halo3 release day)? Can you have your games auto-update?
Right.
Now, imagine all of that… embedded in your head. A chip in your jaw for vocal transference (either sub-vocalization or normal… sounds travel through bone). A chip above your ear for audio broadcasting to your eardrum. A chip above/in/next-to your eye for visual display (HUD-style).
Don’t think that’s impressive? Take the Moore’s Law principle, and apply it to computers. We currently can pack four processors into the space where once processor previously existed… this is up from one just a few short years ago. By the time ten or fifteen years roll around, computers that rival “Big Blue” will fit in a very small space… maybe even small enough to go in a chip the size of an RFID tag.
Joystick of The Future?
I’m ready for the day when you can kill high resolution, self generating, AI enabled aliens in the middle of a boring meeting… without anyone knowing. Aren’t you?
