The Future Of Videogames

[bastard_loud]

A little while back i was watching Discovery (yes) and they were showing things about robotics, and a.i. and the future of it.

I saw a couple of scientists talking about bio-implants and the merging of humankind and robotics/nanotech. They said in maybe 30-40 years time, people would be able to get certain 'electronic enhancements', like ultrasound hearing, better viewing etc.
Some of the knowledge is already applied in the medical world, and it won't be very long before consumers will be able to take benefit(?) of it.

Think about plastic surgery, years ago, plastic surgery was first used with burnvictims. Now people who are in perfectly good health stand in line to benefit from the research that has been done.

The idea of a "matrix-plug" @ the backside of your head ofcourse sounds silly, but think about it for a while. Try to think 40 years ahead. I'll be 62 but hopefully still alive and able to witness technology at that time.

When enhancements as mentioned above are widely used, and we hopefully still have videogames, there's bound to be some guy that thinks of a whole new, revolutionary way to control your videogame...
That whole matrix-plug idea suddenly doesn't sound very silly at all.

I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on this subject.

Oh and please remember that this post is semi-serious, and i'm not some sort of robogeek with 3d goggles on, typing this message with his P5-glove.

Cheers.

P.S. Anyone have any experience with 3D-goggles?

 

[nw909]

Well lets hope that asteroid doesn't kill us all in 2014 then.

And getting a matrix plug would be a painful process.

 

[bastard_loud]

lol, true...

but don't keep thinking about that huge-ass plug at the back of your head. Besides, at the time when the matrix takes place you wouldn't need such a severe medical operation.

In the future everything is smaller.

 

[nw909]

I wanna go into the matrix and say "I need guns, Lots of guns"

 

[bastard_loud]

I hope CS isn't still the most played game by then

 

[Archangel]

no. Its CS extended condition 1.5. And its gonna suck. I will probably be around that time and babble about how good it was back then, when we were waiting for HL2 to come out ("HL2?""Its that stone old game that still needs a monitor...""uh...."), and how spoiled the youth of today is...

 

[mindless_moder]

hmm a matrix plug.
that wouldnt be a bad idea actually we would have to wear full body suits to feel vibrations and sutff that would be cool.
maybe a walker to run .
the best game id like to play on this all day would be clay shoot cnat u just imagine sitting in an empty room with a shotgun throwing clay discs and shooting them ?

 

[Morbo]

Matrix plugs would need to be reallly well done, I can tell you. And let's hope the plugs are clean. We didn't see it in the movies but every person in Zion clean his/her plugs with a q-tip.

More seriously, I would be a virus and do like Smith. This guy is so greaaat. When he sees Neo in the helicopter and says "No" in the first movie, his expression is so cool. And Weaving does an amazing job transforming the caracter, from a "robotic" killer to a psychotic virus. Just in the first one, you see him in the first minutes and during the "interview" with Neo, and he's just like a robot. Then everything goes wrong, he does this crazy speech about humanity and virus (notice the irony?), then he fights Neo and the change is really easy to see ("I will enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson").

And if you saw the Revolutions trailer, you can see him laughing...

 

[ray_MAN]

Did you ever read Tom Clancy's Net Force? The have Matrix plugs and it's like 2015 then...

 

[Sulkdodds]

Recently (very) a completely blind man had a digital camera plugged directly into his cerebral cotex. Blind from an early age, he can now see (albeit somewhat limetedly). Makes you think, doesn't it. The future might not be so far away as you think. uanytum computing is coming! Raise the barricades! Build the defences! Prepare for the onslaught, comrades!

Ahem.

 

[bastard_loud]

Exactly what i mean Sulkdodds, if you take a look at what's possible these days, then think about the near future.
Things are going to get very interesting.

 

[x84D80Yx]

worst thing we could ever invent is a time machine. i swear that would mess up everything in the world...even if the creator wanted it for good use.

so anything other than a time machine would be great, i would love to have technology like the matrix. i would get one of those huge plugs in the back of my head for it ...no fear > just imaging a guy with no legs could plug himself in and actually experience walking ...and it would feel absolutely 100% real. or some old guy could plug in and make himself feel and look 30 years younger. would be sweet....first thing i would do if i could "plug" in... id go into the construct and be like "i need guns and motorcycles...lots of them" and play a co-op type game with a few friends hehe

 

[nw909]

Originally posted by mindless_moder
hmm a matrix plug.
that wouldnt be a bad idea actually we would have to wear full body suits to feel vibrations and sutff that would be cool.
maybe a walker to run .
the best game id like to play on this all day would be clay shoot cnat u just imagine sitting in an empty room with a shotgun throwing clay discs and shooting them ?

A full body suit?

What if you get shot by a BFG and the suit kills you?

 

[Prince of China]

I heard that in the future, people will get console implants in their body.EWWW!

 

[Solidarnosi]

Originally posted by nw909
A full body suit?

What if you get shot by a BFG and the suit kills you?

ew, gibbed in your suit!:x your mom will be pissed to find all that...

 

[nw909]

Indeed my point

 

[x84D80Yx]

Originally posted by Solidarnosi
ew, gibbed in your suit!:x your mom will be pissed to find all that...

hmm... if its a suit, wouldnt it implode rather than explode. shit i dunno wtf im talking about lol..but that would be friggin weird

 

[Sulkdodds]

Originally posted by x84D80Yx
worst thing we could ever invent is a time machine. i swear that would mess up everything in the world...even if the creator wanted it for good use.

err...no. say you went into the future, to see where you where in 20 years or something. Lets see you found you had been killed in aterrorist attack. Then you go back to your own time. Lets say you decide to wear a bulletproof vest, or maybe be somewhere else. But it won't work. Somehow you'll get killed. You will end up being there, and being shot. because if you had managed to avoid death, then you wouln't have seen it in the future. The same goes for changing the past. If you tried to stop a fdreind getting killed, you woud fail, because if you had succeeded, then you wouldn't have gone back in the first place. It's a paradox, I know, but hatever happened, things would stay, exactly as they are. As a research resource, a time machine would obviously be invaluable, and there would be no changeing history.

 

[Archangel]

actually, my theory on time travel in the past goes like:

The sum of history, changed or not has to lead to my birth/me being able to do the trip. since at the time I do the trip, the trip is actually over already (since it happend in the past), all my changes (if there were any), have created the world I start from.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Hmm. surely a topic we could debate in full. But lets leave well alone, okay? If anyone mentions time-travel again I will..erm..tell you to stop.

 

[Sulkdodds]

As games get more and more advanced, and graphics get more and more realistic, developers are going to have to work hard to make the interactivity, detail and vision of their gameworlds fit the graphics or else there will be no immersion. But just imagine for a second how much RAM would be needed to make a photo-realistic, physically accurate gameworld. We are not going to get photo-realistic graphics till we get quantum computing. And we are not going to get full immerson until that is coupled with direct brain access. Personally I think we should be debating the future of videogames as software, the concepts and gameplay mechanics that have not been used, the potential of next-gen 3d engines for previously unseen levels of fun. Opinions?

 

[Dax]

I'm afraid that if something similiar to a "matrix world" was invented, a lot of people would be so hooked to it that we'd start ignoring the present world. Our society would be a mess I reckon.
Bah, I dunno.. but I see more disadvantages about the whole "virtual-world" thing than adv.

 

[SenorDingDong]

Time Travel is scientifically Impossible.

Anyway you must remeber that, if someone did go in the past and changed something, then came back into the future, it would ONLY be different for that person. It would be like an Alternate Reality. Everybody else would be unaffected, but for that one person that did time travel, it would be different for him and people would be different to him.

Back to the Future Trilogy does a good job of explaining this.

 

[Fat Tony!]

Matrix world sounds gd to me think about it, rape would go drop so far, people would have cyber sex programs :|.

 

[Sulkdodds]

No, back to the future is flawed, because as I said, if you changed time nothing would change. I could be wrong but surely whatever you did in the past would have already manifested itself? Anyway, lets leave that for another thread. (now there's an idea). Anyway, a plug-in gameworld begs the question, how do you upgrade? What if you're plug is obsolete? And how is it possible to develop maps and models for something so complex? As I said, we should be discussing the nearer future of videogames. Please?

 

[SLH]

I'm waiting for a programming language where i can go:

"Make me a really good game that will last for 5-6 years."

Ok, Ok, those already exist, but i meen one that'll actually respond by making a game as expected.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I'm waiting for a programming language where I can say "okay, this gun looks like an M4 and it will kill this enenmy in five shots. Oh, and when you get to this point, a helicopter flys over. then it asks 'what helicopter' and i type 'a huey'. A language that understands plain english and tells you when you've done something wrong.

 

[Archangel]

languages tell you that something is wrong, but with some nice "Exeptional error at adress fffaa12xfffaa13 has occured. Application will be terminated. Sucker."

 

[bastard_loud]

Originally posted by Sulkdodds
But just imagine for a second how much RAM would be needed to make a photo-realistic, physically accurate gameworld. We are not going to get photo-realistic graphics till we get quantum computing. And we are not going to get full immerson until that is coupled with direct brain access.

Ofcourse it would take a supercomputer dressed in ninja fatigues to do all that, but in my original post i was talking about 50 years ahead.
If i take a look @ how electronics, computing and robotics have evolved in the last 50 years, i can't help but think that what you mentioned isn't so far ahead as the average Joe thinks.

On the topic of full immersion i totally agree with you. You need direct brain access to make it believable you're really there.
But how long do you think that's going to take? Communication between a brain and electronic (aid) devices is already possible these days.

It's not going to happen in 10 years, or even 20, but there's bound to be some geeky dude who's able to pull it off. Maybe not in a Matrix kindof way, but let this sink in;

Just how cool would it be to park yourself in a phatass LazyBoy(TM), in front of your computermonitor, and being able to control your copy of Half-Life 10 by mindpower, instead of moving your limbs and pressing WASD and clicking a mousebutton? If you thought "Hey, what's that in the corner, i'm going to take a look..." you would do just that in the game, just like you would in real life (walk over to the corner, crouch (if needed), and look at an object).

Kinda like being inside the head and controlling another person, only a virtual one, in a virtual world.

I'd have a ball. Seriously.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I thinik that somes up the entire argument pretty well.