What Will Video Games Will Be Like in a Few Decades?
September 16th, 2011Here’s an example of a video game that I thought was fun when I was young: Choplifter (1982):
Now, nearly three decades later, take a look at some gameplay footage from the upcoming, Battlefield 3:
As I was watching that Battlefield 3 trailer, I found myself squinting, blinking and setting the volume to mute. (Maybe my parents would have done the same thing if I had tried to sit them down to play Choplifter back then.) But look at the difference between Choplifter and Battlefield 3. Woh!
This led me to wonder what video games might be like in another 30 years? (Assuming humans aren’t extinct, of course, and that indulgences like video games are still common.)
For me, the big question is not so much about the nature of the games, but whether the action will take place on a computer screen at all, or in the mind’s eye, so to speak, using some form of neurocomputing interface. Sci-fi has been prepping us for this for a long time with films like The Matrix, 13th Floor, Avatar, Surrogates, Inception, and Source Code.
What do you think? Is a Matrix-like neurocomputing interface any more likely in the next 30 years than other sci-fi staples like teleportation (not quantum teleportation, which is real) and time travel?
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This post kind of reminds me of my 5th grade teacher telling the class that by the time we are 30, there will be flying cars. I am well into my 40’s and still waiting- cars on a road, same as it ever was…
The world may be going to hell in all kinds of ways, but while everything from the natural world will keep getting more expensive, the price of technology will likely keep plummeting. 30 years from now is too far away for me to have any confidence speaking about, but those photos of kids in India using facebook on their smartphones while their villages lack clean drinking water seem like a fairly reasonable vision of the future to me.
games are one of the oldest forms of human culture, and digital games are currently one of the most effective forms of distraction/persuasion, so I tend to think that short of an asteroid collision or zombie apocalypse, we’ll still have video games in the future. whether they’re actually played with some neuro-interface, or just a “low tech” heads up display or contact lens video monitor, i’m sure they’ll basically be virtual reality.
And the doomers are winning the poll by a long shot. I’m in good company here. 🙂
I’ve worked in the VR/MMO sphere, and I keep up casually with ‘interface technology’ research.
The direct brain – computer interfaces are coming, short of technological collapse. Given how plastic our brains are, it’ll be half technological advance, half easily-absorbed feedback-motivated repetitive training. I still just about twitch from memory watching choplifter. I’m sure kids exposed to brain-computer interfaces will easily adapt. Us codgers? Maybe not so much. The Battlefield video ramped up my heart rate and immediately made me hate it for so blatantly pushing my buttons. I guess I’m getting old.
It’s pretty much a given that resources derived from the biosphere (food, water…) will continue to become scarcer, more valuable, and more tightly controlled. It also seems pretty obvious that acts such as reproduction, building a house, etc. will become more controlled. That is, activities which have a substantial cost in terms of physical resources will be increasingly regulated.
It seems pretty obvious in such an environment that the native urge for excitement, adventure, and a sense of self-determination will funnel towards whatever outlet is available. Add a couple more generations of increasing unfamiliarity with physical handwork on the part of the general population into the mix, and I think you’ll see a world where the interest and attention of the vast majority of the population is absorbed by interactive virtual experiences while the physical cost of their existence is managed on a statistical level by sophisticated modeling which determines just how many new dwelling units can be built, how much a unit of meat costs, how many children can be borne this year, etc. Anyone who has ever had an aquarium knows that as you add more and more fish to it, you end up in a situation where you have to a actively manage food, oxygen, water quality, and eventually, fish number. Make the aquarium a closed biological system (have it grow its own food and self-maintain the O2 level), and survival of the organisms turns into a management problem in which the freedom of the individual fish inevitably must be constrained…
Zeke
Personally? I think Gibson’s adage of ‘the future won’t be evenly distributed’ goes far.
I *think* we’ll see something akin to ‘Snow Crash’…. of course, trying to describe it NOW is like being back in the late 80s looking at TRON and trying to extrapolate to the 2010s…
The future will be not as evenly distributed, and not as cool as we think it will be. A downer I know.
-Drunky
Hmmm…
If we still have video games in the future, I think it highly unlikely that the controls will be in the mind. Maybe it’s just because I’m seriously lacking sleep right now, but it seems to me that human thoughts are too jumbled and too holistic to do a good job of working all the complexities of the modern vidoe game. And how would contemplation and evaluation of different scenarios/options be handled? If thoughts require a separate “execute” step to enact, it seems to me that the extra step limits the speed advantage that direct thoughts might have.
Another limitation I think will occur, is that if they manage to get games into the mind’s eye, they’re likely to lack the complexity and variables that the modern games have. Those games will be the new Choplifters, rudimentary in both their play and realisation, while on-screen gaming will be beyond Battlefield 3. Will the public be happy to consume that more limited gameplay?
And finally, I think mind’s eye gaming will be dangerous. Mental pathways are built through use, and the more used and more recent tend to crowd out older less used pathways. What would be the effect of the constant emphasis of gameplay mental pathways over real world? My guess is that such people would interact with the real world the same crippled, diminished way that drug-addled people do today.
What about some sort of immersive environment, with holograms or 3D technology on hydraulic armchairs that mimic those rollercoaster simulators.
@Georgia there will never be flying cars as long as we have the old systems… too hard for our would-be rulers at the top to control.
Borders would become meaningless – now we can’t have that can we…
Really needed an “all the above” on this one
On Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I’d like to believe that the answer is ‘Rat Meat’, but on Tuesday and Thursday, I think it’s that people will be dying to ‘jack in.’
The belief in total collapse is akin to religion, though. I’ve maintained all along: We’re not that lucky.
I have no idea seems the only appropriate response, considering the long and ridiculous history of such prognostication.
In theory at least, I suspect the whole thing will slant toward ever more “transparent” integration of biological and mechanical systems, being sold as the inevitable future of the human race the whole way.
Meanwhile, there isn’t much to add to Zeke’s comprehensive and thoughtful take. Though I would make a point of aligning myself with Kev’s take on the “crash” scenario.
The system will change when the Eye decides it’s to their best advantage, and when it does the pain will NOT be distributed evenly, as the lubricated economist rightly infers above.
The Age of the Fortress will return, but this time the walls will as much about keeping a frightened populace in as keeping all those tax-evading marauders outside city walls of both the physical and virtual variety.
Satellites, ballistic objects and air power may have rendered the fortress obsolete from a safety standpoint at the level of all-out conflict, but at the physical human level they will still be saleable to the remaining masses huddling there in the name of “safety” and “security”.
And those who choose to remain behind these walls will be cowed and controlled like no society that has come before, thanks to the class of current and developmental technologies designed specifically to enable 24/7 monitoring.
As for the future of games, I’m pretty pragmatic.
The materialistic industrial world wrong-headedly relegates gaming to “worthless” play — unless you’re programming them — despite such abundant evidence to the contrary. But anyone with their head on straight already knows better.
Flight simulation for civilian and military pilot training? Game. Incinerating a wedding party in remote Baluchistan via the latest drone tech? Game. Tracking and monitoring millions of physical and virtual targets via a global version of Sim City? Game. Ad infinitum.
The lines defining what constitutes a “game” are blurrier with each passing year.
Jacking in ala the Matrix? Pretty likely, given current developments. In theirty years? Perhaps. Injecting a living human mind and its matrix of memories into a machine? Give me a f**king break.
While we might be able to create a bio-mechanical vessel capable of storing complex relational data that will simulate life — an automaton — isn’t much more than a golem, a humunculus.
But all the high-speed multi-core processing in the world seems far less likely to give birth to sentience or self-awareness. Especially since we still have no real clue at that level beyond a whole lot of speculation.
I lean most strongly toward the perspectives of fellows like Mckenna & Sheldrake. To my mind, for all Kurzweil’s prognostication and preaching, the idea of “soul simulation” strikes me as a non-starter.
But if somehow these blinkered souls do succeed in such an arcane endeavor, aren’t they essentially crafting a biologically bound life simulation? In other words, a “living” game?
As Miraculix rightly points out, the line between ‘game’ and ‘real world’ is fuzzy. This is not new. The distinction is artificial and easily ignored when convenient.
I am not so much worried about actual AI either, as I am paranoid about the effects of emergent behavior in increasingly complex (and incompletely understood) self-regulated systems.
Watch the mania on the stock market as automated systems buy and sell according to various rules, and occasionally do unexpected things because of bugs or unforeseen interactions. Now think about equally (or greater) complex systems applied to grid power, transit, etc. Consider automated defense systems, engineered to respond on time scales that do not permit human oversight. In a world where integration is ever-increasing, all these systems are destined to interact, vastly increasing the potential for unexpected outcomes.
Tighter integration of systems inherently means greater vulnerability. Witness the global economy surging and falling. Greater vulnerability motivates pressure for stricter control. Stricter control drives tighter integration.
In more cheerful vein, it’s finally sunny here. Everything growing seems caught up in that silent swell towards autumn maturity. This, at least, gives me confidence that there will still be trees on the hills and fish in the sea if we inadvertently erase ourselves as a species.
Zeke