The Next 25 Years of Video Games
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Let' just say it right now: Video games are going to dominate the freaking future. You'll see it in your own lifetime. We're warning you, though, it's going to get weird. Beginning with ... 2008:
Neverending Games, Sony' Model-T Matrix
Spore's Infinite Universe
... and evolve into a creature of your own design ...
... then form tribes ...
... then cities ...
... then planets ...
... then interplanetary travel ...
... which lets you visit other planets teeming with infinite varieties of alien life. Yes, guys, you can then build warships and wipe them out. This sounds like a ridiculous crack fantasy to any gamer who's ever dropped $60 on a game and blown through all 12 levels in eight hours. How the hell do you fit an "infinite" number of planets and aliens on a few DVD' worth of data? The answer is a technique called procedural generation, which just means the game doesn't have to store millions of creatures, it just stores the methods by which they can be built. You, the gamer, make the creatures. Your malformed abominations, along with all the civilization and technologies that spring from your deranged imagination, are automatically uploaded online where they become part of the Spore universe. Those other planets you get to travel to? They're all created by other gamers.
They're planning on half a million stars with millions of planets orbiting. When we say "infinite," we mean it. We're talking about a game you could literally spend the rest of your natural life exploring without ever reaching the end. Whether or not this particular game becomes a hit, this method of game creation is the inevitable future. A whole lot of what sucks about games right now--specifically, the huge art budgets that force publishers to cash in with shitty licensed games--will go by the wayside. Game makers won't have to construct a whole digital universe; they can simply provide the blueprint and distribute the creation process to millions of people like you and me. But, what could wind up having an even bigger impact ...
PS3 Home
It' called PS3 Home and basically anybody with a PS3 console will be able to take a handsomer version of themselves into a cleaner, more-awesome version of the real world and mill around with other gamers doing the same.
I don't think we can summarize the scale of this as well as the insightful experts at PrisonPlanet.com have HERE, with the headline:
SONY BRINGS REAL LIFE MATRIX A STEP CLOSER
Hell, yes. If we were Sony, we'd put that shit right on a billboard. Not that this is a tough sell; every move mankind has taken toward a virtual community has drawn a stampede. From MySpace to World of Warcraft, the promise of being able to start your life over as a cooler, better-looking version of yourself has been irresistible. Look at the picture up there. No one will be fat in PS3 Home.
So far, Sony has done an incredible job of convincing us not to buy a PS3 (It' getting pounded by the Wii and Xbox 360 in sales.) but even if PS3 Home dies on the vine, it will, at worst, serve as the blueprint the next virtual world is built from. It could be the Model-T of what could, generations later, turn into something close to The Matrix. But, we're getting ahead of ourselves. But know this: It will happen. The virtual utopia has a spot reserved in our future right next to the sex robot: People want it, and it' just a matter of working out the details.
What Will Suck About It
Check your inbox. How many of your emails are from friends, as opposed to spammers? How many of your female MySpace-friend requests are dummy pages set up for porn?
Spore and PS3 Home are still made up of people and therefore a certain percentage of those wondrous new universes will be composed of dicks. At some point you will travel to a wondrous new Spore world and find the creatures there have evolved to have hides covered in porn URLs. As for PS3 Home, do you think Sony is pouring tens of millions into development so you and your little friends have a place to hang out? No, they're creating one of the greatest targeted-marketing opportunities in the history of advertising. How long until busty virtual girls are chatting you up, then interrupting flirty conversations to say they'll need 20 bucks to continue? All that is just around the corner. Now, let' skip ahead a generation ...
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Does that photo of the kid in the helmet on page 4 remind anyone else of "Akira"?
Someone might have mentioned this before, but I am to lazy to read 113 comments. Ruck Rucker wrote a book called Postsingular about tiny nanomachines that used quantum entanglement to create a worldwide "Orphidnet" (that was the nanomachines were called--Orphids) and they were in everyone, so everyone was connected all the time to the new "internet." and the little Orphids could make AI assistance to help you and make you smarter and stuff. It's pretty good.
Also I get $0.50 everytime one of you reads it, so help keep me and my seven foster children fed. And my camel.
Good God I do not want this s**t to happen! Can't video game makers accept the fact that games are fine the way they are? Or better yet actually go back to the f*****g 90s and realize that games were magnificent back then? No, no they can't. Well when that Matrix s**t comes about I'm going to put a gun in my mouth.
"But anyway, Spore looks pretty cool and we're looking forward to it."
made me lol
This makes me want to cry. I don't want to be alive that long.
Sometimes Cracked has dick jokes, sometimes it has wacky historical factoids, and sometimes it has visions of the future that blow your f*****g mind. Thanks, Cracked. I am scared as s**t of the future.
Also,
"There will be two kinds of people in the next 100 years: Those who trust technology, become transapient and the next step in evolution - And then the people who don't wish to evolve, mistrust technology, and fear change. Guess which one will be around longer, and which one will be wiped off the face of the earth as a matter of eventuality."
Hmm, I'll have to get back to you on that, Magneto.
That'll be so kick-ass. I'd just not get into it and let everyone else sit around in their virtual world. In the real world there would be nobody to stop me from doing whatever I wanted.
"Let's go play with some TNT!"
"I feel like joy riding in a tank today."
"Lets play God and splice the genes of every animal togather."
This is going to be hell on earth. Think about it, no free will, no actual friends, no face time with anybody, NO HUMANS!! I dont know about you, but I think I would rather be dead then not have friends, and lives, and sports, and actual love, and meaning to life. The scariest part about this though is that it would be the most evil time in existence because there would be no religion or the bible to tell people to do good, in fact, jesus would be completely forgotten. No one would go to heaven anymore because (from the christian fate) no one would be able to get saved because they wouldnt be able to hear anything about any of that. So I'm pretty sure god would bring on the apocalypse before any of that could happen, because he wouldn't ever allow that to happen. So that stage in mankind will never happen because mankind wont be in existence.
This is seriously making me want to go live in a hole in Nunavut, living off venison for the rest of my life.
i'm seriously beginning to wish I'd been born 20 years earlier
"There will be two kinds of people in the next 100 years: Those who trust technology, become transapient and the next step in evolution - And then the people who don't wish to evolve, mistrust technology, and fear change. Guess which one will be around longer, and which one will be wiped off the face of the earth as a matter of eventuality."
My guess is the ones who will be around longer are the ones having sex with real people, instead of the ones boinking machines.
the difficulty would have to be so damn high on those games it would make insanity mode look like a walk in the park...
lets hope the future doesnt end up like harvest of stars lol
To add on to the ironic revenge, by then medical technology will have probably advanced far enough for computers to be able to revive us. They could literally make us respawn. We could be trapped in real-life Counter-Strike for eternity.
Something that troubles me is the skill factor of such games. How would there be any skill in a game controlled by brainwaves (considering that you could react just thinking about it)?
That last part reminded me of the song Color my world by Eyedea
I'm looking forward to this, as long as there's a way to resist all the corporate bullshit (and you know there's gonna be a lot of that.) Hopefully adblock and spybot will still be around...
There will be two kinds of people in the next 100 years: Those who trust technology, become transapient and the next step in evolution - And then the people who don't wish to evolve, mistrust technology, and fear change. Guess which one will be around longer, and which one will be wiped off the face of the earth as a matter of eventuality.
Yeah. The future is going to suck some extremely serious camel ass, from the perspective of us, now, with free minds and wills looking forward into its ghastly inevitability. But I suppose to the f*****g zone-implanted pleasure-slave zombie eunuch triple A quadraplegic sub-human freaks who will be our descendants, it will be awesome. An IV shot of primordial vitamin soup to start the day and then nothing to do but lie around in your own nanobotically processed filth and experience sexual ecstasy and adrenaline rushes in your cerebellum without ever suspecting that there might be an actual reality out there. All things considered, I'd much rather have our society overthrown by Skynet and have my descendants grow up badass, fighting Terminators--even if they end up extinct. Every man dies. Not every man truly shivs a robot with a f*****g C-4 polearm.
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i think that the "Well when that Matrix s**t comes about I'm going to put a gun in my mouth." problem will be fixed flashpenny
someone could start a new gaming revolution where they stop making movie games and the average budget is in hundreds of dollars instead of thosens (or is it millions hmmmmm) they spend on well that usual same-as-3-other-games-that-come out-this-week
and mr. wong did u get ur ideas from "Serial Experiments Lain"? cause really i think all of those were in the first few episodes (besides the last one which was a big chuck of the plot)