Gaming reached one of its peaks in 1980 with Pac-Man, a 2D game which reached a wide audience and gave gaming a mascot. Pong was a block, Pac Man was a circle with a piece missing, and Donkey Kong was a pixelated monkey. Then video games became more human, with Arthur, who became Guy, and eventually morphed into Chris (losing his handsome looks from polygon surgery). Girls only benefited from the shift to 3D it seemed, and Lara Croft was a polygon shaped female who became a pop culture sensation. So have you ever considered what a life size CGI Lara standing outside your door would look like? Not too bad by current graphics standards, but the big questions to consider are how game designers will bring these virtual characters into the real world to begin with, so perhaps its best to take a step back, into the world of virtual Pac-Man.
Real life Pac-Man or ARQuake aren't the most visually appealing games, but they do show a new style of gameplay, that is the first person augmented reality genre of gaming. The games rely on some decent computer hardware, head-mounted displays or LCD glasses, and a UI that understands your fingers as a pointing device. This opens the genre up to shooters, which is an exciting thought, however games which involve collecting items/questing could be just as entertaining (as human Pac-Man shows).That would be the beginning of first person AR gaming, but what about the future? wearablepersonalcomputer.com shows us the great technological progress that has been made through demo videos that put 1.7ghz 2gig ram PCs in our pockets and in front of our eyes. A future AR game would have increasing hardware and software innovation.
Freddie W - Future Motion Control Gaming
Hardware such as 'Wearable motherboards', computers that are basically worn, with sensors that relay informationabout different parts of the body continuously, like heart rate. The bodysuit could be nanoconnected to other devices like the Virtual Eye Display and earpiece, to allow for more computing power/peripheral use. Software could then allow for human interaction with digital objects and vice versa, or even digital objects interacting with physical ones (like digital graffiti). I imagine that some game designers are Today trying to make games around these concepts. Its hard to picture what these games have in common with current models of gaming, but once technologies like the Wii motion plus, Sonys wand and Natal are properly realized, they will provide a bridge for current gamers to these next technologies. The game industry will expand with this technology, creating new sub-genres of games in the process. This at least, is how it has worked traditionally in the industry. I just wonder though, when we have our semi-virtual reality interfaces, will so many of us still be wishing that we had better technology? Will some of us always be the ever waiting, never reflecting types? I love new technologies and what they represent for gaming, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that even more than that, I love what gaming has represented so far.
