The future of video games has come a long way, from the first video game developed in 1958 by Physicists William Higinbotham which simply consisted of a bouncing ball on an oscilloscope, to complex 3D and VR worlds. William’s simple game of pong triggered a massive response of more developed and more risk-taking games. In video games now graphics and art could be mistaken for being real, virtual reality has skyrocketed in popularity and the games are complexly wired so that it draws the player to know what to do. It almost seems like we can’t get any better. So, what can we expect for the future of video games?
One very flashy thing we can hope to see in the future is synthetic skin. Synthetic skin is a patch that you can wear that can recreate the feeling of touching or holding something and in a virtual reality game, this would make the gameplay scarily real. The current prototypes can send signals 1000 times faster than the human nervous system. This could also be a large stride for amputees to create the sensation of touch for people’s lost limbs again. However, we won’t be seeing this type of technology anytime soon as it still has a long way to go before it is market-ready.
Scientific source: https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/32/eaax21
98 We are also expecting VR to take large strides in the next few decades. Unlike synthetic skin, VR has been around for a long time and is constantly improving. Newer and faster versions of VR are coming out every year. In the future, VR will become more and more immersive through better equipment. Many companies are developing a hand controller with separate finger movements. Omni-directional treadmills, treadmills that move with the player and essentially create the ability to physically walk somewhere in a game, are finally making their way into availability although still very expensive. Hopefully, in the future, they may be a key part of VR gaming and maybe count as exercise!
Video of an Omni-directional treadmill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhwLRX4m2s
The last point isn’t to do with technology, but the rise in games with interactive stories is something we are going to see. These games have lots of choices throughout the gameplay and the choices you make and how you react in combat bring you to one of the multiple endings. This type of game has already been around for a long time but the endings and processes to get there are getting more intricate and complicated. Games like Detroit; Become Human and the last of us are a clear sign that we have a lot more interactive complicated storylines coming our way.
