The future of games

With the advent of new sophisticated and lightweight devices capable of monitoring movement while being inexpensive to produce, a variety of new products have started making their way into gaming.

Motion-based gaming is kinesthetic, making some of the actions of the game more intuitive than in the past (such as performing a certain button press combination, sequence, or timed press). The rise of motion-based gaming in mainstream popularity is attributed largely to Nintendo's Wii console.

Of course, Microsoft's Kinect provided a different way to achieve motion control, using a dual camera setup which used the cameras to determine depth, and used a vector finding system that identified the player separately from the background.

Additionally, 3d gaming has begun to make its way into the limelight as well. Nintendo's 3DS tries to do this on a small scale as a handheld and portable gaming device. And the Oculus Rift is a headset (with built in gyroscopic sensors, making it also a motion controller) which functions similarly: by displaying a different image to the left eye than the right eye, the brain interprets the differences in image as depth.

Other interesting devices are also in development to allow for movement of a character through walking on a pad or in a sphere (to provide an infinite walkable area, while making walking more intuitively controlled).

All of these technological advances are meant to help increase the immersion factor the games provide.
The goal: to increase the suspension of disbelief by making the player feel as if they actually ARE the character in the game.

Is this the future of games? Well, quite simply, I think it is. The question remains, however, whether it's a distant future, or one that's closer than expected. Virtual reality has long been a fantastical daydream for the people who love their games. Who doesn't want to actually BE the characters they're playing as (minus the pain those characters might experience)?

I don't think that virtual reality will ever completely replace other types of gaming, but as we continue to push forward into a realm with smaller, lighter, more powerful, more intuitive technology, the idea of a virtual reality simulation becomes more and more imaginable.

There may even be a day in which people can plug their consciousness into a game directly, as in the storylines of some of today's most popular video games, anime, and manga.

But is this the best idea? Should we continue to strive toward making virtual reality gaming possible?
I would say that making virtual reality possible for the sake of doing so is a rather poor reason. However, if virtual reality is used to enhance the delivery of a narrative, or give rise to powerful tools for learning and simulation, it needs to happen. Tools like these can change the people who use them, and thusly change the world.

Imagine a world even more globally traversable than today's. You could visit a friend that lives across the world by simply putting on glasses, gloves, and standing on a pad. You'd enter a world and be able to interact with them just as you could if you were there in person! How exciting.

The future of games looks bright. And the idea that they can be used to improve the world, not so far fetched.