Spielberg, Lucas Opine On Video Games' Future

[Smiley Face]

So, when I'm holding my book, turning my pages, something turns off in the heart? I don't think so.

Moreover, the immersion breaking isn't from having the controller, it's from using it - and a motion controller is just another type of controller, except with the motion controller, you need to make HUGE, SWEEPING, immersion-breaking gestures, whereas with the controller I just twitch my thumbs - it's just motor reflex now, I've got a circuit in my brain which has a link between pushing forward with my left thumb and moving forward - no immersion breaking for me, thank you.

 

[Taurus Vis]

Remind me, why are we taking advice from 60 year old men in an entirely different part of the Entertainment spectrum. I respect Mr. Spielberg as a Director, but he doesn't know the first thing about what makes a gamer tick. This kind of stuff is just Microsoft paying well known people to advertise. I'd like to see Steven Spielberg and Georgy play Dark Souls, Borderlands or even Call of Duty and try to understand the nuances of those games without help. They MIGHT get through a Call of Duty level.


Might.

 

[Formica Archonis]

The most out-there suggestion for the future of entertainment came from Lucas, who sees brain implants within the relatively near future. He noted such implants are already being used to control artificial limbs; they just haven?t been used for entertainment yet.

Ahem: [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/andrew-schwartz-brain-control-for-artificial-limbs] "Schwartz's device is a long way from commercial availability. Among other challenges, the initial version requires a brain implant and a cord that connects the mechanical arm to the patient."

So, 1) they're trying to do away with the implant and 2) it's not even a viable prosthetic device yet, never mind entertainment device.

"The next step is to be able to control your dreams," he said. "You'll just tap into a different part of your brain."

He says it like the brain has USB ports all over it and it's just a matter of plugging into the right one, like the minefield of complexity that is our sleep state is in any way comparable to the comparatively-simple-but-hideously-complex basic motor functions.

Besides, I don't want to control my dreams. As strange and surreal as they can be, they are ultimately the sum of my own experiences and ideas. What novelty there is is more from novel combinations than from new data. If I dream I can fly over my city I'll see things that my brain extrapolates from what I've seen through my own eyes and Google's satellite view. If I tried to fly over London it would be a cardboard city of chip shops and pubs with double-decker buses filling the streets. Maybe I want to experience something new in my entertainment, not merely a godmode rehash of what I already know. Just because the experience feels slightly more real than simple daydreaming does not make it more immersive.

 

[Stevepinto3]

Yeah, we've had this discussion of why motion controls are actually a hell of a lot less immersive than a controller. Tiny movements with your hands and fingers can go almost unregistered by the brain, but flailing your arms about is going to remind you that you're standing in your living room. To put it another way, it's the difference between watching a movie in a theater with the lights on vs. off.

And then we've had this whole discussion before. Old people involved in other media, usually cinema, talk down about how (imagine this in the most smarmy, condescending voice possible) "gaming isn't really an art yet, you don't have emotional connections with the characters". Yeah, please just stop talking and go back to ruing your old movie franchises.

 

[tardcore]

Yeah thanks for your two cents guys. You do realize that you seem to know absolutely dick about both video games and how life really is for those of us who can't afford solid gold bog roll right? Hyper-realistic holographic gaming technology sounds great in theory, but in reality it will never be realistically affordable to the brunt of gamers.

And thanks to game makers trying to be more like these guys we are already seeing input controllers become superfluous as the player spends more and more of their time with their thumb up their arse watching boring cut scene diatribe play out rather than actively playing the game.

 

[Crazie_Guy]

Why thank you for your unsolicited, unqualified, and rather stupid opinions. Please come in, sit down, maybe try playing an actual game for the first time in your lives.

 

[ellers07]

These sound like the musings of men who have not played a video game in a very long time. In terms of empathetic characters, I will take the Mass Effect trilogy over the Star Wars prequels anytime.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

Yeah, you better give us some padded suits too in case we wanted to play a ninja game or something. I don't think everyone can do a backflip without hurting themselves.

Now I don't mind at least some advances toward VR but total physical immersion is what I'm worried about.

 

[Mahoshonen]

With all due respect for Spielberg and Lucas, but once again, who the fuck gives a shit what the makers of movies think about videogames. This is the equivalent of asking Charles Dickens what he thinks of Casablanca.

 

[4Aces]

Let me see if I get this straight. Games need to be as immersive and character driven as Lucas's movies? Which ones? The originals, where Execs took 3 of his books and edited them down to IV, and V, or the the rest (V, I, II, III, oh and Indiana Jones: Raped and Abused)? Credibility is everything, and talking about things you can no longer accomplish yourself (in either medium) is just more sad pandas added to the pile. I just hope Disney Execs keep him away from JJ Abrams with the new movies or it will be bunny droids and incompetent, but unkillable sidekicks (again).

 

[kypsilon]

So taking the example of Journey being a game that caused players all sorts of empathy and warm fuzzy wuzzy feelings, one could argue that it's not the controller that is preventing gamers from truly empathizing with the characters in a game, it's the games themselves.

So...make better games.

 

[Therumancer]

To be honest I'm skeptical of any kind of technology that actually requires a direct neural interface, the ideas that involve this seem to underestimate the sheer amount of trauma involved in neutral surgery and how complicated it is. Not to mention that trusting your average person to take care of themselves on a basic level is "iffy" when you take a look at health concerns and injuries, the everyman with a plug in his head is almost nightmarish, I can just see people poking them, sticking things in them, etc...

Not to mention that there is also the question of affordability, for something like this to become a big deal it needs to be put down into an affordable range, and to be honest I can't see elective neural surgery for the purposes of entertainment ever being something people are going to be able to do as casually as picking up a new X-box or whatever.

Not trying to be a bummer, I've just put a lot of thought into it and run into a lot of back and forth about popular concepts of VR and near future cyberpunk novels and such, and the thing is that while this could conceptually work, the issue isn't the technology itself but the practical concerns surrounding it.

Given my own RL concerns, I've actually considered the pros and cons of having my brain physically examined due to the dent in the top of my head, to see what the damage is, and what might be able to be done. It sounds crazy, but well, let's just say if your where I am now you have thoughts like that. The thing is that simply opening up a head to look at a brain to the extent that would be nessicary would be a big deal, and at the end of the day even if someone DID do it, and could spot a problem, we know so little about the specifics of the brain despite what we've discovered that being able to do anything would be pretty unlikely.... okay consider that, and now imagine someone opening up your skull and then jamming an entertainment or data device in there. 10-15 years? I doubt it. We need a lot more advanced knowledge in the neurosciences, and will probably also require medical automation to the point where surgery becomes easily performed by reliable robots, cutting the cost of training and employing doctors full time, since as I said, nobody that is going to cut into your brain is going to do it on the cheap.

 

[RicoADF]

I'm actually offended that he thinks that only a game made for women and girls can have an emotional impact, as though he's saying us men have none. Fuck you Lucas. Especially when Homeworld already had emotional moments back in early 2000, seriously the first few missions had my hairs stand on end, and it's only gotten better since then.

 

[RandV80]

These guys obviously aren't going to have a pulse on the entire industry but if you look at a game like the recent Tomb Raider and the article that came out from the games writer a little while back there's some sense to it. Starts off as immersive story telling but quickly breaks into the 'it's a game routine time to start killing lots of people' thing.

 

[Hagi]

Proving Mr. Spielberg hasn't got the faintest grasp on human psychology whatsoever.

See, us people have got one amazing ability when it comes to tools. It's that once we get used to them we stop regarding them as external and start viewing them as part of ourselves.

We don't say "I'm going to use this key to unlock the door". We say "I'm going to unlock the door". And we feel like that's what we're doing. We're unlocking the door, not the key.

Same thing goes for controllers, once you get used to them you stop viewing it as an external device you're interacting with. You're not interacting with the controller, you're interacting with the game.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Once motion controls are as responsive as a button, yeah, that'll be the bee's knees. Until then, no. Buttons are hard to top for immersion.

 

[infohippie]

Depending on the game, a controller of some sort can very well add to the immersion. A steering wheel controller for racing games, a joystick for space sims and flight sims.

Also...

Lucas meanwhile prays for a time when a chip, inserted in your brain, allows you to download your dreams and play them like a game. "We'll be able to do the dream thing 10, 15 years from now," says he. "It's not some pie-in-the-sky thing."

...I am looking forward to the porn.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I don't want Lucas handling any games. He proved in the prequels that he can't entertain the masses, why trust him now?

 

[MrMan999]

Yeah. Because George Lucas sure knows how to make a cohesive and appealing romance.

 

[Woodsey]

And I'm sure they both spend a lot of spare time playing games.