Stand by for mind control!

We've posted several times about how we believe MMO's are generally in a state of cult-following status. There are a core of MMO gamers who really enjoy the medium, but these people are not representative of society as a whole.

We've also posted how we think this is not likely to change very much until either a game designer is able to create a new MMO that has more mass-market appeal, or someone invents a Holo-Deck. Until the medium can become something as easily accessible as a book or a movie, with enough transportive elements that allow a person to experience a fictitious world in a more rewarding way, we think it's doomed to sub-culture status. (That's fancy talk for saying that books and movies let us do stuff that is kind-of real but not really.)

But wait. Though the holo-deck is not here, it is getting a little closer. Remember the early 90's and all the promise about how virtual reality was going to change the world? No? Well it was there, even if it faded as soon as the internets came into everyone's home.

But some virual reality type stuff keeps popping up, even if it isn't so complete as the Matrix. Take this new bit of technology for gamers: the brain controlled headset. Using a bunch of techmology, this headset will allow gamers to control their games using just their vertabrains. Or at least that's what we can tell form the depths of our middle-school science education.

No, it isn't virtul reality, but it's kind of getting there. We think it's largely inevitable that holo-deck type environments will be around sometime in the future. The ability to interact with a fictitious world not only in just a mental capacity (books, movies, games) or a visual capacity (movies, games) or an interactive capacity (games) but in a physical and interactive capacity is probably the way of the future. We can see a time when stories will be loaded into completely immersive, matrix like environment where people are free to interact and be a part of the story, while still maintaining the safety of fiction.

But until then, we'll keep an eye out for the next Raiders of the Lost Arc, Legend of Zelda, or The Sun Also Rises.