Neural Interface for Gaming Getting Closer?

An anonymous reader writes "Mercury News is reporting that a neural interface for gaming may be in the not-so-distant future thanks to at least two start-ups developing this technology. From the article: 'The goal is to create game console add-ons costing less than $100. Some of the game play features can be conscious -- such as forcing someone to concentrate in order to drive a car faster or toss something at an enemy. Others can be subconscious. The game could slow down, for instance, if the sensors pick up an increase in anxiety, Lee said. The company hasn't set a timetable for the product launches of its customers.'"

Comments

Output?

[dukiebbtwin]

Now how long will it be until this sort of input is reversed and a game will directly impact our physical body?

Back off?

[Loconut1389]

Why back off when the viewer/player gets anxiety? Half Life 2 was pretty f'in scary going through ravenholm- couldn't imagine how scary yet cool it would have been to have the zombies/scary things come out just when you're most freaked out.

Psychological impact on some people could be bad though.. Perhaps a 'freak me out' threshold option?

Re:Back off?

[4D6963]

Great thought. Having some scary shit poppin up right when you're freakin out the most could be great, but that makes me think, if what you fear happens when you fear (kind of like in that movie Sphere), could you end up controlling your fear knowing that the two are linked? That'd be interesting.

Maybe then I could learn to control my fear of Octabrains... ;-)

Re:Back off?

[iabervon]

Actually, if the nasty things pop up when you're most freaked out, you'd probably just waste them, because you're primed to twitch. It would be a lot more effective if nasty things popped out when you relaxed, and innocuous environmental effects happened when you were freaked out.

If you think about it as the game trying to maximize the ammo you use relative to the number of monsters it uses, and it gets to sneak a look at the snap decision you're going to make next, the obvious thing is to have nothing there if you're going to shoot and a monster there if you're not.

For that matter, imagine playing through a ten-minute sequence where it's actually impossible unless you're on the edge of your seat and shaking, because the game throws in enough stuff to kill you otherwise. Going through it, you'd obviously be totally terrified, at least if you didn't get frustrated instead.

Or imagine a sequence where some impossible nasty is chasing you, and you have to both go really quickly and accurately through the map, and also stay hypervigilant, becasue the moment the game detects that you've relaxed at all, even if you're playing perfectly otherwise, it catches up. It would be like actually being in a nightmare or horror movie, rather than just having a nightmare or horror movie setting where you aren't the main character.

Re:Screw gaming

[Loconut1389]

A throw-away comment from an AC- but seriously, imagine the borg-like capabilities we'd all possess if every time we needed knowledge, we could tap into google without taking away from whatever we were doing? Matrix things like "Tank, get me a pilot program for a B-212 helicopter" would be somewhat possible- though we'd still have to 'read' the material. Imagine how well we'd all do on MCAT's or LSAT's, etc. Person drops dead on the floor in front of you, all of a sudden you can look up exactly what to do and what could be wrong.

It is unlikely that something like this will be available in our lifetime- though this 'singularity' some say is close, I have a hard time believing it. Still, the possibilities are both frightening and inspiring.

Re:Someday soon ... like 2050

[Jugalator]

2050 is a hell of a long time for tech already available today, you do realize that, don't you?

The lecture you were on was also 10 years ago.

In 1950 we barely even had computers in the normal meaning of the word.

Would it really take that long for existing tech to get cheap enough to be useful for entertainment systems?