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Someone Will Die Playing a Game In Virtual Reality
SlappingOysters writes: Grab It has detailed a hands-on session with horror VR title Kitchen — from Resident Evil creator Capcom — and argues how the physical reaction to the experience could lead to death. The site also believes that classifying VR games will be a challenge and many titles could be banned. Virtual Reality has a big year ahead, with the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus all set to release, while Microsoft is working on the HoloLens, which the site argues adds a further challenge to traditional gaming.
I cannot talk for other countries, but in Australia, a rating is determined by the impact a piece of media has over a range of categories. The impact of the experience described in this article would be extreme. That would suggest Refused Classification (which is basically banned). It will be interesting to see how these titles fit into the classification in tough countries like Australia and Germany - people could be hard at work right now on games that won't be allowed to be released (legally at least) in many countries.
> Someone may die playing a game
> Some VR games may be banned under some nebulous concept of too much immersion
Ahhh, lawyers. Is there nothing you can't invent ways for corporations to throw money at you over?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Finally, a way to be rid of noobs for good.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
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Something along the lines of "you understand that beyond this point there are real dangers beyond the reasonable or desirable control of society and assume responsible responsibility for your own well being."
I can't believe all the stupid shit that is banned or that people have to be warned about because they're just that stupid. My personal favorite was a waiver I had to sign before using an ice rink. It literally was about absolving the rink from responsibility should I slip on the ice and fall... as well getting my initials next to a statement where they inform me that ice is slippery and they wanted it on record that I had been informed of that.
And that sort of thing is just everywhere.
My big issue with these rating systems is not that they exist. I think ratings are fine. My issue is that some countries take the step that if something gets a bad rating or refuses to be rated... that they presume to BAN whatever it is. That's not acceptable. By all means... slap warning labels on things.
I'd like a universal one that just basically reads "for adults only"... and then I'd put that on everything. Anyone that can't handle it will be assumed to be a child... even if they're 40 years old... and will be asked to go back to the various kiddy pools where they'll be kept safe from the big bad world.
Can a VR game scare the piss out of you? Sure. A survival horror game can do that already without VR. And if you have a heart condition or something then there are already games that can kill you. But it isn't the game killing you... its your fucking heart condition. And if you have one... maybe you should be smart enough to not play a game that is guaranteed to scare a little pee out of you.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If you die in the matrix, you die in real life.
Nothing like advertising: "Someone actually died from playing this game, causing it to be banned in 12 states" to ensure it'll be the top ranking game for months to come.
...and the extreme speed of trains will of course also kill you.
People die playing 'regular' games because they forget to eat etc.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
There is no evidence that anyone wants one of these new fangled mouse pointing devices.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
What if you're playing a virtual reality game, click logout, and the system says "I can't let you do that, Dave" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is exactly the kind of fearmongering clickbait that the Slashdot of old was not subject to and its editors didn't fall for. If I would want to read crap like this I'd visit Kotaku, Gawker or Polygon.
Wrong.
VR combined with an automated (and reliable, working with a good percentage of the population) induction of an alternate mental state will lead to gaming that matches the reality levels of a lucid dream.
Tell me a paradigm shift like that is a 'niche'.
The technology of how to achieve this isn't quite there yet, but the knowledge surely is. Whoever invents this is going to make a fucking -fortune-.
Someone Will Die Playing a Game while walking across the street.
Sorry, this is just bullshit!
Sorry for the bad news, VR is a niche and will never take off as a mainstream thing in gaming
It's a niche market currently. As soon as more goggles (or whatever they'll be called) become available, and especially low cost versions become available, that will change. At that point they will be able to be used for more than just gaming. Who wouldn't want to be able to carry around their own movie screen? I'm sure some sort of WiFi (HDMI wireless or something) screen sharing won't be too far behind at that point either.
History is full of people saying things will fail that are now commonplace. How many people said the iPod or iPad would be a flop? People said the same about the GUI, homeless carriage, and any number of things.
I just hope that automatic updates (water and food, for example) are provided.
"Someone will die doing something that a lot of people are likely to be doing."
This is just pure marketing B.S. They want to sell you on the idea that having a set of goggles strapped to your head for a game like, .e.g. Outlast, will be so realistic that it'll literally scare you to death. Last I checked, most people's hearts weren't so fragile that jump scare number 90012 had a risk of actually _killing_ them. If any of these companies had a legitimate concern about it happening, there wouldn't _be_ any horror titles coming out for VR headsets, because no American tech company wants to handle the first lawsuit filed by a family who had a fragile relative die with an Oculus on. At best they'd include some HUD elements on the screen to give you a subtle reminder that yes, you are actually playing a game, though I can't picture the person who needs that kind of warning to be honest.
If they're arguing that people can be startled to death by a video game, let's take a count of the number of people who have died playing any of the following (admittedly the only source of data on the subject is the Internet but I think it's pretty representative):
Either of the Amnesia games: 0
Outlast: 0
Five Nights at Freddies and its numerous sequels: 0 (though some of the girly screams coming out of Youtube dolts while playing almost killed me from laughter, so that's a close call of a sort)
Alien: Isolation: 0
You could go on and on. Nothing about any of these games has gotten so "realistic" in the past five years that strapping said game to your face would make it go from "realistic" to "heart attack." Again, it's just marketing B.S. of the highest order. "Our system is so immersive, so realistic, we worry sometimes that someone might actually die of fright. It's a real problem, yet for some reason we're not treating it as a problem, we're treating it as a selling point." Yeah, that should be your clue right there that someone's being disingenuous.
Errr... wtf is a "homeless carriage"? (honestly, I've never heard of that term)
Horror movies used to have these warnings, and like this one, they were nothing but marketing.
Here's a poster from an old William Castle horror flick where they promise to insure you for $1000 against death by fright.
https://mattmulcahey.wordpress...
And you know what? I bet at some point someone died of natural causes by watching a movie, just as someone will die of natural causes from watching a VR game. Nobody's going to "die of fright" from playing a CAPCOM horror game.
Also, in popular culture a "ban" is almost always a great way to promote sales. CAPCOM's just trying to sell some video games with a more sophisticated, up-to-date version of, "If you have heart disease or are weak of constitution, you should DEFINITELY NOT see this film!".
You are welcome on my lawn.
In the war on ISIS, we've been on the losing end b'cos the Iraqi cowards have fled leaving US given weapons to ISIS, who are even better armed than before, despite the loss of their ability to sell Syrian oil.
So how about this idea - instead of our weaponry, sell or give such VR games to the Iraqis (and Syrians) on the newer frontlines. They will flee, leaving those toys in the hands of ISIS. ISIS volunteers will play those games just out of curiousity or b'cos they want to, and drop dead! In fact, w/ some luck, such success could even spread to other Islamic groups, such as Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, et al
News at eleven: a person doesn't like VR, comes up with excuses for justifying asserting his opinion as a global fact.
Is that all?! That's a bit of a letdown.
To paraphrase South Park... "Anime did it!"
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If can be done, someone will do it, no matter how brilliant or stupid it is.
Long before somebody dies because of playing a VR game, I think we will see somebody complain about getting raped by such a game.
We won't know the specifics of the situation until it actually happens, but I hypothesize that it will involve a very outspoken, left-leaning, college-educated (some strain of sociology, most likely) woman in her early 20s. She will likely be somewhat overweight, but not obese, and otherwise very unremarkable. Because of her obnoxious, self-righteous attitude, her obsession with "social causes", and her average physique, she will attract the attention of very few males. The only ones she will interact with will be weak-willed, soft man-boys she met at her college, who likely exhibit latent homosexuality. As a result, she will be deprived of the typical sexual interaction and pleasure that normal women receive.
This woman will try on a virtual reality headset. She will play a fairly typical game. It may be some form of 3D sudoku, most likely. But the experience will be traumatic to her, for some reason. She will convince herself that she was violated and molested. She will go to the media with her story. She will be on every morning show, talking about her harrowing experience. She will have newspaper columns written about her. Twitter will be on fire. She will have become The First Victim of Virtual Reality Rape.
I think that's still pretty far in the future. We don't really understand the brain enough to do that.
And even if we did there are legal, health and general safety issues that need to be explored beforehand.
Hello ? Smartphone, tablet, laptop, portable DVD players, ...
I don't like wearing glasses. But what I really don't like is wearing bulky glasses. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this sentiment.
And the line of vaporware wraps a few times around the earth.
What about rickshaw businesses run by homeless people ?
Because golf, bowling, hunting, soccer, kayaking, and blackjack/hookers have had quite a lot of people drop dead on the fly.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
RADIO/TV/ROCK&ROLL/COMPUTERS all of this would have killed a thousand people, and lulled people to sleep with entertainment (looks at global economy: Nope, Nope, and NOPE.)
this won't change anything, and nobody will die because people will just take it off ( -__-)
But government don't want people that no longer believe their propaganda and VR will desensitize people to it. and no right-wing oppressive government would ever want that...
Surely there would already be a long list of people who have died while watching TV, playing videogames, or putzing around on the phone while sitting on the couch; at least if such incidents weren't(while individually tragic), so boring that nobody has bothered to compile a list?
This is not to say that highly immersive simulations are riskless; I'd personally want to be either sitting down, or in a decent sized room with no sharp-edge furniture and ideally a cushy carpet if I were going to play some VR horror sim that is likely to cause me to jump wildly and potentially fall over; but that's basically the same precaution I would apply to playing some Wii kiddie game that involves flailing around wildly so the accelerometers pick up my input.
Given that you are, effectively, blindfolded; and being fed spurious(relative to the room you are actually in) visual stimuli; VR gaming is going to require more caution than flat screen gaming, especially if standing up and moving around are involved; but "VR: It's So Scary You'll Die in Real Life!!!" doesn't seem like a major issue.
we would just need to have a new rating system... the systems we have are retarded. esrb is a bunch of assholes who just shake down companies for money.
In John Carmack's in-depth critique of a horror genre GearVR game https://www.facebook.com/perma... he too had a thought that people will die from VR: 'Some of the scares are just perfect â" walking along, see a table off to the side, turn to pick up loot, turn back to carry on, and *JESUS CHRIST*!!! Someone is going to have a heart attack in a VR horror game, it is only a matter of time. There were also times when I was legitimately afraid for a minute or two, since I really didnâ(TM)t know what the rules of the environment were. When I did get jumped, I desperately wanted an endurance limited sprint option instead of the nightmare slowness of normal walking speed, but there would be VR comfort issues to consider.'
I wouldn't be surprised if someone did something stupid and died.
Be seeing you...
n/t
Be it books and TV that make you blind or computers that make you dumb - this is the "latest technology will kill you" outburst.
Brought to you by morons for morons.
I remember buying Grand Theft Auto 5 the day of its release and jumping right in. I loved all of the features and the advancement of the game. The story was great, but it felt shorter than the previous games especially San Andreas.
I went online and saw some people mentioning all of the mini games. "Go buy in game stock! Go do Yoga/tennis/pimp out your car/go do multiplayer."
Multiplayer! Awesome, just what I needed. However, GTA 5 multiplayer has so many stupid rules. You're telling me if i steal someone's car and blow it up it'll cost me money to replace it? The last kicker was the cost of property. $1.5 million for houses. Your mission payouts are only $1000 a pop too.
What's the point in grinding for all of this pointless crap in a video game when i can do all of this outside in the real world and grind for real? VR offers more of the same. So you spend 500 hours playing mini games in some VR Los Santos. What do you really have to show for it?
TL;DR: young guy realized that real life is the ultimate video game and went outside.
that's the plot of Gemini Game by Michael Scott (published in 1997)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Not from some lame VR game, but because people will become disoriented, trip over something and smash their heads in.
No doubt, there will be warnings and disclaimers about people with heart conditions, as there are with roller coasters.
The liability is when someone dies in a house fire wearing VR goggles. Except version 2.0 of these products to have the obligatory "someone sneaking up behind you" alarm, on loud environmental noise, drop to headset-mounted camera view and cut the audio, and videodrome-style aureola burn detectors.
To me this sounds like the not uncommon hype that seems to follow the release of indifferent 'horror' movies. Like the one called something like 'The Human Centipede', which was supposed to be the most incredibly extreme horro movie ever. Only, it turned out to be a flop, hardly worth a shrug, something that could have been thought up by a couple of teen-agers and filmed on a smartphone.
I don't know, maybe I've grown too critical with age - I've stopped having night-mares because I tend to wake up and think "What is this crap?" because the story is too thin and the effects are unrealistic.
Living life will lead to eventual fatality.
Actually, the question is going to be whether VR kills more people, or saves more people, or has no statistical effect. People die at fairly predictable rates, so if you have a given number of people you can assume that a certain number of them will drop dead if you let them sit around long enough. But wait, the kind of people who go to any particular event will skew the results considerably; the death rate at Burning Man is below the national average in spite of it being more dangerous conditions than average, probably due to the particular nature of the people who go. If you're ill and/or infirm, you're less likely to go in the first place.
If VR kills anyone it's going to be because their display crashed or freaked and they walked off a roof or into traffic. Don't play VR games on the roof or near a road unless there's a good fence, railing, etc., problem solved.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Natural selection, pussies.
Someone will die NOT playing a game in virtual reality, too. Let's classify and regulate reality, too.
>I'm building useful skills,
useful???
The overwhelming majority of the population gets through their entire lives without finding jumping out of a perfectly good airplane "useful" . . . :)
hawk
Errr... wtf is a "homeless carriage"? (honestly, I've never heard of that term)
It's the name of the folder that my spell check program is installed in. ;-)
Deaths associated with video games are hardly news:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berzerk_(video_game)
He can claim 2 deaths still. No VR game will be able to match that.
News flash! People die while driving a car, riding a bike, using the toilet, changing a tire, etc
I am getting so sick of people wanting to ban or regulate things "for your own good" because there is a slight danger.
We are living organisms. Nearly everything we do can be dangerous. Breathing can kill us. Ultimately what matters is risk vs reward.
These days whenever I read a news headline like this I can't help but imagine a group of people gasping and fleeing in terror like they just said Godzilla is coming. Generating fear and outrage makes a lot of money for news organizations, and creates a lot of stupid laws in the process.
I mean, there are already records of people dying while practicing sex. It's evil! It kills people! Oh wait, religious moral pedantic people are already banning anything sex related, sigh you people, always taking the fun out of life.
Always a few deaths from heart attacks during important matches. Maybe stop showing sports on TV. Or stop having important matches.
Maybe start doing sports instead of watching them.
Now write the screenplay!
I used to die all the time playing VR games.
Im sure many people have gotten a heart attack during some more "intense" movies. Does that mean we should ban them? No.
No news. Adding death warnings to labels on scary things has been an advertising gimmick since at least the 50's.
Seizure problems with video games have been a thing since video games have been a thing. I can rember a friend's stepdad in the 80's having seizure issues with video games. Did that make him stop? No, he still loved playing. He made a choice to do it.
Do we ban every form of entertainment that has flashy lights because there are some people that just can't resist? Or do we make sure that products with this are still labeled correctly? Maybe we should even fund research into seizures and curing the problem?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
We understand it enough to destroy it. That's all the knowledge we Republicans we need. Because we're evil and we hate you. That's the way of our kind.
They're only entertaining for a while. The novelty of humiliating and debasing a subhuman being who couldn't make or hold onto money soon grows stale, and we long for another form of entertainment. Torturing the homeless and having them brutalized may amuse us for a while more, but only the immolation of the have-not on a pile of his own feces can really seem to satiate us. We're Republicans, and we're used to some standards in merriment.
"If you die in the game (or a dream), you die in real life" is one of the most tired plot devices in fiction. It's on my short list of things that will make me stop reading a book, along with "hero loses their powers" and "best friend becomes worst enemy".
I suspect, given the nature of FPSs to go for realism especially (and the tender age of the kids who tend to play them), we'll see huge rates of PTSD resulting from VR. We need to be very careful here. Will we be careful? Of course not.
Someone will also die while not playing a game in virtual reality.
Yet another prediction
You are all going to die.
In case any VR content is too graphical that can have intense effect upon a player, say, a weak hearted person, that one can stop playing specific title and could move on to the others. But I dont see any reason in banning a title when humans can control the way they want to use VR applications?
http://www.virtualrealitytimes.com/category/philosophy-and-ethics/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
It was about full brain recording and playback, kind of a super VR that Mark Zuckerberg talked about this week. (plot of many scifi stories)
In the movie someone dies during a recording session. Then it becomes a tug of war for the recording between police who are investigating a suspicious death and scientists who want to see if there is life after death.
Plus there is an ironic twist that the lead actress dies of a drowning "accident" during the filming. But some people dont believe it was accident and the debate resurfaces periodically. The lead actress is Natalie Wood, who played the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street and Maria in West Side Story.
Hello ? Smartphone, tablet, laptop, portable DVD players, ...
I don't like wearing glasses. But what I really don't like is wearing bulky glasses. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this sentiment.
And the line of vaporware wraps a few times around the earth.
People don't like bulky glasses like they don't like bulky computers that take up a whole room, bulky mobile phones that take a car battery to run them, bulky laptops that... actually, they seem pretty good at taking these bulky devices people don't like and making them lighter. My new watch is half the bulk of my old one, and has a computer in it that does all sorts of wonderful stuff...
tl;dr version: Complaining that a new tech is 'bulky'? That's going to make the entire technology into vaporware?
Your reasoning might need to reevaluate what you can find out about previous technologies as wholes, and how they tend to progress.
If VR fails (doubtful, but possible), 'too bulky' is not going to be the reason why.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
Has anyone tried google cardboard? If you have a decent smartphone, you have a fully functional VR headset for under $20.