I Want To Play a Game

What do you think of video games? Are you an enthusiast who is willing to defend them to the bitter end? Or do you think they waste time and cause crime rates to skyrocket? Either way we're delving into the depths of cyber (and real) space to try to figure out just how real these games could ever get.

Everyone has a different opinion about video games. To designers they are works of art, with months, sometimes even years of constant nitpicking every detail in order to give us the best experiences. Gamers obviously like them, as they provide a way to fill time, play with friends, and do things that they never could in real life, giving them a sense of accomplishment. 

On the flip side there are those who are strongly against video games, claiming that they give children violent tendencies and promote criminal activity to those who play them.

Video games weren't so much of an invention as they were an eventuality. With people becoming increasingly able to access computers that they could control it was only a matter of time until some person with too much time on their hands made a game out of it.

But what makes a video game real? Well in order to answer that we must think what lets us observe and absorb data from out current real world? Contrary to popular belief humans actually have at least 9 senses with most researchers agreeing we probably have about 20. However for the sake of time we are only going to talk about the big 5 that everybody is brought up learning about.

Sight

A huge part of developing video games is the graphic design. Everything in a game has to be individually designed, with a 3D model created, then each small blip on the model has to be individually colored in. So evidently due to the fact that you can always zoom in further on an object, we could never truly replicate an object within a game. However the trick is that humans cannot see the smaller things. In fact the human eyes only have a resolution of roughly 576 Megapixels. Game designers creating a simulation of real life could always take advantage of this and realise that a certain level, we cannot see the detail and so it would be not worth doing.

Accomplishable

Hearing

The second in command in the human brain is the sound, with a large portion of our brain dedicated to auditory processing we are able to pinpoint a sound from quite a distance and some people are even capable of echolocation, the biological radar commonly used by whales and dolphins. This is surprisingly easy to accomplish as even today video games accomplish a realistic surrounding using mixers to vary volume levels and guide us towards where an even occurs using sound. On the other hand it may never be possible for people to navigate a game with echolocation.

Accomplishable

Touch

This one is difficult, indeed until recently it was inconceivable, however with advancements such as microsoft's Kinect we no longer have to use controllers to control our games, on top of this, holograms may soon be able to be used widely due to Hololens, another advancement by microsoft. The only problem is that without actual physical objects or a direct link to influence the nervous system, it is basically impossible to simulate touch. Maybe this will come with time but for the moment it is simply not able to be done.

Not Currently Accomplishable

Smell

Smell is actually not as difficult to replicate as most people would think. In fact simply dispersing tiny amounts of the required substance or one of a similar smell would be sufficient. However this may not work well for people with allergies, other than that it is possible with some simple chemistry.

Pretty Easy

Taste

Ah the most widely used sense in the battlefield. Lets face it there are a lot of video games today where what you are most likely to taste is your own blood because you're getting shot at. However once again it could most likely be accomplished with some chemistry and substances of different textures.

Probably

And now a Bonus one, how on earth would a video game simulate true motion? How would it create a truly realistic environment? Because no matter how advanced the NPCs are or how good it looks if the world itself isn't realistic it will never seem real. And the sad truth is that due to the random nature of the universe that we live in this is almost unaccomplishable. There are simply so many factors, lets think about a simple flower for a minute, the head might turn to face the sun, but the wind might also be moving it. Gravity will be pulling it downwards, and if you step on it what happens then? If a simple flower take this amount of programming to create then the odds are that there will never be a video game that truly simulates real life.

I'm not exactly sure what this article implies but I am truly a fan of video games, I believe that in offering people opportunities to accomplish things that they could not do in real life they can help to boost self esteem and make people more open to new things. On top of this the sheer amount of work that goes into each and every one is immense and the people who design them really do not get the credit that they deserve for these works of digital art.

What I was trying to show with this article is the true complexity of the world around us, and how little we actually notice. If you take one thing from this article I hope that it is that our universe is incredible more complex and incredible than we could ever hope to comprehend. But we can really give it a good shot. Thanks for reading this I know it was long but I was very bored, it means a lot that people actually read these :) see ya!