The thing about gaming is that most of the time, the stakes are low and it’s just a bit of fun that helps you unwind.
However, one evil genius of a bloke has made something that turns that aspect completely on its head when you put it on your head.
Palmer Lucky, a defence contractor and the guy who made the Oculus Rift VR Headset, has created another VR headset - one that will end your life if you die in the game.
Three explosive charge modules sit at the top of the otherwise standard-looking headset, and if the headset detects a death screen in the game, they will fire directly into the front of the user’s brain.
In a blog post, Luckey said he made the thing because he a) wanted to up the stakes for gamers and make them reconsider how they play a game, and b) he was inspired by an anime with a similar premise.
“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me,” he wrote. “You instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it.”
“Pumped up graphics might make a game loom more real, but the only threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.”
He was inspired by the anime and novel series called ‘Sword Art Online’. In that series, a bunch of people put on VR headsets to play a game and enter a virtual world. But shock! Once they’re in there they find themselves trapped with the only way out being to fight through a 100-level dungeon.
If they die in the game, they die in real life. The same goes if someone in the real world tampers with the headsets, called a NerveGear.
Luckey says he’s trying to invent “an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset.”
If you’re wondering why this goes has access and the know-how for such fucked inventions, he’s the founder of Anduril, a weapons and defence contractor that has signed some BIG contracts with the US government and gets to make crazy new weapons and gets paid for it.
Anyway, I’m gonna pass on this one.
