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Book Quotes: Games as The Forebears of VR

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Source: Neuromancer, Page: 51

"The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games," said the voice-over. "in early graphics and military experimentation with cranial jacks." On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spatial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts." A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.

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Ironically this quote from Neuromancer, was not true at the time. Dedicated VR from the late 60s, starting in 1968 with Ian Sutherland's Sword of Damocles interface, paved the way for interactive interfaces, which inspired the first adventure games, and so on. Yet, as the decades have passed, VR and gaming have taken two different tracks. VR has concentrated on immersion, gaming has concentrated on graphics, scripting and fun.

Now, whilst VR lags behind gaming in some respects, games themselves are starting to look at the VR field and take many aspects on board, to offer player customisation and increased sensory stimulation.

So it is that this prediction is likely coming to pass. Ultimately it may well be the games of today which spawn the VRs of tomorrow, and not the VRs of today which do so.

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By William Gibson Produced By Ace Neuromancer, written in 1984, has managed to stay in print for more than two and a half decades. An impressive achievement for any novel, it reminds us of the power of words, in the gritty, grimy, spiralingly depressing and technologically both wondrous and surprisingly accurate book that gave birth to the cyberpunk genre. It was William Gibson?s first novel, and notable immediately, for winning all of science fiction?s top awards - the Nebula Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. There had been books that echoed the tenets of cyberpunk long before Neu... Click here for full review of Neuromancer

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