Bruce Sterling On Gaming in 2043

At this year's Austin Game Developer's Conference, sci-fi author Bruce Sterling gave a keynote speech about the gaming industry — looking back from the year 2043. GameSetWatch has a summary of the speech, and the full transcript is also available. "So do people make games for this platform? Sure. Not the sort that were built for flat glass screens. We don't do those anymore, cumbersome, like a covered wagon. We don't pretend a glass screen is a window into another virtual worlds. The idea sounds silly, it's all the same world. It's always been the same world, it just changes. What we do is hang the towel [his metaphor for cheap, ubiquitous, unremarkable computers in the future] up in midair and gaze through it. And all the light that hits the far side passes through it except that the image is tagged and altered. We don't call it augmented reality, because we think reality is real, but you can still have fun with a game interface is that is everything you see."

Typical flawed predictions

[TriggerFin]

That's one game, or even several. It isn't every game, or even most games. I want to see a place other than the room I'm sitting in when I take a break a break from reality.

Re:

[Creepy Crawler]

I'd be up for neural shunts myself. I'd be able to pipe my sensory data to and from computers for either pass through recording or true VR.

That'd be amazing.. to shunt your senses to the net, connect to a TOR server, and anonymously "in person" communicate with somebody. It'd be a boon for reporters, investigators, and other types who value their identity (Dragon Riders of Pern springs to mind)

Pace of change makes long-term prognostication...

[patio11]

... useless.

35 years ago was 1973. Richard Nixon was in office. We were decades away from the personal computer, the Internet, MUDs, and MMORPGs. Who in God's name could predict how instancing in WoW trades off versus public quests in Warhammer? For that matter, who PRIOR TO THE RELEASE OF FREAKING DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS would have predicted that **ten million people** really want to spend their time pretending to slay those green thingees that English professor dude wrote some fairy tale about?

Re:

[Boronx]

35 years ago was 1973. Richard Nixon was in office. We were decades away from the personal computer, the Internet, MUDs, and MMORPGs.

Decades, really?

Who in God's name could predict how instancing in WoW trades off versus public quests in Warhammer?

Even today, nobody cares about this.

For that matter, who PRIOR TO THE RELEASE OF FREAKING DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS would have predicted that **ten million people** really want to spend their time pretending to slay those green thingees that English professor dude wro

Re:

[Knara]

35 years ago was 1973. Richard Nixon was in office. We were decades away from the personal computer, the Internet, MUDs, and MMORPGs.

Decades, really?

Who in God's name could predict how instancing in WoW trades off versus public quests in Warhammer?

Even today, nobody cares about this.

Untrue. The difference between instanced scenarios and public quests is one of the key differences between WoW and Warhammer. For MMO gamers, this is a thing to be interested in.

as a sidenote prediction:

[CaptainPatent]

Duke Nukem Forever still won't be out, but Leisure Suit Larry will be the new most anticipated game.

Everything Together

[mlawrence]

Regardless of how games are played or displayed in the future, I believe everyone will have one distinct online "avatar" that will track your skills in every game, regardless of the OS it runs on.

Re:

[Valdrax]

Considering the level of industry cooperation and coordination involved, I don't unless the game or computer industry as a whole collapses into a monopoly, either natural or government mandated.

The barriers to doing this a social, economic, and political -- not technical. We already have Xbox Live doing much of that now. I doubt those barriers to One Gaming Profile To Rule Them All are going to go away no matter the march of progress.

Re:

[wiremind]

I think a single Online ID is likely.

Microsoft has the Xbox Live thing of course, which is already a single sign-on account for all microsoft services. (MSN, msdn, hotmail, xbox)

Then you got OpenID which EVERONE is starting to support.

And finally, its just the simplicity of it. for a sony developer to associate my OpenID, and my Windows Live ID with their PS3 signon system just means storing 2 primary keys and using the OpenId/Live API to access my shared data. The cost of this is minimal and benefit is acc

Toweley Says

[BroadbandBradley]

"Don't Forget to bring a towel!"

Re:

[elrous0]

Hey Bruce Sterling, wanna get high?

hitchhikers guide to the galaxy text adventure

[Optical Voodoo Man]

When I read about the towel interface I got really excited. I hope this means I'll be able to put the towel over my head and play the old Infocom game Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Because you never want to go anywhere without a towel. Douglas Adams was ahead of his time.

Re:

[rhyder128k]

Take all the VR towels you want, the damn babel fish will still keep falling on the floor. Damn it!

Re:

[Macgrrl]

Remove gown.
Put gown on hook.
Put towel across drain.
Put satchel across hatch.
Put mail on satchel.
Press dispenser button.

Sadly, that's from memory, it's years since I last played HHGTTG.

Re:

[UncleRage]

I love you.

Re:

[UncleRage]

Actually, my personal preference would be a BSD girl who's a shell slinging CLI junkie with a penchant for wearing fishnets while figuring out exciting and unique cron jobs.

The above "love" comment was simply directed towards someone who remembers how wildly cool Infocom really was. Same as I'd offer love to anyone who understands that Blues to Elvin is the quintessential jazz cut, Last Rights was Skinny Puppy's finest album and that Francis Bacon's word was brilliant beyond creepy.

Of course, you're right.

Re:

[UncleRage]

Ugh... work, not world. Although, I think his world was must have been both creepy and brilliant as well.

Bad, bad, bad pint. Making me fingers type wonkiness.

Beware the red towel ring of death

[spice guru]

Light passing through a towel becomes an image to be tagged and altered? He must be taking some very pedestrian drugs.

Hang a towel?

[religious freak]

Why would you need to "hang a towel"? Seems that automatic interface with your nervous system would be more likely... or for those not exponentially future inclined, at least through contact lenses. They're doing the contact lens thing now, in crude fashion.

Re:

[QuantumG]

If you read the transcript you'd already have the answer. There are people in the future who are transhuman and have DNI but there are also everyone else who chooses not to.

Rainbows End

[retchdog]

I very much respect Bruce Sterling; I loved Holy Fire and "Red Star, Winter Orbit", and his writing about cyberpunk itself is even good.

However, in this case he's mostly hamming it up LARPing a character from Rainbows End [wikipedia.org].

Surprisingly boring keynote

[sir_montag]

I went to the Austin GDC, and when I saw Sterling's name on the program, I made a point of being there for the keynote. I'd enjoyed some of his sci-fi stuff and figured he'd be more of the same in person, which would be really cool.

Unfortunately, the guy who showed up had a somewhat boring speech that was mildly funny in that 'well, actually, that's not funny at all' sort of way that sucks worse than something that actually isn't funny at all, if that makes any sense.

The ideas he presented about future comp