#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist (augmented reality)
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's John Sollitto
So we had a professor come into class the other day. I’m in one of my journalism classes so I’m totally prepped for some crazy-boring lecture about editing or how to interview someone, when he says that he’s here to talk to us about augmented reality.
Augmented reality? The only time I had heard that term was when the Nintendo 3DS came out and people were going all crazy over it. Then he starts to tell us how it’s been used in advertising and he shows us a QR code demonstration.
You know QR codes. Those weird black and white square thingies that look like messed up bar codes:
Yeah, these things. They’re all over the place and sometimes they have cool little video links or coupons and stuffs. But apparently now they do these cool 3-D things too if you scan certain ones and have the software that reads them.
Then he showed us this video of a guy wearing a cam-projector thing, and going about his day as it made a phone on his hand, a watch on his wrist, a web-browser on a wall, and all this other nonsense. Now, that was some weird tech demo at a symposium dealio but it was AWESOME.
I mean, the camera was using the guy’s hand placement to distinguish what buttons he was pushing and it was usin’ shapes and all sorts of madness and I literally was sitting there with my mouth open. I mean, I knew some of this technology existed but I had never seen it in practice like that before. It some kind of crazy Minority Report crap.
And then I remembered the PS Vita. Back when I did my little test-drive with Jen in Santa Monica I got to see a game that put your characters into the world you were at with rear and forward facing cameras. The Nintendo 3DS has these cool cards you can use that make stuff pop out of them when you hover your system over them.
What you do is you put the cards down somewhere and the 3DS scans them from afar, and makes crazy little 3D Pokemon models or little games and whatever. But my question is when is this 3DS technology going to get to something like this:
And I’m not saying I want the technology to turn me into Tom Cruise. I want to have my games be interactive to where I finally feel like I’m a part of the action. I mean, how cool would it be to actually move around and interact with your environment as a part of the game you’re playing. You’d actually get exercise while playing a game for once. You could play virtual tennis on an actual tennis court! You could fight aliens in a parking lot or run through a forest and fight monsters between the trees!
I know, I know, this is kind of far-fetched. I sound a little like Jim Carrey in Cable Guy when he’s talking to Matthew Broderick about “THE FUTURE IS NOW!!” Remember that scene? No? Here’s the clip:
But in all seriousness I’m really excited to see how technology has come along in the last couple of years. I mean, it was only a little while ago we were talking about realistic graphics and now the rage is 3D and augmented reality.
What I am worried about is what might happen when this stuff becomes so mainstream. Right now, augmented reality is a bit gimmicky. It’s not a particularly proven technology and it’s not something that you can build a title off of, nor should you. The reason is that it’s an addition, nothing else. The technology isn’t there to make a game purely based off of that because we don’t have it yet.
It just wouldn’t be practical for a company to put all their efforts into making that because the consoles are doing so well and mobile gaming isn’t exactly a viable platform for all of that. I mean, how are you supposed to get all that tech in a phone or a 3DS or PS Vita? They’re close, but they’re not quite there yet. If companies start making games based off of a gimmick, augmented reality might fade away as a fad and become resented as lame and buggy. I don’t want that. What I want is for people to do something they never do: Take their freaking time with this and perfect it.
Really, what I want is an Omni-tool from Mass Effect. I just want a holographic PDA/phone/gaming system that goes on my arm that can unlock doors and shoot lasers and short-circuit robots. But let’s not get crazy now, okay?
#nerdsunite
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