Friday 1 January 2010

Holograms, Clones and life-size Master Chief

He tugs at his uncomfortable green lycra suit and re-adjusts his helmet. Breathing deeply he listens out for the explosions on the far side of the arena. Carefully he cradles an explosive in his left arm and lights the fuse. His power enhanced gloves make the bomb feel as light as air as he throws it around a nearby corner, just as a white lycra-clad contestant runs around. His screams are heard as his wounded avatar is teleported to the sidelines.

“ And White-Bomber is dooowwnnn!” announces the spectator “and out of the Bomberman Championship 2924!”

A live action Bomberman you say? Well you never know.

As a new decade starts we tend to look back over the years and from a Game Artist’s view there have been some significant developments.

Just to think that only 10 years ago we were all playing on PS2’s, amazed by the captivating graphics of 2,000 tri characters and yet in what is a relatively short amount of time, we are now playing on consoles the size of our palms or on 47 inch screens with so much detail it challenges our own reality.

So in the next 10 or 100 years who’s to say that in-game graphics will have advanced so much that the only way forward is to bring games into real-life itself.

Hordes of clones could be created and then suited up like Master Chief whilst side-lined players re-enact Halo 3. Hologram technology could allow us to run around caves collecting treasures like Tomb Raider.

I suppose the main point to take away from all this is to consider the future of games, will it actually get to the point where only real-life stands in the way?