CNN Money have invited top developers to speculate on how the roleplaying genre will be in 2025. Here's a bit with BioWare's Joint CEO Ray Muzyka speaking:

"I look forward to true virtual reality in games 20 years from now, where you can become totally immersed in the action and storyline," said Ray Muzyka, joint CEO at Bioware, which created "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic." "Imagine taking the role of your favorite hero in a movie and making meaningful choices to move the storyline along."

That reminds me of a short science-fiction story I read in elementary school. A girl was playing something that felt like a roleplaying game, but characters were rendered as phantoms and all sensory data was transferred to her brain via special gaming gear. All combat moves were processed by the same gear, determining if there was a hit and to what effect. It would be nice to have something like that.

Read the rest (http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/16/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm) at CNN Money.

[ September 19, 2004, 16:15: Message edited by: chevalier ]

That does sound cool. And in twenty years, that would be nice.

It would be nice, but I fear that it won't be really possible without tons of (very costly) implants to have full virtual reality, because I don't think in 20 years they will know enough about the human brain to make it work with some brainwave-like system. So the only solution would be implants who are directly coupled to several nerves, including the sensory nerves and motion nerves.

Bah, am not interested.

TO be blunt, gaming is not about how "real" it is, it's about it not being real at all, but a game.

Or words to that effect anyway...

Who said it had to be real with vr? Vr allows you to immerge yourself in a world that is not real and do stuff you can't do in the real world but still feel as if you are truly doing them. That's the point of vr.