'If You Die in the Game, You Die in Real Life.' 112
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, writing on his personal blog: Today is November 6th, 2022, the day of the SAO Incident. Thousands of VRMMORPG gamers were trapped by a mad scientist inside a death game that could only be escaped through completion. If their hit points dropped to zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, supposedly killing the user. The same would happen if anyone in the real world tampered with their NerveGear, the virtual reality head-mounted-display that transported their minds and souls to Aincrad, the primary setting of Sword Art Online.
[...] In SAO, the NerveGear contained a microwave emitter that could be overdriven to lethal levels, something the creator of SAO and the NerveGear itself (Akihiko Kayaba) was able to hide from his employees, regulators, and contract manufacturing partners. I am a pretty smart guy, but I couldn't come up with any way to make anything like this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment.
In lieu of this, I used three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, tying them to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy. When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user. This isn't a perfect system, of course. I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset.
Even so, there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself, and also why I am convinced that, like in SAO, the final triggering should really be tied to a high-intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually correct. At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design. It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user. It won't be the last.
[...] In SAO, the NerveGear contained a microwave emitter that could be overdriven to lethal levels, something the creator of SAO and the NerveGear itself (Akihiko Kayaba) was able to hide from his employees, regulators, and contract manufacturing partners. I am a pretty smart guy, but I couldn't come up with any way to make anything like this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment.
In lieu of this, I used three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, tying them to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy. When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user. This isn't a perfect system, of course. I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset.
Even so, there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself, and also why I am convinced that, like in SAO, the final triggering should really be tied to a high-intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually correct. At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design. It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user. It won't be the last.
Sounds Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't have the balls to wear it because he says there's too many ways for it to go off accidentally.
I say that's the point, if you are dumb enough to make this thing, you should be forced to use it.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
You realize he's trolling, right?
You know what I think of trolls, right?
I guess he thinks (Score:4, Funny)
I guess he thinks respawn is a religious concept, not an in-game option
Re:I guess he thinks (Score:4, Funny)
"I guess he thinks respawn is a religious concept, not an in-game option"
Not at all, he installed 3 explosives, ergo you have 3 lives to respawn.
What (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What (Score:4, Informative)
Another piece of paid advertising disguised as an article.
Re:What (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: What (Score:1, Funny)
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It's not an article, it's a silly blog post. Not sure which numpty promoted it to Slashdot.
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It was a good series, but it's old enough that I seriously doubt advertising for it will do much for sales.
It did have a uniquely techie plot though, so I suppose maybe it's somewhat appropriate here? It dodges most of the common Anime series tropes - no school setting, no mechs, no electric hair colors, no love triangles, no space wars. Kinda refreshing to see! And it was a pretty successful series with multiple seasons.
Re:What (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's obviously intentional as I've noticed this article's posted time was bumped up in order for it to be placed at the top of the home page.
Article current posted time "8:00 AM", however first comment shows as posted at "5:25 AM". And I saw it below AMC Zoom Room article earlier that shows its posted time "7:00 AM". Which means this "Oculus ad" had an earlier posted time before 7:00 AM.
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Did they boost the time to April 1st?
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Which means this "Oculus ad"
An "advert" for a product you can't buy... which would kill the user if you could... posted on a blog post... run by a guy who doesn't work for the company your claiming he's advertising...
The only thing we can conclude with 100% certainty is that weed is legal where you live.
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Another piece of paid advertising disguised as an article.
Paid advertising? For a product that you can't buy and that would kill the user? Do you have more than one Slashdot tab open in your Browser? Are you *sure* you replied to the correct story?
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Re:What (Score:5, Informative)
Also, notice that our comments are from roughly 12:30 (in my timezone) but the "article" is now showing as posted at 15:00. They are updating the posted date to keep it pinned on top of the page.
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That would make sense (Score:1)
Are the people who screen submissions drunk?
It seems likely as only a really drunk person could have comprehended the gibberish and reality-mixing of this submission, obviously also written while very drunk.
Only a guy seeing pink elephants in the room would be able to write, and understand this.
Obvious paid advert placement (Score:3, Insightful)
The amount of paid advertising / product placement decoyed as "articles" on Slashdot is getting insane recently. If it goes ike this, I'll be gone from Slashdot by Christmas.
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A paid ad? For a product you can't buy, which would kill you, placed on a blog post by someone who hasn't worked for several years for the company you're claiming this "ad" is for?
Relevant meme is very relevant (Score:5, Funny)
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This remembers me Galaxy Quest (the movie).
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?
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This was also my first thought after reading the summary XD
Easy to correct (Score:2)
It is rarely this on the nose though.
Indeed, 1984 should really have been called "Circa 2020".
Put him away (Score:2)
Put him in a mental institution or a prison and throw away the key. If he wants to be an edgelord, give him a taste of his own medicine.
Um, what? (Score:2)
You just know how something like this would end (Score:3)
First, the trolling would get to a new level, as would the cheating. Not to mention that nobody who is at least halfway sane would put something like this on in a public setting because ... well, trolling and cheating would be on a new level.
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but maybe if we stick this on developers and PO, we can fix the web...
Re: You just know how something like this would en (Score:2)
Stick this on the politicians.
Why is this even around? (Score:1)
This isn't really news. All passing this around will do is give people ideas for a real-life Running Man/Squid Game/etc. I can easily see someone doing this in some countries, and people all around the world would be paying fees to watch people get blown up in VR and real life.
The less this crap is spread around the better, because someone will make this happen.
Re: Why is this even around? (Score:2)
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Wait, wut? You mean Battle Royale and Hunger Games aren't documentaries???
Damn... there goes my phd thesis.....
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yet...wait until we get afoot or two of rising coast lines.
Is hardware even necessary? (Score:5, Funny)
The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat (Score:1)
old idea (Score:1)
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It's not a new idea, but SAO was published in 2009. Ready Player Two is 2020.
Re: old idea (Score:2)
The original web novel was started back in 2002, with a prototype manga released in 2001 by who is widely considered to be Reki, the author of SAO, under another name. It's been a full 2 decades since SAO was imagined.
It remarkable how forward looking his ideas for VR were.
Why is this in tech and not games? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is this in tech and not games? (Score:5, Informative)
It's about an Anime about a video game, actually.
"Sword Art Online" was supposed to be a new VR Video game. In a new level of immersion, you used a special headset to jack in much like the Matrix.
During game launch, it turned out that the creator of the game was an insane psychopath and had secretly designed the headsets so they could be programmed to be lethal, and in fact did so for the launch of the MMRPG. He was after making some sort of insane point or such. The actual method was overpowering some part of the system to the point that it microwaved the brain, and had enough storage that disconnecting somebody manually could get them with the microwaves before the set could be removed. Me, I'm like I could build a robot to do it fast enough. Anyways, in the serious something like half the original players died from this. It was thousands, making the creator the worst serial killer in history.
It's also missing that it isn't the first VR "game" to feature IRL death as a result of dying inside - this dates back to the Matrix movies themselves, and even all the way back to the original Shadowrun RPGs and such with "black ICE" - defensive programs for servers so advanced that they could figure out ways to kill those attempting to hack them.
I think the thing is that this guy actually went and, as part of an art project or such, built a headset with explosive charges where if you wear it and die in a specific game with a red flashing game over screen, the charges will detonate and kill you. As it's an actual physical thing, and not really part of the game, it's under technology.
Re: Why is this in tech and not games? (Score:2)
The first movie that I can remember that linked real world killing with virtual killing was Brainscan back in 1994. And, of course, lawnmower man had some of this, mixed with VR, in 1992â¦
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The first movie that I can remember that linked real world killing with virtual killing was Brainscan back in 1994.
Brainstorm [imdb.com] had a similar premise with VR (in this case though, the machine was like a VCR for recording and playing back another person's experiences) that could be lethal. That movie came out in 1983.
Re:Why is this in tech and not games? (Score:5, Informative)
this dates back to the Matrix movies themselves, and even all the way back to the original Shadowrun RPGs and such with "black ICE
Jesus fucking christ, don't you kids know how to check your references?
Black Ice was first described in the Sprawl trilogy by Gibson, years before Shadowrun.
And i'm sure there are many earlier examples of people dying in real life from VR-like experience. It is a popular trope that has been used many times.
For instance, check out "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968) , where a VR-like experience can give its users real-world bodily harm (slashed arm) when the VR gestalt they control is hurt.
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"The Veldt," Ray Bradbury, 1950. A family lives in an automated home with a room called "The Nursery," which simulates various experiences based on the preferences of the children.
AFAIK this is the invention both of the holodeck and of the "the simulation can kill you" trope in a computer/automation context. Others may have been before him but there's a sense in which "computer simulation" isn't a concept that makes any sense much earlier.
I'm certain I've read stories from earlier where events in a dream or
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Correction:
It's an anime that's based on a novel, that's based on a web serialization, that originally came out on 2001. The novel preceded Ready Player One.
Also there aren't explosive charges in the headsets- instead it's a microwave megnetron that disrupts the brain in a very physical way.
I guess the fact that there's a LED with the label BK (Brain Kill) didn't tipped off whatever the equivalent of FCC in Japan.
Adaptions of adaptions (Score:2)
It's really adoptions all the way down? I associate it with being an Anime because that's how I first encountered it. I never really got into "ready player one".
And I did note that, in the series, there's no explosive charges, that the headsets microwave brains. THIS GUY, however, built it using explosive charges because he didn't think a microwave is good enough.
As for a LED labled BK, I remember modems with LOTS of LED status lights back in the day. Hell, I think that some of my military commo gear ha
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The Matrix? Shadowrun? Try going all the way back to Neuromancer at least. Part of me wants to thing I've read classic SciFi stories, from even earlier than Gibson, with a similar "if you die in the computer you die in IRL" theme. But I probably have my timelines mixed up. Most of the classic SciFi writers like Heinlein, Clark, Asimov, and Niven didn't get the idea that computers could be anything besides remote mainframes unless they used positrons and were plugged into a robot body.
Start with a game where you can only die once (Score:4, Interesting)
Try to first sell a game where the player can only die once.
Imagine playing the new Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and as soon as you die in the game, the game deletes itself / the license key. Game over man.
Or doing it in multiplayer? You would see a lot of paranoid campers hiding around with a sniper rifle.
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Re: Start with a game where you can only die once (Score:2)
The whole point of a âoegameâ is repeatability. Literally why humans use games and game theory.
You try something and see what happens. You draw lessons. You modify your approach and try again.
Without that aspect itâ(TM)s not a game.
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The whole point of a Ãoegameà is repeatability.
Total nonsense. The point of a game is whatever you want it to be. If it's for entertainment when what you arguably want is for it to be unpredictable, because that has greater replay value. If you were right, and I want to stress again that you are not, then nobody would have been pleased to find that all worlds were not identical in Zelda.
Re: Start with a game where you can only die once (Score:2)
Re: Start with a game where you can only die onc (Score:2)
Game over. Please insert forty quarters. (Score:2)
Game over. Please insert forty quarters.
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Try to first sell a game where the player can only die once. Imagine playing the new Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and as soon as you die in the game, the game deletes itself / the license key. Game over man.
Something like this was done in the 80's; Have you ever played Sub Mission [mobygames.com]? If one of your characters dies and you aren't in practice mode, that character is permanently deleted from the disk. If you lose all of your characters there is nothing more to do except use the included form to order a new disk. The original disk was a booter so it wasn't something that could be backed up either (at least not by an average user). Overall the game sold poorly, and I'm guessing this well advertised feature played a b
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There are plenty of games where you never die: farming sims, point and click adventures, racing games, puzzles
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you could call it, say,, "nethack" . . .
(eyeball)
Why are you repeating blogs by psychos? (Score:2)
Imagine if we could harness this creativity... (Score:2)
Don't forget to include one for the brain stem (Score:5, Funny)
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"the day of the SAO Incident" (Score:2)
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Re: "the day of the SAO Incident" (Score:2)
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SAO = Sword Art Online, Japanese light novel / anime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
SAO incident refers to the main event in the series where players are trapped inside the game, unable to logout.
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suicide device (Score:3)
A helmet wired with explosive charges designed to kill the wearer? Sounds like a suicide device.
Solitaire Russian Roulette, anyone?
My main question is how well it contains the splatter? Easy cleanup is a good feature for suicide. You're no longer a burden, and you don't even leave a mess behind!
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Reminded me of the suicide booths in Futurama - no mess, vaporized completely!
Is this a joke? (Score:2)
I keep looking for signs that this moron "inventor" is joking or pulling some kind of scam. But he comes across as completely serious. And what is worse, the reporting here and elsewhere is also taking his "invention" at face value.
What kind of idiot would would wear a device that will blow his brains out if he loses a video game? Everyone loses video games! That's the whole point! Do these idiots not realize that "respawn" has no meaning in the real world? Dead is dead.
I mean, I guess it would have some po
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He's a Republican techie turned arms dealer (Score:2)
Didn't they have something like this on SG1? (Score:2)
Didn't they have something like this on SG1?
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"Avatar", E06S08 of Stargate SG-1.
If you want to read the full plot, you can see it from here:
https://stargate.fandom.com/wi... [fandom.com]
Ridiculous (Score:3)
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Yeah, I was struggling to figure out from the Slashdot summary what this was really all about. I guess it's about some fiction anime this guy wants to sell that has that story line as the theme, where "mad scientist makes people wear explosive headset that kills them if they don't finish the game"?
The way he goes on about actually building such a headset is disturbing though. I guess one might do this if he/she believes by merely assembling it, it becomes something new/never built before to take it from th
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This is dumb even as an art project.
Actually its a direct reference to popular culture. I'm guessing you've not watched Sword Art Online. I'm guessing most people here haven't and thus are probably equally confused what this clusterfuck of a summary is actually about.
hmmmm (Score:1)
Ready Player Two (Score:2)
[Minor spoilers]
This was roughly the main plot device of Ready Player Two that sets the plot in action after the first chapter. Not exactly the same, but fairly similar idea.
'If You Die in the Game, You Die in Real Life.' (Score:2)
you guys are npcs (Score:2)
Awaiting the class action lawsuit (Score:2)
Confirmed (Score:2)
The dirty untold part of SAO (Score:2)
The plus side: you can have actual sex in the VR world. Fully immersive, total experience.
The minus side: your avatar is altered to look just like you do in real life.
Welcome to Hell, incel
I rather enjoyed the anime but as with most anime that attempts to do SF their grasp of real science is tenuous at best. I didn't have the problems with Kirito that many detractors had and Asuna was quite cute.
Here lies andy; peperony and chease (Score:2)
Here lies andy; peperony and chease
The line for beta testers . . . (Score:2)
. . . for this project is going to be mighty short.
Obvious attention grab is obvious (Score:2)
His relevance days are long over.
Psychotic Child Endeavor (Score:2)
Jesus what a fucking weeb (Score:2)
dÃrk
Oooh, Edgy (Score:1)
Yawn, it's already been done, just not triggered by a video game, and the creaater definately tried it out, unlike the boy referenced above who's ball's haven't dropped yet.
The OG Suicide Helmet [reddit.com]
This is exactly why I stick to chess. (Score:2)
Or poker.
Loonie (Score:2)
This chap needs to seek medical help I suspect.
Sounds like the first minute of a bad CSI episode. (Score:2)
Unless one's terminally ill and looking to go out suddenly instead of a suffering a potentially slow, lingering death, how effin' stupid would one have to be to actually agree to play such a game?
Mod points for articles please (Score:2)
I am pretty sure I have already (Score:1)
I am pretty sure I have already see this episode on a kids TV show.
Re: Is he stoned? (Score:2)
He should be safely tucked away in a padded mental cell (click..lock) and be given a mandatory daily regimen of electroshock and mental drugs (zap..gulp)