Palmer Lucki, the founder of Oculus, a Virtual Reality firm, has developed a new gaming device that can actually kill the player if he dies in the game. The first headset named “Oculus Rift”, was introduced to the public in 2012, the same year the company was founded. Then in 2012, Facebook (Meta) purchased Oculus Organization for $2 billion. In March 2016 firm started selling its product, which gained massive popularity for the next years.
A few days ago, Palmer Lucki uploaded a new post on his blog site regarding a new idea for an even more realistic Virtual Reality (VR) gaming device. Where he mentioned that if the user’s hit points will drops below zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, allegedly killing the user. Lucki said he was inspired by a Japanese science fiction novel series called Sword Art Online (SAO), which action takes place in the future and focuses on a virtual reality game. Oculus founder claims that the idea and the concept of virtual reality that can influence users’ real life “have always fascinated him”.
What is important to highlight here, is that the new Oculus headset is going to be connected with another virtual reality called Metaverse. Which is a virtual space area founded by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, Meta CEO) where users can easily interact with each other and perform all tasks and activities that are done in real life such as working, living, shopping, partying, etc. Users will be able to easily connect to that virtual world from their couches.
I cannot imagine people killing each other in a game, but with the result of dying in real life. Players would be able to kill themselves from more than thousands of kilometers distance within seconds.
I very much disagree with Lucki’s new idea, and I hope the device is only a plan and it does not exist and will not be presented to the market in the near future.
To be honest I am a bit terrified of these kinds of developments. Even if Lucki’s new player-killing device is not existing yet, I am shocked at how people may come up with such ideas. Now I am curious how many of those modern machines are created and not presented to the public yet.
I am looking forward to seeing your opinions on that topic, feel free to comment. Thank you for reading.
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In my opinion it is a bit hardcore product idea, but also it is awkwardly interesting. In my opinion, this product could be used in prisons, where a lots of prisoners are sentenced to life and don’t have any choice anyway. They could try play such game with other inmates, and person who wins gets released/gets their sentenced shortened, using this VR set. This is a bit unrealistic idea, but reminds me of a movie ‘Death Race’ (2008) where prison inmates sentenced to life had to race their cars, on a track with deadly obstacles on a way. A person who won the race was released from the prison. This technically could work in environment of prisons, where prisoners compete with each other for a prize of being released, in some FPS/competitive game. Good article, thanks!