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slideshow of the history of computers
First came the joystick. Then came the motion-sensing Wii remote. Now get
ready for another radical and rather unsettling leap in video games
technology: thought control.
Satoru Iwata, the president and chief executive of Nintendo - which is
expected to sell about 25million units of its successful Wii video games
console this financial year - has no doubts about the next gaming boom. “As
soon as we think something in our brain, it will appear within a video
game,” he told The Times in an exclusive interview.
“You'll probably need to wear some kind of hat or helmet or something.”
As far-fetched as it sounds, Mr Iwata's claim - which brings to mind the plot
of Craig Thomas's bestselling 1977 novel Firefox, about a mind-reading
Soviet fighter aircraft - is already coming true: the world's first
thought-controlled game is expected to be launched by the Sydney company
Emotiv by the end of this year.
Co-founded by Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist and former University of
Cambridge research fellow, Emotiv says its EPOC headset features 16 sensors
that push against the player's scalp to measure electrical activity in the
brain - a process known as electro-encephalography. In theory, this allows
the player to spin, push, pull, and lift objects on a computer monitor,
simply by thinking.
Despite widespread scepticism, pre-release tests have suggested that the
technology works. “This is the tip of the iceberg for what is possible,”
said Tan Le, another of Emotiv's co-founders, during a recent press
demonstration. “There will be a convergence of gesture-based technology and
the brain as a new interface - the Holy Grail is the mind.”
Mr Iwata, in Los Angeles for the video games industry's annual E3 conference,
is credited with a revolution of the video games industry with his Wii
remote, many of which have been hurled at television screens or living-room
walls after overenthusiastic players lost their grip amid virtual tennis
tournaments or boxing rounds. He did not comment on Emotiv's headset but
said he believed that fully thought-controlled games were still years away:
“We don't have that kind of technology right now, but when we're talking
about a 20-year time period, anything's possible.
“If you look back 20 years from today, things that were thought impossible are
now the reality - for example, it was a distant dream that we would
construct a 3D world with computer graphics.”
The US military has been working on thought-control technology for years. Most
of the projects that it has made public, however, have focused on
thought-reading systems rather than, say, thought-guided missiles.
Last month the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), an arm of
the US Defence Department, said it had awarded a $6.7 million contract to
Northrop Grumman to develop “brainwave binoculars”. The binoculars use
scalp-mounted sensors to detect objects the user might have seen but not
noticed - in other words, the computer is used as a kind of brain-aid,
giving the user superhuman vision.
Explaining the technology, Dr Robert Shin, an assistant professor of neurology
and ophthalmology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said:
“There is a level where the brain can identify things before it ever makes
it to the conscious level. Your brain says, ‘it may be something', but it
might not realise that it is something that should rise to the conscious
level.”
Another defence contractor, Honeywell, has been working on a similar
technology known as “augmented cognition” to help intelligence analysts to
operate more effectively. Based on the same principle as the binoculars, it
has been shown to make analysts work up to seven times faster. It can also
detect when they are getting tired. In other tests, soldiers have been
kitted out with headsets that detect “brain overload”, allowing commanders
to know if they can process new information under the extreme pressures of
the battlefield.
Until recently such technology was beyond the reach of video games companies.
But simplified thought-control systems are now emerging from the likes of
Emotiv, and Moore's Law - which dictates that technology improves as prices
fall - means that they will become cheaper.
Gamers will not be the only ones to benefit. Police forces and other
law-enforcement agencies have shown an interest in using thought-reading
technology to replace lie-detector tests. Similarly, medical researchers
believe that the technology could be used by patients to control the next
generation of prosthetic limbs, or to give stroke victims new ways to
communicate. Emotiv says it is encouraging such applications by giving
third-party programmers access to its software development tools.
All of which represents a new era for video games, according to Mr Iwata. Once
regarded as the enemy of society for encouraging violence, games will
continue to become more mainstream, competing more fiercely with Hollywood
film studios and other traditional forms of entertainment for consumers'
time and attention.
“With the launch of Wii we began to expand the definition of the video game.
Stroking puppies, training your brain, cooking, even measuring your body
weight - all of this we've included in the category of video games.”
Most analysts agree that Wii's success has changed the industry: a year after
its launch in November 2006, it had become a phenomenon of pop culture,
largely because of Mr Iwata's strategy of trying to win non-gamers as
customers.
“The reason why Wii has been given so much appreciation is not because of
technological superiority; rather, it must be due to the fact that we have
been able to provide customers with unexpected and unprecedented
entertainment value,” he said, referring to Wii's lower price and more
extensive basic specifications than its main rival, the Sony PlayStation 3.
Wii's biggest selling point has been its motion-sensing remote, which has
usurped the joystick and led to players using the system for sports
training. It is now possible to buy a plug-in balance board as part of a
“Wii Fit” software package.
Mr Iwata says that video games, far from being the mindless toy of today's
youth, will soon be regarded as a crucial part of a child's development.
Nintendo's hand-held DS product, along with the software program Dr
Kawashima's More Brain Training, has been used as part of a trial in
Scotland to improve children's concentration.
“I think the video game might be able to cultivate the curiosity and the
concentration of children - that's something I personally I believe as a
father,” he said. “In Japan, schools are using English-language training
software and they're showing results.”
In the meantime, however, Mr Iwata is focused on rather more mundane concerns
- in particular, continuing product shortages.He said that the current
levels of demand ruled out any price cuts, but denied vehemently that
limiting the supply was a deliberate marketing ploy. “
The customers we're approaching aren't just those interested in video games,
but also those who have never had an interest, or who have never played
games for any reason.
“Those people might be willing on one day to go to a store and find out,
sorry, Wii's out of stock, but the next day they might have forgotten about
their interest. So the product shortages, we don't think they can give us
any opportunity. Actually, it's an opportunity lost for Nintendo.”
A history of playing games
Spacewar! - 1962
Arguably the first video game as we know it, Spacewar! was developed by
ambitious student hackers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A
simple two-player battle game, it ran on a gigantic mainframe computer and
was stored on reels of paper tape
Multi-User Dungeon - 1978
Created by an Essex University student, MUD let people all over the world
adventure in the same game for the first time. It sowed the seeds of modern
phenomena such as World of Warcraft - and entranced the engineers who
developed the internet
Home Computers - 1982
Sold to parents as educational devices, computers such as the Sinclair
Spectrum truly succeeded because of their early prowess as gaming systems.
In the end education won out - a whole generation of kids became computer
literate and went on to turn Britain into a game-development powerhouse
3-D Graphics - Mid-1990s
There was an explosion in the Nineties in the development of 3-D technology,
fuelled by consumer demand for increasingly complex 3-D games. Prices
tumbled and performance improved exponentially - and the knock-on effect
opened up 3-D imaging to a host of medical and military applications
PlayStation - 1995
Sony's entry to the video game market precipitated a huge change not only in
video games, but also in youth culture as a whole. Games escaped the
schoolyard and started being promoted in nightclubs - and the new obsession
with Tekken, WipEout and Final Fantasy has fuelled trends in fashion, music
and cinema ever since
Nintendo DS - 1997
With its sights set firmly on new markets, Nintendo's ground-breaking handheld
console featured an intuitive touch-screen interface - and a host of
software designed to break out of gaming's existing congregation and provide
entertainment to young and old, male and female. It worked. The diminutive
system is set to sell its 100 millionth unit this year
