Hi, to all! So I recently had my first experience with Virtual Reality(VR) gaming. I played two games: the first was Beat Saber. A VR version of Rock Band or Guitar Hero where instead of instruments you use two different colored lightsabers and slice the appropriate colored blocks in order to get the beat of the song right.

It was a lot of fun to be sure. And you’re not limited to just Electronic Dance Music either. You can download actual songs as well if you want different challenges.

The second, was Robo Recall. I can’t tell you the last time I felt so immersed within a game. This was one of the most fun games I have ever played. The challenges, the stress, the fun that goes along with playing Robo Recall I’ve only experienced a couple of times in my lifetime with other video games.

Now, the video is quite long so feel free to skip a little bit. If you watched the video or have played Robo Recall then you probably know what I’m talking about. It reminded a little bit of I, Robot from 2004 starring Will Smith.

Well, as I was partaking in the new incredible experience that is discovering VR for the first time, I couldn’t help but ask myself what the future of gaming, or even more so the world around us, will look like. But for simplicity’s sake I’ll try to stick to more of the gaming industry.

As I mentioned, this was a completely new experience for me and I had no idea what to expect out of it. What I can say is that I enjoyed every bit of it.

But, clearly this isn’t it. We know that developers are coming out with better things every year for us to consume. Of course we need to enjoy ourselves with what we have in the now but also look forward to the future. But what exactly is that? What does the future hold? In the gaming industry it’s important to remember, “The future isn’t predicted. It is invented.” There are a lot of industry experts who believe radical changes are coming soon and some who think it’ll take longer. But what changes? A lot of people see the future of the industry belonging to virtual reality and augmented reality. I can see why they say that. The rise of Oculus may not have taken the public by storm but for those willing to fork over the money for it I can almost certainly promise you that they enjoy it. Pokémon Go took over the world for a while and is still widely popular on the AR front. Walking Dead even has its own AR game now. To me, I would not be surprised to see both virtual and augmented realities come together. Of course, as I’ve been writing this article I can think of a few episodes of Black Mirror that has hinted at things like this.

Season 1, Episodes 2 and 3.
The 2014 Special, “White Christmas”.
Season 3, Episodes 1, 2, 4, and 5.
Season 4, Episode 1 for sure(haven’t seen past this episode yet).

No, not all of these episodes deal with video games per se but they show you a world where that world has taken on aspects of video games and shows you good and bad. Season 3’s episode “Playtest” is one of the more prevalent, along with season 4’s “USS Calister”.

So if you’re looking for me to give you a definite answer to what the world is going to be like then I’m sorry I wasted your time. What I can tell you is that the gaming world as well as the world is going to change and is always changing.

I encourage you to always be open-minded. Enjoy the things around you and if you haven’t tried VR yet I highly encourage you to do so. It’s a completely different world.

Quote of the Day: “Here’s how I’m going to beat you. I’m going to outwork you. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”
-Pat Summit