Edge - April 2016

Dispatches
april
Issue 290
Dialogue
Send your views, using
‘Dialogue’ as the subject
line, to edge@futurenet.com.
Our letter of the month
wins a New Nintendo
3DS XL, supplied by
the Nintendo UK store
lost myself
Virtual reality concerns me. Yes, it’s
technologically amazing. And of course it’s
going to be immersive and create incredible
atmosphere in our games. But I’m genuinely
worried about the social implications were
it to become the standard for games. I worry
that with not just an immersive world on a
TV but one literally enclosing your head
from the outside world, gamers are putting
barriers up with others.
I enjoy playing through games (even
singleplayer titles) with my girlfriend, with
both of us helping to solve puzzles and
enjoying the story. And I adore local
competitive multiplayer – the brilliant
intensity that comes from a
close match of Street Fighter
with a friend over some beer
and a good laugh together.
Virtual reality will be two folk
with chunky eyeglasses sitting
on the couch not even able to
hear each other, losing track of
time and probably basic eating
requirements due to the
sensory deprivation effects.
Even playing a game with
someone else in VR looks likely to be a case
of stylised avatars, so you can no longer
even see what your friend looks like.
Not to mention the impact this will
have on the way gaming is viewed by
everyone else, just as games start to get
recognised by the mainstream as filmrivalling
entertainment. You only have to
look at the unfortunately hilarious image
of Palmer Luckey on the front of Time
Magazine to get an idea of how this looks
to the outside world. It’s not that the tech
isn’t going to be great fun to use, I’m just
worried about the way it could change us,
not only as gamers, but as people as well.
Mark Blain
It’s only a slight twist on the average WOW
player’s experience, isn’t it? In seriousness,
it surely won’t be long before the image of a
“Virtual reality
will be two folk
sitting on the
couch not even
able to hear
each other”
person wearing a VR headset sheds its
dorkiness. And many VR initiatives seem
more concerned with connecting users
across large distances than it does isolating
them from their immediate surroundings.
We’ll be looking deeper into VR next issue.
happy again
I’m looking forward to Vane – it may be just
the aesthetic experience I’m seeking at the
moment. Let me explain.
Convalescing in the country recently, I was
looking for a gaming moment to complement
gentle walks and early snowdrops after a
busy, gaming-free year. My first thought was
to reinstall Civilization V, and a few long
nights of 4Xing captured the
melancholy, deliberate mood of
getting well slowly. In its way
this is a perfect game, but it
wasn’t exactly the moment
I was inching towards.
So I looked elsewhere,
and briefly toyed with the
desolation of Fallout. But then
the ideal moment came, one
evening, in the middle of
nowhere in Elite Dangerous.
I was dipping in and out of
planetary rings for no good reason, far from
civilisation, lacking money and purpose,
expecting very little of my career as an
explorer. And suddenly, somewhere in the
aimlessness of this unpressured wandering,
was the essence of a line of Leonard Cohen at
his most contemplative. This cultish, goodbut-not-transcendent
space game had
brought Famous Blue Raincoat to the far
Welsh Marches.
All art forms promise these perfect
moments when the stars align and bring
mood, experience and circumstance together.
There won’t be snowdrops out when Vane is
released, I imagine, but from what I gather
the game is a good bet for similarly evocative
moments in 2016. And I’ll take those over
the upcoming Doom reboot any day.
Neil Rutter
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