The best-selling computer games of all time are The Sims, produced by Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA), which have been extraordinarily popular with women. Instead of shooting anything, you spend your time creating a little virtual life in a little virtual suburb, complete with a job and relationships to other little virtual people. Things like this will happen in The Sims:
Source: Devina Kemmy via DeviantArt.
Ain’t it cute? Certainly seems to meet the criteria for “actual relationships,” at least in the confines of game programming. With 150 million copies of all its various games and expansions sold, The Sims seems to already be the Titanic of games. Again, Lucas seems a little behind the curve when it comes to anticipating positive entertainment trends. I’ve played The Sims 3 with a top-of-the-line computer, and it takes ages to get going once you start putting add-ons on top of the base game. In due time, I’m sure that Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA) or another game developer will make a game that’s so engaging no one will want to come back to their real lives. Speaking of which…
Spielberg: We want a holodeck. Lucas: Let’s control people’s dreams!
The last comments were a bit far-flung. Spielberg started off with this:
We’re never going to be totally immersive as long as we’re looking at a square, whether it’s a movie screen or whether it’s a computer screen. We’ve got to get rid of that and we’ve got to put the player inside the experience, where no matter where you look you’re surrounded by a three-dimensional experience. That’s the future.
That, I think, is called a holodeck. Incidentally, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is working on just this sort of technology, which was called “IllumiRoom” the last time it got some attention. Incidentally, Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s Xbox chief, was part of the panel. There’s no record of him making note of this, which is a bit surprising. Maybe the technology is still too far away from production.
Spielberg didn’t set a timetable for his idea, but Lucas did:
The next step is to be able to control your dreams. You’ll just tap into a different part of your brain. You’re just going to put a hat on or plug into the computer and create your own world. … We’ll be able to do the dream thing 10, 15 years from now. It’s not some pie-in-the-sky thing.
If you could create your own immersive, fully believable and fully customized world every time you closed your eyes, why would you want to open them again? You might as well plug yourself into the Matrix at that point. Does this mean that George Lucas just predicted the emergence of a voluntary Matrix? Seems a little bit scary, doesn’t it?
The article Steven Spielberg and George Lucas Have a Strange Vision of the Future originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Alex Planes.
Fool contributor Alex Planes holds no financial position in any company mentioned here. Add him on Google+ or follow him on Twitter @TMFBiggles for more insight into markets, history, and technology. The Motley Fool recommends Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Dreamworks Animation Skg Inc (NASDAQ:DWA), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), and Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS). The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Netflix, and Walt Disney.
Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
