I find the science behind existenZ most interesting because it really does seem like the ultimate destination for video games. Gamers like to be immersed in the world of the game, and presently game developers have many methods for facilitating this immersion. Companies such as Bioware use elaborately constructed plots that are directed based on a player's choices made during conversations with Non-Player-Characters in-game. In many ways the immersion factor works the same way as a book or a movie. The more entertaining and enjoyable, the more the player/consumer deepens their experience of the game. However, we still only use a limited range of our senses when playing modern video games. Sight and sound. ExistenZ brings about the concept of delivering entertainment along all the senses, simultaneously. Visa vi, seamless virtual reality.
Of course there are a vast range of problems that would arise from such a game construct. Game addiction for one, is already a very real condition. Then again, it has already been proven that one can become addicted to theoretically anything. Addiction in and of itself is only a person's over-centralization of their day to day functionality around a singular or narrow experiential range. So imagine in a game world that draws all of your senses in entirely, and the real world isn't just in your periphery, it has disappeared! In a world where you can completely escape the problems of reality by entering the perfect reality of a video game world, I think there would be way too many people giving up on reality and just living the rest of their lives in the game world, only leaving periodically to eat and sleep. Slowly but surely more people are drawn to the perfection of the game world until global focus drifts from the real world into that of the game. And then you have a population of utterly detached vegetables who are existing in real space only to further their existence in a virtual space.
It is because of the totality of the immersion of existenZ that I would deter anyone from playing or marketing it, and even trying to develope such technology.
To create and market a complete virtual reality platform for the masses would spell doom of all kinds for humans. And the scariest part is: someday if our science continues to develope, the technology of existenZ can be entirely realized. There should be no reason why we cannot trick our brains into receiving fabricated stimulus, uninterrupted, from the five senses simultaneously. We experience reality only by the way our brain tells it too, so why couldn't we learn at a certain point to design stimulus for our brain?
