Russian video game developers are working on the first ever multiplayer game with a neuro-interface which would read players' real-life emotions and transmit them back into the gaming environment, Vladimir Statut, the director of the company Neuromatix that's developing the new technology, told Sputnik in an interview.
The new technology will be a multifunctional neuro-interface used in a few different fields.
"We aim to create learning and training systems, marking the introduction of a new mechanism for the control of the gaming environment, the behavior of a [player] and the perception of content," Statut told Sputnik.
As for now, the developers see that the multi-interface could be developed into two major directions: education and entertainment [video-games].
In terms of education, for example, the technology could help to analyze a person's emotions while he or she is reading a text or processing some other information; that way the neuro-interface would show most effective ways of how people perceive information.
Furthermore, the neuro-interface would learn whether people really liked watching certain videos, for example, as the system would scan their faces for true emotions. Audience would no longer need to put "likes" or "dislikes" to rate videos and other multimedia content, the neuro-interface would tell all this information in a detailed way, the Neuromatix director said.
The entertainment direction would be equally important, as the technology would bring an emotional component into the video-game environment. Players would be able to see each other's real emotions as reactions to certain actions they make in a game.
"Currently, there are no emotions in video-games. A person can commit a murder [in a video-game] and he wouldn't receive an adequate emotional impact. Without emotions in virtual environments, people can then have the lack of emotions in real life," Statut said.
He further explained that his company is working on integrating real-life human emotions into the gaming environment, so people don't forget about the emotions of other people, even when playing computer games.
The new emotion-filled games would appear next year and people could start playing them on Russian-language social media platform Vkontake, Statut said.
Besides the education and entertainment fields, the Russian military has also become interested in the development of the new neural interface. The military sees huge potential in the development of the technology as it could be applied directly on battlefields. One of such inventions was a neuro-interface-based drone that could be controlled using a pilot's thoughts.
Looks like the near future will bring some amazing technology which many of us didn't even expect would exist. According to the NeuroNet expert group, by 2035 the global market of neurotechnologies will reach $1 trillion.
