Enlarge / An artist’s interpretation of how future Dota 2 tournament trophies might look if Valve chief Gabe Newell pushes any further into brain-computer interface (BCI) research. (credit: Getty Images / David Jackmanson / Sam Machkovech)
For years, the open secret at Valve (makers of game series like Half-Life and Portal) has been its interest in a new threshold of game experiences. We’ve seen this most loudly with SteamVR as a virtual reality platform, but the game studio has also openly teased its work on “brain-computer interfaces“—meaning, ways to read brainwave activity to either control video games or modify those experiences.
Most of what we’ve seen from Valve’s skunkworks divisions thus far, particularly at a lengthy GDC 2019 presentation, has revolved around reading your brain’s state (i.e., capturing nervous-system energy in your wrists before it reaches your fingers, to reduce button-tap latency in twitchy shooters like Valve’s Counter-Strike). In a Monday interview with New Zealand’s 1 News, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell finally began teasing a more intriguing level of BCI interaction: one that changes the state of your brain.
“Our ability to create experiences in people’s brains, that aren’t mediated through their meat peripherals [e.g., fingers, eyes], will be better than is [currently] possible,” Newell asserts as part of his latest 12-minute video interview. Later, he claims that “the real world will seem flat, colorless, and blurry compared to the experiences that you’ll be able to create in people’s brains.”
Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments
