(Gateway Pundit) Oculus’s founder, who was subsequently terminated from his position at Facebook, claimed to develop a virtual reality (VR) headset that has the capability of bringing gamers’ deaths into the real world.
In a blog post published November 6, Palmer Luckey, one of the original founders of the Oculus VR who sold his company to Facebook and now acts as the foundation for Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambitions, claimed that he had modified a virtual reality headset so that it would explode if the wearer lost in a video game, killing them in real life as well.
According to Luckey’s blog post titled “If you die in the game, you die in real life,” the fictional virtual reality headset “NerveGear” from the Sword Art Online anime series served as inspiration for his deadly gaming gear.
Sword Art Online (SAO) is a Japanese light novel series written by Reki Kawahara. The anime has been released where players control their avatars with their bodies using a piece of technology called: Nerve Gear. One day, players discover they cannot log out, as the game creator is holding them captive unless they reach the 100th floor of the game’s tower and defeat the final boss. However, if they die in the game, they die in real life, according to Crunchyroll.
“You want NerveGear, the incredible device that perfectly recreates reality using a direct neural interface that is also capable of killing the user,” Luckey wrote.
“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me – you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it. Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game. This is an area of videogame mechanics that has never been explored, despite the long history of real-world sports revolving around similar stakes,” he continued.
