It’s an old trope in a lot of dumb sci-fi movies involving virtual reality: you die in the game, you die in real life. In said movies, the characters get trapped in a video game and have to play for their lives. If their avatar disappears, so do they. Well, it looks like someone really wanted this trope to come true. I mean, someone created a VR headset that literally kills you if you lose a video game. Fun, right? The creator is none other than Palmer Luckey, the 30-year-old virtual reality wunderkind, defense contractor, Trump financier and co-founder of Oculus, the VR company that Facebook bought in 2014 for $3 billion. Luckey published a blog post on Sunday explaining his strange new handset — which he claims is mostly a “piece of desk art” for now — and also included a photo of it. For reference, it looks like this: Photo: Palmer Luckey G/O Media may receive a commission lightsaber hum SabersPro For the Star Wars fan with everything. These lightsabers are powered by Neopixels, LED strips running inside the shape of the blade that allow for adjustable colors, interactive sounds, and changing motion effects while dueling. Yes, this thing will end your life. More specifically, it’s rigged with bombs to blow your head off. In his blog post, Luckey explains how his deadly new tool is supposed to work: I used three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, connecting them to a narrowband photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a certain frequency, making game integration from the developer side very easy . When an appropriate game screen appears, the charges are fired, instantly destroying the user’s brain. Jesus. In other words, Luckey has essentially brought to life the plot of the nerdy anime web comic from the mid-2000s, Sword Art Online. Indeed, Luckey says that this comic was the main inspiration behind his work. In the comic, the characters wear a thing called “NerveGear”, which is an “incredible device that perfectly recreates reality using a direct neural interface that is also capable of killing the user.” They are then thrown into a matrix-like world by a mad scientist and forced to endure a “death game” where the stakes of the game are tied to their own mortality. For Luckey, this is an exciting idea: The idea of connecting your real life with your virtual avatar has always fascinated me – you immediately raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players within it. Increased graphics can make a game look more real, but only the threat of dire consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game. Righttttt…well, that’s certainly an interesting idea, though some might argue that the enjoyment of the game actually comes from being able to experience death-defying scenarios and not have your head explode. Some may support it. Anyway, whether it’s a good idea or not, Luckey seems to have plans to make his new hat even scarier than it currently is by adding “anti-tamper” technology to it: This is not a perfect system, of course. I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset. So the ultimate goal here is to create a killer helmet that you literally can’t take off. Once it’s attached to your noggin, the only two scenarios in which you’ll be able to remove it are A) one where you beat the game, or B) one where your decapitated corpse is dragged out of a pile of mangled rubble by whatever unfortunate soul happens to stumble upon it. That’s probably why Luckey hasn’t used the thing himself yet. He says: … there is a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I haven’t been able to actually use it myself, and also why I’m convinced that, like in SAO, the final trigger should really be tied to a highly intelligent agent that can easily determine if the termination conditions are indeed correct. …At this point, it’s just a piece of desk art, a thought-provoking reminder of uncharted avenues in game design. Some will undoubtedly find this concept exciting, while others (actually, let’s be honest, most people) will probably be put off from participating after reading the phrase “kill the user at the wrong time”. Unfortunately, I fall into the latter camp, though a grim cocktail of curiosity and suspicion will certainly keep me watching the progress of this project for the foreseeable future.
