VNN - Valve's Brain Chip Interfacing - everything known
21 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vi4Def3CmM
honestly i don't care that valve hasn't been making games if this is the shit they're looking into
Wow, Epic have hit them so hard they've resorted to mind control to make people stay on steam. Incredible what competition can do!
although the aperture science analogies are becoming more and more real. developing brain implant interfaces for video games isn't that removed from developing portal technology for shower curtains.
Y'know, this may be Valve's core desire to innovate in gaming's ultimate end; creating simulations that can be interacted with 100% intuitively and to "feel" like you're really your player character. It's the ultimate end of design choices like making Gordon Freeman's actions completely limited to player input, hence him being a mute we can make jokes about. From a scientific and technological perspective, it's utterly fascinating.
But in the process, they're ignoring the consequences their behavior has left on the general public. Valve may be major tech geeks wanting to push their limits with a cool game, and they have such followers wanting to join them in playing, yet over 20 years of development they've let beloved game franchises fall into open graves just because they can't find a project "perfect" for their standards to continue them, accidentally created not only a monopoly over desktop game retail that they insist on taking a "hands-free" approach over and let notorious titles and devs run rampant, but the dreaded modern standard of game content monetization that is lootboxes, as well as maintained a chaotic, inefficient working environment that leaves them with practical no public relations or productive organization, to say nothing of the rumors of laziness/greed-fueled machinations sabotaging who knows how many projects. Not to mention as of today they've produced their first utter flop of a failed game in the form of Artifact.
Valve Software may continue to be a groundbreaking and innovative company, but they've left so many things fall apart and tarnished goodwill and admiration from so many people in the process. It's saddening, but it's also utterly bizarre to witness in a way.
Tyler was freaking out hard watching the live feed and tbh I was too.
Like, this is the logical endgame of Valve's data-driven gamedev approach. Literally read people's cognitive patterns out of their brains as they play games. Their obsession with data was already creepy before, but this takes it to the next level.
And imagine the broader ramifications of this. Imagine tech giants selling your brain data. Imagine what China will be able to do with this.
And that's just the helmet. Imagine the people who'll be implanting chips for faster, more accurate measurements. Imagine they actually manage to get it to the point outlined by the psychologist - two-way data transmission, and subsequent cognitive augmentation.
The only solace is that Valve thinks it's only about 5 years off, which means we won't see it in our lifetimes. But still.
I remember Valve talking about reading a player's hearth-rate to affect the events of horror games years ago.
Now with this Valve's endgame is pretty much that episode of Blackmirror of the videogame that reads your mind and translates your worst fears into the video game.
Yeah but isn't ECG a bit... crap? I really don't think too many people are going to be thrilled about the idea of putting a datajack in their head just to play video games better
i don't see anything like this, to the point where it could be reliably sold as a consumer product for an acceptable price, happening for decades if not a century.
despite this, it's a concept that terrifies me; we already barely have a sense of privacy today thanks to facebook or google taking all of our data and everything we do or say - and imagine how much worse it'd get if they had access to your fucking brain.
like shit, microtransactions and lootboxes in games are already predatory and manipulative enough, but if you let them read your thoughts on top of that??? this brain chip stuff sounds like something out of Cyberpunk or something, its dystopian.
if it's just a helmet, or a headset - and it's output only - then sure, okay, that could be acceptable to some amount if everything involved is clearly defined and acceptable.
like, in terms of games, i can see this having slight potential - imagine a horror game that tracks how you're feeling and changes the environment accordingly to mess with you further, or a roguelike that changes dynamically based on your thought process - but the potential downsides or corporate advantages that the tech would absolutely have just wouldn't be worth it at all, even if its just the helmet!
i said "output only" as if that implies they'd be able to also send inputs to your brain and have them be accepted, but i feel like anything like that wouldn't happen for centuries, if at all - technology advances exponentially to some amount, but to the point where we understand the human brain enough to make it do specific things? that just doesn't sound possible to me, and if it is possible the implications of it are scarier than anything else in this talk.
i like it when Valve gets experimental with stuff - my love for the steam controller is an example of this - but this is something else entirely and it scares me
Can't wait to give the big businesses and governments of the world direct access to my fucking nervous system so they can more optimally feed me loot boxes, advertisements, and political misinformation campaigns, all so I can headshot noobs in counter strike
Oh, yeh, the issue about the potential misuse of brain-chip interfacing. That's another point I can make about Valve: They don't personally consider the potential for trouble when they try to beneficial things.
-No-management work environment to let creators work unhindered, and individuals together are what decide major actions? Their development becomes a chokehold as projects have uphill battles to get going, deadlines are a suggestion at best, and relying on unison agreement is just historically ineffective (Exhibit A: The United State's first attempt at a government in the form of the Articles of Confederation)
-Make Steam an open marketplace for any dev to get a chance to sell their game to the public? They overlook the ocean beyond the floodgate they're trying to let fish through, letting asset flips, shovelware and reams of other bollocks flood their storefront. And they're reluctant/lazy to take preemptive steps to stop or curate them to boot.
-Allow official sponsorship of paid mods to let the hard-working content makers get a share of profit? Ignores not only the jerks who would charge $5 for their own sword model, but they try it in agreement with Bethesdia, whose motives couldn't be more clear once they launch their own mod selling service.
-Make Artifact a pay-heavy experience to emulate the physical trading card game culture? Shows extreme ignorance of how card games are treated in the digital realm and creates a major barrier to the skeptics of the game ever since the announcement trailer, ultimately hurting the ability of the game to even get off the ground for success.
-And now this with BDIs? Offer innovations in gameplay, sure, but in an age when people are uber concerned about modern tech taking notes and letting unscrupulous governments have complete logs on their citizens, their ambitions have the potential for extreme abuse detrimental to civilization as a whole.
Sounds like this, but irl.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110923/e07b4bc5-7b03-4229-b987-a2cc4fcc221f/image.png
There is a long road before discussing the idea of slapping a chip inside your head for entertainment purposes (and if there is no negative impact in your health), but I would be interested to see custom chips with that logo.
Sounds kinda like how the Director works in Left 4 Dead, just without reading actual biometrics.
Brain activity imaging tech is far behind for what's required for your doomsday scenario. Using such devices is cumbersome and the data is approximate at best even in the top of the line devices which are completely unaffordable to consumers.
When that tech eventually gets there, there'll be governments investing in mind reading machines much before such game controllers roll out.
In order to play HL3 now, we have to get invasive brain implants?
I never asked for this.
Yeah I understand why Hl3's taking so long now
Cyberbrains lets go
I feel like this is a double edged sword.
On one hand, yeah. Stuff like this could revolutionize inputs for games, and result in games that can adapt in relative real time to how a player is playing or how a player feels while playing. Sitting down and playing a game could be as easy as just sitting down at a chair and thinking about what you want to do instead of having to think about and then execute actions on a gamepad or kb+m. It also opens up new opportunities for the physically and maybe even mentally disabled.
On the other hand, we all know that this tech is more than likely going to be used by some devs and publishers to manipulate players into doing things like buying microtransactions due to dynamically altering the experience to incentive them and even potentially dynamically changing the cost based on the player's thoughts. And not to mention the potential for this data to be collected. I'd rather that not happen at all.
In order for me to fully accept this tech with open arms, I think there would have to be an agreed upon code of ethics of sorts that can't be broken lest you receive legal ramifications for doing so. I just don't trust the industry enough to not use this to manipulate, not even Valve.
computing techniques has advanced to a significant degree since most man/machine research was done (mid 2000s)
As someone who works with EEGs and other neuoron monitoring devices, I can say that...
They're trash.
On the best case scenario, where you have the electrodes perfectly positioned by examiner, you can only pull very vague data about general emotional and awareness states.
But here they are using helmets, so it will be even worse considering current tech.
So they either created a brand new imaging method, and decided to keep it to video games instead of giving it to the medical world (and this will have to go through the FDA and all, which may take years)...
or they are grossly exaggerating their implementation of current tech.
Its hard for me to give valve benefit of the doubt anymore - even more so when it's about tech that I can only describe as sci-fi. Like I guess controlling video games with your brain would be cool, ignoring all other implications on how it could be misused but it's also a complete gimmick until tested - much like what VR was until people started making good games with it rather then toys and demos
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