Have you ever wanted to die via VR? Well, Palmer Luckey, one of the co-founders of the Oculus Rift, has just announced that he has started us on a delightful journey of self-expression. At least, that's apparently what Luckey thinks, as he's created "a piece of office art" that shows "unexplored avenues in game design" Surely this is an avenue that doesn't (or shouldn't) need to be explored, but now we have a real-life NerveGear from Sword Art Online that will kill the user via three explosive charge modules. Yay?
The reason that this was announced yesterday (when the blog was published) is that it was the day of the SAO Incident in SAO lore. On that day, thousands of VRMMORPG players in SAO were trapped in a game that can only be escaped through completion, thus starting off its main story. It's a neat concept, although in that game the headset kills people by a microwave emitter that "could be overdriven to lethal levels", which Luckey couldn't manage in real-life due to the size of the equipment required.
Sword Art Online as a franchise has done pretty well for itself, with plenty of games, novels, TV shows, films, and other content being released to expand upon the killer concept. Still, the main question that Palmer Luckey raises is this: would there be an audience that would voluntarily use a VR headset designed to kill them?
Well, if there is, you'd think it'd grow smaller over time, although that also depends. Gladiators were venerated for their deeds and admired by many during the Roman Empire, and in theory, if a particular VR streamer survived long enough (or even made it to the end of a game without dying) then perhaps there would be a big enough audience to not only keep a killer VRMMORPG up and running, but actually keep it busy too.
In a particularly chilling and dystopian sendoff, Palmer Luckey says he thinks that while his headset is the first of its kind, it won't be the last. For more information on Palmer Luckey completing other mad experiments or other killer VR headsets being announced, stay tuned to TechRaptor.
