Video Games Unworthy of My Fanaticism...Yet

I have to admit it: I never could get into the video game phenomenon. Although there are individual exceptions, I think that becoming a video game fanatic (or not) is largely a generational matter. And I may have just missed the "cut". I know that my children sure were (and still are) big video game players. I keep telling them, in reference to my relative lack of interest in the "activity", that I am waiting for virtual reality technology to take hold. But in spite of the fact that Walt Disney World's Carousel of Progress show's vision for the near future features Grandma sitting in the living room engaged in playing a virtual reality space battle game, nothing of the sort has yet "materialized" in the "real" world of the marketplace. Instead, we just keep getting more realistic looking flatscreen games.

Maybe we need a Steve Jobs in the gaming industry to come out with a vision that pushes the technology and software designers into the virtual world that I myself would clamor for. But then again, maybe that's the point: virtual reality could possibly be made so alluring that its participants might just decide to spend their waking hours completely within its fantasy lands, and that wouldn't exactly be a good thing for society in general, would it? Come to think of it, that's just what happened in a Star Trek: the Next Generation episode: one of the crew went overboard with his holodeck (virtual reality room) sessions to the exclusion of his duties, even losing touch with reality itself (which was actually complete fiction, but in the context of the show it was reality).

After all, it is clear to me that this is already happening to an extent with flatscreen games. There is even a company called GameFlight that allows video game fans to be able to afford to spend just about every waking moment of their lives completely immersed in them. I've seen the commercials: the "satisfied customers" kind of creep me out with their fanaticism, I have to say. Have you seen any of these ads?

Maybe the current generation(s) of video gamers will eventually reach the point where the two-dimensional game image becomes a bore and they collectively begin to demand high-quality and readily available virtual reality. If that happens and the industry responds with some good reality-emulating products (and not those cheap, inadequate 3-D simulations), expect yours truly to join the ranks of creepy video game fanatics...