I just got back from a fun-filled trip to LA for some pre-E3 festivities, including the opening of The Future of Gaming exhibit at iam8bit. Gallery owners Jon M. Gibson and Amanda White teamed up industry luminaries with renowned artist to conceptualize what the future of video games might look like. There’s a great write up about the show here.
I was teamed up with Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning, whose quote really aligned with my own musings on where this technology could be headed:
“You are the game of the future, where every bit of energy exerted thru your digital daily life will be captured toward more real world incentives,” Lanning predicted. “Each beat of our heart, calorie we eat, footstep we make, and mile gained thru our day will be captured, converted, and gamified into cost saving incentives that just ‘can’t be beat.’ Our decreasing privacies increasingly offered as the willing sacrifices made at the altar of savings, incentives, and reward points. Three billion years of progress will have finally evolved us into the hairless walking coupon.”
The Hairless Walking Coupon
I really just wanted to capture the overwhelming system shock of the world that Lorne anticipates, with every movement and action inside and outside of the game world being captured and quantified. Whether it’s defeating a Level 99 dragon or eating a Burger King Whopper, everything we do will be watched, recorded, and rewarded.
Other luminaries who lent their theories to the exhibit include Megaman creator Keiji Inafune, Tim Schafer who created the Secret of Monkey Island, and video game jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-most-of-them Seamus Blackley.
The exhibit runs through June 22nd at iam8bit’s Echo Park headquarters at 2147 Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles, CA.
Jude Buffum 