This is satire, right? 
(Somebody, anybody, please tell me this is a joke.) 
3 Likes
I wish I could tell you it was a joke.
My uncle Terry was on the beta-testing team.
We all miss him.
11 Likes
4 Likes
How about a nice game of live chess?
2 Likes
So what exactly is this for? The ability to kill someone with something they can’t remove seems an awful lot like what billionaire preppers have been asking for…a way to force guards to work for them after they can’t pay them.
But why VR? I don’t see what this adds to VR, or what VR adds to a slavery device. I guess it’s just for supervillains to have fun putting on their victims?
14 Likes
Well he said it was inspired by Sword Art Online. The plot of that show was there was a new update where this VR MMOG was going from Beta to live, and all of the players logged in for the update. And soon after the it is revealed the VR units have the ability to kill the player. So if you die in the game, you die IRL. If someone on the outside tampers with the unit, it will kill you. So they have to play the game to try to escape. I stuck with it for a couple of seasons, the first being fantasy based, and the 2nd being a more modern warfare type game.
So - it was kinda a dystopian yet far fetched premise for an anime, that some idiot thought would be a good idea to make real. 
4 Likes
This was my first thought as well. Perhaps the VR aspect is intended to make servitude in the post-apocalyptic wasteland their bosses created more bearable.
2 Likes
“This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself.”
Please go ahead and try. What could possibly go wrong? After all you’re last name is “Luckey”
9 Likes
With porn always being leading edge, I’m surprised he didn’t go for something new in autoerotic asphyxiation.
5 Likes
This guy needs to be put on every watch list there is. This is at least as much a red flag as someone building pipe bombs in their basement.
7 Likes
He’s not just a sociopath, he’s a Trump-supporting, holocaust-denying outright fascist. And I know there’s a policy against wishing anyone harm here, so I won’t do that, but I will say - he’s literally asking for it.
Also my immediate reaction was: this seems like the dumbest possible way to implement this incredibly bad idea (even as an art piece). It’s triggered by a specific color? Gee, no way that’s going to happen accidentally. (The smart way would be a whole trigger sequence of lights/specific colors.)
@fuzzyfungus
When you scratch a tech-bro libertarian, you’re likely to find an outright fascist (like this dude), which I guess explains why they seem so eager to build those Torment Nexuses - they seem like good ideas to them.
6 Likes
IMHO, the smart way is to not freaking do it at all.
8 Likes
I mean, yeah. I guess I’m just seeing this in the larger context of the Silicon Valley approach to tech development - doing it the dumbest, most unreliable way, which worked okay when it was software that had no real-world impact, but they’ve kept that approach even as they’ve moved to things that directly impact human lives. In this case (and his other current work), fatally.
2 Likes
Palmer Lucky is an edgelord and troll, and he created this ‘art piece’ (out of Facebooks eyewateringly expensive new headset, no less) to generate articles pretty much like this one. Because Facebook kicked him out for being a creepy little fascist.
Can we just let these horrible people be horrible?
Do we have to hate on VR just because corporate media hasn’t a fucking clue?
I’m enough of jaded old cyberpunk to still love VR.
Just like I’m enough of jaded old cyberpunk to still read bOING bOING
1 Like
VR is expensive, so remove that from his design, and you have a remote-triggerable, tamper-resistant slave collar. I was wondering who was working on the explosive leashes, now we know. And, it is possibly not just for security guards post-Oops, but probably coming to a workplace near you!
5 Likes
Corporate media has some clue. To most people (myself included) all current implementations of VR are stupid vomit-inducing toys for rich white dudes, quite worthy of some mockery. Maybe that will change, but for now that is the state of things.
Before you start challenging my credentials, I did AAA game development for 25 years, and mobile game development for 10, which included VR ports. I’ve played every VR game on every system. I know the deal.
5 Likes
Was coming to say exactly the same thing. I’m mildly surprised none of them have chosen Nazgul yet though.
2 Likes
Wormtongue.
1 Like
3 Likes
I wouldn’t dream of challenging your credentials. Heck, I fled game dev after only 12 years and never even made it to the VR era.
I’m just a freak who straps on their headphones and plays their music loud, and straps on their VR goggles and blasts their retinas till they can feel their brain melt.
VR can be geeky and dumb and ungainly, and heck, it makes most people sim sick.
The very idea of people doing a days office work in VR is bizarre.
But I’m a happy mutant, and I love my digital psychedelia. 
2 Likes
