Localhost
Localhost transports you to a futuristic chop-shop, taking on the role of the worker in a simple but unpredictable job. In a future where storage space is at a premium, you have to erase hard drives. Sounds easy? Well each hard drive is the host to an artificial intelligence and do not want to die. With retro-fashion graphics, like Blade Runner, your task is to talk these hard drives into unlocking themselves before you can free up the storage space. If an intelligent job in the future is something you crave, then Localhost will give you a taste of that.
Universal Paperclips
Universal Paperclips is a kind of ideal clicker game, a genre which will often involve doing mindless jobs which stoke a sense of lower level self-satisfaction. Assuming the role of an AI programmed with one specific goal, to create paperclips, you slowly exponentially grow your business from single paperclip production to mass-factory level output. Your AI, in effect, is destined to take over the universe, as the object of the game is to recycle and turn all matter into paperclips. It's probably not the future we're headed for, but Universal Paperclips will make you think about the capability of the super-intelligent AI's of the future and what may happen if the role they're programmed to is taken to the extreme.
Very few people have been into space. Right now there are more satellites above us than astronauts that have ever visited the infinity of space. But in the future, when sprawling mammoth starships and derelict cruisers which could've transported thousands of humans are left abandoned in the deep reaches of space, who will salvage the useful materials on these long-discarded craft? That's where you come in, a simple blue-collar worker of the future in the employment of the Lynx Corporation. The rewards are plenty for successful salvage, but Hardspace: Shipbreaker is not without a twist. As a space shipbreaker you sign away your genetic code to Lynx who resurrect you as a clone if you happen to die in their service, and they don't do that for free! Salvage some spaceships, make some credits, pay off your debt. It's the future of the 9to5.
Tom Clancy's The Division 2
Division 2 takes place in a near-future version of Washington DC where things are ravaged by aftermath of a genetically engineered plague. The job of the Strategic Homeland Division is to help rebuild the city after the sudden collapse of society and civil war. The open-world environment presents a harsh, war torn landscape, a dystopia trying to recover from a man-made pandemic. As a soldier in this future you are armed with your own onboard AI, your role is to preserve order and continuity of government - because even in the future the government are still calling the shots!
An open-world, open-ended space simulator where you can pilot a spaceship across a 1:1 scale realistic depiction of the milky way. The massive multiplayer game will let you explore some 400 billion star systems complete with planets and moons that rotate and orbit in real time. You can feel like a real space-trucker, although it's not always an easy role to assume as not only does Elite Dangerous pit you against the environment, but also against the rest of the players. It's like a murkier version of the kind of future we may face, as humans explore in the new founded vastness of the various domains.
Eliza
One of the earliest attempts to produce AI, ELIZA was developed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1960s. The game of Eliza casts you as Evelyn, a young woman who was initially successful in the high-tech industry of Seattle before burning out, and now serves as the human proxy for the ELIZA virtual counseling service, reading what the program produces to tell the clients. Evelyn is required to stay on script produced by ELIZA, but this creates difficult choices for her in how she talks to the clients and to others including old friends and even herself. The game depends on the feelings of powerlessness and a perfect balance of existential trepidation.
Conclusion
Although many science fiction games are unrealistic, others stop and make you think about the future and what it may hold for human kind. Like video poker games you need to find the best of tactics to conquer and have the best hand. Some games may have visual effects which are highly impressive, others set their atmosphere through storytelling. All of the games we've highlighted here will give you a taste of a possible future and have you thinking about your role in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment