From the movie 'Ready Player One' to the real world

Nowadays, there is a raft of video games to play on all the platforms, the conventional PC, gaming consoles and mobiles. Contrasting from the days when the games weren’t as immersive and detailed, to the incredibly realistic games now, there has also been a significant change in the way the games are perceived now.

There was a time when people used to spend their time outdoors, involving themselves in sports and other activities, even just sitting outdoors embracing natural beauty. But, all this has been long lost, and most people now spend their time (not ‘work’ related) with their eyes gazing on the screens of their mobiles or their computers. But, change in the behaviour of people, with them spending more time alone with gadgets and the lacuna of spending time outdoors is an entirely different topic of discussion. And there have been numerous renditions in the form of movies, novels, etc, of what our lives may be in the future if this does not change.

A still from the movie, with a player shown using the VR headset to go to the virtual world. (Image Source: Google)

For instance, Ready Player One was a movie where a virtual world was shown, with each person having their own identity, which could something completely different from the one that they have in reality, a woman could even take a man’s character in the virtual world and seemingly do anything that they could think of, after all, it was all ‘unreal’. But, looking away from the virtual world in the movie, it’s not hard to unsee the condition of the people in the real world and the world itself. People spend most of their time hooked up to their VR headsets in the virtual world and are practically cut off from reality.

Moving away, and back to the discussion about games, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), Counter-Strike, Dota, etc. are few games that have a massive player base. And if you don’t know about PUBG even now, it’s time to come out of the cave as otherwise, it's impossible to not have an idea about this game. PUBG gives its players a very well detailed and properly built virtual map a.k.a Erangel, which is an island located in the black sea. This map has become a place where people spend a raft of their hours daily, roaming around and hunting down other players for becoming the sole victor. It’s all about people’s choice about how they want to spend their time, but the important thing is when they become so engrossed in this that probably there comes a situation when they don’t know about something new happening around in their neighbourhood, but they know if the game developers made a slight change in the location of an object in the map. They may know a good spot in the game for hiding and scouting, but in all likelihood, they may not know a good hangout spot around in their town/ city! With all the virtual reality, augmented reality and even mixed reality technology coming forward, all in all this don’t seem like a distant future. It all corroborates the different theories and fictitious narratives, that people have thought of as to what would happen to our lives and the world in the distant, or rather even in the near future.

Well, we are definitely moving towards a scenario where our lives will be the same as that of the characters in science-fiction movies like Ready Player One!