Thalam Concept Art*Virtual Reality continues to grow in popularity and Augmented Reality technology advancing alongside it. Gaming has changed on a fundamental level - and it will continue to change for the generations to come. A company in Mumbai, India has utilized this boom in VR and AR hm technology turning it towards the medical field in particular. The company would in this year rebrand themselves as Retro Reality[R²] and their engineers began development on a device that allowed the disabled to play games utilizing brain function and eye movement. And then they would market these devices to hospitals and special needs individuals.
The first iteration was the Retro Vision, which held a lot of simple games that could utilize the software they developed to control the mechanics within these games. It was limited, but very well-received and turned a lot of heads when it came to a “non-controller” based gaming system that was still in age only seen in sci-fi. A lot of big developers began to hit the company up for access to the technology they developed, but they remained tight lipped and kept it proprietary. The second iteration would be branded the Daydream Vision and their controller-free seamless gameplay was greatly improved and could be utilized to a greater degree with less error - and as a bonus, a few companies offered to make their indie games exclusive to the Daydream.
Skip forward a few years, R² has come the Nintendo of the era. Actually it’d be more accurate to call them the Valve? Their engineers not only have created perfectly seamless brain-activity controlled gameplay through their device, but under the request of various big-wigs they have taken it further by creating the ARI(Alternate REM Interface). The ARI is a VR headset which worn while going to sleep and activates while in REM sleep. This is done through anime pseudo-science, but there are some realistic pros and cons to utilizing this up and coming device! The pros are that it will not affect the daily life of students, working class citizens, or those with the inability or time to play simple games. This makes the ARI incredibly popular with moms, schools, and other businesses as it doesn’t interfere with daily life. The cons are that anyone can use an ARI at any time, and hardcore enthusiasts are known to take sleeping pills and play for days on end. Which leads into another con, overuse of an ARI can cause ocular nerve damage causing early blindness. Despite this, medical professionals use the ARI for studies on those whom are in comatose to see if they may stimulate brain activity - and thus, they give it standing approval.
Other uses of the ARI are social media, video streaming, and even school itself. They’re also compatible with linking to personal computers and can transitional material from one to the other wirelessly. It could be said that if the smartphone is the device of the day - the ARI is the device of night as most people have one due to their very competitive price point. Cloud Storage’s developments also allow most of the software to remain off the device allowing documents, videos, and other necessities to consume the storage. Though, there are some gamer purists who prefer to fully load their ARI to the brim with titles they are currently playing. Online games continue to migrate to the ARI every year, though, one title has the entire community extremely hyped.
Vestige Games has in the past created a number of successful single-player roleplaying games on PC, and the numerous consoles over the generations. They are incredibly well known for their attention to detail and strive for immersion of the player into the realm they create. Their most popular series was Stigmata, which was an open world dark fantasy RPG with thousands of quests and a gritty atmosphere that’s meant to fill you with dread. They also worked on more lighthearted titles like Portal Quest which was actually their first delve into the VR medium.
But over the past few years they’ve been working on something big - big enough that their mainstay titles were put on the back burner. Their main development team had been working with Spirit Works a company less known for games and more so for their experimental engines - on their very first attempt at the VRMMO. Many of the developers were veterans of the genre, some even had experience working on them in the past. But nonetheless the project was huge, it was a ten year old endeavor with a projected holiday release slated for this year! The name of this project, Thalam Online. It would take all of the best immersion aspects of their prior games and utilize the new ARI technology to bring them to greater realization.
Spirit Works assisted in the infrastructure that the game would be built upon, and also developed a new and very realistic AI that could be altered and built upon for NPCs. It was a living breathing world - enough so that it would be entirely possible for the factions of the world to end in a world war and destroy the entire map. It would be up to the players to prevent that though, if such a scenario came to rise. But the years of work - good marketing - the easily accessible platform, everything came together and made Thalam Online one of the most anticipated games of the year.
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