Has a Black Mirror Episode Predicted the Future of Games?
In Playtest, a developer creates an augmented reality horror adventure that uses the player's own memories to scare them. This is closer to reality than you may think.
- Keith Stuart for The Guardian October 26th, 2016
- Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/26/black-mirror-episode-playtest-predicted-future-video-games-augmented-reality
The latest Black Mirror series from Charlie Brooker presents, despite its transition to Netflix, another unsettling collection of future shock nightmares drawn from consumer technology and social media trends. The second episode, Playtest, has an American tourist lured to a British game development studio to test a new augmented-reality horror game that engages directly with each player's brain via a biorobotic implant. The AI program mines the character's darkest fears and manifests them into the real-world as photorealistic graphics. Inevitably, terror and mental breakdown follow.
