Video games have predicted your future; you won't like it.
Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory.
Rearrange the letters in our name and you get:
GyraTe me ho.
Think about that for a minute. And think about this:
Videogames . ... ... ... ... ... ...
Videogames are ... ... ... ... ...
Videogames are fascinating!
With your help, this show is already united practically every gaming universe,
into one shared canon. But today, I wanted to approach the topic
from a different angle.
If we were to create a timeline of every single game
based on when its story takes place, which one would be set furthest in the future?
You'll find out the answer here in a few minutes,
but what I stumbled across while doing this little exercise
was even more fascinating.
You see, by lining up the games, patterns started to develop.
And in this case, video games from entirely different franchises
all seem to predict the same things happening at about the same time in the future.
In short, the video game industry -- through their shared predictions --
has unintentionally created a sort of "Gamer's Mayan Calendar", that provides
a disturbingly clear prediction of what will happen to you, to Earth,
and to life as we know it in just a couple short centuries.
Consider this a Spoiler Alert:
For Your Life!
Before we get into any fortune-telling, let me point out
that video games predicting the future is nothing new. Look at Smash TV!
I- I said Smash.
Set the year 1999, but released in 1990, this insane run-and-gun arcade game
successfully predicted the rise of reality television,
a decade before Survivor's Richard Hatch ever "bore it all" in Borneo.
Now if only Mutoid Man was selected to hand out roses as the next Bachelor?
Now THAT would be some must-see TV!
Other Accurate Games:
Before they became solid, the early 90's
had Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake predicting
a fuel producing algae able to replace gasoline.
Sure enough, in 2012, algae fuel started to roll out at four gas stations in San Francisco.
But the most accurate example, is also the most unsettling;
as Deus Ex predicted the 9/11 attacks a year before they happened.
The game's interpretation of the New York skyline had the twin towers
noticeably absent. This was the result of the game's memory limitations.
But the cover story they wrote in the game? That the World Trade Center's had fallen
as the result of a terrorist attack.
What started off as a workaround for memory limitations,
ended up foreshadowing the worst moment in America's recent history.
Eerie. And definitely dark.
But not nearly as dark as what's going to happen to us,
if the rest of these predictions come true.
Here's what we can look forward to.
We begin in a future not very far from our own: The 2020's.
Where we find the lines between what is human and what is robot,
are beginning to blur. On one side, Mega Man and Proto Man represent science
finally creating the world's first truly humanoid robots.
Concurrently, nano-technology continues to evolve,
notably in the little-known Nano Breaker, set in 2021.
Six years later -- 2027 -- the technology is ready,
and the world of Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes to life,
whether you asked for it or not.
Fusing man with machine,
upgrading ourselves to superhuman status,
and polarising the world in a debate
about the ethics of human augmentation.
Over the next few years our enhanced selves and robot partners
get put to the test against a new breed of self-proclaimed
super criminals in Captain Commando, and biologically enhanced rebels in games like Haze.
But, all in all, life is peaceful. For about a decade.
Then comes the 2030's, when technological progress slams to a halt.
Overwhelmingly, games predict that sometime between 2030 and 2080,
the world will be crippled by a lack of fossil fuels.
Some desperate countries will turn to space for a solution.
Carnage Heart, Machine Hunter, Tobal No. 1, Red Faction,
even Halo all see Mars being colonized during this critical time.
But, while some other countries explore new worlds, others stay focused on this one;
becoming locked in wars for domination over the natural resource supply.
Killzone 2 and Fallout both depict the need for petroleum
sending the world into a nuclear apocalypse.
Star Ocean: The Last Hope calls it World War III.
2077 is the breaking point, as the US and China
desperately lash out against each other,
and the confused world releases a flurry of panicked warheads.
Scared civilians literally bury themselves to survive.
Once facing the endless possibilities of space,
humanity is forced to hide underground
in Fallout's vaults and Metro 2033's subway
to avoid the RADIOACTIVE CHOAS.
But the situation goes from bad, to worse,
as humanity must turn on itself.
Shortly after the nuclear apocalypse,
mutated viruses begin to take over survivors, living and dead.
By 2079, whether you believe in Fallout or Krush, Kill 'n' Destroy,
the new enemy becomes your infected neighbors, friends, and family.
Thus begins a dark period in games.
I could only find a handful of titles taking place
during this post-apocalyptic period between 2090 and the early 2100's.
The games, like the underground civilians, just seemed to hide...
waiting to return to the surface. The few games I did manage to find,
like Warzone 2100, Metal Warrior and Battlefield 2142,
all tend to feature the rebuilding of societies and battles involving mech suits;
since, you know, it would be unsafe for humans to walk around on the surface unprotected.
Unless they wanted a third eye. ... ... ...
Unless they wanted a third eye. Or a tail.
But by the mid 2100's the radiation has subsided,
and a newly humbled human society slowly starts to return to the surface,
trying to piece together a civilization, and still searching
for a solution to their limited resources.
And that solution comes from outer space.
Remember all the mining operations on Earth and Mars
prior to The Great War of 2077 and subsequent nuclear fallout?
Well, as we struggle to find resources, they're back in action,
and they're starting to find more than just fuel.
Beginning around 2150, alien artifacts start to pop up around these dig sites,
causing some pretty serious side effects.
2145: employees on Mars start to go insane, as depicted in Doom 3.
2148: Mass Effect has us finding Prothean technology on Mars.
2214: Dead Space's "Black Marker", a dangerous alien artifact, is found
by Earth's government in the deserts of New Mexico.
Truly, we are not alone.
And no game makes this clearer than Mass Effect, where the aforementioned discovery
leads us to faster-than-light travel faster than you can say:
"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel."
Within a year of faster-than-light travel, we find that Pluto isn't a chunk of ice at all,
but rather the equivalent of an interstellar bus stop.
Who knew!
And by 2186, we've successfully joined an alien council, killed an alien council,
and destroyed the galaxy-wide railroad with your choice of colored beam.
Left without the ability to travel from Star System to Star System,
surprise, it's Halo that picks up the slack;
reinventing the Prothean technology we just lost.
With the Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace drive in 2291,
once again opening the universe up for exploration with faster-than-light travel.
But this time, the universe isn't so eager to see us.
Whether it's dismembering Necromorphs in the Cygnus System in 2508;
fending off the dual onslaught of Flood and Covenant on a ring world in 2525; or
wielding the power of a well-executed Macarena against extraterrestrial Teletubbies in 2499;
I think we can all agree opening the door to space,
simultaneously opened a dangerous can of worms.
So, to summarize: 2020's, Technological Progress;
2030's through '80's, resource wars;
2090 through 2140, waiting underground;
2150 to 2300, emerging from the ground and making alien contact;
and 2300 - 2500, alien wars.
But you know what I find truly fascinating about this?
That's it. We're left with an earth defending itself against toe touches and tea bags.
In a medium where game designers can make any world they want
to come to life using a few zeros and ones,
depictions of our future tend to stay within the first half of this millennium.
Granted, the order of events coincides well with what real world researchers are already saying.
Right now, robots are moving more freely by the day,
and within 10 or 20 years we should see our own Rock Man and Roll.
Regarding a resource war, some experts speculate that 2060
may well be the date we deplete our petroleum reserves;
a date that just so happens to be smack dab in the middle of the range video games predict.
And remember the 30-year dark period where we theorized survivors were waiting underground?
Fallout from a nuclear apocalypse can take
anywhere between a few months and a few decades to dissipate back to safe levels.
So a 30-year hibernation of human society would actually make a lot of sense.
But all that aside, what happens in the year 3000? 4000?? 100,000?!
This is where games can truly speculate, and sadly don't.
Jump ahead 2,000 years now and Neo Contra shows us
Earth as a world devolved into a prison planet;
jump ahead another 3,000 and you no longer have Earth,
but instead Lost Jerusalem...an abandoned planet
no longer appearing on star charts in the Xenosaga story.
Oh, and that game set furthest in the future?
The clear winner is BoomBots, set the year 15 MILLION BILLION.
Never heard of BoomBots?
To summarize, a group of aliens called the Feline Alien Research Troop,
or FART, for short,
invades Earth and steals all our cats.
So we create the Boombots Underground Technology Team,
or BUTT team, to stop them.
Yeeeaaahhh.
So, after years of hardship,
rebuilding and defending our homes against outside invaders,
we have this to look forward to.
Gr-r-reat.
War. War never changes.
It just involves more cats and lamey joke acronyms.
In total, the take home message today isn't whether or not these predictions come true,
it's that video game victories are short-lived.
It's easy to think of these games existing in vacuums,
and that when you beat the final boss and the credits roll,
you're done, you've saved the universe.
But the thing to remember is that, really,
you're just playing out a chapter in a much larger timeline,
consisting of all other video games.
Sure you may have won the day this time, but Dr. Wily will be back next week with a new plan.
The Deus Ex guy will still be complaining about never asking for this.
Each and every victory will be short-lived.
And eventually all of them will lead to the cat aliens taking over.
And maybe, just maybe, as a future human goes to bow before his Feline Overlord,
he'll find this video and smile, knowing that
someone millions and billions of years prior was thinking of him...
and thinking about his place in the grander scheme of things.
But hey, that's just a Theory.
A Game Theory!
Thanks for watching!
Welcome back to the
SUPER _ _ _ _
SUPER AMAZING _ _ _
SUPER AMAZING END CARD _
SUPER AMAZING END CARD TOURNAMENT!
Where last episode the response in the comments from you guys was overwhelming!
Seriously, I cannot explain to you how awesome it was to see
fans from all around the world getting into the contest.
It made me so tremendously happy, and I hope you all enjoyed it too.
That said, it's time to announce the winners, and -- let's face it -- you're all winners.
But some of you more than others.
And those others are:
Japan with 77%;
Belarus with 85%;
Taiwan with 92%;
Ukraine with 93%;
Martinique, Russia, Armenia, India and China, all with 100%.
And a special shout-out goes to America, who really stood no chance in this contest
-- I knew that going in --
but crushed everyone in absolute numbers.
Anyway, enough looking backwards. It's time to look towards the future.
Question of the Day: Which version of the future would you like to live in most?
Metroid, Fallout or Mass Effect?
Click on one to choose, and I'll make sure that your choice gets sent along
to Santa Claus, so that maybe you can get your wish this Christmas.
Hey, have you subscribed yet? You should!
-- Subtitles by cloudrider7 --