 You probably shouldn't play Pokemon Go in the shower. The last thing you want is some pervert trying to catch a Pikachu. This is my HTC Vive. I pre-ordered it in the first hour that it was available, and I've been playing it off and on since I received it. It's not the holodeck, but until that's an option, it is a convincing first step. When I'm using it, there is a legitimate feeling of being in these virtual environments, of immersion and presence in artificial worlds. I put on the goggles, click go, and it feels like I'm somewhere else. One can think of virtual reality as being a unique and separate thing unto itself, but the criteria that we normally use to define it start to get a little bit fuzzy when you examine some of the border cases that supposedly separate VR from other sorts of ours. For example, the Vive has a feature which allows you to view your immediate physical surroundings using the built-in camera on the headset. Is that still virtual reality? I mean, I'm not seeing the photons that are actually bouncing off of my living room, but I can still see the real couch and real television and slightly impatient real guests. What about things like the Microsoft HoloLens, which is being marketed as an augmented reality device, overlaying virtual objects atop the physical world and responding to changes in that environment? If I were to fill my entire field of vision with virtual objects so I couldn't see the physical world anymore, is it now a virtual reality device? How many pixels of that display have to be transparent before it becomes augmented reality again? One? Half? Because of this fuzziness, many researchers have discarded the idea that physical or augmented or virtual reality are things unto themselves and have instead embraced a concept called mixed reality, a continuum of human experience which ranges from 100% physical to 100% virtual. And this end is the experience of the raw physical world without any virtual input. No cell phones, no internet, no video games, nothing. Most of us actually aren't all the way over there because there's some small part of our awareness that's reserved for a ringtone or a notification sound. We pass through things like actively using your cell phone or computer, say, to watch YouTube through Google Glass augmented reality devices like the Microsoft HoloLens, the Vive's meat space camera, and over here the Vive itself, where the majority of your experience is composed of virtual sensations of sight, sound, and a little tactile feedback. But you'll notice that it's still a ways from the end of the mixed reality spectrum. Even if I'm totally immersed in a really seamless Vive game, there are still components of my experience that aren't virtual. The image is a little bit distorted, the audio isn't perfectly binaural, and the only thing that I'm smelling is my living room and the sweat which results from me waving my arms around like a moron. All the way at the end of the spectrum, we have simulated reality. This is a virtual experience that is indistinguishable from our experience of the physical world in every measurable way, like the Matrix or Total Recall. It may just be science fiction right now, but it's probably a lot closer than you think. The Vive and its competitors took millions of dollars of R&D to wrestle the software and hardware into functional consumer devices. But honestly, the technology used to physically make this thing isn't particularly futuristic. Two LCD screens with some plastic in front of them for focus. A bunch of IR transmitters and receivers that aren't really that much different from the ones that are on your TV remote from the 90s. Some decent number crunching and an above average computer to make the screens update with the right pictures. That's pretty much it. Consider for a moment that super-secret augmented reality startup company Magic Leap is developing optics technology that has never been used in consumer devices before. Consider that there are companies currently dumping millions of dollars into developing peripherals, like haptic feedback or smello vision. Consider that neuroscientists have just recently been armed with optogenetics, a research technique which allows mapping of the brain in ways that have been impossible for centuries, and that quantum computing might be just around the corner. These virtual worlds, which are already convincing enough for many purposes, are just the beginning of what we'll be able to achieve in just a few years. So the range of mixed reality that we have access to seems set to grow by a decent amount in the near future. It's also getting cheaper to access any given point on the spectrum. A Vive might cost a little bit too much for someone to purchase on a whim, but stuff like Google Cardboard and Gear VR, that's pretty cheap. With all these variables coming together, it's easy to see why some believe that the increased power, ease, and accessibility of this virtual side of the mixed reality spectrum is going to have an enormous effect on us and our world in the near future. But what do I mean when I say our world? When we're talking about mixed reality becoming more virtual and more pervasive, we're not just talking about the distinct, but more or less similar human experience of Earth anymore. Instead, we're talking about a constellation of totally unique blends of artificial worlds designed specifically for people, and maybe this one, if we feel like it. With no rules governing the construction of virtual worlds besides those of human psychology, what we build there is going to affect the real world, however you want to define it. And unfortunately, the individuals that we've historically entrusted with this task are called game designers. Game design is essentially the applied psychology of building rewarding experiences for human beings. Game designers look closely at the mechanisms which make us feel as though we had fun or experienced something worthwhile, and then construct systems which exploit those mechanisms. Exploit might sound a bit dramatic, but it's a good word for what's going on. There are reward pathways built into our brains that have been cultivated by culture or evolution or upbringing, things like completion or achievement or humor or discovery. Game designers treat these reward pathways like giant levers attached to huge tanks of dopamine, which they pull as hard and as long as they can. And they're actually getting really, really good at it. Take Pokemon Go. I don't think that anyone would argue that Pokemon Go is a particularly deep game. You're around outside with your phone, play a little timing dexterity puzzle to catch cartoon animals, maybe click on something in a gym until it falls down. But it is just hanging on a couple of those levers and changing people's behavior in fascinating ways. BF Skinner might have gotten pigeons to push buttons, but Neantic has gotten video game geeks to be excited about going outside for a walk. The thing is, in our culture, we tend to view games and game design as revolving around idle entertainment. We look at Pokemon Go and we think, oh, it's just a cute little mobile game. I mean, yeah, it did become a cultural and social phenomenon overnight. And yeah, it did change the physical behavior of millions of people in significant ways. And yeah, it did add more value to a company's stock in the week following its release than the GDPs of every single country on earth besides the US and China. But you know, it's just a game. Speaking of China, the Chinese government is currently working with several large companies to develop and implement a credit score system that should be mandatory for Chinese citizens by 2020. One of these corporate giants, Tencent, owns majority shares in Riot and Epic Games, two very successful video game developers with some amazing game designers. In response to the government's challenge, Tencent developed a mobile app which gamifies your credit score, ranking you not just on your payments and purchases, but also on your social media content and the websites you visit and your friends' scores, browsing non-government-approved websites like Twitter, negative points, blogging about how good the system is, positive points, being friends with someone who has a low score, negative points. This is scary stuff. It seems to make the possibility of a government propaganda machine that's driven by human psychology, by the very people who it's conditioning, within reach, but it's also just a game. The development of cheaper and better mixed reality devices is going to allow us a degree of control over the worlds we inhabit that we've never had before. It only makes sense that we would choose virtual inputs to that mixed reality which we enjoy the most. And the people that we currently call game designers, the individuals who have the knowledge and skill for building rewarding human experiences unconstrained by physical or practical limitations, they're going to have a lot of control over how our virtual experiences are going to affect our mixed reality, both the physical and virtual components. That is a tremendous responsibility. It probably behooves anybody who's involved with any sort of mixed reality to learn something of game design, to at least be aware of the psychological principles that game designers use to affect our behavior so that we know when it's happening. And as the virtual component of mixed reality becomes a bigger and bigger part of our lives, it's probably worth bearing in mind that it's more than just a game. Sorry, there's a bulbousaur in here. What sort of artificial world do you want to inhabit? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to bubble and subscribe while I share. And don't stop thunking.