Palmer Luckey has just dramatically increased the stakes of losing in video games.
In a blog post, the original designer of the Oculus headgear, which now acts as the backbone for Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse aspirations, stated that he had customized a VR headset to explode when the wearer loses in a video game, killing the player in real life as well.
In the post, titled “If you die in the game, you die in real life,” Luckey said he was inspired to create the deadly gaming device by a fictional VR headset called “NerveGear” featured in an anime television series called Sword Art Online.
“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me – you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it… only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game,” Luckey wrote.
Unlike the fictional NerveGear, Luckey said he couldn’t find out how to kill the user with “powerful microwaves,” so he chose explosives for his gruesome design.
“When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user,” Luckey wrote.
Luckey quit Oculus in 2017 after selling it to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. Later, he said he thought he was dismissed for “no reason at all,” and that his right-wing political donations might have been to blame. Palmer’s exit was “unequivocally” not due to his political opinions, according to Facebook, which is now Meta.
Luckey claims his fatal headgear is only a piece of workplace art for the time being.
“It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user. It won’t be the last,” Luckey wrote.
“See you in the metaverse,” he concluded.