Gaming’s Guns of Tomorrow: Ready For War—or Inspiration?
Whether it’s a rifle erupting with high-speed plasma (a Halo favorite), another magnetic proximity mine blowing up whomever dares run over it (a GoldenEye staple) or some other as-yet-uninvented gun spewing more neon-colored energy, the virtual arsenals of video games have been thoroughly picked apart, overplayed and underestimated. The weapons selection in multiplayer-oriented shooters is particularly familiar, as the 16 years since the original Doom (the first game to feature head-to-head, first-person death matches) have seen a modernization of munitions types and tactics: Assault rifles do less damage—but fire faster—than sniper rifles; rocket launchers fire even less frequently but deliver all-encompassing “splash damage” … yada yada yada. If you’re a gamer, this is all incredibly well-known (and boring). And while that may be exactly the point to the geeks actually making the games, it’s a surprisingly delicate operation to make fake guns as down-to-earth as they are downright fun, as prescient as they are powerful.
