This document discusses the future of virtual reality and communication. It argues that VR will transform how people interact and share experiences by making them feel truly present with others. As VR technology advances, it will allow for new forms of symbolic and abstract communication. The document also speculates that in the future, people may inhabit virtual environments in space through VR suits and use VR games to train virtual agents to take over procedural and declarative tasks, freeing up human cognition for higher-order thinking and problem solving. This could lead to the emergence of a "superorganism" where humans and virtual beings work together in a cognitive network.

1. BEYOND THE
RIFT
VR Games & the Future of
Communication
Jeannie Lee Novak
Co-Founder, Novy Unlimited, Inc. • Kaleidospace, LLC (Indiespace)
Lead Author & Series Editor, Game Development Essentials (Cengage)
International Space Development Conference • May 2014

2. COMMUNICATION
TRADITIONAL MODEL
Source /
Idea
Message /
Content
Encoding /
Format
Channel /
Medium
Decoding/
Format
Feedback /
Response

3. Source /
Idea
Message /
Content
Encoding /
Format
Channel /
Medium
Decoding/
Format
Feedback /
Response
SENDER RECEIVER
COMMUNICATION
SENDER & RECEIVER

4. Source /
Idea
Message /
Content
Encoding /
Format
Channel /
Medium
Decoding/
Format
Feedback /
Response
SENDER RECEIVER
COMMUNICATION
SENDER & RECEIVER

5. Source /
Idea
Message /
Content
Encoding /
Format
Channel /
Medium
Decoding/
Format
Feedback /
Response
SENDER RECEIVER
COMMUNICATION
SENDER & RECEIVER

6. Single-
Player
PvE
Two-Player
PvP
Multiplayer . . .
(and Massively Multiplayer) . . . Teams  Competition
 Cooperation
 Coopetition
Player Character (PC)
Player Character (PC) Player Character (PC)
“[Virtual] Environment”
Non-Player Character [NPC] or Game Engine
COMMUNICATION
PLAYER & INTERACTION
MODES

7. INHABITING REAL LIFE
(RL)
THE NEW NOMADS

8. INHABITING REAL LIFE
(RL)
DULL, DIRTY, DANGEROUS

9. INHABITING REAL LIFE
(RL)
HUMANOID HELPER

10. INHABITING REAL LIFE
(RL)
HYBRID TECH

11. 2014: “Virtual reality is not the same thing as virtual worlds. VR is an
interface; VWs are a concept.”
– Richard Bartle
1999: “Is a technology such as this really, in practice, ever likely to be
developed? Well, yes, it is. In fact, it was invented in Mesopotamia some
five thousand years ago, and it's called ‘text.’”
INHABITING VIRTUAL LIFE (VL)
MULTI-USER DUNGEONS: MUD1

12. “We thought . . . this would be such a great game to create a virtual world
around—where you're a character inside the game and you can explore this
fantastic universe.”
– Mike Morhaime
INHABITING VIRTUAL LIFE (VL)
MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE
GAMES: WORLD OF WARCRAFT

13. "It's a bit like The Matrix . We provide the land, and the community builds the
actual world, which gives everyone a huge sense of being pioneers in a great
experiment.”
- Philip Rosedale (Linden Lab / High
Fidelity)
INHABITING VIRTUAL LIFE (VL)
MULTI-USER VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS:
SECOND LIFE

14. AUGMENTED REALITY
GOOGLE GLASS
“We shouldn’t be concerned if our entire lives are recorded and made visible to
others—because if you have something that you don't want anyone to know,
maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.” – Eric Schmidt

15. VIRTUAL REALITY
MORPHEUS PROTOTYPE
“Morpheus takes the PS4 to the next level of immersion and
demonstrates the future of gaming. . . . Players feel as though
they are physically inside the virtual world of a game.” – Sony
GDC 2014 announcement
“What if you want your entertainment to be available wherever
you go?
Don't worry--we've got you covered.” – Kazuo Hirai

16. VIRTUAL REALITY
OCULUS RIFT
“This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you
can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life.” –
Mark Zuckerberg

17. COMMUNICATION IN
SPACE
WHAT ABOUT THE SUIT?
 Interplanetary
 Earth  Moon [synchronous]
 Earth  Mars [asynchronous]
 Intra-planetary (extra-terrestrial)
 Augmented reality (AR) vs. virtual reality (VR)
 Suit with embedded communication replacing
Communications Carrier Assembly (CCA)
 New integrated audio system (tested with HATSMAN –
head & torso sim)
 Digital Speech Level Analyzer (DSLA) – vocal tracks for
testing
 Light-emitting patches
 Suit with AR or VR capabilities?

18. VIRTUAL REALITY
HIGH FIDELITY
 Voxels / nested content
 Peer-to-peer avatars
 Cryptocurrency
 Oculus Rift / PrioVR
harness integration

19. AUGMENTED REALITY
THE PLAYROOM
The new “sandbox”:
Say hello to my little friends 
Robots in the living room

20. THE NEW TELEPRESENCE
“TUNING IN & TURNING ON” IN THE PLAYROOM
Tuning in
The Playroom: “Live”
a “reality” series that
listens to you
Turning on
The Playroom:
“Interactive”
a game that plays for you
“Watcher” directs the
conversation through
chat
“Watcher” controls the
player’s experience
through commands

21.  Bragging vs. bemoaning  or both
(“humblebragging”)
 Age of the amateur
 Seeking “attention” /
celebrity
 Voyeurism vs. exhibitionism
 Archiving life
 Sharing moments, expertise,
comments
 Anonymous griefers
 Creating artificial events
 Psychological complexity / partitioning
COMMUNICATION
TRANSFORMATION
EVOLVING “SOCIAL” TRENDS

22. COMMUNICATION
TRANSFORMATION
LEXICON: THE NEW “SOCIAL CIRCLE” Like
 Share
 Tweet
 Pin
 Embed
 Link
 Tag
 Powerups/boosters
 Achievements (stickers, badges)
 Feeling [____] “alone,” “meh,”
etc.
 Friend / unfriend
 Upvote / downvote
 
@ #
 Leaderboard
 Integration
 Profile
 Page
 Blog
 Go “viral”

23. COMMUNICATION SYMBOLOGY
VISUAL INTERFACE: THE SIMS

24. COMMUNICATION SYMBOLOGY
INVISIBLE INTERFACE: JOURNEY
“Like ships passing in the night”:
chance communication among strangers

25. COMMUNICATION & COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT
SOCIAL & SERIOUS GAMES
Candy Crush Saga Foldit

26. COMMUNICATION & COGNITIVE
ENHANCEMENT
SYMBOLOGY & PLAY INTERACTION
 Communication is
redefined: more symbolic
& abstract
 Sensory enhancement
(haptics, olfaction, taste)
 Sensory synthesis
(synesthesia)
 Interaction “synthesis” /
“mind meld”
 Altering identity
 Transcending humanity
Messages from space in 2001: A Space Odyssey and The
Last Starfighter

27. Procedural
knowledge
Virtual Agent
(“Doppelbot”)
Declarative
knowledge
COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT
PRIMARY & SECONDARY COGNITION
Secondary Cognition
Higher Order
Thinking Skills
(HOTS)
Primary Cognition

28. High-Level Communication . . . Brainstorm . . . Play
COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT
EMERGENCE OF THE “SUPERORGANISM”
Communication
Network

29. VIRTUAL REALITY GAMES
PRESENT BENEFITS & FUTURE
APPLICATIONS
 Constructivism / experiential learning
 Social interaction / communication
 Simulation / immersion
 Procedural knowledge = internal
(e.g., level grinding, collecting)
 Declarative knowledge = external
(e.g., trivia, quiz, wordplay,
calculation)
 Higher order thinking skills (HOTS) =
meta (e.g., strategy, branching, co-
authorship, exploration, discovery)

30. VIRTUAL REALITY
GAMES
IN SPACE (PART ONE)
 Will we create an underground network in space that allows for real-time
communication?
 Will asynchronous communication make a comeback in what are now
primarily real-time “virtual worlds”?
 Will a VR or AR “spacesuit” with embedded communication components
be beneficial to inhabitants of space colonies by extending reality and
becoming a type of “space” free of constraints?
 Will communication continue to develop and evolve so that it
encompasses more symbolic and abstract forms for efficiency?

31. VIRTUAL REALITY
GAMES
IN SPACE (PART TWO)
 Will it be possible (and preferable) to “split” our consciousness so that
our virtual agents can embrace most (if not all) procedural and
declarative knowledge acquisition and tasks?
 Will we use VR games as intra- and interplanetary communication
(including interactions with virtual agents – e.g., our Earth Agents)
 Will we use VR games to train these virtual agents through gameplay
elements such as level grind (procedural knowledge) and trivia
(declarative knowledge)?
 Will our cognitive focus in these games be HOTS rather than other types
of knowledge, leading to the emergence of the “superbeing”?
 Will our virtual agents record all aspects of our “lives” (past, present,
future), and will we begin to see these agents as representing our
memories (or a new type of “past life”)?