You’ll be happy to know it won’t follow the Sword Art Online in-game rule that if you die in the virtual world, you die in real life. Phew.
Dubbed “Sword Art Online The Beginning Project,” this IBM-sponsored concept is based on the popular virtual world anime in which people play a game by the same name. This project is currently accepting applications for over 200 people to test it in Tokyo from March 18 to March 20.
Participants will wear VR headgear and, according to Dengeki Online, will appear in the virtual reality space as 3D scanned avatars, turning their whole bodies into controllers, so to speak — instead of using a traditional gamepad. The VR experience will also take advantage of IBM’s SoftLayer cloud service and its cognitive systems.
In case you missed it, you can check out our review of the most recent Sword Art Online anime.
Comments
14 responses to “IBM Is Making Sword Art Online For Real”
Do I get my very own cute anime girlfriend?
Only if you pick really carefully… because odds are you’ll choose someone who dies in two epiodes. Or your sister-cousin.
If I had a cousin as stacked as Sugu though…When you put it that way…
*slaps self* mayb *slap* uh, no. I guess.
I still haven’t watched this yet. Have been meaning to for so long…
reminds me of .hack from a lifetime ago
I only just started watching it, I’m up to Sword Art Online 2
The pacing is all over the place, but it’s a good fantasy anime
I had the same .hack// vibe when I saw this but couldn’t justify the price tag.
In terms of .hack// itself, I think the series itself is still going but I stopped after GU and Roots because after that point it completely degraded to a cheap cash-in driven by fan service. So as far as I’m concerned, .hack//LINK and onwards doesn’t exist.
it is rather similar to .hack// and even log Horizon but the main differences ive noticed from watching all 3 is , Sword art is more action orientated, Log horizon is more politically/ social driven and .hack// tends to sit somewhere in the middle.
“turning their whole bodies into controllers, so to speak”
Will we be paralyzed in the real world, sending electrical pulses through my head into the game? You know, so I don’t smash into my coffee table as I leap onto an enemy…
There’s a business idea, plushy furniture and padded walls for VR safety. Then you can leap on your lvl 25 coffee table with out fear of having shards of glass in your face.
You have no idea how ready my body is for this. The one thing I’m truly keen to see is if we have the technology to scan and represent a weebu as an anime character.
Lets hope that this becomes a thing because i am so hyped already
I wonder how they’re going to deal with the disappointment that people will experience when they find that body scanning doesn’t suddenly allow you to become an expert swordsperson or let you jump and leap with superhuman speed and strength around the battlefield? The actual idea of using body scanning isn’t really that exciting or new but what has me intrigued is how they’re going to integrate the cognitive systems into the game.
Ever since I did work for a company making semantic web products over a decade ago I’ve wondered if you could use similar systems to create an MMO that uses metadata and inferencing to create NPCs that could intelligently act and react to players and their actions. It would be amazing if you did something in one part of the world and rumour spread to other towns or if you made someone angry at one point and then one day you find their sister comes after you for revenge or tries to convince your friends to abandon you in a high level dungeon.
Do I get to enjoy the game for 3/4 and then disappear into a really boring relationship by the river game for a few hours?
Will the sequel make me instantly put it back on the shelf once I realize the fantasy mmo has been replaced with fairies?