NOTE: This is thread is not about naive definitions of fun (ie: realistic < fun; // Har Har Har...) but rather an attempt at pushing the suspension of disbelief. If Hollywood can pay scientist to come up with realitic technology for crappy sci-fi movies than game desingers can at least put some thought into their sci-fi escapades. You are free to disagree with any and all of the following... My primary inspiration for this is my dissapointment with sci-fi reusing the same old ideas that already look backwards when compared to modern technology. How can you create sci-fi without first looking at modern technology and it's trends? That's just silly. Anyway, for anyone inspired by this line of thought here are my current thoughts on what future technologies may consist of. 1) Computers may... a. Likely be evolve to use hand gesture systems (I think Minority Report used this concept, I never saw the movie) using either gloves or a remote motion sensor (both are plausible) b. Use voice recognition, we already have it but it is rarely portrayed in sci-fi c. Rely on wireless everything. No one likes cables and we are already moving in that direction. d. Display on floating screens and VR glasses that look like ordinary glasses. Again we are already developing this technology. e. Stop using disks, disks are probably going the way of the dinosaur with USB drives replacing them. I suggest wireless drives both long and short range. For security reasons you may use a very close range (1 inch from reader) system instead. 2) Guns should... a. Likely still use bullets. Bullets are cheap and effective plus there are technologies in the works that promise to make recoil negligable. b. Support more than one type of ammo for the sake of variety in tactics, we already have this. Also "Metal Storm" technology may allow a gun to use different ammo without requiring a magazine change; you just fire from a different barrel. (Google it) More notably, shotgun ammo already comes in many interesting varieties that I haven't ever seen in games (like pellets that are strung together so they can wrap around things and cut them off). c. Use OICW technology. This gun already exists, so why don't sci-fi grenade launchers allow you to change the fuse type on the round? You should have ranged, impact, delay, and proximity (not on OICW) fuses that can be set before the grenade leaves the barrel. b. Use lasers that make sense. Overheat and run out of ammo, gas lasers can run out of ammo. Lasers don't have to be "God" weapons. 3) Security needs to... a. Use common sense. Breaking into the building should require remote and onsite hacking along with an insider aid. Futhermore guns pods are lame, just seal off the door and gas them. 4) Technology in general must... a. Break occasionally. Think of this as emmotional common ground. Every gamer (or person in this modern world) can relate to things breaking or not working correctly. I think sci-fi that breaks could at least provide some humor. Relating to the player's basic senses aids in suspension of disbelief. That's all I have so far. Please add [smile] *edit* By Sci-fi I mean game Sci-fi not movies, only my second sentence mentions movies. Thank you.[Edited by - T1Oracle on November 5, 2006 3:40:28 AM]

A couple things I've had trouble believing in the sci-fi realm..

- Artificial gravity.
- All aliens, no matter where they evolve, no matter how distant from others, all seem to require the exact same measurement of gravity, oxygen, and other environment resources.
- Native-English speaking aliens.

As far as technology in games goes, I've always liked Retro-futurism. It removes some of the serious attitude from the style, and a less serious attitude definitely helps imaginary elements slide by with less scrutinization by the audience.

How far in the future are we talking about? If we're talking 500+ years, I could easily see guns not using bullets, lasers being 'god weapons', etc.

Since what is believable is such a vast category, I'll try to give a sense as to what I think of as the boundary between believable and unbelievable.

Teleportation is unbelievable (and IMO, it doesn't usually add much to the game/gameplay). 'Hyperdrives' and what not for very fast movement is also unbelievable, but it's so common place in Sci-Fi, that I think it's perfectly fine. I'll make that the 'most unbelievable believable' for transportation.

'Sentient' AI is believable to me. Even master-mind computers like those in "The Moon is Harsh Mistress" and "I, Robot" (the movie) are fine to me. I can't really see any up-wards limit for AI. One possible exception might be the ability to predict with incredible accuracy the future actions of humans (though generating statistics for what is a likely action is OK).

Alternate dimensions that you can travel to is unbelievable to me.

Time travel is unbelievable to me. Slowing down time Matrix-style is also unbelievable. Anything relating to time basically confuses me, and so makes me not believe it (even if it really does happen in reality, but I wouldn't know).

Instant communication is OK in my book. Better than the general alternatives of instant or faster-than-light travel.

Hmm... well, that's all I can think of right now.

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Original post by Ezbez Alternate dimensions that you can travel to is unbelievable to me.

You mean alternate universes or traveling along alternate dimensions?

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Original post by Ezbez Time travel is unbelievable to me. Slowing down time Matrix-style is also unbelievable. Anything relating to time basically confuses me, and so makes me not believe it (even if it really does happen in reality, but I wouldn't know).

Actually, in some cases this could be realistic (see time dilation and related topics).

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Original post by Ezbez Instant communication is OK in my book. Better than the general alternatives of instant or faster-than-light travel.

In general, instant communication has the same problems as FTL travel.


Anyway, the first near future technology that come to mind are nanomedicine (nanotechnology in medicine), possibly even that could eliminate natural death. Another technology that would be perhaps further in the future would be reconfigurable matter through quantum dots and other types of nanostructures (although, quantum dots are already in use in consumer products: the blue laser in Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD reading devices, like the PlayStation 3).

I'm fine with cloaking and teleportation (both technologies are in development and have been in the news lately). What's interesting about teleportation is whether the reassembled copy still has the original "ghost" (to use GitS terms). There's probably enough material there for an adventure game or two.

This topic reminds me of Clarke's three laws. Essentially, if we move the setting far out into the future, I'm pretty much ready to believe anything as far as technology is concerned - there should be some theoretical discoveries about fundamental physical laws associated with the technology in question, however, even if they are a bit sketchy.

A more glaring mistake that kills suspension of disbelief for me are characters that talk, rationalize, and act like they live in 20th century America even when the venue is a 540th century Alien Mothership in orbit around Ross 128. If the technology advances, people will advance as well.

Teleportation has bugged me for a while. If we discovered the process of teleporting something or someone, then we have achieved all the nessecary steps for instant clonong and duplication. We can transport an object or person to multiple receivers and have it regenerate at all receivers. Plus when we have the electronic code for making something stored, what is to stop us from reentering that info into the receiver?

Time travel has also bugged me. Few movies and books do it justice. Time Travel is a very delicate process. Any move you make has drastic results for the future. The Butterfly Effect, Timeline(the book) and Kate and Leopold are the only ones that come close to displaying time travel in correct context. Butterfly Effect, Because it is not the physical person traveling but the conscience. Timeline and Kate and Leopold, because they both portray time as a pretzel type situation. If time travel were possible, then the universe corrects itself and adjusts what needs to be done. When time travel happens it is because it was meant to happen.

Those are the two most annoying sci-fi conventions to me. Laser guns, force fields, micro computers and almost sentient AI are all plausible. Faster than light travel is another delicate process but is plausible.

Laser can be beliveable but try to stay away from the generic sci-fi pistol that makes corny sound effects and shoot a green blob that travals about 25Km/h

Actually, I take my cue from animes such as GiTS that have a good handle on things such as "believable unbelievables".

It would be nice if they could at least explain in some pseudo-science how the particular technology works, sort of like Star Trek.

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Original post by Kest A couple things I've had trouble believing in the sci-fi realm.. - Artificial gravity. - All aliens, no matter where they evolve, no matter how distant from others, all seem to require the exact same measurement of gravity, oxygen, and other environment resources.

Not my aliens :D One race speaks english, and is for all intents and purposes, human, except for thier name, except for the fact that they grew up in another universe, so thier politics, geography, etc are strange. I have only a few of these, but the main charachter is of this race. The other main charachter race is kind of a black ball thing with 7 legs placed with radial symmetry. He'll have one big compound(maybe only six or eight sections) eye between all of it's legs that can see in most of the electromagnetic spectrum and see details , and a pair of secondary eyes(for parallax) comming out of it's mouth, which is on top of it's ball like body. It will have a mostly hard shell, but it will be flexible in places like joints. He uses ethanol for blood, and every thermostat he can get his claws on gets turned down to -50 Celcius. I have yet to name either species. My two main charachters will be one of each species.

I'm going for a Star-Trek like diversity, without the cliche humanoid races that populate that world.

I also like to be scientifically accurate, but the temptation to treat space as a manifold is just too much to pass up. I will have wormholes and other wierdnesses, but unless there is someone on the other side shining a light through, they will be black as night, and invissible, the way you expect empty space to be, even if it is curved horribly. There will be limited technology to manipulate this sort of thing, but it will be an artifact of an ancient civilization capable of building a sphere 10 million miles in diameter to study a chaotic space warp the size of a star.

I intend, other than my careless and wonton manipulation of the laws of space and time, to stick strictly to what is physically possible, right down to the enrgy requirements of a particular action, and the innefficiency of whatever motor you use to do it. I plan on making the plot stretch accross the several centuries of time needed to travel between stars. I plan on using suspended animation or einsteinian time dilation to deal with that. Suspended animation will be easy for my little black ball with legs, as ethanol contracts when it freezes, so theres no danger of bursting the cells, as with water.(that's what frostbite is: water bursting cells as it expends when freezing), but I suppose I'll need a good way to prevent the water in our human friend's cells from freezing, if I decide to use suspension.

basically, I plan on using as much scientific accuracy as possible, and making the exceptions as few and as obvious as possible. Because the game takes place over several centuries though, I dont intend using human technological trends, and technology will be different in different star systems. Perhaps there will be some sort of upper limit, as in "A Deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge.

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Original post by T1Oracle 1) Computers may... a. Likely be evolve to use hand gesture systems (I think Minority Report used this concept, I never saw the movie) using either gloves or a remote motion sensor (both are plausible)

Implausible. Unless people generally start to communicate using hand gestures, or these are very simple gestures, people will not adopt a unique system of communication just for interacting with machines.

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b. Use voice recognition, we already have it but it is rarely portrayed in sci-fi

Voice recognition is portrayed in the overwhelming majority of futuristic sci-fi.

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c. Rely on wireless everything. No one likes cables and we are already moving in that direction.

1966, Star Trek. Tricorder.

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d. Display on floating screens and VR glasses that look like ordinary glasses. Again we are already developing this technology.

1977, Star Wars. Hologram. Earlier citations may exist.

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e. Stop using disks, disks are probably going the way of the dinosaur with USB drives replacing them. I suggest wireless drives both long and short range. For security reasons you may use a very close range (1 inch from reader) system instead.

The nature of storage is immaterial, but it will likely be solid state for greater stability.

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2) Guns should... a. Likely still use bullets. Bullets are cheap and effective plus there are technologies in the works that promise to make recoil negligable.

Bullets require shell casings, individual manufacture, transportation (they're bulky)... Pellets are an interesting alternative, where the gun essentially accelerates a tiny pellet to stun/lethal velocity. Because of reduced size, a single weapon carries a few orders of magnitude more ordinance.

That said, the notion of "pure energy" weapons is not implausible for the distant future.

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b. Support more than one type of ammo for the sake of variety in tactics, we already have this. Also "Metal Storm" technology may allow a gun to use different ammo without requiring a magazine change; you just fire from a different barrel. (Google it) More notably, shotgun ammo already comes in many interesting varieties that I haven't ever seen in games (like pellets that are strung together so they can wrap around things and cut them off).

AD 2000. LawGiver 2000. [smile]

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c. Use OICW technology. This gun already exists, so why don't sci-fi grenade launchers allow you to change the fuse type on the round? You should have ranged, impact, delay, and proximity (not on OICW) fuses that can be set before the grenade leaves the barrel.

How often do you see grenades in sci-fi?

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b. Use lasers that make sense. Overheat and run out of ammo, gas lasers can run out of ammo. Lasers don't have to be "God" weapons.

Tomorrow's lasers don't have to work like today's. Sci-fi is always about an extrapolation of the current, and it is not illogical to conceive of a time when a.) the laser apparatus is reduced in size, and with it its energy consumption and heat generation, and b.) this enables lasers to effectively function indefinitely.

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3) Security needs to... a. Use common sense. Breaking into the building should require remote and onsite hacking along with an insider aid. Futhermore guns pods are lame, just seal off the door and gas them.

I think that's a tad narrow. You have to look at the other cardinal assumptions of the specific sci-fi universe. For example, in a world where surveillance is the norm, it is not implausible that your doors can be remotely activated by a supervisor with the appropriate authority, and that the ultimate hub of authority is a single central nexus. Now, if you can compromise that hub, or even just a main artery, then you can override security on several branch connections.

For instance, in Spielberg's film adaptation of Minority Report, the cars on the freeway were controlled by a central computer and their local systems could be completely overridden as a means of apprehending the suspect - so Cruise's character had to kick the window out and jump off the roof of the car.

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4) Technology in general must... a. Break occasionally. Think of this as emmotional common ground. Every gamer (or person in this modern world) can relate to things breaking or not working correctly. I think sci-fi that breaks could at least provide some humor. Relating to the player's basic senses aids in suspension of disbelief.

Meh. Certain technologies, after sufficient refinement, are effectively stable. A well-manufacturerd knife may never fail over its lifespan, and may have a self-sharpening sheath. Yet a few centuries ago, knives failed - they became dull, they broke, they fell apart. It is not inconceivable that process refinements and design simplifications can make certain technologies durable to the point of near-guaranteed function. Where failures tend to occur are with newer technologies.

That said, do players/viewers really care that technology in the future never fails? The real question is whether having technology fail serves the narrative/interactive interest of your world. If not, leave it out.


I'm not just trying to disagree with you. I think you don't give enough credit to existing/prior sci-fi works; only in the last decade and a half has sci-fi really begun to suffer because of its ascendancy as a reliable "blockbuster" genre. Until that happened, sci-fi works tended to be more thoughtful about their complete world and thus more intriguing to the scientifically inclined. The influx of box office bucks gave us garbage like Will Smith's I, Robot travesty, but such films are by no means representative of the genre.

In any case, I tend to prefer the books. *gazes lovingly at his 14 Foundation and Empire novels...*