INSIGHT
FROM FANTASY
TO REALITY
iGaming futurologist Mark McGuinness looks at the latest tech developments blurring the line between
reality and the movies for iGB Affiliate, from Snapchat spectacles to VR and Transformer-style phones,
and considers where they may take the industry.
THERE IS NO DOUBT the world is
experiencing seismic changes in technology,
with scenes straight out of the fantasy world
of Hollywood blockbusters featuring James
Bond and Mission Impossible secret agent
Ethan Hunt, who fight their nemeses using
the full plethora of high-tech wizardry.
Fiction and fantasy are fast blurring to
become reality, and for those of you still
unconvinced, who would have thought
that 3D printing would become a reality in
our lifetime? Touted as the next ‘industrial
revolution’, you can now ‘print’ anything
from prosthetic limbs to real cars and soon
land-based slot machines, or even a fullblown casino!
The impossible has thus become the
possible. Who can forget Google Glass,
the curious-but-futuristic sunglasses
that look as if they were worn by the
character Geordi La Forge in Star Trek:
The Next Generation. Sure, Google Glass
and wearable technology, according to
research group Forrester, was hyped to
be bigger than the iPhone. Furthermore,
according to Forrester, they estimated 21.6
million Americans would buy Google
Glass if it were available. That is around
12% of the population, which is a huge
number by any stretch of the imagination.
Glass, conceptually, reflected how we
are becoming a more mobile, out-of-home
society, freeing up data tasks from our
current working and free time environments
made up of desktop computers and devices
such as smartphones and tablets which
involve our looking down at the small
screen. Instead, Glass deployed display
technology via a small prism screen right
in front of your field of vision. The design
acted as a touchpad, camera, and display, a
microphone within the spectacle frames so
that you could be shown data in your field
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iGB Affiliate Issue 59 OCT/NOV 2016
of vision, take pictures, film, and record,
search for directions and communicate
with other devices while on the move.
Of course, Google subsequently withdrew
Glass, but said they remain committed to
the technology. It was therefore with huge
interest that Snapchat, now called Snap Inc.,
released their first hardware product and you guessed it - video sharing spectacles.
Could this tech be one in the eye for
Google, and work where Google Glass
failed? I believe so. Firstly, Snapchat’s
spectacles’ are cheap, fashionable and
easy to use. Secondly, they are designed
for one purpose in mind: capturing and
Niantic for iOS, Android, and Apple Watch
devices, a huge success this summer which at
its peak had 45,000,000 active daily players.
The big Chinese behemoths are already
embedding themselves in the supply chain.
Tencent, who it has to be said is more
secretive than Facebook, via its ‘connection
strategy’ owns Riot Games (acquired in
2011), the publisher of the world’s biggest
eSports game League of Legends. It also
owns QQ (QQ Instant Messenger), Weixin/
WeChat, QQ.com, QQ Games, Qzone,
and Tenpa. On the virtual reality side, they
have invested in Epic Games and Altspace
VR, two companies working on gamified
“The Alibaba marketplace website sells 300,000 virtual
reality-enabled devices every month, aiming to provide
low-cost peripherals and expand the market demand for
virtual reality products”
sharing video content, unlike Google
Glass, where being able to take pictures,
record videos, receive emails or navigate
through Google Maps was just way too
confusing for the user experience. So,
keep a close eye, no pun intended, on the
uptake of Snapchat spectacles.
Virtual and augmented reality
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
paid over $2 billion for Oculus Rift, the
virtual reality headset developer in 2014,
everyone has been salivating at virtual
reality’s potential for online gaming and
indeed eSports.
However much to the surprise of many
reading this article, or perhaps it may not
be, it’s China that is crushing the virtual and
augmented reality vertical and not the USA.
Think Pokémon Go the free-to-play, locationbased augmented reality game developed by
virtual experiences. In broad terms, Tencent
provides its users with communication,
information, entertainment and financial
services all though one connected platform.
Of course, we can’t leave out Jack
Ma’s online mar