Sword Art Online: The Beginning

Sword Art Online is a light novel series written by Reki Kawahara. In the story, players play this game called Sword Art Online using a helmet called a NerveGear to connect their brains to the server. Recently, IBM announced Sword Art Online: The Beginning, an attempt to full virtual reality game of the game of the series. IBM picked alpha testers and allowed them to play the game. The game uses multiple pieces of technology we described in class such as the Oculus Rift, the Kinect, the LeapMotion sensor, and Ovrvision. Personally, I am a fan of Sword Art Online because I think the concept of using the brain to control all movements of an avatar is amazing and awesome and something that I want to do, however in Sword Art Online: The Beginning, there is the usage of VR and motion sensors in order to control the character. According to Forbes, Sword Art Online: The Beginning is just a publicity stunt by IBM to promote its SoftLayer cloud computing setup. Knowing that it is just a publicity stunt greatly saddens me, but hopefully in the future, when neural sensor technology is fully developed, Sword Art Online can become a reality.