[Valigarmander]

Biometrics are Gaming's Future, According to Valve's Gabe Newell

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell isn't exactly known for keeping his opinions about the gaming industry a secret. In keeping with that fine tradition, the Half-Life creator used his acceptance speech at this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards to shed some light on what he believes the future holds for gaming: real-world biometrics in games.

"We think biometrics will be really important," the Valve boss told his GDC audience (via Develop). "We've seen a lot of work since the Wii shipped to explore how motion -- and with this next generation of controllers -- how vision systems are going to affect our games."

Newell continued, "Given that we have all these proxies inside of our games, that measure player state, we think that actually being able to measure small things like pupil dilation, heart rate -- those are the techniques that are going to give our games enormous impact in the future."

If an industry trailblazer like Gabe Newell thinks games that interpret biometrics are the way to go, then maybe Nintendo's on to something with their Vitality Sensor after all. Then again, this is coming from the same developer who once suggested that Sony should "just cancel [the PlayStation 3] and do a do over." With any luck, we'll see if Nintendo's plans for the Vitality Sensor match up with Newell's ideas for the future at E3 this June.

Interesting. I'm still wondering how developers will implement the technology.