And now, I'm going to sperg a bit about something a few pages back.
Wu, you god-damned idiot. Video games *have* empathy.
Back when you played Actraiser on the SNES, during the God-Sim, when some petitioners come to your temple and beg you to send the rain, because a dying man wants to feel it on his face before he goes, how did that make you feel?
When you played Final Fantasy IV, at the edge of being wiped out, when Rydia comes back to save your ass, how did that make you feel?
When you played Ico, after the whole game of you pulling up Yorda by the hand, when you miss a long jump, she catches you. And then she's taken away. How did that make you feel?
When you played Silent Hill 2, and you watched Angela begin the long walk up the firery stairway, and neither you - the player, or James Sunderland - the character, can do anything to save someone that really wants to die. When the thought occurred to you that life wasn't fair and that some people never even had a chance, how did that make you feel?
When you played Portal, and the game manipulated you into first protecting, and then destroying, a box with a heart on the side, how did that make you feel?
When you played Dark Souls and realized that the big bad wasn't the final boss, but entropy, that the whole world is irreparably fucked, how did that make you feel?
These are all moot, of course. You probably didn't play these games. But "VR" will bring empathy and help games tell better stories. The Microsoft Kinect can't cope with a slight accent and you're going to invent something that can recognize tone and inflection.
I'm going to burn through my entire allotment of sighs way too early in the week.