The Issue:

There are a number of popular computer games that take place in forbidding environments—in a blizzard atop a snowy beak, or inside a volcanic caldera.

However, there is no way of conveying the real feeling of temperature to the player. In a game like Skyrim, the player will be no worse for the wear even after blithely trudge through a blizzard for hours wearing only the medieval equivalent of a T-shirt.

Proposal:

Games could have an interface to an array of different environment-affecting appliances. For example: a fan, an air conditioner, a space heater, and one of those supermarket mist-ers for keeping vegetables fresh.

When playing a game and wandering about on an icy mountain peak, the air conditioner and fan could both be going full blast, prompting the player to find shelter inside a tavern with a roaring fire (which would engage the space heater).

Perhaps in games with a protagonist who can swim, the supermarket mist-er could continually spray on the player while they were in the water. Realism!

A list of currently available modalities of feedback:

• Visual effects (e.g., a monitor, VR glasses)
• Sound
• Shaking / rumble (via a rumble-enabled controller)

Rare ones that already exist:

• Pain via electric shock (as seen in the dubious “PainStation” invention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PainStation)
• Orientation / tilt (for professional flight simulators)

Suggested additional features that could be accomplished cheaply:

• Wind (a fan)
• Cold (an air conditioner / Peltier cooler)
• Heat (a space heater / Peltier heater)
• The Unbearably Bright Desert Sun (LED lights / photography lights)
• Water (a supermarket vegetable mist-er)

It might be possible to just integrate temperature control into the controller using the Peltier heating/cooling effect. Or perhaps a vest that the player could wear, so as to provide a more complete experience.

There is a possibility that sufficiently determined players might actually freeze to death while playing games, but natural selection should solve this problem within a few hundred generations.

A partial list of moddable games in which the temperature of the environment could be an important factor:

• Skyrim
• Fallout
• Minecraft
• Terraria

A simple version of this concept could be implemented with a mod plus a USB-controlled power strip, as suggested in Figure 5.

PROS: Would add a new immersive element to the multimedia experience, the likes of which have not been seen since the demise of “Smell-o-vision” in 1960.

CONS: As you might expect, there are none!