The future predicted by videogames is almost never good. Everybody's at war with either other countries or with different factions in some post-apocalyptic landscape, or we've been enslaved by robots and/or aliens, or we've lost all our rights and humanity to technological advances. And that's just the Ratchet and Clank series. Who in their right mind would want any of the horrible futures depicted in videogames to come true? Well, nobody, obviously, although we wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of DayZ players use the frightening open world game to train for the actual zombie apocalypse that they're sure is coming, and will revolve mainly around the collection of baked beans. But that's not to say that games aren't good at predicting the future; obviously we won't be sure if we'll end up in a war-torn (and mech-heavy) world of Titanfall until that happens - or more likely, doesn't happen - but there are times when things in videogames have, startlingly, come true. From pop culture trends to warfare to sporting events, from the early days of the arcade to the next gen, HD worlds that actually look as real as the ones they outline, here are nine amazing instances of videogames providing an accurate look into what humanity had in store. Some of them are so close that it's eerie. Before we start though, let's have a look at a "future prediction" that turned out to be complete nonsense, just to highlight how shocking the rest of them are...
Fail: Fallout 3
You probably saw this one when it was making the rounds online a couple of years ago, but it bears repeating. Fallout 3 takes place in a futuristic United States that has been completely decimated by worldwide nuclear war, mutually assured destruction leaving a desert of irradiated land where cities used to be, with people either remaining trapped in underground bunkers or putting together primitive shanty towns. it can get a might lonely traversing this hellish, near-empty landscape, so one of the solutions developers Bethesda came up with was giving the player a radio they could tune to various pirate stations on the post-apocalyptic airwaves. The story went that one of these stations, which broadcasted messages in morse code, was not only filling in the backstory for the game's future setting, but also made some eerily accurate predictions about things that happened in real life. Besides supposedly revealing that Britney Spears would win an Oscar in 2023 (which probably won't happen) and the Queen would die...earlier this year (which definitely didn't happen), the station was also said to get the correct dates for the BP oil spill and the death of Gary Coleman. It all turned out to be total nonsense, an elaborate hoax by some gaming forum chancer, and has been thoroughly denied by Bethesda. Still, it was fun while it lasted, and there are plenty of predictions that weren't made of whole cloth....
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
