Valve co-founder seeks to improve gaming experience with brain implants

April 11 (Portaltic/EP) –

Valve and Steam co-founder Gabe Newell has presented a new project that aims to break the barriers of neural interfaces to offer more immersive gaming experiences.

Starfish Neuroscience is a new technology company that aims to create neural implants with which to improve the way we interact with the world, as stated on its website, where it has shared a first image of this device.

Behind her is Gabe Newell, a notable figure in the video game sector for being the co-founder and director of Valve, responsible for titles such as Half-Life and Portal, and the PC gaming platform Steam.

In this new venture, Newell seems to follow in the footsteps of magnate Elon Musk and Neuralink to venture into neuroscience with a project dedicated to brain implants. The goal is to develop a brain-computer interface for gaming.

This is an open source project for the development of said interface that will collect data directly from the user's body and brain. Developers will be able to offer gaming experiences according to their mood, to make them more immersive, as Newell explained in a interview with 1 NEWSfrom the New Zealand media TVNZ.

As he details, the visual fidelity will be much better than what the player obtains through his eyes, and will even go further since, as Newell understands, “”the real world will appear flat, colorless and blurry compared to the experiences that you will be able to create in people's brains.”

He also anticipates that it can be used to modify people's feelings. For this reason, apart from the gaming experiences, the person in charge of Valve and Steam defends its application for improving sleep, which can be induced by simply asking an application.

It could also be used for therapeutic purposes to reduce or eliminate certain unwanted feelings or conditions, such as vertigo. And it rules out the use of this project to create virtual prostheses for people.

At this point it seems that Starfish Neuroscience differs from Neuralink's objective, seeking, as Musk shared when he announced it in 2017, to develop brain implants that allow people with paraplegia to walk again, by sending signals to motor or sensory neurons.

Neuralink has already begun testing its first implant, called Telepathy, on people, with which the patient has shown to be able to perform actions such as controlling the computer mouse, playing chess and playing music, all with direct signals from the brain, as the company has shared.