F.R.A.G. (Image Source: el33tonline)
I get it, video games are engrossing. They engage and heighten your senses. Your eyes are wide, unblinking, darting with even the tiniest movements on the screen. Your ears are strained, desperate to catch all communications from your team mates while also listening out for valuable alert noises. Your fingers are moving at lightning speed, seeking out the precise keystrokes necessary to carry out each action. But what about your sense of smell? Is your nose left out of all the fun?
As suggested in an amusing post on the J!NX blog, Brolo suggests that in order for gamers to fully immerse themselves in a game, video games need to have smell. As the author so aptly put it:
But what if those demons reeked? What if they stank to the High Heavens? What if they smelled of rot, of death, of acids and pollution and corpses and fungus and putrescent piles of poop?
Indeed… what if? It would add a whole new level to the game. You would be able to smell a baddie before you even got around the corner.
Eww.
Well, it turns out that researchers at the University of Birmingham had already considered this and made it a reality. I’m not sure that this a good thing though… hospital smell? Raw sewage? No thank you.
While we leave the chemists and game developers to ponder whether or not smelly games are actually a good idea, there have been some scents inspired by video games that are a little more friendly to the nose.
At the recent Comic-Con, some geeky chemists working under the name Epic-Scents announced that they have, quite literally, attempted to capture the essence of Mega Man, in the form of air fresheners.
There are strong ties between memories and fragrance. We want to tie that fragrance to that character, when you use our air fresheners you will remember the nostalgia of playing that game.
Cool cool. Well, since we’re trying to invoke nice gaming nostalgia, how about reproducing the “new game smell”? I think it would smell a bit like the “newly purchased Apple product” fragrance developed by Air Aroma.
Who am I kidding though, I would just about welcome any attempts to bring nicer smells to the video game environment. There’s a good chance that it would smell nicer than the burning plastic smell of I’ve-played-so-long-my-graphics-card-is-melting, or worse still, the stench of a sweaty gamer ten hours into a gaming session. So please, fragrance magicians, do your thang.
