The future is and forever will be uncertain. There is no way of telling what tomorrow might hold, but it is always fun to speculate and imagine what kind of world we will be living in down the line and the kinds of technology we will have access to. What better way to explore the unknown than through the medium of video games? Gaming has always found itself looking ahead, whether it be 1,000 years forward or just a few decades, yet it seems that for every good and beautiful universe, there is an equally dark and grim one to follow.

Technology is a fascinating part of our society, and as time has gone on, it has become more integrated with our day-to-day lives, a lot for the better, but some for the worse. Though these fictional worlds may only be make-believe for now, the chances of them coming true grow higher every year, thanks to the development of AI, the advancement of warfare, and the companies that oversee it all from above becoming hungrier for power at the cost of our individual freedom.

Deus Ex

Privacy Is A Premium

• Explores a world governed by private interests.
• Predicts the growing concerns around surveillance and digital control.

Deus Ex imagined a future where governments, corporations, and intelligence agencies wield immense power and influence through technological control. The promise of an interconnected network brought with it convenience and security, but also created unprecedented opportunities for monitoring and control, two things that have only become more prevalent as time has gone on.

What makes the game feel remarkably eerie is its focus on who owns technology rather than the technology itself. When looking at the modern day, it is clear we care more about those using our data, especially when it is entrusted to a faceless company. The game's warnings about centralized control remain some of the most well-founded in the entire industry, and I would recommend revisiting it now, if only to see a snapshot of a world that we may soon enter.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty

Nothing Is Ever As It Seems

• Misinformation becomes a weapon.
• The digital world shapes the real one.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is famous for its discussions around the future of information, released in a time long before the social media revolution. You are positioned in a world where digital networks produce overwhelming amounts of data, making it increasingly difficult to separate truth from noise, whilst also opening the door for bad actors to exploit the system.

Its central concern was not censorship but curation, suggesting that future societies would be shaped by algorithms, information gatekeepers, and technologies that determine what people see and believe, instead of their actual material reality. Now, years later, I am still amazed at how much the game gets right in terms of the modern tech landscape, and how well the debates can be transferred to today, even if we never see Raiden scrolling TikTok or updating his bios.

Tom Clancy's The Division

Togetherness Has Its Weaknesses

• Modern infrastructure depends a lot on interconnected systems.
• Convenience creates new points of failure.

It was only a few years ago that we were faced with a global pandemic, and while The Division doesn't get everything right, it still paints a pretty good picture of a city in the midst of a crisis. Society and the technology that surrounds it are built upon a complex digital infrastructure that quickly unravels during the outbreak, with supply chains failing and essential services struggling to function once the supporting systems themselves are disrupted from within.

The technology itself is not portrayed as evil necessarily; rather, the game highlights how modern life deeply depends on these kinds of interconnected networks that can quickly fall apart at the seams if targeted in the right way. I always found the world far more captivating than most other semi-apocalyptic ones, and I think that despite things looking fairly bright overall, we are only a few malfunctions away from burning barrels and complete societal failure.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2

Wars Fought Without Soldiers

• Military technology relies far less on humans.
• Autonomous systems raise questions about accountability.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 centers much of its conflict around drones and automated military systems that looked futuristic back in the day, but have now become a common part of modern warfare. If you had told me that we would be seeing unmanned drones launching strikes across the globe in my lifetime, I would've called you insane, but the rapid development of these technologies has made the fictional world become reality.

The game's darker prediction concerns the delegation of power. As warfare becomes more dependent on machines and remote systems, questions emerge about responsibility. In a world where we can press a button and start a war, it is important to ask what happens when war becomes easier to wage, because fewer people are directly exposed to its costs.

Perfect Dark

Knowledge Is Power

• Megacorporations compete through information dominance.
• Data as a resource.

Perfect Dark takes a few steps forward into a reality in which corporations rival governments in influence, and technology is the true indicator of who is in charge. Much of the conflict revolves around information gathering and controlling access to valuable data, placing you at the center of an extraterrestrial mission that could very well determine the fate of the world.

Far from your average spy story, I enjoy the game's dedication to cohesion. Despite how complex the galactic disputes may be, there is always a sense of purpose behind every individual task. It might have gotten the year a bit off, being set in 2023, but the concept of huge corporations and entire governments vying for control is about as relevant now as it ever will be.

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream

What A Way To Go

• The extreme end of AI advancement.
• Pushes the limits of what far future tech could become.

If there is one game that represents technology gone wrong, then it has to be I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. In the distant future, where a superintelligent AI finally takes control, you and four other humans are presented with a life of eternal torture from which there is no escape, orchestrated by an all-powerful and rage-filled computer known as AM.

I, like many others, have always found this piece of fiction to be among the scariest of all time, as there isn't a specific monster or tangible threat at play, just the unwavering hatred towards humanity from an emotionless entity capable of warping the fabric of its victims' minds. ChatGPT is fairly basic by comparison, yet it is hard not to feel a little wary of where it may go.