10-year veteran NBA forward Lou Amundson has some big plans in store for Basketball fans.
In today’s day of age, virtual reality and real-life looking video games are the norm. Amundson, who’s played for 12 different teams in his NBA career, is planning on combining the two to give NBA fans an unforgettable experience.
Following from Jared Zwerling of NBPA.com:
Now, 22 years later, Amundson has his own plans for a cutting-edge NBA video game, as well as an NBA fan experience, that would both incorporate virtual reality.
Overall, he’s in talks with a virtual reality company about starting its sports division, which would involve different athletics. […] Amundson is currently exploring the development of an NBA virtual reality video game, where, as he describes it, “you can actually interact within the NBA player’s world and have a real life-like interaction with the player.” The NBA fan experience he’d like to create is a concept that can be described as social media meets virtual reality, where instead of just seeing a photo of a player somewhere, you can actually feel as though you’re there as him. For starters, he would experiment with granting access to himself.
“I get asked all the time, ‘What is it like to be an NBA player?’” he said. “So I thought it would be interesting to actually show people, like put them in my shoes, put them in an NBA player’s shoes, and they’d get to experience more or less what it’s like to be an NBA player. It can be a powerful experience to actually show them and be there in that experience. And people love authentic content; people love stuff that they know is like a voyeuristic view into someone else’s life.”
At this point, Amundson is still learning more about the hardware technology that would be needed to pull off his project ideas.
“Stuff in VR takes time to write code,” he said. “But we’re definitely on that path right now.”
Using the controller to play with Basketball players in video games is cool enough, but Lou Amundson envisions us one day playing a video game that’ll let you, literally, BE him.
For Amundson, 33, this invention would certainly draw people from all over the world to test the feature out. Face it, we’ve all wondered what it’s like to be a Professional Basketball player at some point in our lives.
Amundson is aiming to make that seemingly impossible dream a reality one day, something many fans should be looking forward too.
