As Rob points out, "they" have fooled with this kind of thing for about 40-ish years. Nobody has gotten it even close to where it needs to be from a technical standpoint. The last "Big Attempt" I remember was during the dot-com period, and the company had a series of "oil pots" that they could mix & blend on the fly. The 6 or 7 "basic smell oils" would be pumped together in various micro-litre amounts across a heating element--a fan would waft them away from the monitor towards the user. The fellow hyping the thing compared those 6-7 oils to the "Red-Blue-Yellow" base primary colors of an artist's palette. I think they even had a showing at one of the big tech shows--I remember reading about it in a magazine, maybe PC World.
I just cannot foresee this ever becoming a big thing. Even if I wanted it, it would only be for slow-paced, contemplative games like Myst and Riven as you mentioned. Smell the sea, smell the flowers, smell the pine-woods, smell the oil & iron of the "Metal Age", etc. For a fast-paced game, I just don't ever expect it to 'work'.
Now the jelly-bean/taste idea? I actually can see that going big, in a kid's game, if the marketing mind-manipulators would target it correctly. Do some kind of animated movie tie-in where the hero characters eat "flavored power pellets" to beat the baddies? You could could sell the things by the metric ton. Of course, little kids will eat anything sugary, so there's no burning need to even tie it to "playing the game".
As Rob points out, "they" have fooled with this kind of thing for about 40-ish years. Nobody has gotten it even close to where it needs to be from a technical standpoint. The last "Big Attempt" I remember was during the dot-com period, and the company had a series of "oil pots" that they could mix & blend on the fly. The 6 or 7 "basic smell oils" would be pumped together in various micro-litre amounts across a heating element--a fan would waft them away from the monitor towards the user. The fellow hyping the thing compared those 6-7 oils to the "Red-Blue-Yellow" base primary colors of an artist's palette. I think they even had a showing at one of the big tech shows--I remember reading about it in a magazine, maybe PC World.
I just cannot foresee this ever becoming a big thing. Even if I wanted it, it would only be for slow-paced, contemplative games like Myst and Riven as you mentioned. Smell the sea, smell the flowers, smell the pine-woods, smell the oil & iron of the "Metal Age", etc. For a fast-paced game, I just don't ever expect it to 'work'.
Now the jelly-bean/taste idea? I actually can see that going big, in a kid's game, if the marketing mind-manipulators would target it correctly. Do some kind of animated movie tie-in where the hero characters eat "flavored power pellets" to beat the baddies? You could could sell the things by the metric ton. Of course, little kids will eat anything sugary, so there's no burning need to even tie it to "playing the game".
My 2-cents.