Why has smell failed to become a stable gameplay language compared with visuals, audio, and haptics?
This is probably a weird question, but I’m surprised smell never became a real gaming peripheral category. Games have spent decades improving graphics, surround sound, controller vibration, adaptive triggers, motion controls, VR, eye tracking, and even haptic suits. But smell is still stuck in “random CES demo” territory. The strange part is that smell seems like it would fit certain genres really well. Horror games could use smoke, mold, blood, wet concrete, gasoline, old wood, hospital disinfectant, etc. Fantasy games could make forests, taverns, magic labs, caves, oceans, and battlefields feel physically different. Racing games could use rubber, rain, fuel, and burnt metal. Cozy games could use tea, flowers, soil, baked food, or campfires. But somehow the idea never seems to survive contact with reality. Is smell too technically hard to control? Is it a developer support problem? Is it a cost and maintenance problem? Or is it simply that smell sounds immersive in theory, but does not actually improve gameplay enough? A bit of context: this question came to mind after watching Kaguya Hime, but I’m more interested in the practical gaming side than the movies. Games already have strong interactive visual and audio languages, but smell still feels like an unsolved design and hardware problem.