I've heard of Sword Art Online, I know what you mean. If they do end up making nervegear, there will be a lot of restrictions on the extent to which it can actually affect you; connecting electrical equipment to your nervous system obviously has a lot of health risks and an immense amount of caution would need to be taken to ensure that it's safe. I'm not sure it'll even come to that point (it might just not be possible to do it safely for home use) but if it does then I'm confident that it will be more like discomfort or small electrical shocks rather than actual pain. The very function of pain is to tell you that something is wrong with your body, so even fake pain wouldn't be advised as it could cause you to ignore real pain (either if you somehow hurt yourself while playing, or outside of playing just because you've become accustomed to subconsciously dismissing it as fake).
As for the immersion, I don't think it's really bad. Gaming should always be taken in moderation, realistic or not, and I don't think lifelike gaming will or should change that. There are already serious cases of people being unhealthily addicted to games (World of Warcraft being an obvious example), which are far from realistic.
Any gaming system that is fully immersive should have precautions that ensure that people don't get consumed by the game, probably by some notification or forced break feature. The developers should care about the well-being of their customers and think about these things.
Note I'm saying the word "should" a lot; I obviously don't know how it will turn out. I share your concerns and I'm definitely not trying to shoot them down, but I feel that if people are smart enough to provide a completely realistic experience, they are also smart enough to consider the consequences and take precautions for them. At the very least, if developers don't do something about it themselves, others will insist that they do.
As for the immersion, I don't think it's really bad. Gaming should always be taken in moderation, realistic or not, and I don't think lifelike gaming will or should change that. There are already serious cases of people being unhealthily addicted to games (World of Warcraft being an obvious example), which are far from realistic.
Any gaming system that is fully immersive should have precautions that ensure that people don't get consumed by the game, probably by some notification or forced break feature. The developers should care about the well-being of their customers and think about these things.
Note I'm saying the word "should" a lot; I obviously don't know how it will turn out. I share your concerns and I'm definitely not trying to shoot them down, but I feel that if people are smart enough to provide a completely realistic experience, they are also smart enough to consider the consequences and take precautions for them. At the very least, if developers don't do something about it themselves, others will insist that they do.