In my imagination the Matrix as a game would be a VR version of a game like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or an MMO version of any of these games.

Even that whould not be enough for me, if you call out "The Matrix", then surely VR is nice, but it's still only an ordinary game with VR. Expectations are really, really, really high if you call out that name. As in, virtually indistinguishable from reality.

I would expect that if for example, in a Skyrim-like game you're attacked by a gnome or kobold, you can just grab him on the ankle and carry him around, and later use him as improvised club. After being carried around head-down for five minutes, the kobold would have a red head, and after half an hour it would probably start vomiting.
All of that should "just work", although no sane designer could conceivably have thought of this possibility.

In GTA, after running over a hooker with your car, you should be able to pick up one of her shoes and drink champagne from it. Why? Simply because at that precise moment, you feel like doing that, and because in the real world you could do it, too. If you feel like loosening a few nuts on the next car's front wheel, then well... then you can just do it.

If you lift up the nearest gully cover and climb down, then puncture a gas pipe, and a few minutes later throw a burning piece of scrunched-up newspaper down the hole, then not only should there be an explosion, but it should also visually damage the road over a few dozen meters, and the gully cover 50 meters down the road should lift off up to the 5th/6th floor. Why? Well, because that's what happens in the Matrix (and in the real world) if you do that kind of shit.

That is what comes to my mind when I hear "The Matrix". Everything else is just... well, VR goggles. :)

Actually those games were forgotten by those who make games. The computer game industry decided right from the beginning that "board games" were not relevant to what they did. So they began re-inventing the wheel in the mid-1980's.

Dude, what?

RPGs even today use more or less the same dice roll mechanics as board games do (which happen to be still around, even if you dismiss the never generation of board games as "not existant"... Games Workshop and their incredibly successfull board games might want to have a word with you).

Yes, its not bound to a six, ten, or whatever-sided dice. It is still the same concept of simplifing a reality to complex to simulate, and actually pointless to simulate when the result of those complex processes look pretty random to the average person, to a simple random outcome.

The games you mentioned faded a little bit in popularity in the 80's, when they got competition by newer, more colorful and sometimes more simplified board and tabletop games, AND the videogames that started to be able to compete with Pen-and-Paper when it came to give people that RPG expierience, that is all. D'n'd is still alive and kickin, good friend of mine is playing it a lot with his roleplaying group. The other two I don't know about, but wouldn't be surprised to still see them around.

Nothing crashed in the 80's, besides the videogame market. Which was a temporary thing, really.

And no, video games did borrow quite a lot from board and tabletop games from the start.

In my imagination the Matrix as a game would be a VR version of a game like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or an MMO version of any of these games.

Even that whould not be enough for me, if you call out "The Matrix", then surely VR is nice, but it's still only an ordinary game with VR. Expectations are really, really, really high if you call out that name. As in, virtually indistinguishable from reality.

I would expect that if for example, in a Skyrim-like game you're attacked by a gnome or kobold, you can just grab him on the ankle and carry him around, and later use him as improvised club. After being carried around head-down for five minutes, the kobold would have a red head, and after half an hour it would probably start vomiting.
All of that should "just work", although no sane designer could conceivably have thought of this possibility.

In GTA, after running over a hooker with your car, you should be able to pick up one of her shoes and drink champagne from it. Why? Simply because at that precise moment, you feel like doing that, and because in the real world you could do it, too. If you feel like loosening a few nuts on the next car's front wheel, then well... then you can just do it.

If you lift up the nearest gully cover and climb down, then puncture a gas pipe, and a few minutes later throw a burning piece of scrunched-up newspaper down the hole, then not only should there be an explosion, but it should also visually damage the road over a few dozen meters, and the gully cover 50 meters down the road should lift off up to the 5th/6th floor. Why? Well, because that's what happens in the Matrix (and in the real world) if you do that kind of shit.

That is what comes to my mind when I hear "The Matrix". Everything else is just... well, VR goggles. :)

Lets not forget the most important part. If the Kobold gets the better of you and kills you in the matrix, you are dead. If the technology behind the brain/computer interfaces fries your brain, you get stabbed to death by some murderous devices or whatnot doesn't matter.

If you die in the Matrix, you are death in Real life. Everything else is VIRTUAL Reality. The Matrix is a REPLACEMENT Reality, ALL the rules of the Realworld should apply (unless you are the chosen one or a computer program, of course).

I think Kavik Kang has found some interesting description of a world element- and it depends on a player how deep wants to dig in so it can be car fleet, car, piston or bearing of the piston->quantum level. But I may be wrong...

OK, so here's how you get people to listen to your ideas:

First, you've spent a great deal of time talking about the history of game design. Drop that. If your technique is interesting, it doesn't matter where it comes from. It doesn't matter that you've worked 30 years on this, that you come from the game industry, any of that. Right off the bat it's a distraction from the topic at hand.

Next, it's not the Matrix or a God Simulator or a new theory of time. It's a promising new simulation technique that will create far greater fidelity in video games. Or it's a faster alternative to Markov chains for scientific simulation. Whatever. Talk in terms of exciting but incremental improvement. Use the language of whatever you're trying to replace. Promise just enough to catch somebody's attention and then over deliver. If you say "it's the Matrix" people will look at all the ways it isn't. If you say "it speeds up simulations of X 30-fold" they'll hopefully say "my God! It can do so much more too!" After they've appreciated the boring aspect of it, you can point them towards its fuller potential, but wait until they've bought in to something incremental.

As for the theory of time, that's it's own thing. Every superlative you glom together makes it less believable, so pursue that line separately. It's tough to break into academia from the complete outside. You'll have more luck after succeeding with this simulator, but if you want to pursue the theory of time directly 1) do so on its own merits, don't pitch it as part of your god simulation and 2) identify a particular problem in physics, a particular aspect of time that can't be dealt with in the current theories, and provide a solution. That's how academics tend to proceed, so that's an easier way to catch their attention. "Here's a convoluted equation used to simulate this interaction of particles, here's a simple equivalent using my technique."

Next, you've said remarkably little about the technique. That's a red flag for cranks and scam artists and people with an idea that sounds good but won't work in practice. I'm not saying you are those things, I'm saying that your communication style falls unfortunately close to their scripts. If you want to be vague about a secret sauce, at the very least very clearly explain the problem that your technique solves. What is it about weather simulations, protein folding simulations, particle physic simulations that's "wrong". Specifically. Or on the video game side, why do existing simulation techniques fail at interesting sizes? Don't use this as an opportunity to criticize modern games. Don't argue against trends towards abstraction and simplification. If you've got the Matrix that's something developers couldn't produce today if they wanted to. What computational problem is stopping that. Is it inability to deal with combinatorial growth in possible states? Is it the difficulty in thinking up all the interesting interactions between systems? Is it performing calculations on billions of computational entities fast enough?

If you want to be vague about a secret sauce, get as close as you can without revealing it. For example, what's the math behind this system? Linear algebra? Chaos Theory? Deep Learning? If you're talking to a lay person be brief about the topic but reference it. If you're talking to an expert, converse comfortably in it. Use the correct jargon. Give simple derivations as necessary.

Have specific examples. Working code is best. But explain how the obvious alternatives fail in a situation yours excels at. Even if you aren't going to reveal what yours would do, give a situation (simulating the weather, simulating traffic flow in a video game, interacting with a virtual gun), tell where it fails and why. This demonstrates deep familiarity with the problem, suggests that you've looked at and understood all the obvious solutions. I think you tried to convey expertise with your discussion of game history, but that's the wrong expertise. Focus on the problems you're solving.

To reiterate: Talk directly about specific problems you can solve, ideally giving evidence that you really can solve them better. Call it something exciting but not grandiose. Don't talk about yourself or your interests. Practice your pitch, refine your email, whatever until you can succinctly convey, in a couple minutes, that this idea is valuable. This idea is plausible. I am competent and professional and trustworthy. I have achieved what I claim.

And ideally, prepare a crazy demo. If this is as important as you claim, it must be capable of some sort of outrageous thing. Demonstrate 50,000 cars driving realistically on screen. Or achieve best in class results on some problem set (protein folding? weather prediction? mouse neuron classification?). Something that people will look at and think "wow, that's pretty cool."