e481 — Services You Don’t Need

Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Published 16 September 2024

Co-hosts Michael and Michael start things off with an article by Gizmodo reporting on a recent patent reportedly structured to listen to in-car conversations in order to serve up highly targeted advertising. This common refrain over the years has taken on new focus given the recent reporting about the active listening for advertisement targeting. An extreme view for how this such AR advertising may surface can be experienced in the “Hyper-Reality” YouTube video in the show notes, or the WayRay example from 2019’s CES discussed in e223.

Next up, is Lucas Martinic’s innovative example of a mixed reality pen to select a color from the environment, and then to draw in the mixed reality environment using the color of the pen. It will be easiest to check out the show notes below to see precisely how this is done. This reminds Michael and Michael of several other color picking and 3D drawing tools – check out the show notes to see these examples.

Switching to games, it is nigh impossible for Michael and Michael (and Andy) to miss commenting on a Doom experience, and the exemplar for this episode uses a volumetric display to play the classic game. A discussion on the therapeutic use of Dungeons and Dragons spurs a couple of additional sidebars including the fantastic When We Were Wizards podcast series – be sure to check this out after completing the Games at Work backlog.

Then, the co-hosts turn to another common theme across many episodes of the podcast – how generative AI will influence game experiences by customizing the experience of the player and tailoring the storytelling to their preferences. An example of this with Dungeons and Dragons can be found in episode e412 from early 2023, and there several other examples over the run of the show. The article from Rock, Paper, Shotgun deals with this theme as well, and provides fertile ground for Michael and Michael to discuss.

Rounding out the episode, the co-hosts discuss NYU’s Robot Utility Models, noticing the scratches on the drawers and a spacewalk that is not quite a spacewalk, but still a remarkable feat by civilian space travelers.

What example of Doom have you seen that Andy, Michael and Michael have not yet commented on? How might you use Lucas Martinic’s creative use of an AR color picker and pen? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[e-mail] (our home for now) and let us know!

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot. All rights reserved. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Serving Up Unwanted Ads

Gizmodo article: Ford Seeks Patent for Software That Records Your Conversations to Serve You Ads

Patent US-20240289844-A1_I on documentcloud.org

Patent US20240289844A1 on Google Patents

Games at Work e479: Listen Up, Outlaws!

WayRay’s holographic windshield tech from CES 2019 – https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/videos/ces-2019-wayray-holographic-windshield-tech-will-grace-the-genesis-g80/

Games at Work e223: CES and C64

AR

Creative Bloq article: Ingenious XR colour app is an exciting glimpse into the future of digital art

8/100 "What if you could extract the color from real objects around you?"

Part of the submission for the @xraihack in Stockholm.
Using the @Logitech MX Stylus pen.#XRHACK #XR #Unity #Quest #Meta #VR #PresentFutures pic.twitter.com/k5EhnmgzIS

— Lucas Martinic (@lucas_martinic) September 9, 2024

Present Futures

Benjamin Moore Color Match Tool

3Doodler 3D Pen

Games at Work e460: AskEmilyPost: AI etiquette

Upload VR article: Steam Decktop: Steam Deck & Meta Quest HDMI Link Make A Modular Gaming PC

Games

Hackaday article: Doom on a Volumetric Display

Techdirt article: D&D, Once The Subject Of Moral Panic, Found Therapeutic In Autism Cases In Study

R&D Mag article: Virtual “SnowWorld” Help Burn Victims Cope with Extreme Pain

When We Were Wizards podcast

Wikipedia article: Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe

Ctrl-C Club blog post: Holy smokes, I just released a MiniGolf game for Palm OS in 2024

Rock, Paper, Shotgun article: Peter Molyneux thinks generative AI is the future of games, all but guaranteeing that it won’t be

Games at Work e412: 3D or Not 3D

Robots

Threads post: Robot Utility Models

Robot Utility Models

Space

CNN article: Four civilians on a daring SpaceX mission complete the first commercial spacewalk

Michael Martine