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Tag Archive for Videogames

Talk Data to Me

July 1, 2015 future, Videogames, Writing Comments Off on Talk Data to Me

 

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.05869v2.pdf

There’s a difference, a pretty large difference, between an AI and a chatbot. It’s perhaps hard to see if you’re on the receiving end, if you don’t know what to look for, but the way they act and react are different and in the case of a chatbot, once you figure out how the logic behind it works, you can talk it in circles.  Which is a good way to kill an afternoon, if you’re bored on the intarwebz.

Not that I have ever done this.  Oh no, not me.

The point of a chatbot, usually, is to mimic conversation.  They are often not capable of *steering* a conversation themselves, they don’t, or can’t, as leading questions unless the developer has planned ahead (and even then, you can tell when the canned questions come into play, the segues are never terribly smooth).  What they can do reasonably well, however, is continue a conversation in much the same way that many humans do.  It deconstructs your sentence, pulls the appropriate verbs and subjects, and constructs a question or response of it’s own.

If you’ve ever gotten a customer service call, or contacted customer service through one of those “live chat” services offered by banks and online retailers you’ve likely encountered a few chatbots.  Depending on the sophistication, they are often used to just collect your basic information before passing you off to a real-live human, but you can hear the difference if you listen.

 

 

DOOM over time

June 22, 2015 future, Videogames Comments Off on DOOM over time

Shenanegains_DOOM

 

 

To continue on my last post about the time it takes to establish relationships in games (versus the time it takes to turn an enemy into a pile of giblets), they announced a new and extra-quishy version of DOOM in the works.

Now, I adore DOOM.  In fact, THIS is the game that got me back into pursuing game development as a career option.  When DOOM came out, I was sharing an apartment with a couple of High School friends (one of whom also went on to have a career in games) and the original, shareware version of this game became the entertainment of choice (at the time, however, I had an Amiga for 3d animation/rendering and so had to borrow my friend’s PC to play).

I’m not sure it could play it now.  In the intervening decades my tastes have changed a bit.  Part of this is the presence of my kids.  I found (post kiddos) that my personal tolerance for giblets has decreased quite a bit.  It was really bad when they were all 1-6yo, I couldn’t watch certain cop shows, I got all twitchy about certain movies, I couldn’t play certain games.  When the kids were new, my mind would simply project them into the middle of any dangerous situation, which made it very hard to enjoy a number of the harder-edged things that I once loved.

The point is, though, I have a long standing relationship with this game.  I’ll cheer when it comes out with a newer, bloodier version, perhaps not so much because it now has super-hyper-realistic splatter or an extra 3 miles on intestines in every level, but I’ll cheer because the franchise has some meaning for me.  Because I want to see it continue.  This new version of the game may no longer be what I am looking for in a shooter, but that doesn’t mean I feel we should stop making them.  I think there are a lot of people in the industry who feel the same way, they are cheering not so much because it’s now extra gory, or super-violent, they’re cheering because they have a relationship with the game that helped to reboot our industry and they want to see it live on.

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