WowWee Robot To Delve Into Augmented Reality Gaming:
WowWee hoped to introduce a robot that used augmented reality to turn everyday spaces into a video game like world [...] The idea was that you would place markers in a room in your house and then drive the robot around, controlling and watching it through a web browser [...]. When the robot saw and recognized those markers the software would replace the markers with gaming icons.
The Konami Code is a cheat code which is present in many Konami games. Konami code sites lists a number of websites that support the Konami code. It’s a lot more widespread as one might think.
Poor folks love their cellphones
Bruce Sterling dropped this lovely tumbrel remark at this year’s SXSW: “Poor folks love their cellphones!”. His speech caused some controversy following a NY Times piece, but the full text of his speech doesn’t seem to be available. The whole speech seems intent to provoke, down to the point where its lack of online availability is part of the staging.
Somewhat related: If It’s Too Social, You’re Too Old:
I recently came to this conclusion: as an interaction designer, if I’m not actively using social networks, then I’m just not doing my job. It’s obvious to say, but social media is the evolving, messy, inexorable and probably bright future of this business. [...] Still, that inevitability hasn’t stopped me from more or less ignoring these networks for too long.
…and on. I pretty much feel exactly the same way as Khoi when it comes to social networks.
Superhero mmo City of Heroes recently introduced a new feature called mission architect, allowing its players to create their own missions and share them with other players. Player created content in mmos is still rather unusual because it’s obviously difficult to manage – as far as i know Ryzom is the only mmo which tried something like this before. Today on the train i finally had the time to read this Gamasutra article, where Joe Morrissey goes to great lengths to explain how they intend to keep male body parts out of their game. Judging by the recent controversy over exploitative player created missions (Elder Game has some great analysis) it seems they shouldn’t have worried as much about their customers juvenile tendencies as their urge to follow the path of least resistance… But aside from the fact that things aren’t going the way the developers expected and it being dubious policy at best to arbitrarily swing the banhammer, there are possibly some interesting game design considerations to take into account: when players in their “exploitative” behavior strive towards easy gratification, then the core premise of your game probably just isn’t as fun and entertaining as you originally thought? On the other hand games most definitely need to be challenging in order to be fun.
Anyway, i sure hope they’ll figure out some way to make mission architect work, as it’s probably the most exciting new feature in a mainstream mmo in the last few years. Besides, they score extra points for being one of few (two?) mmos on the mac.
Coded Cultures @MQ
Exploring Creative Emergences
The second edition of CODED CULTURES is a binational festival (Austria – Japan) in the year 2009 to explore new artistic practices and creative ability profiles within media integrated project-cultures and digital media related arts, focusing on Japan and Europe.
Coded Cultures link. Festival from may 27th to may 31st, exhibition from may 27th – june 07th. I’m afraid i’ll miss the symposium, but look forward to visiting the exhibition.
Jorge Colombo drew this week’s [New Yorker] cover using Brushes, an application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.
Quite impressive. Link (via Kottke)
Here & There by S&W
Here & There by Schulze & Webb are beautiful projections of Manhattan, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it:
Prints from a limited run are available for purchase.
Cloud Mirror Augmented Reality
The Cloud Mirror from eric gradman on Vimeo.
[T]he CLOUD MIRROR can identify by name whoever is standing in front of the installation. The CLOUD MIRROR then augments each frame, adding a thought bubble to each face in the image. The contents of that thought bubble are selected from a set of “tags” associated with that person. Tags come from various sources, including Facebook, Twitter, and SMS data.
Vice Magazine tries a few recipes from RFlagg’s Anarchist Cookbook V.