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The Guild Counsel: Dealing with the Backseat Driver
Lots of MMOs these days have handy tutorials, pop-up tip windows, and highlighted marks to show you where to go and what to stab. Unfortunately, there are no advice windows that show up when you have to make a tough decision as a guild leader (although that would be a great addon!). Instead, leaders have to rely on past experience and a little bit of gut instinct and then hope for the best. Of course, if you're faced with two paths, and you choose path A, you can pretty much guarantee that someone will voice his support for path B, and that can lead to no end of headaches and potential drama. Let's take a look this week at identifying and handling the "Backseat Driver."
Ford patent describes the digital backseat driver you never wanted
We're a long way from Ford and Microsoft's EVA and her soothingly monotone stream of helpfulness, but it seems Ford is already prepping her for a dose of... feeling. The company has filed a patent called "Emotive Text-to-Speech System and Method" describing a system that can not only simulate emotion when reading out directions and describing traffic problems, but could also detect the emotion of the operator of the car and interact with them in ways designed to, oh, soothe a little road rage. The avatar is said to "appear to become frustrated" if the driver is a lead-foot, and may say "Your driving is hurting my fuel efficiency." Or, if a driver is going too fast, the dash-bound assistant could turn blue, ask what's wrong, and suggest a more direct route to their destination. It all sounds terrifically annoying, and we can only hope this disembodied nag will be a little easier to deactivate than 2001's HAL -- and a little less prone to singing, too.[Via Autoblog]
