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Papo & Yo dev replies to fan's 'moving letter'
Let it never be said that the developers at Minority Media - the team behind Papo & Yo and a studio you should get to know - are out of touch with their fans. After receiving a handwritten, 5-page letter sent in by an anonymous fan, Community Manager Rommel Romero posted an open letter response. The text is heartwarming and thoughtful, and shows a kind of thinking it would be nice to see more of. It reads, in part: "I read your moving letter the moment it got to our studio and felt that the team would love to know about you. So, we called a meeting and I read them your gripping story out loud. I had to stop every other paragraph to regain my composure; your story is an overwhelming one and your courage is inspiring. Being a small company, our path is filled with many challenges and the energy we get from our community of fans helps us push forward. When I was finished reading your letter to the team and I looked back at them, I saw in their faces that you had given them strength." The original letter isn't posted anywhere, but it's clear that it touched on some very deep and personal issues. "In your letter, you spoke of your father and about how he tells you that your thoughts are worthless," Romero wrote. "I am writing you to tell you that we disagree: your thoughts are powerful. I will pin your letter on a board in everyone's view, so that you may constantly remind us why we do what we do."
Heartwarming Pokemon comic will make you experience all the feels
Ash Ketchum, eat your heart out; this comic about the lives of a Venusaur and the baby Charmander it adopts, all to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine," will teach you more about friendship, love and caring than that 11-year old and his electric rodent ever could. The comic comes from Tumblr blog The Very Worst Thing (some art NSFW), but we'd argue this is kind of the opposite of the worst. D'awwww.
Prototype of robot that develops emotions on interacting with humans officially complete
The first prototype of a Nao robot that can develop emotions as it interacts with a human caregiver has been completed. A team across Europe was led by Dr. Lola Cañamero of the University of Herefordshire in the UK to develop the bot, which differs in several significant ways from those that came before it. These robots develop over time in much the way that a child does, learning to interact with and respond to the human beings around them. Modeled after human and chimpanzee childhood development paths, they are programmed to be highly adaptable to the people around them, and to become attached to whatever person is most suited to its needs and 'personality' profile. Over time, the more they interact, the more they learn and bond to the human being. These little ones, moreover, are capable of expressing a wide range of emotions, including anger, frustration, fear and happiness. The next steps are to research the bots' emotional and non-linguistic behavior, and to move toward combining linguistic and non-linguistic communication to become further attached and adapted to them. Yes, we want one.
thatgamecompany's third Sony project is 'something you've never experienced before'
thatgamecompany, aside from giving us a chance to start this paragraph off with a lowercase letter for once, is currently hard at work on its third contractual Sony project. At the Develop Conference in the UK this morning, tgc's Jenova Chen had a handful of artfully abstract information to drop on conference attendees regarding the upcoming game. He said the project "feels like a natural progression" from the company's other titles and will be "something you've never experienced before." So, Flowest confirmed? Not quite."In the future there's a lot of feelings that video games haven't explored that are open for us to find," Chen said -- he specifically cited God of War as "a really good game about hatred." As Eurogamer points out in its coverage of the conference, Chen repeatedly cited the iteration time necessary for a game concept to go into full production -- he says that the concept for Flower took about two years -- and as such, may very well not have any solid information to talk about regarding his company's next game. Have you considered the fourth dimension, Mr. Chen? Hmm? [Image]
All the World's a Stage: The Art of Roleplaying
This week, David returns (again) to All the World's a Stage as a newly married man, feeling particularly happy and joyful, and overflowing with enthusiasm for just about everything he loves in life.The relationship between rolelplaying and real life is a multifaceted one. If you have read this column before, you've probably seen some mention of roleplaying as a creative art form, but for some readers, it might be a bit difficult to imagine roleplaying as an art. After all, some might say, it's just a bunch of people sitting around, pretending their characters are real people, having real problems and real stories, all in spite of a game environment in which one's character can't actually affect the world in any way that matters. Problems of continuity, such as instanced dungeons in which many people can slay the same monster at the same time over and over again, make some people feel as though there's no story value to the game at all, and that anything roleplayers do is a waste of their time.The trick for roleplayers is to think of roleplaying as something more like freeform play art, in which the main point of the art isn't so much the end product that results from one's efforts (as it would be in painting, novel-writing, or composing music), but rather the thoughts, feelings, and inspiration that come to mind when we actually engage in the process of the art itself. The closest parallel to another art form might be improv acting games, where the whole point is to make things up for you and the other actors to enjoy, rather than to deliver a performance for a separate audience; but if you've enjoyed something so simple as building a sand castle on the beach, then you probably have a good sense of what it feels like to roleplay. Fingerpainting, mandala-making or even just freeform music and dancing can all give a similar feeling like what you get in roleplaying: the sheer joy of creation.Some roleplayers need no more justification for their art than that they enjoyed themselves. But others look at their own roleplaying careers and see certain things that they've taken away from their roleplaying experience over time. These things are usually not as solid as an actual painting or recorded song, but they still have a kind of solidity in the roleplayer's mind, as they positively impact his or her real life in several ways.
Video: Ganzbot reads Twitter feeds aloud, looks fashionably low-rate
We've seen methods for hooking house plants up with their own Twitter account, but there's hardly anything more satisfying that building a robot to read back all those feeds from the thousands of people you're undoubtedly following. Ganzbot is a decidedly low-budget robot that relies on an Arduino Decima to control the head actions and a USB cable to receive up-to-date status information. Have a look at the innards as well as a few words being spoken just after the jump.[Via MAKE]
Would emotional value improve the leveling experience in MMOGs?
Grats on your ding, wait, why are you crying? Not again. That last level really hurt your feelings didn't it. Well, some game developers like Indigo Prophecy creator, David Cage believe there is a missing component in the MMOG leveling experience. Cage's own feeling on the matter is that the interconnection is lacking when it comes to invoking a broader reaction from the player. "What's the real narrative or emotional value? Sometimes it's really interesting when you're in the guild in a massively multiplayer game and you attack the fortress or whatever. Some great things can be told, but it's not guaranteed. The value is not always there."Wow, that's deep but in all seriousness there is a certain truth to his sentiment. Leveling can be a painfully dull experience and usually MMOG use the same formula and mimic the same rags-to-riches journey. While there is nothing wrong with that, it can become tiresome and insipid if you no longer care for the redundant leveling experience. So maybe developers do need to instill a sense of danger, a sense of importance and meaning to the leveling experience. Fun is most important, and MMOGs should be enjoyed and not an emotional rollercoaster into dystopia.
Kansei makes a comeback with reactive facial expressions
Quite a lot has transpired in the android universe in the past two years, and it's fairly safe to say that Kansei has made a few solid strides during that time as well. A Japanese research team has purportedly crafted a working prototype that can "pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords." According to a professor at Meiji University's School of Science and Technology, the idea of the project is to "create a flow of consciousness in robots so that they can make the relevant facial expressions," and the device relies on 19 movable parts and a silicon face mask in order to work its magic. Developers also noted that speech abilities should be added within a few years, and while we doubt you had to guess, it's quite likely that fully developed Kanseis will one day roam nursing homes as Japan seeks to care for its quickly growing geriatric set.
GlowBots develop relationships, express emotions via LEDs
Although we can't deny that having a household humanoid that chases away intruders would be a welcome member to most families, a team of individuals more focused on actual "complex relationships" have developed a series of bots that can learn and express emotions via lights. GlowBots are wee wheeled creatures that "develop attractive patterns that are affected both by user interaction and communication between the robots," meaning that the days of expensive animal training in order to have a pet around are nearly through. The technology within is based on an open experimental robot platform, dubbed e-Puck, and the actual robots utilize "eight IR proximity sensors, a camera, a trio of microphones, three-axis accelerometer, a speaker, two stepper motors, Bluetooth interface, a number of LEDs, a PIC micro controller, and a 12-step-mode selector" to confess their love. The creators will apparently be showing off their heartwarming invention at this year's SIGGRAPH conference, but until these suckas come sheathed in some sort of faux fur and fully equipped with bad breath, we're afraid Fido will retain control of the dog house for now.[Via PastaAndVinegar]
Nintendo's Wii: a marriage saver?
It's fairly obvious that using the Wii to keep yourself slim and trim is bound to put a smile on your SO's face, but a curious banner at a presumed church used Nintendo's console (and its token font, too) to hint at answers to a successful marriage. Of course, a couple interested in spending countless hours of quality time gaming away with each other are indeed more likely to find common ground, but for the uber-competitive type, gaming together could lead to more quibbles than friendly laughs. Nevertheless, it shouldn't be surprising that a religious institution would tap into mainstream culture in order to garner attention to its offerings, and hey, if you've got to go to counseling for only taking "Mii" into consideration, you may as well get your game on while you're at it.[Via NintendoWiiFanboy]
