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Artificial intelligence is on the brink of a 'diversity disaster'
The lack of diversity within artificial intelligence is pushing the field to a dangerous "tipping point," according to new research from the AI Now Institute. It says that due to an overwhelming proportion of white males in the field, the technology is at risk of perpetuating historical biases and power imbalances.
WoW reveals new human and Draenei male models
World of Warcraft character models are on their way to enjoying an eventual facelift, and the latest reveal shows off two new models as they'll appear in the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. The human and Draenei male character models look to be more detailed and "realistic" as we saw with the female Draenei reveal (that was first done as a not-so-popular April Fools' joke). You can check out more details on the model revamps at the official site.
Latest episode of PBS' Game/Show discusses male stereotypes
The latest episode of PBS' weekly webseries Game/Show asks the question: Do video game stereotypes hurt men? Following a recent episode exploring sexism in gaming culture, host Jamin Warren returns to discuss growing body image issues and social expectations men face, as well as the ways video games relate to them. This is the sixth episode in the entertaining Kornhaber Brown-produced webseries, which includes videos about violence in gaming and the "Let's Play" YouTube phenomenon. Each episode offers a fascinating look at the culture surrounding games and the "relationship between videogames and modern life." We recommend you find six minutes and 43 seconds to watch this week's episode; it's a good one.
The HEX Code Wallet case is nicely built, but a little too unwieldy
A few years ago, I decided to do my best to narrow down the number of things I carry around in my pockets every single day. Instead of one giant keychain with all of the keys I've ever owned on it, I cut down to two smaller keychains, one for my house and another for my car. And instead of a giant wallet that had been stretching out my back pants pockets, I instead just grabbed the insert out and stuck my ID and a few cards in there. Other than that, my iPhone 4 is the largest thing I carry around all the time. Of course, the functionality is definitely worth it, but still, I've always wondered if there was a way I could go even lighter, and combine my iPhone and wallet into one unit. The HEX Code Wallet case for the iPhone 4 or 4S is designed to do just that: It's a very well-made leather wraparound case that has a few card slots on the inside front cover, and the goal is to simply store a credit card or two and your ID, so that you don't need to carry around both a phone and a wallet when you go out. Unfortunately, the HEX Wallet isn't what I'm looking for. While it will definitely store your cards as needed, it's just too unwieldy for the simplicity that I'm after. The case is definitely well-built -- the leather on the outside is solid, if a little too rough. Inside, however, the leather that holds your cards is quite luxurious, and the plastic that holds in the iPhone is smooth and strong. I had no problem snapping my iPhone 4 into place, and while it was a little tougher to get it out, presumably you won't be removing it much once you've purchased this one. All of the buttons are, obviously, accessible, and a nice open area near the dock connector means I had no issues hooking my iPhone up to a charging cable while in the case. The biggest issue with the HEX, however, is when you start to put your cards in it. There are three slots on the inside front cover, as well as a larger pocket behind. But if you actually do use all three slots, the case becomes quite thick, and a little too unwieldy for my taste. Plus, even with my wallet insert, I still carry around 10 or 12 cards (from various customer appreciation programs and discount stores), so the HEX wouldn't work for me all of the time anyway. The other issue I have with the case is the strap that runs from top to bottom outside, and is meant to keep the case closed and shut when you're done with the iPhone. While the strap itself is nice and strong and seems well-connected to the case, I just found it in the way while I was using the case, and it felt a little awkward snapping it back around when the case was being closed. Fans of Moleskine notebooks may love this strap, but personally, it didn't work for what I wanted. And finally, though this is probably the most personal of my feedback, I just don't like the idea of a cover flap on my iPhone. It makes what is a really beautiful and simple device into something off-center and even ugly. The flap doesn't fold around to the back at all, so when you're using the iPhone with this case on, it's basically a book where you're only reading the right side of the page. I admit that this is mostly personal taste, but that's not the case for me. If you do just have a few cards you want to make sure are always with your iPhone, and you don't mind those concerns about having a cover and a strap on your case, then the HEX Wallet might be what you're looking for. At $50, it's not cheap, but the production materials aren't cheap here, either -- this definitely feels like a case that can last a while, and the black one I tested did look quite classy, especially when closed. But this case definitely isn't the one for me. Personally, I'm more excited about the possibilities of Passbook in iOS 6, and any other future technologies that allow me to use my iPhone as a credit card, identification system or even car key. Eventually, my hope is that all I'll ever have to carry around to get whatever I need will be Apple's gorgeous smartphone, and any case it needs will accent its beauty, rather than try to cover it all up.
Retaining your masculinity while carrying the iPad
The New York Times had an odd post recently in which it responded to men who were having trouble carrying their iPad around town in a masculine fashion. According to the article in its Fashion & Style section, some men have even eschewed taking their iPad in public just because there's a lack of suitably macho bags. Scott Stein at CNET even rated iPad bags in terms of their "humiliation index." I've used a laptop for many, many years and I'll admit this isn't a problem that's ever occurred to me. Any doubts or questions about my bag are instantly dissipated when I bust out awesome technology like the iPad. I guess I could see a bit of embarrassment if you're wearing a funky fanny pack or something, but there are tons of great looking bags for the iPad. Just check out the Booq Boa push bag, for example If you really have trouble with establishing your masculinity via your gadget bag, let me suggest using a Sharpie to draw some skulls on it or maybe add some spikes.
Consumer survey says iPhone owners more likely to shop online, go snowboarding
This little list of factoids from last fall's Survey of the American Consumer is pretty interesting. It runs down a few of the things that iPhone owners are more likely to do than the average American. Some of them are obvious (iPhone owners are more likely to make calls over the Internet, see their phone as entertainment, or even pay a subscription to watch live TV on the device), but did you know that iPhone owners are even more likely to own an elliptical trainer or be snowboarders? In fact, they're 282% more likely than the average American to order a product from Zappos. Maybe they just wanted to save money. At any rate, these stats are really more of a novelty. We already know that most iPhone and Apple product users tend to be male, older, and affluent; it's not surprising that pastimes and activities that also appeal to that segment are popular among iPhone owners. In the end, the most interesting stat may be the last one: iPhone owners are 52% more likely than other people to want to "wow" others with their devices. We know that iPhone owners have more money and more resources than others, but I'm interested to know more about just how vain we are and how Apple cultivates its own image to target that audience.
Sexist computers: male voices are apparently harder to recognize than female ones
Researchers up at the University of Edinburgh have determined that the male voice is harder for voice recognition software to pick up and understand than its female counterpart. This conclusion was reached after telephone conversation recordings were run through a battery of tests, which revealed that men seem to say "umm" and "err" more often, while also identifying that the greatest difficulties arise with words that sound similar and can arise in the same context, such as "him" and "them." Equally troubling is the first word in a sentence, as it comes without context and therefore doesn't benefit from any predictive assistance. Done in partnership with Stanford, the study was aimed at identifying and overcoming the major hurdles to producing usable and reliable voice recognition -- something Google's universal voice translator phone is also aiming to achieve. Let's hope somebody figures out how to get around all our hemming and hawing, eh?
All the World's a Stage: Anonymosity
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles. Roleplaying is a journey of trust you take with strangers. You may now and then start out with a group of people you know in real life, but for the most part, the people you roleplay with have no idea who you really are, or why you are sitting here at the computer. You can tell them if you want to, but most people don't ask. Roleplayers tend to keep personal details private, and don't intrude on one another's space. Besides, other roleplayers don't necessarily care that much about who you "really are" either. They're there to get to know your character, not you as a person, unless your character first makes a very good impression and they decide that they actually want to be friends as real people. Even though you respect each other as people who share the same interest, there's still a distance between you which either (or both) of you may wish to maintain. And yet, the relationship you have is one of trust. It's not at all at the same level as a best friend of course, but you still have to trust one another in a very creative sense -- you rely on each other to create interesting things for your characters to share with one another. You're not just buying a shirt from a salesperson or holding the door for a passerby -- you're exchanging behavior and language in an unpredictable and totally interconnected way. Any little surprise a stranger brings to an interaction may completely alter the whole game session and stick in your mind as one of your most memorable gaming experiences. Roleplayers have to trust other roleplayers to help make those experiences positive, even without knowing anything at all about one another. Sometimes two characters can even become very close friends, even though the real people behind them do not.
Gender differences in armor
A few readers sent us this post over at Border House that has laid bare (heh) the oft-mentioned differences in armor between the genders in World of Warcraft. While there are some exceptions, in most cases, the exact same set of armor (like this chestplate above) shows up as much more skimpy on female characters than it does on male characters. To the point of absurdity in some places -- even plate leggings, designed to serve as solid protection to the legs, appear to be more like plate thong underwear on the ladies. As Border House points out, this isn't just WoW's problem. Fantasy and sci-fi in general have been the domain of boys in the past (even if that is changing quickly), and the sexual depictions in the genre have reflected that, for both traditional and financial reasons. As I pointed out the other day, all of Blizzard's luminaries thus far have been men -- is it any surprise that the game is designed from a mostly male perspective? And as BH also says, fortunately, WoW has lots of different gear. If you don't like what your character is wearing, then you can find something else.
Anti-Aliased: Boobs and you
Well Happy Turkey Day everyone! It's Thanksgiving Thursday, but it's also that time of the week again -- the time where Sera gets to rant in her opinion column to her heart's content. Yes, that's right, it's time for Anti-Aliased.This week's topic is one that's near and dear to my heart. Well, it's near to my heart, at least, and I mean that quite literally. It's also a perfect topic for today's holiday! I mean, who doesn't like to talk about large breasts on Thanksgiving? (Score one for the terrible synonym.)During last week's column on Blade & Soul, the main topic that came up time and time again in the comments wasn't the game's combat, or the game's engine, or anything really related to the game at large. No, it seems that many of you were turned off of the game by the fact that the screenshot I used had a woman with huge boobs. That was the deal breaker for the game.
Drama Mamas: Time to man up
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we pretend to be a gender we're not. When we discussed boys playing girl characters before, we all pretty much agreed that it was cool as long as there was no deception involved. Roleplaying = yay. Experimentation = good. Hiding your true identity in a non-roleplaying environment = uh oh. Unfortunately, for One Big Liar, what began as experimentation and a wee bit of roleplaying evolved into a full-scale reputation for being a "real girl." Uh oh, indeed.
Nielsen: WoW is most played core game by 25-54 females
Here's an interesting bit of info from the Nielsen folks: over 400,000 women are playing World of Warcraft in the US, which means it's the most-played "core" game for that gender. And even more interesting, females 25 years or older make up the largest block of PC game players overall, and they account for 54.6% of all gameplay minutes in December of last year. Girls don't just play WoW -- they're quickly becoming one of it's main demographics.You can read the report in PDF form over here -- the chart above might be the most interesting piece of information, as it shows that though males still make up a huge part of the PC gaming audience, many of them have now moved on to consoles, and women (especially older women, over 25), during the last month of last year, are making up a huge audience for PC games. Later in the report, you can see what kinds of games women are really playing: Solitare, Freecell, Minesweeper, and all of those other little attention grabbers on every PC. But among those widespread casual games is our own World of Warcraft. And while the 25-52 male audience of 675, 713 for that game still remains larger than the female audience in the same demo, the ladies aren't far behind.Neilsen also calculated some base stats for WoW, including the fact that 1.8 million unique people played the game, and the average time of gameplay per week was 744 minutes, just over 12 hours (slightly up from last year's average). Additionally, of those who play World of Warcraft, their second most-played game was Solitaire, followed by Warcraft III. Fascinating stuff. Remember that these are statistics, so they are more general trends than anything else, but it's definitely true World of Warcraft and PC gaming in general is no longer only the domain of the male demographic.
Bandai's latest handheld helps women "understand" men
For the longest time now, we were under the impression that it was men looking for miraculous ways of understanding woman. Clearly, we've had the whole thing backwards. Bandai has apparently polled thousands of opinionated males in order to fill its latest handheld with data that woman aged 20 to 30 will pay ¥2,499 ($28) to know. In all seriousness, we can't imagine this thing having a very good search mechanism, so its actual usefulness is definitely questionable. One thing's for sure, though -- handing one of these to your SO / ex-lover with a smirk is guaranteed to get a rise.[Via ShinyShiny]
Survey reveals what twinks are all about
This is interesting -- our friend Drayner over at Twinkinfo.com recently took a survey of his site's readers, and after picking up almost 1,000 replies, he's posted the results. They show a little bit of insight into the kind of person that plays a twink (a character maxed out at a certain level before 80, usually to run around in PvP battlegrounds). Specifically, they're male, under 21, play for 21-30 hours a week, think their gear rates a 5 out of 5, and are probably level 19 and in Warsong Gulch capturing flags. I'm not sure if that's suprising or not, but those are pretty safe majority votes, even given the smaller sample size of the poll.Twink players are also more likely to not have more than one account, which kind of makes sense -- they only need one account and just have lots of characters on them. 66% of twinks are actually in twink guilds, and most have at least more than one twink to play around with. Hunters and Rogues top the class choices (though not with a clear majority at all). And perhaps most interesting, over 50% of twinks say Blizzard is serving them just fine -- they're not ignoring them, and they're not giving them any more love than other players. Still, as Drayner pointed out to us, about 36% of twinks said they'd leave the game if Blizzard shut them down with an additional 30% saying Maybe, so Blizzard does have a little incentive there to keep twinking happening.Quite interesting -- twinks might be one of the only groups of players who are completely fine with how they're being handled in game. 2.3 obviously gave them lots of new items to play with, and while there is some frustration from other players, Blizzard has made it so easy to level that if you don't want to play with the twinks at 19, you can move on pretty quickly.
Breakfast Topic: To re-customize or not
Paid customization has come to the game, and with it, some big decisions for a lot of players. We've asked for a long time to be able to change our gender or look in the game, and now that we can, we have to decide if we will or not.Personally, I'm torn -- way back when I first started the game, I created a female Night Elf Hunter, thinking along the old classic lines of "if I'm going to stare at someone's backside for hours and hours, it might as well be a woman." But since then, I've gotten a lot of flak for being a dude playing a female character, and since I've played all male characters since then, I think I better identify with male characters anyway, even if the view isn't as good.But on the other hand, I'm used to my Hunter now -- she's looked the same for almost 80 levels, and it would be weird to suddenly see a Night Elf guy on the screen in her place. So I'm torn -- change my character to a male and make being social in game much easier, or stay the same and keep my character familiar to me?What do you all think? Are you facing the same situation or is the choice easier (or even harder) for you?
Interview with a Gnome Death Knight
We still have no idea who did the voice of the Headless Horseman, but if you're playing a male Gnome Death Knight lately, we know whose voice you've been listening to: Dino Andrade, recently interviewed by Geeks of Doom, a voice actor who's probably most heard as "Pop" of the Kellogg's Rice Crispies mascots. You can hear his reels and demos on his website, and sure enough, that's our Gnome.Andrade says the Blizzard recording was "the most secretive thing I have ever done" -- they didn't show him anything visually about what the character was or did, and apparently he wasn't even allowed to take the script out of the recording room. Andrade also says that Blizzard is keen to let voice actors do their thing -- rather than giving direction, they let the actor come up with lots of their own reads, and then chose the one they wanted to use. It's almost hard to believe that Blizzard's voice acting is so good, given how hands-off they are (you'd think they'd aim to connect it with the art or animation in some way), but Blizzard fans know how well it works -- the voice characterisation in Blizzard games has always been terrific.Very interesting -- while Blizzard's voices are one of the things that have really made their games successful, it's strange that they've never let us into the process more. Their sites are full of concept art and model designs, but it would be cool to hear an uncut recording session or find out exactly how voice recordings are integrated with the game. Maybe we'll see more on that in the future.
Jennicide: Male players "need to be more accepting of women ingame"
Allakazaham has posted an interview with "Jennicide," who, as we reported previously, is not only a poker player and Playboy poser, but plays World of Warcraft as well. Unfortunately, she doesn't sound all that into the game (she does claim to have raided during a poker match, which is pretty awesome if true), but she does make an excellent point about Blizzard's marketing: as cool as William Shatner and Mr. T are, their ads could use a little more feminine touch, and they could certainly acknowledge all the women playing this game a little better.She also says that "guys need to be more accepting of women in game," and unfortunately she doesn't offer any solutions on how to make that happen, but it's good to hear someone say it -- just ask any girl who's been afraid to come on Ventrilo for fear that creepy guys will come out of the woodwork.All in all, Jennicide sounds like she's got a good head on her shoulders (and she does actually win a few nerd points for playing The Realm). Maybe she's right -- more high profile female players might help turn the image of gender in game a little more close to equal.
GDC08: Gamer genders, in graph form
We were amused by this graph from Sony's PSN presentation. According to their internal data, 92% of registered PSN gamers are male. Only 4% are female! It looks like hardcore gamers are still predominantly testosterone-driven. Should we be depressed, or disturbed, that there are as many female gamers as those whose genders are "unidentified"?
All the World's a Stage: If looks could kill
All the World's a Stage is a column for inquisitive minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening. The media usually portrays WoW as a "boy's game." That's not to say girls don't play too, of course -- just that the game is basically about qualities such as aggressiveness and violence, and our culture expects males to be interested in that sort of thing. Whether such a designation is true or not, the "masculine equals violent" stereotype is very pervasive, and it is natural for many male players to begin the game with a powerful and intimidating character in mind. The player may imagine that his avatar is warm and kind-hearted inside, but outwardly, his character looks as though he could rip out your throat with a flick of his pinky finger.But there are many men out there who don't like such exaggerated manliness in their characters, just as there are many women who don't want their character to look like a dainty barbie doll. Being a person isn't just about just one gender attribute, after all. Indeed, female characters in WoW can achieve a full range of human attributes in their appearance; they can look friendly and intelligent, yet lightning quick and deadly at the same time. However, the appearance of male characters is often so filled to the brim with "strength and honor" that there's not much room left for any other human quality.
Mojo Money Night promises more finance-based programming in 2008
Those who felt strangely compelled to watch Wall Street Warriors religiously will be stoked to hear of Mojo's plans for the new year. Apparently, the male-centric channel will be devoting Thursday nights to finance-based offerings, and aside from the return of the aforementioned program, we'll also be treated to two new shows. The block, which will aptly be dubbed Mojo Money Night, will feature Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist -- a show focusing on the life of a capital management investor -- and Junkies, a new series all about "serial entrepreneurs." The action gets going on January 24th of next year, so we'd go on and pencil in a reminder in that perpetually crammed planner of yours.[Image courtesy of Mojo]
