Ben Says Things Loudly and With Authority

Warning. Nepotism ahead.

Muse Games is holding a contest to find a new, interesting game concept. The winner of the contest receives money and a publishing deal. Most of the stuff there is akin to "You're on a boat and you can go off sweet jumps." Now, that can be fun, but it ain't new. Vincent Diamante and I have an idea that is so sweet that it's sick. So nice that it's nasty.

You are an embedded photojournalist with the most powerful weapon of all: the truth. The pictures you take become resources that can be sold, used to blackmail your enemies, and curry favor in a world where everybody but you is trained to use a gun.

The most current build--a fully playable core mechanic demo--is living on the competition page. Please, so that I can finally be a real adult (Vince doesn't have this problem), go to the IMMUNITY competition website to play and vote for "War Photographer".

Regardless of the competition outcome, this will be an ongoing project. If you're interested in following its development, new iterations will be posted on my main blog roughly twice a month.

Researchers use brain interface to post to Twitter

The interface consists, essentially, of a keyboard displayed on a computer screen. "The way this works is that all the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually," says Williams. "And what your brain does is, if you're looking at the 'R' on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the 'R' flashes, your brain says, 'Hey, wait a minute. Something's different about what I was just paying attention to.' And you see a momentary change in brain activity."

Wilson, who used the interface to post the Twitter update, likens it to texting on a cell phone. "You have to press a button four times to get the character you want," he says of texting. "So this is kind of a slow process at first."

However, as with texting, users improve as they practice using the interface. "I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute," says Wilson.

Anybody know how many dollar signs it would cost to set up a rig like this, assuming you are developing the software yourself?

Science gleans 60TB of behavior data from Everquest 2 logs

Some choice bits:

Mixing in the demographic information produced a few surprises. Gender turned out to be a negative influence on interactions: even after their low numbers were taken into account, female players avoided interacting with each other. Time zones had some influence; players in the same time zone were 1.25 times more likely to partner than players even one time zone apart.

But distance had a much larger effect; players within 10 kilometers of each other were five times more likely to interact. Contractor concluded that, for the typical player, the game simply offered a way of continuing their real-world social interactions in a virtual setting.

aaaand

Mostly, the gamers seemed healthy; their body mass index was better than the US average and, although they were slightly more depressed than average, they were also less anxious.

Buried among those happy, average players was a small subset of the population—about five percent—who used the game for serious role playing and, according to Williams, "They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players." They belong to marginalized groups, like ethnic and religious minorities and non-heterosexuals, and tended to use the game as a coping mechanism.

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

Attention: This is how you know that it is the future.

I know that phrase gets bandied about quite often (Logan I'm looking at you), but what these researchers have managed to do is translate the blood circulation and synapse firing patterns happening in the brain into images. If the litmus test for "Is it currently the future?" is whether or not I can think of a figure eight and have that figure eight displayed on my Bravia at a party with a beautiful European DJ also named Bravia, then we are there. The technology exists. All that is left to be done is throw a party, raise the money for the Bravia and call up Frau Bravia.

You also need an fMRI machine and a pretty dope computer, but seriously, Moore's Law and all that.

Apparently, the way this technology works is a little bit obvious in hindsight, but still a little bit magic. A computer reads the data coming off of an fMRI machine as you observe/think of predetermined images. The computer is then able to equate the predetermined brain activity with, say, certain pixels. It is analogous to how an all-in-one printer and scanner can print a colorful grid onto a sheet of paper, scan the paper, and calibrate all of its internals.

Read more about it here!

Vince and I often talk about wonderful things that we would love to study for a lifetime had we a couple hundred lifetimes. One profession we both think would be an enormous joy is digital art archivist. To be a good games archivist you would need to be an incredibly talented programmer on many different platforms, as well as a hardware hacker and art historian. And now a relevant link!

First Screening

http://producten.hema.nl/

This is a wonderful little advertisement that plays against your expectations of the online medium. I won't ruin the surprise, but I think you should mouse over the blue cup at the top on the right ;)

Hasan Elahi is a media artist who found himself on an FBI watch list. Rather than allow the power of surveillance to rest entirely in the hands of a small group, he embraced the transparent life. He meticulously blogs his daily life as a sort of art piece/alibi.

Fun. More on Wired.

Independent Gaming linked to a wholly unofficial, yet validating list of the top 27 art games (bugger off, Ebert). Guess who's thesis project made number three on the list...

These are both examples of what I aspire to; simple, elegant, addictive, and beautiful in their own way.

Valo

Bells

Enjoy.

Here's a little machinima that Max and I put together for Peter Brinson's class. We're proud of it, so, please, only throw the softer foods.