Games At Work dot Biz

Oh hello, what do we have here? 👀
#pokemon #lego #leak
https://retrododo.com/pokemon-lego-set-reportedly-leaked-by-lego-mexico/

— Daniel (@puresick) 2025-03-18T14:16:13.486Z

Retrododo article: Pokémon LEGO Set Reportedly Leaked By LEGO Mexico

Lego Germany Pokémon

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:32 — 58.5MB) | Embed

e505 — AR Never Neverland

By Michael Martine | March 17, 2025 - 06:22 |March 16, 2025 Podcast

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red neon sign reading ‘Neverland’ — Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash

Published 17 March 2025

e505 with Michael and Michael – stories and discussion on AI technical & security challenges, a Metallica augmented concert, Dungeons & Dragons and much more.

Michael and Michael get things started off while Andy is away with a discussion on the security challenges and technical complexity for AI implementations for Siri and in upscaling video. They then turn to another set of AI game generation and playing experiences using Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. There have been many such stories in the past years where the level of AI sophistication has been tested by either developing game code or leveraging machine learning to play a game.

Moving into the augmented experience world, Michael R gives his firsthand impressions of the new Apple Vision Pro Metallica immersive concert. He was very impressed – listen into the episode for the specific vignettes that were most intriguing to him. This spurred a conversation between Michael and Michael about ways to potentially interact with such immersive experiences in the style that the 1983 game Dragon’s Lair used to highlight choices for the player. Take a look at the YouTube video below for this game mechanic. In another story, Lowe’s Home Improvement is using the Apple Vision Pro to help you visualize your kitchen design. This also reminds the co-hosts of similar experiences from Ikea.

The team then heads over to the Pokemon Go Gym to exercise the story the recent sale by Niantic of the game (and the game’s data) to Scopely. Michael and Michael imagine how in-game rewards could generate immensely valuable (near) real time location data collection. Last, the team wraps up with a couple of Dungeons and Dragons stories – one on the tabletop augmented experience and another on a colossal D20.

How would you like to experience a concert or sporting event from the comfort of your living room? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Links

AI

9 to 5 Mac article: Apple commenter John Gruber launches blistering attack on ‘rotten’ Apple over Siri vaporware

Vice article: Netflix Used AI to Upscale ‘A Different World’ and It’s a Melted Nightmare

The Guardian article: ‘A lot worse than expected’: AI Pac-Man clones, reviewed

Pac-Man history

Games at Work e504: Can you Digg It? for fly.pieter.com

Boy Genius Report article: Claude-3.7 outperforms other AI in Super Mario Bros, but it’s still no gamer

Super Mario Bros history

Games at Work e225: Ah-ha, it’s AI! for AI playing Q*Bert

AR

MacStories article: Metallica Is Coming to the Apple Vision Pro

Wikipedia article: Dragon’s Lair

9 to 5 Mac article: Apple Vision Pro demos expanding to new Lowe’s stores

Games at Work e336: Pancaking Robots for Pancake “furniture as a service” and Ikea

Apple App Store: Magic Room: LiDAR Environment

AR / VR Games

TechCrunch article: Pokémon GO maker Niantic is selling its games division to Scopely for $3.5B

404 Media article: Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data

Games at Work e503: Death Watch for Scaniverse

Polygon article: After years in development, D&D’s Unreal-powered virtual tabletop still feels off

Hello Mastodon! I'm a power engineer who is trying out solo game development and on the way to release Power Network Tycoon – a game where you build and manage your own electrical grid with real physics simulation.
If you've ever wondered how power systems actually work (or why they fail), this might be your jam. I built it to be technically accurate while still being fun. To say it's been a challenge is an understatement
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2429930/Power_Network_Tycoon/
#GameDev #IndieGame #Simulation #Gaming #Energy

— David Made This (@DavidMadeThis) 2025-03-10T17:11:40.896Z

Tindie post: Massive Light Up D20

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:34 — 60.4MB) | Embed

e504 — Can You Digg It?

By Michael Martine | March 10, 2025 - 06:38 |March 9, 2025 Podcast

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picture of a sign with the text “Life is a Garden, Dig It.” — Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

Published 10 March 2025

e504 with Andy, Michael and Michael – stories and discussion on #vibecoding #AI, #biocomputing, #philosophy, #Digg, #MWC25, #LaserRot and much more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things started off with a 404 Media story about creating software with AI, specifically focusing on Pieter Levels’ “vibe coding” methodology. Levels created a flight simulator game using AI and per the article, this free to play game is bringing in a very healthy income from in-game advertising and purchases.

Next up, is a story about a company called Cortical Labs who offer the CL1, which they describe as “the world’s first code deployable biological computer”. Amazingly, Cortical Labs also offer a biological cloud service. This reminds Michael R of his experiences in the biocomputing space, and Michael M of the Swiss startup FinalSpark.

Then the team turns to the discussion of whether a large language model can produce philosophical and ethical output sparked by an article entitled “The questions that ChatGPT shouldn’t answer”.

An article on a new version of Monopoly which features a mobile app to handle the banking tasks gets the three co-hosts energized.

After the Monopoly discussion, the team turns to the reboot of Digg – something that inspired the creation of Dogear Nation, the precursor to the Games At Work podcast.

Wrapping up this episode is a discussion of exoskeletons, a quick fly over of some of the technology introduced at Mobile World Congress 2025, and a conversation on Warner Brothers DVDs with laser rot showing that even if you have physical media, it is not immune to degradation.

What you would like to “vibe code”? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Links

AI

404 Media article: This Game Created by AI ‘Vibe Coding’ Makes $50,000 a Month. Yours Probably Won’t

fly.Pieter.com

Wikipedia entry: Vibe coding

slither.io

Solterra Guardians

MIT’s Scratch

This is… uhh… deeply disturbing, tbh. https://newatlas.com/brain/cortical-bioengineered-intelligence/
More: https://corticallabs.com/cl1.html

— Sean Heber (@bigzaphod) 2025-03-04T17:01:25.421Z

New Atlas article: World’s first “Synthetic Biological Intelligence” runs on living human cells

Cortical Labs’ CL1

Games at Work e470: Two Marvelous Mini Brains for biocomputing

Science Alert article: Swiss Startup Connects 16 Human Mini-Brains to Create Low Energy ‘Biocomputer’

FinalSpark Neuroplatform

The Verge article: The questions ChatGPT shouldn’t answer

IMdB: The Good Place

Simon & Schuster book: How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur