Episode 222 - Haptic eSports | Games At Work dot Biz

Michael and Michael start 2019 off with the wide world of sports, eSports to be specific, and the story of one Twitch celebrity Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who plays Fortnight about 12 hours a day for his millions of subscribers. His efforts resulted in nearly $10 million in income in 2018. It is incredible that there is such money in sponsorships, subscriptions and advertising related to online game playing, and in the wider esports tournaments as well.

Turning to their thoughts to wearables, Michael R talks about a Microsoft haptic wristband, and his personal experience with the therapeutic benefits of electric muscle stimulation. The pair follow up the haptic conversation, with one on smart fabrics, and what could be done via fabric to interact with the wearer — maybe giving them extrasensory perception of the world around them. Neil Harbisson gave an interesting TED talk on what it’s like to hear color, and how he can hear colors that cannot be seen by the human eye.

Mapping the world is becoming more and more important, especially as keeping mapping data up to date requires an incredible amount of energy and time from the map owners. Validating that a point of interest is still there, open and available to visit makes the difference between a frustrated user and a very satisfied one. Michael R puts forth the terrific idea that there’s a win-win-win strategy to be employed, where the map data owner benefits from crowdsourcing the effort of keeping the maps up to date, the individual doing the updates benefits via contests/games/microtransactions, and the business establishment benefits as well from the attention of 3rd parties. While there are many examples of this kind of action — road munching from the early days of Waze, Swarm/Foursquare, Yelp reviews, the benefit to the crowdsource participant to improve/validate the map has not really been cracked yet.

Selected Links

TechCrunch article: Ninja raked in nearly $10 million on 2018 — https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/02/ninja-raked-in-nearly-10-million-in-2018/

Wikipedia article: List of esports leagues and tournaments — https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-filed-a-patent-for-a-haptic-wearable-muscle-stimulator/

ZD Net article: Microsoft patent shows wearable band with haptic feedback — https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-filed-a-patent-for-a-haptic-wearable-muscle-stimulator/

Fast Company article: Patent reveal Apple is looking into “smart fabric” — https://www.fastcompany.com/90287049/new-apple-patents-reveal-smart-fabric-and-gaming-ambitions

TED Radio Hour 4 Jan 2019 episode: Extrasensory — https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2019-01-04

TED Radio Hour What’s It Like To Hear Color? — https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=283441986

Wired article: This Startup Is Challenging Google Maps — And It Needs You — https://www.wired.com/story/streetcred-mapping-cryptocurrency-needs-you/

Map NYC by StreetCred — https://mapnyc.streetcred.co

StreetCred — https://www.streetcred.co

Waze — https://www.waze.com

Foursquare — https://foursquare.com