e548 — The Uncomfortable Valley | Games At Work dot Biz

Desert valley — Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

Published 23 March 2026

e548 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on uncomfortable valley & uncanny valley, Nintendo’s Talking Flower, 8bit Pixel Agents for AI orchestration and a whole lot more.

Michael and Michael get things rolling while Andy is away on an article discussing the animated emojis in Microsoft Teams. Fast Company article author Rebecca Heilweil describes these emojis as the ‘uncomfortable valley’ due to the animations that imbue the emojis shared in Teams with potentially unintended additional meaning. Check out the link for a comparison graphic showing the similarities and differences between the uncanny and uncomfortable valleys.

Switching to robotic animation, Michael and Michael take a look at Nintendo’s Talking Flower, which reminds them of the Alarmo alarm clock. Next, a digital camera that provides mini quests that are satisfied by taking a picture of “a tiny thing” or “a hidden face”.

Turning to AI, the co-hosts check out Pixel Agents, an 8bit representation of agents allowing the human orchestrator to monitor all the agents performing their tasks in a concurrent manner. Michael R highlights a Mac local orchestrator called Osaurus. Rounding out this week’s episode is a Washington Post about jobs that AI may take on, a story about ChatGPT assisting with cancer research, and an intriguing video about Devo.

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