9A469E6A-7DCF-4D85-B605-281EAB20BF64: [Music]
91CAF432-16BC-48DE-8182-B7E7F0CF7766: This is GamesItWork.biz, your weekly podcast about gaming, technology, and play.
91CAF432-16BC-48DE-8182-B7E7F0CF7766: Your hosts are Michael Martine, Andy Piper, and Michael Rowe.
91CAF432-16BC-48DE-8182-B7E7F0CF7766: The thoughts and opinions on this podcast are those of the hosts and guests alone,
91CAF432-16BC-48DE-8182-B7E7F0CF7766: and are not the opinions of any organization which they have been, are, or may be, affiliated with.
91CAF432-16BC-48DE-8182-B7E7F0CF7766: This is episode 540, saucer, separation button.
9A469E6A-7DCF-4D85-B605-281EAB20BF64: [upbeat music]
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of GamesItWork.biz, your weekly technology podcast. This is Michael Martine, Freshly Back from Terror Hote, and I'm glad to be back reunited with Mike Podcast co-host Michael Rowe and Andy Piper, and how you're doing these days.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I'm well Michael, thanks for asking and say Tera Ho.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Terahote rhymes with boat
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Tera Ho.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Oh, okay.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: It's an Indiana of all places so
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Okay.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Wow.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: The things you learn on a podcast like this, right?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Nice trip.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: It's not terahoot and ryan's with boot?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I just wanna give a shout out to Michael Rowe for keeping things rolling last week with our good friend E-Pread.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yeah. Ian was awesome. I was very glad to find Ian and not find him, but get him, convince him to come back and have fun with us. It was loads. Yes. Yes. Yes.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Since neither of us could be part of the show.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: to drag him kicking and screaming as a retired person to have to express an opinion on a topic or three.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Yes
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Yeah, you know, you know the thing that struck me as I was listening to the episode is like, you know
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Now that he's retired I wonder how busy he might be hmm
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Why do you think? No, that's not why I asked him, but hey, yeah, he could. Maybe like a third part of a novel trilogy.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: He could always spend some more time writing I guess.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, we have got some fun links to share this week.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And Andy, we're going to start off with you because you have a new piece of shiny new equipment that you've gotten off of Kickstarter, which kind of kickstarted our run of show.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, let's talk about this great device you have for your phone.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: That noise was my M-con controller, which is a MagSafe connectable, or magnetically attachable controller for your mobile device, so it's pretty much the same footprint as my iPhone,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: The thing that you're showing, ooh, yes.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Ooh, did you hear that?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: whatever version I've got, the one that's two years old, 15 something like that, connects on the back using mech safe. Really nicely even though I'm
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: where it's got a case on my phone.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And you press this button, it pops up so that the underneath the phone slides out,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: a standard control pad with a D-pad and two joysticks left and right thumbsticks.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And then you have four buttons on the face,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: and then there's also four shoulder buttons.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: You can fold out the little wings.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So it's more like a regular console controller.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: A bit more comfortable to hold that way.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And the other thing you can do is to test.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And you can attach the top section, which is the magnetic part, and prop your iDevice or mobile device on the table with a little kickstand instead if you prefer.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So yeah, it's quite nice.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: So, so I haven't asked, does it work with Android?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It does, yes.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: They attach, in case you don't have a maxa for a key magnet on the back of your device.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: they've added one of those all easy to stick on rings.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I have to say I think this was a kickstarter that was about 18 months ago, I backed it and it's taken a long time and they did some really nice updates through the campaign showing the iterations of the thing and yeah, it's really nice device.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: The only thing is that a lot of mobile games are deliberately made for portrait mode because they're more casual games for when you're waiting for the bus or whatever and just
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: wiping away, rather than the landscape mode that this expects which has been my one annoyance finding, easily finding the games that it supports or that support it.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, sticking on this theme of controllers, there's another one that we were chatting about a minute or two before getting into the show itself, and this is the Abernich's wireless controller, Abernich, Abernich.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Anvanic. Yes. Anvanic. They make a lot of retro devices for these fairly small consoles that you can play retro games on these days, although. So this is apparently, this is a story on the verge that actually just came out today as we record about the new Anvanic controller and it's
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And it has a very special feature, doesn't it?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: you know, a fairly standard looking console.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: controller, not dissimilar to what I've just been talking about with the phone.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And it's not the first one that has a screen in the middle between the thumbsticks or the other controls. Of course, we can go all the way back to the Sega Dreamcast for that kind of aesthetic where you had a little display in the middle, but this one, as well as showing, you know,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Check out!
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: your battery charge and various other bits of information on there, it will show your heart rate.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I guess so you can calm down in your first person shooter.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Exactly. Yes.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: You know, the one thing I was thinking about with the availability of various retro arcade tools on mobile, I'm wondering if any of those would, by definition, support a gamepad.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: And therefore, if you ran one of those arcade simulators, if it would give you more
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: one of the things that when I went into Apple Arcade on my phone it was recommending was the retrocade okay simulator game yes I don't know whether I also went to one that said it supported a controller and it was immediately trying to do things in portrait mode so in principle is you still need to tell the games framework on on iOS to to pump the the game gamepad through in the case of the ambient act.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: This is apparently incorporating the heart rate sensor going back to this story.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Into the actual grips of the controller, which I think is quite interesting.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: There's a few other interesting elements to the device.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I'm wondering whether people will be interested in integrating the heart rate sensor into games,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: or whether it will just be used for something.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I haven't done any more than just say it's coming soon, so it's a bit of a gimmick at the moment.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: But it also doesn't.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Well, they're not a development shop though. Are they? Does dampernik write games as well?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Ambonic? No, no, no, they make a lot of hardware, yeah, they make a lot of hardware.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: They're just a hardware manager
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So I mean if you if you think about all the other you know
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Not controllers, but devices that I'll read other information health information whether it's a watch or ring or what have you?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: In theory those data streams exist and an enterprising developer might be able to then incorporate that stream into doing something you know like for example
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: To suggest rest breaks or to leverage kind of like with Pokemon Go that you want to get your heart rate up a bit you know to maybe unlock a certain feature at a certain location because you're now exercising and I can tell yeah
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Or Pokemon sleep, which I've been playing now for two years consistently and using it as, you know, because I already, I haven't collected more, I don't think it's actually possible to collect them all, I'm convinced that the reason they keep bringing out new Pokemon games is so that you'll always have to try collecting more, is that not the reason?
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Have you clicked to them all?
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: OK.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: novel.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Well, the next set of articles that we've got here are all talking about how do you solve the puzzles and how do you do them with a little bit of help from your, in this case, AI friends?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Well, is it? I'm curious to tell your interpretations of both of these stories. Go on.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So this one, is it?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Well, the first one is around letting Claude play text adventures and we've had over the last,
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: we'll just say, is it two years, it's been a while.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: two years. I think it's two years.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: you know, various examples.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: examples of playing info comp games with large language models and having them kind of sort their way through things and text adventures are certainly really well suited to this kind of thing because it is essentially a chat interface, the game being one end of the chat, the LLM could be the other end of the chat.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And for those that playing a game is rough and you want to twitch type of experience, you could say, alright, you know, hey Claude, use my credits and go play this game.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And let's see how you do so I we talked about this for two years Michael like you said that this is a good test to see how the experience goes from a large language model and how sophisticated can it be and how far can it get versus you know, is it just sort of flailing around and not knowing to go down the stairs or pick up the candlestick or the sword or whatever it might be because many of these.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: older and newer.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So that was going through my mind to begin with, but I really liked the way that this particular article from Borretti.me explains how to go about doing it.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: It gives now some instruction sets about how might you use the harness, how might you connect the LLM, and then how might you be able to take it even further to maintain and memory, what with the experience, and maybe draw some things out to create maps that weren't
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So when they brought out the open source,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: what was the games that Microsoft recently open source from Infocomp?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Happy with the Zork, yeah.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Zork, thank you, of course.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Classic Zork, when they, when they did that,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I downloaded a Python interpreter and started messing around with that and I made a little desktop UI in Python so I could play it with a sort of graphical wrapper and things like that.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: That was quite fun.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: There's a programming.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And of course,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: giving the LLM the context for how to play these kinds of games is quite straightforward,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: especially with the older games.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Even with Zork,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: you had a very sophisticated range of things that were possible.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: That was one of the joys of Zork and discovering how the game could be.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: The tools could be used.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So I do think, I agree, I think, fanander bretties.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: But blog post here is really interesting to talk about how he implemented this using a Python wrapper, and being a two-dimensional, essentially a two-dimensional game, with a text interface.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It's interesting. The cost of running it and letting it get creative is quite challenging, it seems, which is not completely surprising.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I am a little bit tempted to have a go mess around with this myself.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I don't particularly want to spend a load of AI tokens on doing that.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I'm wondering if you could take this and restructure the code to run against a local Olama instance.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Oh sure, you definitely could. Yeah, yeah. You definitely could. It will all be about the efficiency and effectiveness of the models, right? And the commercial ones typically have been the more successful ones. You could also train your local model to more specifically understand how to do the game without having to use more of a general purpose one.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: So you're not spending any money on tokens, right?
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yeah. I...
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: There was an article this week,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: and I forgot to put it in the show, Lynx,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: about it was a Git repo and some of the things on how to have Claude code running locally on your infrastructure.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: But it went me. I can't be- can't be correct. Right.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: It can't be the whole thing,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: but I'm gonna find it just for us,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: maybe we can read it and talk about it next week.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Hmm. I- I-
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: But that way we're all knowledgeable on it,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: But because it was really interesting.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: And I want to give it a shot given the capacity of my server here and figure that I'd give it a shot.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: 1-1 shot.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I threw in both, I threw in both of the, this link that we've just been talking about the text adventure AI one and also the, the one I'm about to mention, which is also using Claude, Claude code in this case as the tool to drive roller coaster taking.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I threw in both of these stories because I'd come across them both during the week at separate times and I thought they fitted our general themes.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: [humming]
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Of the show relatively well in the, they talk about games, they're both in this case,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: kind of retro classic games and whether we like it or not, we've been forced over the last couple of years to confront the reality that is LLM's and these AI tools.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And equally I found this story really interesting, it's presented beautifully in a kind of classic Mac ish windows, ish window style webpage.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: With the isometric roller coaster tycoon art animated in the background and it's from a company called ramp and they talk about how they enabled Claude to run roller coaster tycoon.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It turns out that this is of an open source game at this point and there is a CLI interface.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: One of the things that it shows, Claude is not good at, is the Vertica
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: company, the three dimensionality of the game because it can't, it's used to the sort of flat surface and the management tasks of operating it but it can't do what we can do as humans and creatively come up with building taller and awesome roller coasters.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So I thought that was particularly interesting.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: They also had to do a lot more in terms of modding open roller coaster tycoon to enable this interaction with Claude and again.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I found that really quite interesting to see how they did it.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Although they also pointed out that they vibe coded the interface itself, which was a little bit disappointing.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: I don't know, I love this because the idea behind a roller coaster tycoon or civilization or any of these games is that there are so many variables to try to optimize.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And so the task in hand here was go optimize them all, right?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: In roller coaster tycoon, you want your visitors to your park to be happy.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: You want them to not wait in long lines, you don't want them to be throwing up from going on to the roller coasters that make them go crazy.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And then whatever happens gets cleaned up quickly enough because you don't want your park to be messy, so I mean, and it goes on and on and on.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: There's so many of this.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So this is such a great example of where a game environment where all the variables are known, which is a simulation of reality, which you cannot know all the variables in reality, but you can in a game to say, go optimize them all, go write bug reports and fix them.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: and going back to our original thought processes when we started recording these shows way back in the day it's one of those commands interfaces where you know you're learning through play how to optimize and manage large environments you've got that rich data you've got those dashboards you can see and as the game goes on as you say it gets more complicated to manage all of those tasks of course now the brilliant mine
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: in the west coast of America at the moment are insisting that this should all be automated away and we shouldn't have fun but there you go that's that's right right right right right this this week's show brought to you by my I reading habits.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Well, that's why we have agents to have fun for us so we can enjoy the agent having fun.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Now, Andy, you found this isometric New York City version and very similar to, you know, the 8-bit and structure and SIVS.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Yeah, no, I'm glad for it and I love it and I was zooming in, you know, really small in certain places where I could see the various forts.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: But yeah, it doesn't zoom enough though.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Now, this is another, this...
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I've zoomed all the way in and I recognize some parts in New York quite well because there's like a restaurant in the park that I went to and I found it but yeah, it doesn't zoom
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: They've ended up quite high on hack and use and lobsters this week.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It's an isometric New York City where the person who created it had the notion of, "Well,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: again, there's AI now," and we can use that to recreate classic kind of graphics similar to what we're actually looking at in open rollercoaster tycoon, or as Michael says, in You know, those 1990s pixel art.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: You know, the version of representations of cities.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: What if I could do that for the whole of a real place?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So again, I found the right up of the process,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: particularly fascinating.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: This is described.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Different ways of finding map data and tile information.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: In fact, he ends up using Google Maps 3D tiles and then having to train an LLM so that it's optimized for the task of creating this pixel art and a consistent
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: manner so that it didn't all look completely disparate as you put peel piece together the whole of New York City. I found it also really interesting that he struggled most with green areas presumably central park primarily trees and and the water and he ended up just kind of throwing his hands up and giving up trying to to do that. He also talks about how complicated it is to manage that zoom in.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: You've just described and the over-tiling and depending on what you're looking at.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I think it's cool to look at, for me, intellectually, it was again more interesting, similar to the last two stories.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Thinking about what, thinking about the process of doing it.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And I think it all three cases, which are using this AI, LLM technology, which we will have complicated feelings about.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It's enabled interesting thought processes for the human behind it, as much as it has burned a bunch of tokens.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And I really enjoyed those thought processes, as well as enjoying the aesthetic outputs.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I'm frustrated that it all took loads of language models to achieve.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Well, I mean, we've seen examples of this where humans have built in Minecraft and elsewhere,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yes, Sam.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: you know, similar kinds of things, right? And the digital twin, they're not sure. And but where I was going to go is that there's a digital twin kind of construct,
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: whether we're talking about a city or a manufacturing line or what have you, that can be represented,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I would like to ask Michael Rowe what his yes and is because I'd like to hear all of the angles here.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Right? Yes, Sandy.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yeah, my yes, and I think the aspect of this that I found interesting was the constraints that you put in place, right, of how it was built.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: - Mm-hmm, yes.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: And then also the constraints in the experience, right, because my first reaction having played around with things like this all the time was, I want to turn it.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I want to see the front of that building can't do any of that.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: It is truly just an image that you can zoom in that's giving you the isometric perspective.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Yeah, that's a good point
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: And then looking at the perspective of creating this and the point that you're making on the amount of tokens, there's so many ways that this type of thing has been done in the past to your Minecraft example is having AI do this specific task, proving something else that makes it valuable, or is it just, I want to see if an AI could redo something that somebody else has done, and we've got bazillions of examples of that because it has consumed that knowledge already and it is regurgitating.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: - Right, exactly.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: So the uniqueness of the experiment that was done here is what I'd like to understand more of.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: - Yes.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I think that's a really good point.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Yes, of course, I mean, since 32,000,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: which I think is what this is kind of modeled on,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: that's that graphical style,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: you also couldn't rotate the camera,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: you just had that one isometric view.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: But it's not like any of these three individuals have said, here's my entire idea to an AI model
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: had it. Give it back.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: The fully completed version and such that there was no human in the loop and there was no iteration and process.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: There's some sophisticated, well, I hope and believe that we will never be there because I think that the creativity and the iteration and the what-ifs comes from the human mind and not from the machines here.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yeah, it's it's funny I've I've been in discussions with people talking about how AI
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Yeah, I... I...
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Gets them sparked creatively and like well It may be able to provide you examples of a bunch of stuff, but it's not creative. You are being creative
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Well, you're guiding it much in the same way that you're guiding a trowel as you're laying the brick on the wall, right?
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Another brick in the wall.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: You know, I realize, and I understand that a landscape is a changing and evolving thing, and it may not be evolving and changing minute by minute, but it certainly changes.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: [laughing]
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So when I zoomed in on the airport, for example, there's all the construction going on at the airport.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, if you link this example back to the story.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: We're just talking about with roller coaster tycoon, now you can do an awful lot of interesting modeling around what if I wanted to do traffic flow optimization?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: What if I were able to see data points in more detail? Can I now change which traffic lights are doing where I put other traffic lights in to increase the flow of traffic and decrease wait times for people as they're trying to get around a city?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: There's so many ways that
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: something like this allows for the same kind of digital twinning that the Nvidia guys had had been working on from the, what do they call it, omniverse, I think, something like that.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: That the creation of this, and I do you remember how long it took to create this, Andy, from your right up? Don't remember.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: No, I don't. I think it was quite a long time. It was a period of, yeah, I'm going to have to go back and read it now.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Yeah, but a while, but a while, right?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Carry on. Yeah.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, you know, there's the what ifs? What if this could be done in generalistic real time? So now you can have people who are able to synthesize with their eyes and understand things and zoom in and out and what if you could rotate it like Michael, you want and kind of dial into the real buildings and what if you use this now to say, you know, I want to open a new restaurant in New York City, where will be a good place to do it, right?
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: start to be able to ask good questions like that and then have this be a wonderful interface.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: to explain well if you're going to open a new restaurant that is this kind you want to put it here here here and here's why you might consider that you know that there's some really cool things that this could unlock.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So the creativity is absolutely still there from a human perspective but there's more to it.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: All right, so exciting excitement. The next story that's in the in the list here was one from Inc and I don't spend a lot of time reading this particular.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: News source but what caught my eye here largely because I had been listening and hearing an awful lot about LVMH in the last year and change is that air maze has made a point that they're really driving unexpectedly no no.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: That they're leveraging a artist an artist to create the artwork that is starting to show.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: up in their product lines and in their advertising and even more and the thing with air maze and the way that they function with the Atteliers that are crafting the hand created products this is sitting exactly well with what they're doing from a construction on artwork and they're they're zinging where a lot of other places are zagging.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, I thought this was intriguing.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Certainly, they call it fantastical styles, right, because you're seeing things of octopuses with shoes walking around that could show up on an air-made scarf and the lake.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So, again, not surprising for the brand.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And the further point on the article is, is that even as we're going more and more towards generation of artwork or clip art or other things, the human creativity still looms large.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I thought it was interesting that they talked about the growing desire for hand-drawn work,
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: authentic human-created work, and I was also really pleased to see that they chose to take this route.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yeah, I actually
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Agree with all of that what acts the angle I took looking at this story
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: One is some of the artwork kind of looks like it could have been AI created
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: But it's not right and then the second part is it it threw me back to a lot of the same art style from the late 60s and early 70s
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Like the keep on trucking guy with a big foot or the
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Marine art from the Beatles or, you know, even even some of the early money Python or
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: hmm yeah I knew you were going there next
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: And the final one would be the wall
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: so there were all these really bizarre kind of
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: psychedelic freaky artwork
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Examples back then especially when you get further down in the article of the two shoes kissing and the the mushroom legs
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Table as I call it those to me are like 100% correlated with
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Art style from back then and I enjoyed that it kind of was a nice throwback but still felt modern
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: In another angle with the way they're doing it so very cool. I'm not an Hermes person. I don't own any. I don't buy any
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: It's not my style, but this art's kind of cool
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: You surprised me. Interestingly, since we are a game show as well, there was a thing with the Sims recently where they did a deal with coach, and they have got a load of coach items now in the game, which feels very five years ago in terms of brand partnerships.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Hmm. Right. Yeah.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It's also interesting that they have because coaches are very recognisable logo that they wanted in the game, but they don't use English in the game.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Timlish, there's an option.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I was watching the English version and so on, but the other thing that felt quite icky about the whole situation that I was watching clip on yesterday was that they actually sent out a load of coach gear to the influencers, the young YouTubers, to encourage them to make this content.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Influencers?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: EA has been through this buyout with Saudi and other...
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: The brand of the sims in terms of like the playfulness and overall vibe of the game.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I have to ask, how do you say "coach" in "simlish"?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I could not tell you, but I would just say, "Biddly, beep, boop!" or something like that. I've no idea. I've... Yeah, okay.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: That's what I thought. That's pretty close, I think.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I think you missed pronounced that last row.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So I'm watching the time and we're getting close but Michael you had a fun piece of art story that you want to include here that is just a really tremendous when you take a look at it so show notes look.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: - Yeah, so just 30 seconds on it.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: This is actually, it's funny.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: When I first glance at it,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I thought they actually knitted the entire image,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: but actually it's someone looming together to go back to your usage of loom in the last story.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: The old family photos cut up into strips and then loomed into potholders.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: And it gives a really kind of a cool vibe.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I just thought it was kind of a cool art project.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: It is a cool project I agree and the colour matching or the colour combinations that they use with the loom are to try to fit in with the vibe of the photographs is quite fun.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: The last thing I think we want to briefly touch on is this story on TechCrunch, which is talking about Netflix, which having grown up into the right as far as it can do without just continuing to hike prices is now becoming a social app.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I can't tell you how many times back in the EBO days, 20 years ago now.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: We talked about second screen experiences and watching shows together and all that crap,
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: and it's like, I don't need another social platform.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I really don't care what you're watching, unless we're talking about it, and I don't want social platform as TV
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: it. It's funny you mentioned that because the thing that I'm most excited about recently is that I can now disable YouTube shorts from showing up in search results because YouTube shorts just frustrate me because that's not the way that I consume my video content where you broadly speaking and I know that's a generational thing and lots of other things but Yeah, this seems to be where I know.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Oh, that's a good thing.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Get off your lawn
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: This seems to be where Netflix is moving with podcasts and comments and so on.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yeah
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I That's 30 more seconds on get off my lawn
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Have have either of you guys gotten just totally sick of the number of companies that want some kind of survey
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Oh, yeah, now I
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: I I swear the survey deluge is insane lately
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Nearly wrote a blog post on this last year. I
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Kept for a month or over a month last year I kept a folder of all of the review requests and survey requests I received from brands
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And I with the intent of writing a blog post, you know with midmetrics
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: You know everything from you've just been to a physical grocery store and bought a piece of broccoli
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Could you review it?
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: To, you know, to all kinds of other things, so I am also extremely frustrated.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yes. It was broccoli. I saw somebody on Massadon today,
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And NPS doesn't write itself though guys, then PS needs
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: post a thing saying they got a basically a reminder follow-up survey thing to a marketing letter that they didn't respond to. It's like give me a frickin' break. You don't need to instrument everything. Yeah.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: Yeah, yeah Got it It's those KPIs It's those KPIs, we're incentivizing the wrong things folks
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: I've received pre- I've received, yeah.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And I've received three experience survey requests as well.
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yep. Yes.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: So before you have the experience, I want you to note that we're going to ask you about the experience.
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: And you can start your survey right now even before you've had the experience, which is like, are you kidding me?
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: Yes, like us, like us, follow us on your favorite podcast or Brussels or Brussels sprouts that you got in the grocery store that you have to do an NPS survey on.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: So please send your feedback about our show that you've just listened to give us a rating of one to five
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Yes. Yeah, we'll have a bit, we'll link.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: And next week on on games at work does tech grumps will
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I won't be here because I will be in Brussels for the annual Folsdam open source conference, but I will leave you
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: I will tell you my review of the excellent food that I have in Brussels
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: >> Excellent.
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: next week
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: Yes, you could do it beforehand
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: >> [LAUGH]
EDEB1289-37EE-489E-91FE-AF0D914CDCE5: See everybody
9A469E6A-7DCF-4D85-B605-281EAB20BF64: [upbeat music]
4C565A47-80DA-4EAF-A640-3A47230B8E62: See ya
1AC7D02B-029D-459B-9583-3575AAA94272: >> Bye.
91CAF432-16BC-48DE-8182-B7E7F0CF7766: You've been listening to games@work.biz, the podcast about gaming technology and play.
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