If you give people virtual superpowers, will they use those abilities for good or evil?
(Credit: Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory) Researchers at Stanford recently investigated the subject by giving people the ability of Superman-like flight in the university’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory (VHIL). While several studies have shown that playing violent videogames can encourage aggressive behavior, the new research suggests that games could be designed to train people to be more empathetic in the real world. To test this hypothesis, the group — which included Jeremy Bailenson, an associate professor of communication; Robin Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist and author; and Stanford communication student Shawnee Baughman — needed to choose a superhuman ability that could only be simulated in virtual reality, but that people would also subconsciously identify as a “do-gooder” superpower. “We thought about giving them X-ray vision, but that was a little creepy,” said Bailenson, director of the VHIL.
Bethesda Tutorial Dialogue
This chapter will walk you through creating specific dialogue for our tutorial quest, "Bendu Olo's Only Hope." The reader will learn: How dialogue for Skyrim is authored in the Creation Kit. How to script events based on the player's dialogue choices. Skyrim provides a simple visual layout system so you can see the flow of your dialogue as you're creating it. To get started with the view, navigate to your quest (GSQ01) and double click to open the quest window. To make a new view, right-click in the table in the left part of the window and select "New." We haven't added anything to the view yet, so it's a boring white expanse. Before we go on, there's some terminology that can be confusing and we need to get straight: Response: A single line of dialogue said by an NPC. So in that set of clicks and typings above, we created a branch, which automatically created a topic for itself. Double-click on the topic to open the Topic Window. Now hit the OK button at the bottom of the window twice.
The Banner Saga's branching narrative and travel events detailed in Kickstarter update | Indie, News
An update to Stoic Studio's Banner Saga Kickstarter sheds some light on the RPG's conversation options and decision-making, which promise to have a significant effect on the game. In addition to your more standard conversation options, you'll have to make decisions on the road - including chance encounters and events - that "may affect the caravan's morale, size and supplies, and form a personal connection to the characters traveling in your party." The game's branching narrative is also detailed, with the diagrams to prove it. Excitingly, when discussing its branching story and combat, creative director Alex Thomas namechecks two of history's finest strategy RPGs. "Similar to Final Fantasy Tactics or Shining Force, The Banner Saga has a large cast of playable characters; special warriors in your caravan who can also join you in combat. Head here to read the full, fascinating Kickstarter update, discovered via VG24/7.
Defining Adaptive Music
Introduction …I know, I know: defining adaptive music sounds boring, pedantic, academic, theoretical, and of limited practical use. Yawn. Audience This article is targeted mostly to experienced game composers and audio programmers with actual practical adaptive music experience. At the same time, the paper should be easily accessible to a general audience. Background (Warning: gratuitous personal anecdote. Some More About Me As far as I know, I’m one of very few people with the following skill set: a formal training in classical composition (BMus from the University of Toronto) many years of indie music production experience audio programmer credits on two “next gen” console titles (“Full Auto” Xbox 360, “Full Auto 2: Battlelines” PS3) Full Auto As such, I like to think that I have a fairly unique and advanced understanding of adaptive music. This know-it-all attitude is kind of obnoxious in the game industry, considering I haven’t actually composed music for any (shipped) titles. Dr.
You Are Watching Machinima, the Future of TV | Game|Life
Machinima’s independent channels scored billions of views in 2012. Click on the image for a larger version and zoom in to see the top performers (numbers represent pageviews in millions). Illustration: Matt W. Moore The future of TV isn’t in an HBO boardroom or on the CBS lot in Studio City; it’s not sitting on Aaron Sorkin’s laptop or buried deep in Dan Harmon’s Tumblr archive. Inside, the decor is pre-post-collegiate: arcade games, fanboy swag, and the occasional wafting odor of recently nuked pizza pockets. Yet it’s one of the biggest online video producers there are. Not bad for a never-ending highlight reel. Machinima traffics in videos of people playing videogames, often with voice-overs by the players. And they did it all without much of a homepage. Machinima gets almost all of this content from video-making enthusiasts around the world. Once Machinima signs someone as a director, it gets to claim those YouTube views as part of its aggregate viewership numbers.
Glimpses—The Uncanny Valley
Why are monster-movie zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating? Written and illustrated by Dave Bryant Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori is not exactly a household name—but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as “the uncanny valley”. Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. This chasm—the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis—represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. Here Be Dragons Of course, fiction and art are created by humans for human audiences. Down in the Valley The Other Side of the Mountain Full Circle
Fables, Myths And Narratives — Converting Our Stories Into Multi-Screen Experiences
Advertisement Storytelling takes many forms. In the past, stories were told orally, with people telling and retelling myths, fables and even histories. Multi-screen narratives are being told across all kinds of platforms, pages and devices, making for truly immersive experiences. How I Fell In Love With Interactive Storytelling First, a little background. The Kwagh Hir, or Thing of Magic, my tribe’s largest cultural festival (Image: Naptu2) Those fables are a piece of my cultural inheritance. Creating modern, interactive versions of these stories is possible, but how exactly do we do that? A Bit About Context And Screens When speaking about multi-screen storytelling, remember that screens have different contexts, not only different capabilities. I like to focus on the following screens: Not all of these need to be used at the same time, because they won’t all be appropriate to the story you are telling. Now, as promised, here are the five essentials of multi-screen storytelling. 1. 2. 3. 4.
