Category: Storytelling

June 28th Games For Change Day in NYC

Image result for games for change

It has always been, for a decade and a half, a convening of people who make games, love games and use games for social good in the world.  And this year NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio gave it official standing in the Gotham city proclaiming, June 28th, Games for Change day.

The festival marked a meaningful 15th anniversary making it old enough to become an institution and young enough for everyone involved to believe it’s still nimble.   The organization runs all year and culminates in this event which draws people from all over the world to discuss, plan, plot and swap notes about where and how efforts are making a difference. They are tackling complex global problems from climate change to literacy, equality, inclusion to mental illness. This year the tracks included Games for Learning, Civics and Social Issues, Neurogaming and Health, Games for Learning, Civics and Social Issues, and XR (virtual, augmented and mixed realities).

Susanna Pollack is the president of Games for Good and a force of nature. She’s developed robust programming that spans three days and provides extraordinary opportunities for connection and thus, new ideas to form and grow.  There were programs for students. 

And of course, plenty of games to experience including the debut of Lost City of Mer intended to “inspire players about the impact that humans and their carbon footprint are having on the oceans.”  A full list of the games that won awards is here.

This is an important organization, of which I am an ambassador because they have and are leading the way on gamifying content.  Gamifying content can be a powerful tool for multi-disciplinary purposes. It’s moved into the mainstream and the potential to educate, engage and change behavior for the better is happening.

 

 

Wearing your #AR or #VR: A Path to Commercialization?

source: inverse.com

Can you imagine this? Your hand open, palm up and suddenly with your finger tips you have access to anything you have right now, today in your smartphone?  This is a prototype from Leap Motion, VR/AR developers out of San Francisco.  Click here to read the full article. But before you go, check out this video.   I could watch it all day!

It’s exciting to see converging technologies- in this case #AR and #Wearables- converge  into a potential utility application.    Thank you Keiichi Matsuda, the creative director and VP of design who is developing this.  This application, tool, feels like a lovely path to commercialization.

 

 

 

 

Virtual Reality is Isolating, I Bet Not

The idea virtual reality is an isolating experience and thus won’t scale to the masses without a multi-user winning application, always puzzles me.  There are plenty of challenges, yes.  Indeed, it’s a tall order to ask someone to strap on an awkward chunk of plastic over their eyes. And if they  do it, there’s gotta be a serious reward.   Lots of brilliant people around the world are working on that part right now, as I write.

As for isolating. Yes and No. No matter what gadgets or technologies come to bear there are many things that humans like to do alone or better yet can really only do alone, like:

Reading

 

 

 

 

Painting

 

 

Writing-Typing-Computing

I could go on, but I won’t. You get the drift. Many centuries and many gadgets later, we are reading more books than ever. I bet nothing in the world, at least in my lifetime, is going to change that.  Virtual reality will find a place as it’s singular purpose is realized. I’m beting on that too.

 

In Reverse

Like many millions, I regularly use Power Point (presentations) or Excel (spreadsheets) or Microsoft Word (documents). You probably do too, or have.  I think about this suite of products and the relationship to the evolution of virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence.  There is a connection.

First though, making virtual reality and augmented reality content is real hard right now.  The software, hardware and the nature of the content is rapidly iterating, not settling quickly. It’s  the ubiquitous notion of  trying to change the wheels on a car speeding down the Autobahn in Germany (there is barely a speed limit).

I just spent three months on a virtual reality project, and while I have produced hundreds of video for broadcast and the internet, meaning I have a lot of experience making visual stories, live action 360 video is a beast; an entirely different process. The work flow doesn’t flow like preparing for the stage or a 2D film or 2D digital video. Why? The output itself, a 360 degree moving picture is not like any of those others.

We have far more questions than answers.  Are we telling stories, a narrative or creating experiences?  What might a story look like when the USER can choose to look anywhere in that spherical space, and so on?

What does that have to do with Microsoft?  While technologists built those utility pillars, they could then hand to the masses, and say carry on.  People can and do use them for anything they choose from personal journals to professional financial modeling.

These emerging technologies actually work in the EXACT opposite way, meaning while VR and AR  technology is cool, it has almost no meaning without a specific application.  Consider, a surgeon having a conversation with a technologist.

Technologist:  “We have some cool tech that makes 3D digital assets, how might that help you?”

Surgeon:  “Medical images, say X-rays or MRIs would be great to have 3D versions in augmented reality.”

Technologist:  “Great, what type of features will help you diagnose a patient’s issue?”

And so on.  The technologists need direction from domain expertise whether it’s educators or doctors, real estate developers, industrial manufacturers, human resource professionals or those working in sports, media and entertainment.  Materially beneficial applications, products, will only have meaning for those who are using them in the course of daily use,  particularly in enterprise or professional capacities.

We live in a 3D world, it’s fantastical to believe the ability to create 3D digital products, tools and assets will not have fundamental uses across the way we live and work.  Right now, the problem is we don’t know exactly what that looks like, except to say, the winners will be busy collaborating across disciplines with  technologists and domain experts at the table.  Let us not forget in every technological evolution someone, some company, some team comes up with a winning step. There will be winners.

 

 

Calling ALL Virtual Reality Skeptics

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Photo: World Economic Forum

“I’m a skeptic,” a seasoned filmmaker, let’s call her Mary, told me not long ago standing in the middle of a VR festival.  “I’m a skeptic when it comes to virtual reality.”  No matter how many times I hear it, I am always perplexed.  I gave her my standard comeback,  “What are you skeptical about exactly?” adding, “I honestly don’t understand because we don’t know what it is yet.”   Mary makes wonderful movies and while she said the word skeptical, her eyes screamed disbeliever.   She’s convinced stories can’t be told in the waters of this evolving three dimensional technologies.

She’s not the only one, I meet lots of self-described skeptics logging miles among technologists, entrepreneurs, educators, investors, health providers, multi national corporations, creatives, governments, corporate leaders, and basically, anyone interested in the Fourth Revolution (see chart above).

Routinely, I also ask them all to hold off a minute and better yet, dig in, check out what’s being made (seeing as much of the content is being created for the first time), keep an open mind and even better think about how this might actually work in their domain of expertise.

Keep in mind, among the cyber-physical system sit emerging technologies of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and artificial intelligence.  It’s not just one technology that is the question, it’s a number of viable technologies, like computer visualization and mobile computing power, that are driving incredible possibilities among emerging technologies.  They are huge buckets of potentially life changing tools defined by the nature of the hardware if any, software, content and application.

We live in a three dimensional world. It’s virtually impossible to think that this ability to manipulate things in and about our world in 3 dimensions will not  find relevance and scale accordingly.   Life is nothing but change and tech is innovating faster than most would have imagined even 50 years ago.  I mean,  Google’s  not even twenty years old and many of us, certainly above a certain age, cannot really recall the world before the search engine arrival.

For almost four years now there has been a yearly influx of new headsets, applications and creations into the marketplace.  New. It’s all new.  Before we dismiss virtual or augmented or mixed reality, envelope it in a choke hold of skepticism, let’s  first truly investigate how it might be relevant in your life or your work.