This month was the AGM for the BCS Animation and Games specialist group that I have been chairing for a very long while now. I gave a presentation from a personal view point (this is not a work presentation and I make that clear in the disclaimers, though it is what I work in too of course), on the advances in Metaverse and GenAI content creation. The full YouTube version is below but the link to the blurb and bio (and the video) at the BCS is here
We are always looking for presenters to come and share some ideas with our specialist group around all things games, animation, metaverse, esports etc, so if you are interested ping me there is a slot waiting for you. We sometimes get a big crowd, other times smaller ones but with the videos published like this it can be a useful thing to do and share.
For those of you who don’t know, BCS (formerly British Computer Society) Chartered Institute for IT is a UK based (but worldwide membership) professional body for anyone in the tech industry. It exists at all levels from just getting going in the business to Fellows with vast amounts of experience and willingness to help. It was part of my professional certification whilst at IBM and I then also became a certifier whilst there too. Volunteering and sharing ideas, such as this presentation, is one of the many ways to get involved (you don’t have to do this). It benefits you as an individual but also elevates tech roles within enterprises and organizations you work in.
Firstly, yes it looks like its a while since I posted on here, but that’s the challenge when work life and social/hobby life are one and the same thing. I have to save all the really good stuff for my professional output. However, I bought myself what is my 16th VR or AR headset with the Meta Quest 3 and as a long time user of such kit I wanted to share my personal (and only personal) thoughts about this bit of kit.
Quest 3 box
Headset and controllers
Looking like the Aliens from Toy Story 3 with 3 eyes wearing a Quest 3
Our Quest 2 has been kept in our kitchen ready for anyone in the family to use it since it arrived. The kitchen is the only place with just about enough free space to wave arms and make the odd step safely in VR. Though as I may have explained before there is a dent in the fridge from a side fist I did playing Superhot VR when I was training for my 2nd Degree Black Belt in Choi Kwang Do. The Quest 2 went straight to VR, obscuring the world (that was it’s job after all) but the guardian that we manually drew around the kitchen (often repeating that process) tended to keep us in bounds. Picking up the controllers and getting them on the right hands in the right way was always a bit fiddly, like plugging in a USB A and always getting it wrong the first two times despite there only being two ways to do it.
The Quest 3 on the other hand, starts with colour pass through, you put it on (over glasses too as they fit in the headset), and just see a slightly blurry version of where you actually are, its much quicker to get in and stood in the right place. (Quest 2 has pass through but it’s very disorientating and B&W). The new hand controllers are much easier to see and to pick up the right way as they don’t have the massive halo loops of plastic around them for sensors. The headset also does the guardian and scanning around for things on its own, you don’t have to (though you can) draw a line around yourself, which in the Quest 2 seemed like some sort of weird religious or mystical incantation involving a border of salt.
The Quest 3 is also light and smaller than the 2, or at least feels like it, I haven’t weighed them. This makes the whole experience to just get going much less faff an bother. It is a similar leap to when we had to place external sensors and try and line everything up before playing anything.
Going into a VR game of applications is pretty much the same across headsets, though it is noticeably crisper and faster/flashier as all new kit tends to be. Though now games win particular are being upgraded to have richer visuals, which in turn will start slowing it all down again. I plumped for the lower spec memory of 128Gb as mostly the family plays Beat Sabre and Pistol Whip, but I now have some games that seems to be 13Gb so it will eat it up more quickly now.
The Mixed Reality (MR) elements of the Quest 3 blending the pass through view of the world with digital elements anchored in that view is the clever bit. This is augmented reality but calling it mixed reality is as accurate. The view you see is virtual, its a camera showing you the physical world, it is able to scan the environment and build a digital mesh of it knowing what are walls, surfaces and objects in the view. It does in the example first steps app asking you to look around you and you see it overlay what it considers the mesh of the world. It’s very matrix, and deliberately visual, not really any need to show the user other than to intrigue them. The demo app then causes a break in the ceiling with bits falling on the floor and giving a view of a space environment and another planet in the distance. Through this hole drops a spaceship that lands (in my case on the the kitchen floor). Being in pass through makes it easy to walk around not bumping into physical things, as you can see them, so get a better look up into the hole in the ceiling. Over the course of the demo tribble like fluffy things break through the walls and run around you space, they drop behind things like the breakfast bar in our kitchen and you can’t see them unless you go and look over. They creatures also run along the walls and other surfaces. It really is quite effective as a cartoon comedy demo of full AR. as this is not holding up a tablet or phone the field of view and turning of you own head and hence view is 100% natural.
The wonderful old painting application Vermillion had some upgrades, so now in full MR the easel and paint brushes can be in your own room and now even better you can hang you paintings on you physical wall and they will stay there if you want them too. You can see family walking into the room and talk to them, though it’s a little odd for them to know whether you can see them or not, having been used to giving the VR headset a wide birth (as the fridge didn’t above) 🙂
This Quest 3 for the kitchen liberates by Quest 2 for my gaming PC, which in turn retires the tethered Rift/S. It also means we can play multiplayer games with two of us in the house. The main account can share their apps (though only on one headset). I shared the Quest 3 apps and unshared on Quest 2 but we were able (with me logged into Quest 2 and Predlet 2.0 using his account on Quest 3) to play a good few rounds of the VR Walkabout Mini-golf and some multiplayer beat Sabre. I say a good few rounds but the battery life is pretty short on both headsets. This can be sorted by attaching a very long USB cable to the power outlet, but that sort of removes the untethered nature of the headset.
This Quest 3 and pass through is obviously a much cheaper version of what the Apple Vision Pro is aiming to do, but it’s out first, it works and it has a library of interesting things to engage with. Though the really new stuff like Assassin’s Creed and Asgards Wrath II (Remake) are not out at release. So it’s more to play VR things and the odd MR update at the moment. I say out first but pass through has been the mission of commercially available Varjo headsets for a while.
One other thing pass through allows for is being able to see you phone (sort of as its a bit warped). This is very useful as trying to buy things in the store in VR doesn’t work as it needs the phone app to do all the verification. This used to mean taking the headset off, now it means double le tapping the headset for pass through and finding your phone. That’s a silly use case as it should just work in the environment or represent the phone and its OS in the environment, but that’s payment rails for you.
In short, it’s good, worth it and I like it. IO am looking forward to more proper AR/MR apps and experiences, whilst enjoying the brand new ones like Samba De Amigo that just launched (again not new as we played that a lot on the Sega Dreamcast with a set of maraca controllers way back).. and pose….. Happy memories reborn 🙂
I play a lot of games, of a lot of different types and genres, and have done for too many years (45 of them at least). I know that driving games always attract my attention, I am many hours into the current Forza Horizon and all the preceding Forza’s of all types. I like a good free roam RPG, obviously GTA5 rules the roost there, but No Man’s Sky also scratches that itch. However I also really like turn based combat games, many of which have been Switch based ones of late, though good old Xcom used to be the one to drop into. I also really like Fights in Tight Spaces for a quick blast of card based gameplay with great visuals. These turn based games suit us older slower gamers, I do still enjoy run and gun FPS like COD but in multiplayer those tiny milli seconds of thoughts wading through years of experience to get to a trigger pull reaction on a target don’t work.
At christmas I got Marvel Midnight Suns on the Xbox Series X, thinking it would be an interesting, quick enjoyable game to have a go at. It is most of those things but it certainly has not been quick. In fact since xmas 22 I have not played anything else (10 mins on Forza doesn’t count). It has properly dragged me in with its turn based, card/resource battle, over the top cartoon visuals, stacks of side missions to just play for to level up, a massive storyline and a mini world to explore on foot in between battles. All this super heroes are in it (well not all, but an awful lot!), and the lead character is my very own super hero. There is also a stack of costume and room customisation, collectables, research of upgrades and weird little friendship building conversations and gift giving (I did say that was weird).
The heart of the game uses individual superhero abilities expressed in a small deck of cards to say what a move can do or the impact it has. Some cards give heroism as a resource, others spend it. You get 3 cards to play each turn (or more with some levelled up modifiers) out of selection of cards depending on the 3 particular super heroes in the mission you are engaged with. There are also environment moves to throw things, blow up things and drop heavy objects on the bad guys. The camera work and the animations for all these battling effects get increasingly frenetic. e.g. Wolverine (once he joins through the story) is able to chain hits together on multiple enemies, they often begin with a frenzied battle cry and flexing of his blades in traditional Wolverine fashion. It shares a lot with XCom given its by Fireaxis but it does’t have that infantry style constant loss of the team, after all in most cases superheroes live to fight another day. They do get hurt and damaged and some attention to repair them is required though. Also in the deck there are special battle cards that recipes are research,learned, found etc. Various resources can be used to craft those. Also battles often give an item that Tony Stark will analyse for you, a coil, that opens up a set of new cards, which you get to pick a couple to add to heroes you have taken on battles, or your personal deck. Having more than one of the same card they can be smashed together in the training yard to create more powerful attacks. It goes on and on 🙂
The start of most missions, once you pick the 3 heroes there is a short slow motion walk to camera scene, with avengers music playing that I have yet to skip, as its very much a “hell yeah!” moment. Examples are below, different versions of my hero’s costume in the centre.
Wanda, Hunter and Spider ManIron Man, Hunter and Captain America
I am about 60 hours in to this game, and much of that is enjoying the levelling up in side battles, or finding good player combinations, e.g. cap is very much a defensive tank, digging in with block or tainting enemies, spider man is a bounce around getting everyone character. There are also lots of magic and environment focussed characters, Ghost Rider does a lot of damage, but also to himself, Blade grabs energy and makes bad guys bleed for constant damage.
The enemy roster gets quite complex too, whilst it starts with soldiers and big guts with shields, I now have things that when attacked at all split in two, or spiritually linked demons that you have to kill them all in one turn or they come back resurrecting one another. There are also some huge bosses to deal with, not to mention (not really a spoiler) a corrupted Sabretooth and Hulk.
Different battles have different objectives, and sometimes you can get away with just focussing on the objective, e.g. hack all three terminals before the server gets beaten to a pulp, you don’t always have to clear the bad guys, so an otherwise encounter ending move might be a game saving one. Other times it is a take them all out situation.
There is some DLC heading toward the game this weekend I think, with Deadpool. So sorry any other games vying for my attention at the moment. I am busy saving the world 🙂
I had the honour of hosting my good friends from Gamesatwork.biz for a BCS animation and games event to hear about how they have managed to create compelling content in a weekly podcast for what is not approaching 400 episodes! The official BCS event link page and links to everything else about the BCS is here but I have added the youtube directly. Its very free form, not scripted and was a entertaining to be the interviewer, especially as I know Michael, Michael and Andy just know what to say and when to say it.
BCS Animation and Games hosts Games at work dot biz team for a free form chat about the show
As the guys explain a lot of the content is based on us all sending them things we are spotting or are busy doing and enjoying. All the podcasts episodes have their own show notes and links so after watching this go check those out and see the sort of thing they do, or vice versa and then start sharing stuff with them, the more the merrier. Also if you are in tech, check out the BCS as a professional org.
Hot on the heels of my BCS animation and games webinar on the games of 2020 I was delighted to be invited to pop along to my favourite podcast, Games At Work, as a guest to talk about my personal views of some of the thing going on in the tech and games worlds including AR and VR.
To hear us riff on a range of subjects head over to here to website and the show links or look for Games at work dot biz on your favourite podcast repository.
I have had the honour to be on before, the last time was in June 2020, a mentally trying time that the podcast recording really helped with. Its always a blast to record, they kindly had me on years ago too when I first published my Sci-fi Novels Reconfigure and Cont3xt. Given it is now on episode 311 you can tell this podcast is certainly not a fad or a flash in the pan but a wonderfully produced and entertaining experience, despite my ramblings and book pitching. Enjoy.
Yesterday I presented a webinar for the BCS animation and games specialist group that I chair, but open to all, sharing some thoughts on what games made sense and for what reasons on 2020. I am not sure which BCS channel that will appear on but whilst waiting if you want to have a look and listen its all here.
As I say throughout this is all my own thoughts as a gamer and all personally experienced, bought and paid, no promotional activity by anyone other than me mentioning my books in this.
Just over two weeks ago I was sitting waiting for my Xbox Series X to arrive on launch day. It got held up for some reason and for a tense moment or seven I thought I might have fell into the over booking of orders trap. The good news though it arrived the following day and here it is.
Xbox …. box
opening up
Installed
Installation and setup was super simple and I left the One X attached too. However I had already moved lots of the key large games that were due a X/S upgrade onto a removable USB drive to save needing to do quite so much downloading, network transfer was an option too but I thought things would be at least playable more quickly. On logging onto the new box the profile and all its favourites and colours etc re-appear making it completely like the older box. Next gen gaming is now very like phone upgrades with the excitement of taking the thing out of the box, logging on and seeing …. oh its exactly the same. The best way to see and feel the different is to dive into an X/S enhanced game, get some ray tracing going as in my last post.
Microsoft has a smart delivery label on some games indicating they know to patch to the fancier version on the Series X. However, for a Series X version to work it has to be on the internal 1Tb internal drive or the 1Tb extension cart (which I also felt obliged to get). So I set about asking all of the 60-100gb games on the USB drive to make their way over to the fast internal drive. That is not an overly speedy process and for obvious reasons is kind of a one at a time gig. I had booked off the rest of the week to use up 2020 holiday and immerse myself in the new console but some of that the was going to be sat sipping in a progress bar.
Whilst I waited it was great timing the Harmonix (of Rockband fame) had released their DJ music mixing game/experience the day before. I had already played it on the One X but now could spark it up (from the USB as it is not “enhanced”) and just get on with enjoying the console. This game is disc flipping brilliant! An array of tunes, from 60’s country to modern EDM are available to put into your set. 4 platters let you drop parts of those tunes onto the decks, e.g drums from one, vocals from another. As you progress you get to mix and match all sorts of elements, fading in new parts, hitting beat markers for scores, muting, looping and adding custom instrument sections. The whole thing keeps everything in time and tune and synch in a really impressive and entertaining way. Most DJ stuff is usually dance music but as with my little mashup below there are some old 80’s tunes too. It won’t win any prizes but, rather like rockbound it makes you feel a musical god when you are doing it. You can play it as a game to progress, hit marks and styles or just tootle around. I have played with a lot of music games and to be able to just put stuff together and it sound right is such a buzz. We don’t all have the musical ability to do these things but it does make you want to do more. This filled all the time I was waiting for things to transfer and I had a blast, and am still. playing it of course 🙂
Once on of the One X versions of a mega game had moved across I launched them. It was Dirt 5 the new mad Codemasters racing game. Duly it announced with a new message that a better version was available did I want to upgrade. Hell yes ! The original was something like 60Gb so I was expecting some smart delivery of a few GB more of textures, instead I got a 70Gb full download. It seems smart delivery is not a delta, but the full thing re downloaded in a new package. This meant the transferring of over a terabyte of games to the USB drive from the One X and then transferring from that to the Series X SSD, hours worth or transfer, was in fact… pointless as far as I could see. I killed all the other transfers and just went to the network to get it to download new version. In this case I started with the launch of Call of Duty Black ops whatever number it is and carried on playing Fuser! I even entered something into a monthly task competition.
Once it had downloaded I launched into Call of Duty Black Ops in the single player story mode. I was constantly amazed by how fast and slick it was, how many great scenes there were visually. I also enjoyed the story and the temporal jumps. I mean I should as Reconfigure starting chapter is form the middle of the book :). It was also set in my era. A very different time for American presidents, though Reagan was previously a hollywood actor, and wanted to create space based defence systems. Interesting to be working for him though.
Reagan
Sunrise
I played the entire campaign through that day. To be able to a) finish a game and b) do it in one sitting is not to say it is too short or anything. The ability to block time off, enjoy and dive in made this like a fantastic boxed set on Netflix. There is of course the multiplayer, but I have to be in teh frame of mind to get a constant beating in that by all the kids.
Another really nice touch was this easter egg (which took a bit of figuring out to get to, ut not too much 🙂 ) As well as some 80’s games to play, really old eight bit glories there was this terminal.
Terminal
Typing on the diplayed keyboard it was clearly a proper version text based operating system from back in the good old days. I listed and changed directories (not sure many modern players will have a clue about that, but they can always look it up on the fancy inter webs). It turns out it has full versions of Zork I, II, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and a few others. I couldn’t;t use the keyboard on the Xbox app, only the slow and annoying onscreen key board, but that was actually part of the fun. I tried one of the games and saved a game, left the console and went back to see if it loaded it, it did! In the middle of the kick ass, next gen first person shooter there was a good old fashioned text based adventure from my youth, utterly brilliant and not the only flashback this month.
There were a stack of other games I have then dived into. In teh house we were already playing Watchdogs:Legion on the previous Xbox, but it was a really nice upgrade to be able to see London in all its next gen (and own futuristic dystopia).
However, The real stand out game has been Assassins Creed : Valhalla. The free-roaming of a beautiful looking saxon Britain it truly eye meltingly lovely. Unlike Call of Duty its an almost never ending set of things to do or complete, constantly attracted way from one task to do another or just to go sight seeing. I particularly liked that over in East Anglia, where I am from, a full version of Burgh Castle exists. The roman walls still stand there today and was a childhood haunt out on the edge of the broads.
`Sunny England
Not so sunny england
More sunny england
Admist all the lovely views there were a few unusual things too. I went to sort out a real work delivery of food and my controller timed out I was met with this amusing error message.
Boring-Squid
Also I unlocked fishing, of course it has fishing. As I tweeted recently.
animal crossing (ac) and assassins creed (ac) are the same game 🙂 It’s all fishing, picking flowers and plants (apart from the actual killing parts of course 🙂 ) #acnh#AssassinsCreedValhalla Spot the difference 🙂 pic.twitter.com/QhebUqIrQ4
I also played this for a while too, one I specifically bought after getting the console.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
It is as mad and weird as its predecessors, will not be to everyone’s taste but it has made me laugh a lot. The new fighting system is more turn based, but you get used to it.
I have updated a stack of other games, Mortal Kombat:Ultimate was the biggest mess as I tried the moving from the USB drive again as it has lots of standalone pieces, I ended up deleting it all and starting again. Fifa got me confused too as it kept not installing much of an update, only to realise it was not actually available in the new shiny version yet, it just never told me and the X/S icon would relaunch the original One X version every time.
The only other fly in the ointment is that our 3 years old super snazzy high end Samsung TV does not cope with the new 120 hz ability of the Xbox. I also had to double check how to enable full HDR on the HDMI ports as it was not automatically doing that either. All done now though and it all works.
What no PS5? Well, once it all quietens down I will investigate getting one of those, but the Xbox, with its Game Pass Ultimate that covers the PC’s too is just too much ecosystem to ignore as a primary gaming system.
I mentioned I was relieving my childhood, well I also finally signed up to yet another video service – Britbox, as it was bundled for 6 months free on out BT broadband. I had pondered if I wanted old box sets of BBC and other channels shows, the lure of Spitting Image reborn too was tempting. However what finally did it was Blake’s 7, this was such a formative show for me, for career, interests and the sort of Sci-fi that I really like, and also write. Yes its all a bit set wobbly, occasionally long winded and cheesy, but I love it. Avon in the foreground below, played by the late Paul Darrow, as I have written often, is probably one of the reasons I became a techie/programmer. That’s turned out OK it would seem 🙂
Microsofts Game Pass is a great way to get to experience games that you may not have noticed before or to try something completely new. As a subscription you get access to a 100 or so games, in a library that has everything from AAA games to quirky indie’s and also a lot of great retro content.
This weekend I noticed Observation appear on the list by No Code studios and originally released on the PC in May 2019. For me that month is a bit of a blur after the concussion in April so my gaming slowed a bit. Still I was glad to bump into the BAFTA winning experience on Saturday. Now I play a lot of games, I also have written some slightly out there Sci-Fi with Reconfigure and Cont3xt, top that with have watched lots of great mind bending sci-fi movies and shows and read a few books too, and I have to say Observation was up there with some of the best off all those experiences. It had a 2001 Space Odyssey, Moon and Gravity etc feel to it and the story was well slotted into that. As a game the control of a corrupted AI trying to help the remaining crew member but only able to access the ship systems through cctv cameras and an occasional use of a roving sphere was fantastic. The art direction, the tweaks on the camera feeds, the odd outages and secondary systems to access all added to it. So much so that I played it most of Saturday and then Sunday again. It is not a really long game, not a RDR 2 or anything, but its doesn’t need to be as it is certainly longer than any film. The emotional involvement and intrigue as too what was going on was truly engrossing. No spoilers, but it’s suitably trippy. It is certainly one of the best games I have played for story and inventive presentation.
Observation
My other notable gaming experience was the launch of nDreams Phantom:Covert Ops for my Oculus VR rigs (Quest and Rift S). This introduces a really innovative approach to VR movement and to stealth action games. You play sat on a chair as you are a special ops soldier in a stealthy kayak. You control the boat with your hand controllers by gripping the two ended paddle with each hand and pushing down into the water on alternate sides of the boat. You are trying to sneak into a waterlogged compound and have a variety of ways to get passed guards and their spotlights. Sat on you boat you have various weapons and devices strapped to you and it. The paddle locks onto the left of the boat, a pistol is on your chest, a machine gun on your back, and a sniper rifle on the right. A set of binoculars sits just in front. Using these, some quiet paddling, hiding in reeds and finding tunnels you work your way in. Like all stealth games you don’t want to get into a full on fire fight, but if you do you can survive. Sat in the kayak at the start you can almost feel the water and the damp air. The paddling (despite not having a pole to link both hands) seems to get the shoulders going, especially if you are trying to quickly cross a dark, but open body of water having distracted a guard shooting a light out. The game also is cross play with the same save game and unlocks on quest appearing as the ones I unlocked on the Rift S. The only disadvantage to this is not being able to have more than one save game for other family members to play, a problem across the Oculus range as they are single facebook account machines. Anyway, love it, well done all just up the road in Farnborough, a revolutionary game and really good fun. Check out the official video below.
I was catching up on some blogs before jumping on a train and heading to London to discuss one of my major threads of work at the moment which could be described of gamification of a particular genre of interaction. Up on the feed reader pop’s Raph’s gamification of everything post. Its always hard to ignore serendipity when its been so vital to me over the years.
I am not going to repeat what Raph said, go and read it, but he makes a very good points that whatever your objections to the gamification of certain services, however industries, governments, leaders are using basic human psychology, paired with the communication the web gives us, this sort of interaction is not going to go away and we need to take a balanced view.
If you have ever got a buzz from receiving a level up in a game, or a promotion level at work, or a prize at a competition or a complement well meant then you already know of the impact of recognition.
Computer mediated experiences allow very quickly for new achievements to be generated for a never ending set of levels and trophies to be created. If you map that to a promotion structure in your average corporate, those events are few and far between and unable to be restructured due to legacy promotions of others. It is fairly easy though for World of Warcraft to introduce another 10 levels on top of the uber level of 70, or for Pet Society to introduce yet more rainbow poo.
Of course, as Raph points out, when these reward structures are applied to things such as parenting, politics, product use who is it who decides the structure and what are their motivations.
“There are plenty of valid concerns to be had here. But it’s not going to go away. Instead, we need to be thinking about what our accommodation is with these technologies and approaches. Almost all of this arises simply out of better knowledge of ourselves and our psychology paired with improvements in communications technology. And that is not a new problem — it’s an old one.”
“the concerns that arise from gameifying the world apply in larger measure to non-games.”
The last part of the BBC Virtual Revolution programme looked at Homo Interneticus. How we are evolving and changin the way we enagage with information and with one another. There are of course concerns to be raised but there is also the potential that we are in fact now interacting in ways that suit how our brains work, in an associative fashion rather than in a way that has been restricted by some of the ways we could interact with information before. (I took the web behaviour test BTW and came up as a Web Octopus)
It was interesting in the programme to hear Susan Greenfield refer to the dangers of online interaction for our brains. Here premise being that there are no consequences to our interactions online, because if you break something in the real world its broken, break it online and it doesn’t exist. That is of course missing quite a lot. There clearly are consequences to your online interactions. True if you play a game with respawning on, you die, you are back again. That though is like playing hide and seek as a child. You are found, you go hide again. However when you interaction is with people and their things online you have the ability to enhance or reduce the quality of the relationship with them just as much as sitting around at dinner. It is true if you understanding of physics comes solely from a simulation of physics you may be surprised at the real world results, but equally you may learn more about physics by being able to play with and experience forces that would be impossible/really hard in real life.
I did really like the video Raph posted from Stargate studios on video compositing and not believing everything we see. It’s come a long way from a bit of film projected behind an actor. Though I do find some of the street scene changes in this as a little odd. Why not just leave it as it was? Which I guess comes back to the point. Who makes the changes and why.
There is some cool content for G.I. Joe the movie appearing on PS3 home. A set of clothing parts in the threads store. This is great as I can now cover my face, in protest at not being able to have green hair for some still inexplicable reason.
It was great to see the G.I. Joe clothes spread through home in various combinations. Here I am a mix of white ninja, black ninja and wearing Star Trek original series trousers. An interesting combination.
Whilst I was on I noticed a new promo space for a game called Fat Princess. It was a cartoon themed environment with lots of statues matching the game. Interestingly it had a little mini treasure hunt Xi style. In the environment (whilst still populated with other users) you are able to hunt cake hidden in little bird cages and answer eight questions on the game. This is not state of the art gaming, but I did feel the need to answer. It is also interesting as your view of the space is actually different to that of others. i.e. you wont see the cake unless you are personally on the quest, on completing the quest the princess changes into the larger version of the princess. This is a reward, but for the individual player. Everyone else will be seeing you as an avatar in world, but the princess will be the regular princess.
This concept can be tricky for people lost in the concept of a unified world. There is no reason to not see a completely different representation of a world to every other user of that world. Of course there is then the question of what it is you are all there at the same time for in the first place.
One other twist was that completing the quest, bothering to engage with the advert in effect, gives you a virtual object. In this case the royal throne to place in your own apartment.
So here I am, in my lightly decorated apartment (without the ability to upload my own pictures and videos as I live in Europe and SCEE cant seem to get round UGC legal issues), wearing my G.I. Joe cool costume (that doubles as a protest for no green hair) sitting in my Fat Princess virtual throne that I won by walking around an immersive advert with lots of other people (mostly all wearing G.I. Joe clothes).
