Digital Explorers' Diary #45

Today: How to avoid repeating the same creative process, Meta's avatar movement reconstruction, Apple Vision Pro accessories, and AI usages and restrictions in the game business!

Jul 03, 2023

Welcome to the Digital Explorers' Diary #45!

A curated collection of thought-provoking topics about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.

Executive summary:

Let’s explore how to avoid repeating the same creative process, even if the first occurrence was a win.
Meta’s impressive demo of avatar movement reconstruction from the headset and controllers position,
Apple Vision Pro accessories, and a very expensive version,
And AI usage and restriction in the game business!

When creating experiences, reinvent yourself!

What most often weighs you down […] is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas, and the memory of old victories and defeats. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment.
— Robert Greene, The 33 Stategies of War

On June 30th, Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go, announced layoffs, canceled their latest NBA All-World game, and stopped production of their upcoming Marvel experience.

What happened? It might be due to over-hiring during COVID. Many advertising agencies switched from on-site events to online during the pandemic, and Niantic had great success with its industry-leading 8thWall platform.

But it is most likely due to their persistence in re-purposing the PokemonGo concept as-is without innovation. The fine blend between the unlimited possibilities offered by the Pokemon franchise, the novelty of needing to go out to catch exclusive monsters, the social gatherings, the virality, the paradox of going outside while escaping reality into a fantasy world… All of these interdependent factors are one of a kind and very difficult to reproduce.

But Niantic tried. With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (Stopped in 2022), Pikmin Bloom (Still active, but have you heard of it?), NBA All-World (Stopped), Catan: World Explorers (Stopped), Transformers: Heavy Metal (Cancelled), and Marvel World of Heroes (Cancelled).

And all of them have the same concept. Get «something», then go out and walk to improve your «something» and compete with other people so you can get «something» better.

Peridot, which I reviewed here, is a bit more innovative and still active, but concerns are growing around the limitations of the free experience. Very quickly, users are limited and must pay to progress more.

Niantic is still developing Monster Hunter Now, but the concept seems to be very similar, again, to Pokemon Go…

Interpretation: Whenever presented with a new opportunity, reinvent yourself. Get rid of your past successes and failures, and start from a whiteboard. Look at the current trends, take a bird’s eye view, and investigate new technologies and new communication mediums. Think deeply from all angles; this new endeavor needs all your experience and learnings applied to the current circumstances.

Just for fun, let’s imagine two examples related to Niantic.

Instead of using traditional NBA for the game, use Fantasy Basketball. Currently, 24% of Americans aged 18+ participate in sports betting. Is there a way to create sub-leagues related to where the users live?

And for Harry Potter, voice and gesture recognition are pretty effective right now. Isn’t it how spells work in the wizarding world? I’m sure there is something to explore here!

Do you want to explore your ideas in the same way? Book a call with me here; I’ll be your sparing partner!

This Week's News:

New research from Meta went out last week, showing how they managed to train an AI to reconstruct a full user motion just from the headset and controller’s positions.
1. It’s not perfect - see the end of the video for fun examples - but it’s a great improvement. Remember: presence is very important in Virtual Reality, and having realistic movements of yourself and others is critical to providing a great experience.
Apple never disappoints with upsells, and many companies have joined to create accessories. We can bet that the Vision Pro headset will also come with its customizations, and it’s not even released that a company called Caviar has announced its $40,000 version. Do we need this? Related, read Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier’s CEO, on Why do we need Luxury more and more.
Source: Caviar
Unity, the leading game engine, is joining the hype of AI. I quote: «When played [and] created, every game will be touched by AI».
1. On the game creation side, they «just» embedded ChatGPT and Stable diffusion into Unity to assist game developers in their process.
2. For the gameplay part, creators will be able to add AI-driven behaviors into characters. That is the trend. Will this be good enough to pass the quality requirements?
Related, Steam, the leading game diffusion platform, is reported to block games that use AI-generated art. Or maybe they are just figuring things out, as many platforms right now. This will probably not much affect big game studios, but independent creators might suffer from it. Indeed, these creators often are one-man shows, and having the assistance of an AI is a great time saver.

From the Podcast

Every week, I’m teaming up with Guillaume Brincin and Sébastien Spas on the Lost In Immersion podcast. This week:

We discussed last week’s topic on Niantic adding rewarded ads into Pokemon Go and their subsequent games. We didn’t know at that time that layoffs would happen; maybe our conclusions would have been different. We mostly discussed how invasive these ads would be and if Niantic will run ads optimizations as it’s done on all other platforms.
Niantic Rewarded Ads
We then tried 3DFY.ai, a platform that claims to be able to generate 3D assets thanks to AI. Obviously, we challenged it and were disappointed: it seems to be drawing from a bank of existing 3D models and tuning it a bit according to the prompt. It often fails and surely is not generating models from scratch.
My bet is more on a mix of techniques, maybe by generating an image and then creating a 3D model from it.
Yes, but not quite…
We then look at progress in Augmented Reality usage for construction work. Indeed, the usages with headsets are not mainstream yet, but is there still a place for handheld devices?
vGIS.io
And we conclude by celebrating the 20 anniversary of Second Life, the first «metaverse». It’s amazing that it’s still alive, and it’s mostly because of the very strong community. Yes, Virtual Worlds are social spaces, and this is what is missing from a lot of them - Meta’s Horizons, for example!
Second Life