Activision Alums Raise $16 Million to Build EOS-Focused Blockchain Game Studio
Mythical Games is “a next-generation game technology studio.” Their focus is online games where players own the assets they develop or acquire in the game – true digital ownership powered by the blockchain, as opposed to managed digital ownership backed by centralized servers. It’s an important difference.
When a player acquires assets in a game like World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, or Runescape, they are at the whim of the company to stay in business and keep servers online. A decentralized game built on the blockchain can keep in operation, with assets retaining value, for as long as users desire them to. Not to mention how much easier it is to transfer assets when blockchain-connected accounts are involved.
The company has yet to release a game, but today announced that it had raised $16 million in funding from five different venture capital firms including Galaxy Digital’s EOS VC fund and OKCoin.
“We believe that gaming – and specifically players’ interaction with in-game economies and virtual goods – will play a key role in how the masses first discover the true potential of the blockchain. Mythical’s experience building rich and immersive game worlds will be invaluable to this mission.”
See the full story here: https://www.ccn.com/activision-alums-raise-16-million-to-build-eos-focused-blockchain-game-studio/
AT&T Reveals Winners of First Magic Leap Hackathon
Among the 31 submissions, judges selected three winners, with the grand prize winner taking home $5,000, the runner up pocketing $3,000, and third place securing $2,000.
The grand prize winner was Lifescope, makers of a platform that visualizes a users' online transactions and captured content. The company submitted XR Time Machine, an app that allows users to explore their digital timeline via WebXR.
"Lifescope is a tool for connecting your services into an API of you. Individuals can choose which aspects of their life to track and improve. From an individual data wallet, anyone can spin up their own 'gallery' a time machine portal to re-live their past and retell their story, or project the future and test-run their concepts," wrote developer William Collins-Broza in a Devpost describing the project.
Coming in second was Dr. Dodgy's Intergalactic Augmented Reality Circus. Developed by a former circus juggler, the experience presents users with a cosmic circus via interactive 3D content in the user's space.
"This project uses augmented reality to augment a real live story based circus performance. What is reality and what is augmented will blend together as you watch the circus show interact with spaceships, inter-dimensional portals, asteroids, robots, machines, lightning, and more," said creator Andrew Towl, who hand-modeled the 3D content and animations with Blender, with Unity and Vuforia used to create the AR experience.
The third place winner was Magic Ideation, an interactive spatial ideation tool that mixes the tactile canvas of a whiteboard with the multimedia capabilities of a desktop PC and a mobile device.
Since AT&T has committed to being the exclusive retailer of Magic Leap's first consumer-focused device (whenever it arrives), the company has a vested interest in helping grow Magic Leap's developer community. And, as an internet service provider, AT&T also stands to benefit from the consumption of future AR apps that will need 5G speeds to push high-quality 3D content at low latency.
See the full story here: https://magic-leap.reality.news/news/at-t-reveals-winners-first-magic-leap-hackathon-0189915/
Microsoft to Host Women in AI & Mixed Reality Hackathon in San Francisco
Over the last few years, the virtual reality space has earned a welcome reputation for fostering better representational balance with regard to gender compared to the general tech industry, with women like Nonny de la Peña and many others leading the charge.
Comparatively, augmented reality hasn't (at least on the surface) looked as balanced, which is something Microsoft is apparently working to address at the developer level via an upcoming event.
In December, Microsoft will host the Women in AI & Mixed Reality Hackathon at the Microsoft Reactor in San Francisco, right across the street from the Moscone Center, the site of countless tech events that were important to Silicon Valley's overall history.
See the full post here:https://hololens.reality.news/news/microsoft-host-women-ai-mixed-reality-hackathon-san-francisco-0189913/
Japanese man ‘marries’ virtual reality singer Hatsune Miku hologram
In fact, none of Kondo’s relatives attended his wedding to Miku — an animated 16-year-old with saucer eyes and lengthy aquamarine pigtails — but that didn’t stop him from spending ¥2 million on a formal ceremony at a Tokyo hall.
Around 40 guests watched as he tied the knot with Miku, present in the form of a cat-sized stuffed doll.
Since March, Kondo has been living with a moving, talking hologram of Miku that floats in a $2,800 desktop device.
And Gatebox, the company that produces the hologram device featuring Miku, has issued a “marriage certificate,” which certifies that a human and a virtual character have wed “beyond dimensions.”
See the full story here: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/11/12/national/japanese-man-marries-virtual-reality-singer-hatsune-miku-hologram/#.W-sYAy3MwnU
Oath, 360i and Nat Geo bring programmatic to virtual reality on Mars
The VR experience lets users explore what life would be like on the red-rock planet. Naturally, life on Mars won't be without ads, as any good marketer knows to follow its audience.
Lucas added the 'Mars' demographic matches the upscale, younger consumer that uses VR, which made advertising in the space a natural step for Nat Geo and provides value for brands in the future.
Kolin Kleveno, head of programmatic at 360i, said everybody involved in the project wanted to make sure the ads looked alive and realistic on VR without being intrusive.
See the full story here: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/11/12/oath-360i-and-nat-geo-bring-programmatic-virtual-reality
Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers?
Now get ready for the nanoinfluencers.
That is the term (“nanos” for short) used by companies to describe people who have as few as 1,000 followers and are willing to advertise products on social media.
Ms. Baker, a leasing manager in Alexandria, Va., said she had stumbled into the hobby-slash-gig after being scouted by Obviously, which describes itself as “a full-service influencer marketing agency.”
To Mae Karwowski, the chief executive of Obviously, nanoinfluencers are a largely untapped and inexpensive opportunity.
But as influencers — like the 20-year-old fashion model Luka Sabbat, with his 1.4 million Instagram followers — have grown in popularity, they have started charging more. And with their success and online fame, they may be losing the homespun quality that once distinguished them from the crowd of celebrity endorsers.
Prices have climbed even for the midlevel group known as microinfluencers. Taylor Camp, for example, who has almost 37,000 Instagram followers on an account called TheTieGuy, said in an interview that he had recently earned $500 for two Instagram posts for a men’s shaving company.
Kelsey Rosenberg, a 26-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, with 1,900 Instagram followers, saw an opportunity when influencer marketing took off. She contacted companies, including bars and restaurants in her area, and now regularly incorporates advertising into her Instagram feed.
“It’s like one of your friends telling you a new skin care product is amazing, but instead of me telling my friends at happy hour, it’s me telling them on Instagram,” she said.
There are strings attached, though.
“You have to keep it on your feed for a certain amount of weeks,” Ms. Rosenberg said, “and they want you to say certain keywords, like something is ‘cruelty free’ or something ‘smells good,’ or whatever their marketing says. They want you to mimic that.”
Ms. Gee admitted to having mixed feelings.
“I feel kind of like an infomercial, and I’m generally kind of uncomfortable pushing things on people,” she said. “But I’ve seen a return on that, albeit small.”
Can AIs Create True Art?
At GumGum, an AI company that focuses on computer vision, we wanted to explore the intersection of AI and art by devising a Turing Test of our own in association with Rutgers University’s Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Cloudpainter, an artificially intelligent painting robot. We were keen to see whether AI can, in fact, replicate the intent and imagination of traditional artists, and we wanted to explore the potential impact of AI on the creative sector.
Even though the Cloudpainter machine has evolved over time to become a highly intelligent system capable of making creative decisions of its own accord, the final piece of work could only be described as a collaboration between human and machine.
Moreover, until AI can be programed to absorb inspiration, crave communication and wantto express something in a creative way, the work it creates on its own simply cannot be considered art without the intention of its human masters. Creatives working with AI find the process to be more about negotiation than experimentation.
THERE’S AN ACTIVE ROLE BETWEEN ART AND VIEWER
How traditional art purveyors react to AI art on the world stage is yet to be seen, but in the words of Leandro Castelao—one of the artists we enlisted for the study—“there’s an active role between the piece of art and the viewer. In the end, the viewer is the co-creator, transforming, re-creating and changing.” This is a crucial point; when it’s difficult to tell AI art apart from human art, the old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder rings particularly true.