GigaOM » gaming

Google Glass minus glass: Dekko makes the world your OS

Amanda Alvarez — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:00:36 +0000

With the advent of wearable tech, apps and operating systems will have to radically adapt to the changing ways users want to interact with their devices and the world. One startup that thinks it is up to this challenge is San Francisco-based Dekko, a new company founded by the husband-and-wife team that used to work at augmented reality pioneer Layar.

Dekko plans to launch its real-world operating system Thursday, which brings the promise of augmented reality (AR) to fruition using the camera on your mobile device, powerful computer vision algorithms, and some serious financial backing.

Dekko’s tech overlays content on the real world, a kind of out-of-the-device OS that goes way beyond just superimposing search results over a snapshot of a landmark or restaurant, like Google Glass does. The system actually builds up a 3D model of the scene in front of you from image frames, then reconstructs it and inserts whatever you want — a favorite cartoon character, perhaps, or a guided walking tour — onto the image. “The tech layer can run anywhere that the camera can see anything,” said Dekko CEO and co-founder Matt Miesnieks. This is a big change from other AR efforts that require an anchor or a known object to interpret the scene.

The biggest advance from Dekko is the ability to complete the entire AR process — scene modeling, object recognition, and reconstruction — in real time on the relatively limited processor of an iPad Mini. This is impressive considering computer vision techniques still struggle with basic pattern recognition, even with powerful post-processing. Dekko’s algorithms don’t even rely on two cameras (like the stereo vision of human eyes) or an infrared field (like the Kinect) to calculate depth. The system just uses the slight differences between moment-to-moment image frames to build up a 3D model of the world, and focuses on surface textures to segment objects.

As is the case for other AR ventures, the cluttered and dynamic real world still poses a challenge for Dekko. The OS works best in static environments, and can now model a 10-by-10-foot window in front of the user. Miesnieks is confident that his team can solve the problem of tracking far objects, and said the window will be expanded to 100-by-100 feet in the next six months. Real time reconstruction at the pixel level should also become possible, with improvements in mobile device GPUs and CPUs.

Co-founders Matt and Silka Miesnieks are veterans of another AR outfit, Layar, which superimposes digital content onto snapshots of printed pages. Disillusioned with what he calls the “gimmicks” of earlier AR efforts that devolved into marketing, the Miesnieks are focusing on gaming as Dekko’s entrée. “We consciously chose gaming as a vertical because it’s often how new technology is introduced to the market,” he explained, citing Microsoft’s bundling of Solitaire with Windows to get users comfortable with graphical user interfaces. “It’s a new way for people to see apps outside the box.”

Dekko’s tech will almost certainly have advertising applications as well. Samsung, Intel, and Facebook have already expressed interest in using it to augment their services and devices, and Dekko is in talks with major hardware manufacturers to integrate its core tech into new devices. On the app side, toy, game, and media companies want to have their superheroes and creatures frolicking among the dishes and books on your coffee table. This capability will be demonstrated when Dekko Monkey, a tabletop game app, comes out this summer.

Dekko is working jointly with developers to build apps rather than just opening up its tools, since Miesnieks thinks that the company occupies a unique space and has privileged and complex algorithms. He concedes that a tension exists between framing Dekko as a tech platform versus a stand-alone app. “Augmented reality has the exciting potential of a goldmine, but no one has come out with a nugget of gold,” Miesnieks mused. “We need to go in ourselves to get the first nugget before selling shovels to others.”

Dekko has already scored something akin to gold, securing $1.9 million in funding last September. Today the company announced an additional $1.3 million of seed funding, mostly from MicroVentures. That cash should help Dekko scale up its OS and make good on the AR promise of a seamless experience between digital and real.

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Games meet brains: the new immersive tech of gaming

Amanda Alvarez — Fri, 03 May 2013 01:18:44 +0000

From joysticks to gamepads and now gesture recognition, gaming has been downsizing the gadgets over the decades, and it is getting close to tapping into the ultimate controller: your brain. About 300 people gathered to learn about and test the latest neurogaming tech at the eponymously named conference and expo in San Francisco this week, and many an attendee was outfitted like they belonged to the Borg. Besides the “neuro” side of the tech offerings, haptics technology — involving devices that stimulate the touch or body sense — was also well-represented.

The majority of exhibitors were peddling tech to monitor brain waves, and it seemed like EEG (electroencephalography) headsets were available in every color, shape, and size, from sleek Google Glass-like headbands to traditional electrode-laden caps. Since the measured waves represent the activity of the whole brain, it’s not possible for the devices to literally read your mind; you can’t, for example, move left or right in a game just by thinking it (yet). However, because some wave activity is associated with alertness, games like Intific’s NeuroStorm can incorporate the user’s extra focus into gameplay. Sustained concentration can also be used to launch and fly Puzzlebox’s Orbit helicopter. If you want to stimulate your brain rather than just read it, Foc.us has a headband that supposedly increases focus while playing.

Electroactive polymers — perhaps the base material for future shapeshifting phones — are being used to deliver enhanced touch and feel to gaming in Bayer MaterialScience’s Vivitouch technology. The thin film can minutely expand and contract, so that when attached to a gamepad the player can feel blasts and receive force-feedback. Vivitouch will be launching a new product at E3 in June. Tactile Haptics’ Reactive Grip is like a Wiimote on steroids that lets you feel like you’re really gripping, firing, or wielding weapons, but it’s still a tethered device.

Noticeably absent were offerings in the augmented reality or facial tracking space. Predictions about where neurogaming is headed from a few of the conference’s speakers included integrating data from wearable and smartphone sensors to enhance gameplay, and artificial intelligence-modulated games that could, for example, level the playing field between beginners and grandmasters in chess.

For mass adoption, of course, the “tech” can’t be too technical. That’s why smell and sound-driven game experiences are under development, to appeal to the limbic brain in all of us.

Image via NeuroGaming Conference and Expo

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Former Zynga exec ‘Lo’ Toney lands at Khosla-backed learn-to-code startup LearnStreet as CEO

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:00:17 +0000

Laurence ‘Lo’ Toney, a former general manager of Zynga Poker, has traded in his chips to help aspiring coders work on their programming chops.

On Thursday, LearnStreet, a learn-to-code startup incubated at Khosla Ventures, announced that Toney has been named the startup’s new CEO.

The company, which launched in November with $1 million from the venture firm, has been CEO-less until now. In a statement, Vinod Khosla said he expects Toney’s experience with consumer brands, as well as his familiarity with startups, to help LearnStreet grow.

In October, Toney left Zynga, where he had been for a few years, first as the general manager for Poker and then in a similar role in mobile. Prior to that, he worked at Cake Financial (which was acquired by ETrade), Nike and eBay. He’s also served on the advisory boards of several startups and has been an angel investor.

He said he was drawn to LearnStreet because of his interest in education, as well as a recognition that the digital economy is changing the skills people need to participate.

“I think the opportunity is massive and transformative and anyone can see the direction that all economic indicators are leading toward,” he said.

In the last few years, the learn-to-code landscape has become increasingly crowded with companies like LearnStreet, Codecademy, Treehouse, Coursera and others – all interested in some way in helping people hone programming skills online.

When it launched, LearnStreet said its goal wasn’t to be a place for people want knowledge, but a hub for those who want to actually build something. Through its “Code Garage,” for example, students can choose from a range of kits that help them learn by creating games, calculators and other digital tools.

Toney said LearnStreet will continue to focus on a project-based approach and, while it will expand horizontally into other languages, its real opportunity will be in expanding vertically to accommodate learners at different levels. He also said the company plans to do more behind-the-scenes building to use its data to personalize each student’s online learning experience.

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GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:01:14 +0000

Every January CES sets the stage for the next year in tech, showing off all the latest in consumer electronics as well as smart-home technology, digital health, connected cars, virtual reality, and mobile platforms. Given how CES is now a barometer for such a wide array of technology segments, we at GigaOM Research decided to ask our readers which way the tech winds will blow over the next year based on what they saw in Las Vegas. Our readers responded with the technologies they thought were the most disruptive and least disruptive, as well as the companies they were most impressed with, from categories as diverse as TV technology, smart home, connected car, internet of things, virtual or augmented reality, 3D printing, interfaces, digital health, mobility, and robotics.

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Why your next game console ought to be Watson

Roy Bahat, OUYA — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:30:41 +0000

A few years ago, the gaming world was thrilled by the premise that the cloud (the Cloud!) could be harnessed to power games, too — any game you wanted, anytime, on any device, served from data centers to you. Services like OnLive and Gaikai promised freedom from your hardware, the end of the lockout of exclusive games only available on one platform or another.

Reality disappointed: What we actually got was a limited library of not-new games (Homefront, anyone?), many of which you already owned, but even laggier than on your own hardware. Turns out traditional retail, game publisher, and hardware platform companies made it difficult for cloud gaming services to get the best games on the day of release, and even then the gameplay quality was slightly inferior.

But the concept of gaming in the cloud is still an idea worth pursing for a far greater promise: the ability to deliver an entirely new kind of game experience.

Historically, in games as in any other media, new distribution technologies enable new creative experiences. Pong wouldn’t have been possible without a new device plugged in to your TV. Internet-connected computers meant you could play Duke Nukem and Quake with other people online. The evolution of server technology brought massively-multiplayer games. The iPhone brought Angry Birds, a game designed for a touch interface, and so forth.

So why should a cloud gaming service be used to deliver the same old games as before that were built for a $250 machine?

What we should be wondering, then, is what new kinds of games and gaming experiences cloud delivery could inspire? Compared to the gaming hardware you own, a cloud gaming service could access much more computing power—with a limitless capacity to add processing. Consider after all that the most powerful supercomputer in the world, the Titan, is about 70,000 times more powerful than an Xbox 360. Granted the Titan costs a cool $100 million, which cuts out most households, but scaling back to basic and accessible data center prices would still offer many orders of magnitude more computing power than any current or near-future home console . (And this isn’t to say great gaming experiences are limited to powerful hardware—to the contrary mobile phones play compelling games, too. They’re just of a different sort.)

As for content itself, games purpose-built for the cloud do not yet exist — ones that aren’t encumbered by the limits of processing power, that would use the full advantage of many more, and more powerful, CPUs and GPUs. These “supercomputer games” would open up creative possibilities far beyond what games of today are capable.

Imagine supercomputer games with vividly lifelike worlds and characters (and not the almost-real, uncanny valley of current-generation graphics), or a single battlefield with 50,000 other players playing at the same time — or opponent AI on the level of IBM’s Jeopardy!-winning Watson. Supercomputer games could be dramatically different from anything you can play tonight at home. I’m no game designer, but what if we could use real-time traffic data to fill the streets of the next Grand Theft Auto, or step into a computer-generated world that looks as compelling as the Lord of the Rings movies?

Now, there are many reasons, beyond the technological, that these games don’t yet exist: It would be prohibitively expensive to pay artists to create all those detailed graphics, and simple AI is good enough to defeat most any player at most any game. But the record of creative innovators is that eventually they find a way to stretch the available technology to its limit. And some gamemakers are already beginning to probe at the games you can create if you host some of the game in the cloud.

There is a nagging constraint to the cloud, of course — bandwidth, which simply isn’t growing at the pace of Moore’s law. Network latency makes fast-twitch games, in which defeat is determined in microseconds (like with the top console genre, first-person shooters) hard to play over today’s internet. So, at least until the next engineering breakthrough, these supercomputer games might be designed around genres requiring slower player reflexes than, say, Call of Duty or StarCraft.

Best of all, the only hardware you would need at home is a basic input device like a controller and a box to render the graphics, and it could be cross-platform so that you could play from a PC or Mac or any smartphone. As one for-instance, OUYA, the new open, Android-based console I back, could be great for a cloud-delivered game (hear me, developers?), and its notable that Sony bought up Gaikai and certainly has plans. (Full disclosure: OUYA also has an announced partnership with the relaunched OnLive.)

Supercomputer games could be extraordinary. Now some intrepid game developers just have to make one.

Roy Bahat is Chairman of the open, Android-based game console company OUYA, and is former president of IGN. He is also on the faculty at UC Berkeley. Follow him on Twitter @roybahat

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Facebook works on game quality, social to keep users from calling it quits

Eliza Kern — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:16:07 +0000

The name of the game right now for Facebook is making money, and there’s no question that games will play a large part of that.

“We need to make sure we have a greater set of games for a greater set of people,” said Alex Schultz, who works on user growth at Facebook. “It’s from users to gamers to payers. So how do we optimize that funnel?”

And the company is getting better at getting gamers to pay up, focusing their efforts on quality games and social games, company representatives said in a discussion with reporters Thursday at its Menlo Park headquarters.

Schultz said the company looks at revenue models and user activity for individual games in three ways: “Hit-based” games are those like Farmville or members of a franchise, which require the constant production of new versions to stay profitable (much like the Batman movies, he said), and tend to move slowly downward in active users over time.

Then the company has a “Success” category, which encompasses pretty solid games that grow slowly over time, a Facebook spokeswoman said, including games like Words with Friends or SongPop. But the category the company really wants to target is the “Awesome” category, which typically starts out strong, experiences a lull, and then grows rapidly, either through the release of a version for Android, or more likely through social word-of-mouth. They said Instagram has actually been a good example of an app with this kind of growth, and they’re hoping more games will soon display this kind of growth as well and keep users engaged.

Schultz emphasized once again Facebook’s push to mobile, which was a huge theme in the company’s earnings call Tuesday. All of those principles apply to games as well, which are slowly moving from desktop versions to mobile, or at least toward a platform that adapts and picks up on a variety of devices. He also said the App Center has been huge for Facebook’s gaming growth, connecting users with games their friends are playing without spamming someone’s newsfeed.

Over and over, Facebook’s gaming professionals referred to quality. Quality is what keeps users playing and engaged, and expands Facebook games to traditional gamers used to the deluxe console experience. Sean Ryan, who runs the games partnership team, said the bar has been raised so much higher than it was just a few years ago:

And finally, the company pointed to arcade games and “real money” games currently taking place overseas as areas where they expect to see growth going forward. They said they’ve seen arcade and “casual” gaming take off, moving into gaming groups like teenagers who haven’t typically adopted Facebook games yet:

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Nintendo’s Wii U bets big on second screen TV

Janko Roettgers — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:48:39 +0000

Nintendo’s Wii U game console, which will go on sale mid November in the U.S., will feature on-demand video from Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon as well as some interesting second-screen action for live TV consumption. The company revealed details of its media offering, which is officially called Wii U TVii, at a press event in New York Thursday.

Nintendo had first announced that the Wii U would come with support for Netflix, Amazon and Hulu Plus at the E3 gaming show in Los Angeles earlier this summer. The move means that the company is catching up with its competitors Sony and Microsoft, which have been offering video services on their current-generation game consoles for some time. Microsoft in particular has been putting a lot of emphasis on TV, adding live TV feeds for pay TV subscribers and numerous other services in recent months.

The line-up of supported services on Nintendo’s Wii U TVii looks kind of meager in comparison, but the console has something that none of its competitors can offer: integration with a user’s existing cable or satellite TV service. That’s possible because the Wii U’s gamepad, which is essentially a touchscreen tablet, doubles as a remote control with IR blaster and second screen capabilities.

Check out a demo video of Wii U TVii below:

The gamepad can be used to browse both titles on services like Netflix as well as live TV listings. Owners of a TiVo can even control their DVR through the gamepad. And it will turn into a second screen while you watch live TV, displaying game stats during a sports game and making it possible to interact with your Twitter followers. This type of functionality was made possible through a cooperation with I.tv, a company that previously built second-screen experiences for media brands like Entertainment Weekly and AOL.

Nintendo said that the TVii service will be free to use. Of course, users will still have to pay for Netflix, Amazon and Hulu Plus — but making the service free itself sets it apart from media services on the Xbox, which require a Xbox Gold subscription in addition to any third-party fees. However, the question is: With so many apps for existing tablets already providing second-screen experiences, and other consoles offering access to many more services, will Nintendo’s Wii U TVii really move the needle and make users want to buy a Wii U?

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Valve Software makes hardware move

Barb Darrow — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 00:29:37 +0000

Valve Software, the hot gaming company behind such titles the Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike, is looking to get into hardware, according to a job post seeking an industrial designer.

According to the job description — also posted on the Coroflot job board and first spotted by website Nowgamer – Valve seeks talent to help the company’s existing engineers who are:

defining new entertainment experiences through both hardware and software. We’re hoping to add your expertise in product design and manufacturing, ergonomics, usability, aesthetics, and surfacing to our team.

There’s not a ton of detail about what, exactly, the Bellevue, WA. company plans to build, but the post leaves no doubt about the company’s dissatisfaction with the current state of hardware design:

Valve is traditionally a software company. Open platforms like the PC and Mac are important to us, as they enable us and our partners to have a robust and direct relationship with customers. We’re frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we’re jumping in. Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There’s a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked.

Valve Steambox on its way?

In early March, rumors surfaced about a mysterious Valve “Steambox” gaming console project but the company discounted those reports (sort of). This job posting, if nothing else, will bring them back to life.

Earlier this month, Valve also said it will start offering productivity applications as well as games on its Steam online delivery service. Whatever happens in hardware, Valve is definitely looking venture beyond its gaming stronghold.

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The Apple Roundup: Secure passwords can create a false sense of security

Erica Ogg — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:17:45 +0000

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss:

Wired follows up on the epic hacking that victimized writer Mat Honan’s iCloud, Twitter and Gmail accounts over the weekend, and warns that our focus on creating secure passwords lulls us into a false sense of security.
We still don’t know for sure if the next iPhone will have a larger screen. But 9to5Mac has figured out that the current iOS 6 software beta at least makes it possible to scale the homescreen up to a larger size without sacrificing image quality.
TUAW weighs on how the Apple TV is moving beyond “hobby” stage for Apple and its living room ambitions.
Asymco looks at the impact iOS GameCenter has had, now that it’s the third-largest gaming platform of all time.
Last week it was Siri’s voice commands, this week it’s Facetime that’s generating a lawsuit against Apple from Taiwan. MIC Gadget has details on the man who says he owns the patent on an “internet call feature for phones.”

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Social gambling could boost Facebook’s flagging Payments

Robert Andrews — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:27:34 +0000

Facebook could find better growth for its slow-going Facebook Payments revenue line, after it debuts paid gambling games on its platform from Tuesday.

UK online bingo game maker Gamesys‘ new game Bingo & Slots Friendzy is the first on Facebook App Centre to pay real cash prizes; several more are likely to follow. Release.

While U.S. regulators only recently began allowing some kinds of online gambling on a state-by-state basis, it is commonplace in the UK – a nation usually marked by greater regulatory control. Furthermore, recent deregulation of gambling advertising has prompted news publishers, bookmakers and various other brands to launch their own bingo and betting games, promoted through day-time TV ad campaigns.

Bingo & Slots Friendzy will be accessible only to those aged 18 and over. Gamesys promises: “A series of controls will be in place to protect under 18s and vulnerable people. In line with industry standard gambling legislation, all users will have access to a number of self-help tools to limit their spending and exclude themselves from playing at anytime.”

Facebook’s alternative to its core advertising earnings is its Facebook Payments stream, which has relied heavily on payments from Zynga games that are becoming less popular. Facebook Payments revenue grew a disappointing three percent through Q2 this year…

So Facebook Payments could stand to benefit from online bingo fans who pay money to play on the platform, which will also allow users to play along with friends.

There is another category of operator which could also benefit from the move. Gamesys also powers the bingo platforms for News International’s Sun Bingo and Fabulous Bingo sites – two of the largest in the UK. The market has become fiercely competitive, with Trinity Mirror’s rival Mirro Bingo losing players over the last year for example. If Gamesys or other vendors take their clients’ games to Facebook, the publishers could find new audiences of players.

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