Everything you need to know about mobile Amber Alerts

At 2:38 PM on May 19th, 2017, my phone buzzed, emitting a high-pitched tone. So did the phone of my colleague Roberto Baldwin, who was standing with me in a Starbucks near our office. Actually, all of the phones in that Starbucks buzzed at the same time, setting off a cacophony of synchronized alarms. An Amber Alert had just gone out for a missing 1-year-old child, last seen in a 2000 tan Toyota Corolla. And everyone in that Starbucks, and possibly the whole of San Francisco Bay Area, saw the same message at the same time.

Up until about five years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. That’s because it was only in December 2012 that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) started to implement the Wireless Emergency Alert program, which is the one responsible for that aforementioned high-pitched tone.

The Wireless Emergency Alert program (also known as the Commercial Mobile Alert system) is used not just for Amber Alerts, but also to warn the public about natural disasters and imminent threats. Alerts can be issued by the National Weather Service, the office of the president of the United States and emergency operation centers. Think of it as the Emergency Broadcast System, but instead of appearing on radio and TV, it’s on your phone.

Still, when most people think of these emergency notifications, they think of Amber Alerts, simply because they occur more often. The US Department of Justice started the Amber Alert program in 1996 in honor of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas. The word “Amber” also stands for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response Plan.” According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Amber Alert program is “a voluntary partnership between law enforcement, broadcasters and transportation agencies to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases.”

Before this, if you wanted to receive Amber Alerts on your phone, you had to opt-in with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The program was simply called the Wireless Amber Alert program, and you’d have to not only sign up online but also specify which locations you wanted to get alerts from. Only around 700,000 or so people did this, so its reach was limited. Now, anyone with a cellphone receives the alerts by default.

While the previous Wireless Amber Alert program was SMS text-based, the current Emergency Alert program uses a technology called Cell Broadcast, which delivers messages to all phones within range of designated cell towers. It doesn’t send the message to individual recipients, so it doesn’t need to know your phone number and it doesn’t need to know who you are. This way, the alert also won’t be affected by voice and SMS text channels, which are typically more congested. Wireless Emergency Alert notifications are always free.

Each alert will contain up to 90 characters and is designed to be loud and unusual enough to capture your attention. The alert also typically only goes out to a certain geographic area where it would be of most use. So if a child was last seen in San Francisco, the Amber Alert would be sent to everyone in San Francisco, or at least in California. Sometimes the Alert is expanded to several states simultaneously, as was the case with missing 16-year-old Hannah Anderson from San Diego in 2013; authorities followed her abductor through California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington state and Idaho, sending out Amber Alerts in each state.

It’s worth noting that not every missing-child report results in an Amber Alert. Not only is it reserved for “serious child-abduction cases,” it’s also provided only when authorities have enough information to put in the alert, such as the description of the child, the abductor or at least the type of vehicle they were last seen in. The goal of an Amber Alert is to “instantly galvanize the entire community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of the child.”

And, apparently, it works. Hannah, for example, was found in Idaho thanks to an Amber Alert warning on television. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 857 children have been successfully recovered as a result of the Amber Alert program. However, only 38 were thanks to wireless emergency alerts, which is less than 5 percent of all recoveries (the rest were found through Amber Alerts on TV or the radio).

Still, that’s 38 kids who otherwise would not have been found. Of those children, one is an 8-month-old boy in Minnesota, who was found because a neighbor saw the alert on his phone and recognized a Kia that matched the description. Another was a 7-month-old in New York City, who was recovered after the alert led to a tip sent to the police hot line.

You can disable these notifications if you wish. In Android, the settings will be under Cell Broadcast, while on iOS, you’ll find the Government Alerts toggle under Notifications. But, seeing as these alerts could save lives, we suggest leaving them on.

Oh, and about that Amber Alert that I received last Friday? The child’s name is Makai Bangoura, and he was found safe in Culver City, which is 400 miles from San Francisco. Alex Bastian of the San Francisco district attorney’s office tells ABC 7 News that “the Amber Alert played a pivotal role” in his recovery.

‘Far Cry 5’ brings cult mayhem to Hope County February 27th

Far Cry 5 is going to be a little different than you might expect. The new announcement trailer paints a picture of pastoral life that lends itself surprisingly well to the franchise’s familiar trappings: hunting, off-road vehicles, airplanes and guns. And it seemingly wraps it all together in a way that seems like a more grounded version of Grand Theft Auto V’s depiction of a rural life of crime.

As hinted at by the cover art reveal, religion plays a big role here as well. The Eden’s Gate cult is terrorizing the local community under the guise of saving the residents’ souls. Naturally that involves forced baptisms/drownings while also holding what looks like a bible and keeping someone on their knees by waving a rifle in their face. You know, light narrative fare.

The development team spent a few weeks in Montana doing on-site research and also studied religious cults in an attempt to depict them correctly, the PlayStation Blog notes. Rather than focus on one central villain as in games past, the idea here was to build a realistic framework around Joseph Seed, the leader of Eden’s Gate.

“We look back at some of the characters that we’ve created before, and we’ve had those key moments where you sit down with them, and you look at them eye to eye,” creative director Dan Hay says. “But we kind of did it with one character at a time, and each game was a face-off. This time, we thought it’d be really interesting if we created a cast of characters like that.”

So, there’s Jacob the head of security; John, a lawyer who advances the cult’s public presence and Faith who “keeps the cult’s members pacified.”

Ubisoft promises that there will be more revealed during its E3 media briefing on June 12th, but if you’re curious for more before then, there’s plenty of info tucked away on the game’s official website.

The trailer says that this was captured from in-engine footage, but maybe don’t expect actual gameplay visuals to look exactly like this next February 27th on your PC, PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

Source: Ubisoft (YouTube), PlayStation Blog

Truly intelligent enemies could change the face of gaming

Live, die, repeat — the tagline for the 2014 science-fiction film Edge of Tomorrow — describes its protagonist, who “respawned” every time he died in the real world. Critics noted that the conceit resembled the cyclical experience of playing a video game, in which dying resets a staged arrangement of obstacles. Often these are enemies, and the most common way they’re surpassed is by the player violently dispatching them. Some games have kept this as cartoonish as Mario jumping on a Goomba’s head, but others strive for vivid action and more-lifelike foes to pit the player against. But we know what enemies look like today — how will we treat them in the games to come?

Put another way: How will violence in gaming change in the future?

The question is broad, and a little loaded. Gaming’s evolution was stricken by moral panic about the effect of violent video games on kids. In those days, Mortal Kombat and Doom convinced the fearful that engaging in bloody digital combat — as real as it looked in glorious 16-bit — would warp players’ minds. This cultural anxiety still spikes from time to time, but as those youths grew into adults no more prone to carnage than anyone else, the argument’s long lost its teeth.

Freed from cultural pillories, gaming started looking inward. As the industry yearns for artistic respect, critics are asking more of violent games. In the mainstream big-studio titles, we still shoot, stab and detonate digital enemies, but some see the relationship between players and foes as ripe for exploring. One of the most popular games that ventured into this territory was Shadow of Mordor.

Released by studio Monolith Productions in September 2014, Mordor placed the player in the boots of Talion, a Ranger of Gondor who is unjustly killed. His body possessed by a wraith, Talion becomes a revenant obsessed with avenging the murder of his family, while the elven ghost inside him remembers a forgotten past. His wraithlike powers enable him to mentally dominate Orcs and set them on their former comrades. The murky moralism — you essentially enslave Orcs but use them for “good” — and brutal violence disturbed some reviewers, but it didn’t stunt the game’s success.

Monolith is gearing up to release a sequel, Shadow of War, this August. This time around, Orcs follow Talion willingly as he challenges Sauron for rule of Middle-Earth, fighting his enemies (Orcs still faithful to Mordor) and even forming a bodyguard cadre to protect their leader. Ditching mind control in favor of a strongman cult creates a more fertile arena for dynamic relationships to develop between players and their erstwhile allies and enemies, according to Michael de Plater, creative director for Shadow of War at Monolith.

“Unlike in Shadow of Mordor, where basically their whole minds got wiped by that experience, we wanted [the Orcs] to keep their personalities, and also still have some possibilities where they can still break free and even betray you or go back to Sauron. So it is more of an allegiance of a relationship rather than just straight enslaving them,” de Plater told Engadget.

“There’s a definite tension between those two things — are you enslaving them, or are you recruiting them?”

“But at the same time, it is still definitely under the influence of the Ring of Power. There’s a definite tension between those two things — are you enslaving them, or are you recruiting them? And how free are they, and what sort of stories can get created with that? … We certainly explore through the course of the story … some of the Orcs react to, and explore, and talk about, and create different events as well,” de Plater said.

Like the first game, Shadow of War will use the “Nemesis” system to generate unique Orc captains and pit them against each other in a bloody hierarchy. The system ended up creating memorable enemies that players would recall years later on Reddit forums, de Plater said: They’d kill named Orc lieutenants the system assigned a random personality and set of attributes, who would return with a grudge and sometimes kill the player, creating a brutal cycle with both parties knowing the score.

Most but not all of these named Orcs will be randomly created. Some will still be scripted by Monolith to fulfill a specific purpose in the game’s story. In future games in the series — and across the industry, in general — de Plater hopes that procedurally-generated enemies will have such advanced AI and reaction protocols that players will develop relationships with them without realizing the NPC’s lines and behaviors weren’t written out beforehand.

“The ultimate goal would be that you have something that looks and feels at the level of detail of something that was entirely scripted, but it is taking place entirely procedurally,” de Plater said. “I think everyone’s still a fair way away from that.”

The Monolith Productions team isn’t alone in believing that one of gaming’s frontiers lies with the unpredictability of AI-controlled enemies and allies. Mitu Khandaker teaches on the topic as assistant arts professor at NYU Game Center — but as chief creative officer at artificial-intelligence company Spirit AI, she’s also working with a team to develop technology for companies to use in their own games.

“What we do is build tools to help developers creatively author story scenarios and author personalities for characters and the kinds of things that characters might say, but then those characters might improvise based on the space that you’ve authored for them,” Khandaker told Engadget. “There’s a lot of potential there for players to really have deeper, more meaningful conversations with characters.”

“There’s a lot of potential there for players to really have deeper, more meaningful conversations with characters.”

Spirit AI’s efforts could be summarized as “building technology which will let us make the walking simulator a conversation,” according to Khandaker. Think of the squad’s idle chatter in Mass Effect, or the casual smalltalk during long car rides in Final Fantasy XV: Pre-written, nonessential dialogue tumbling out of an algorithmic generator that organically delivers exposition and character detail. But what if those AI characters talking to the player and making up responses on the fly — even if they’re enemy grunts with their guns drawn?

Khandaker can imagine creating games where the enemies aren’t just tokens or pawns but more fully formed virtual characters. “Instead of just committing violence upon some kind of enemy, maybe [players will be] trying to understand their motives, she said. “Now, in this cultural context, more than ever, a human understanding of the reasons why people make decisions they do is super-important. Even if, on some level, we think decisions people make might be evil, we still need to have the level of understanding because that’s how we learn and grow and how we combat evil.”

What Shadow of War won’t have are human enemies that players can mind control or kill in gruesome ways: Your foes will be Mordor-born Orcs who span the gray-brown gamut and exhibit the violent, traitorous ways of their race. This is intentional.

“One of the challenging things is striking the balance of having a game that’s fundamentally pretty gritty and violent, but also making sure that we have this humor in there and this levity to it,” de Plater said. “Ultimately, even though it is dealing with some dark themes, there is a cartoony level of violence as well. Orcs represent these caricatures. Everything’s turned up to 11 in terms of their personality and their characters and their faults, and the violence of their society and how power-crazed they all are; how backstabbing and cutthroat they are against anyone.”

In short, you’ll be dispatching and commanding a class of enemy designed to be dynamically interesting yet disposable in a way that shouldn’t trigger a player’s ethical qualms. Game critic Austin Walker believed that the first game, Shadow of Mordor, failed to justify Talion’s anti-Orc kill-and-enslave crusade: “But we’re told again and again that these Orcs want to destroy beautiful things. It just doesn’t hold up, and this tension extends to every element of their narrative and systemic characterizations. These Orcs have fears, interests, values, rivalry and friendships. Some Orcs are lovingly protective of their bosses or underlings. But they are ‘savage creatures’ that ‘hate beauty,’ so go ahead and enslave them,” Walker wrote.

At least Shadow of War will strive to explore new and uncomfortable relationships between player and enemy. Even if it never lets players forget Orcs are villains at their core, some will attempt to liberate themselves from any overlord, dark or bright, de Plater said. He didn’t specify whether these autonomy-seeking enemies will be a scripted faction in the game. But imagine wandering down the sludgy Mordor foothills only to find a procedurally-generated band of Orcs that avoid conflict and try to run away from you, the bogeyman who’s murdered (or recruited) all their friends, as they search for a better life.

Imbuing enemies with relatable traits — human traits — is as fascinating as it is discomforting. Since their inception, single-player games have driven a hard wedge between players and enemies by making the latter alien and threatening. Space Invaders and Galaga literally used aliens, while Missile Defense tossed unthinking explosives at the vulnerable people populating the player’s cities. The dawn of the first-person-shooter genre featured demonic monsters in Doom and Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D, enemies so unrelatable that players don’t think when gunning them down.

Spirit AI’s clients are using its AI-conversation tech to augment NPC allies, though Khandaker’s team is starting to graft it onto enemies. But it’s really up to whoever uses Spirit’s tools, and whichever studio decides to challenge players with ordinary foes that do more than shoot in their direction.

“I would love to see that as a moral choice that you make. It should be sometimes deeply troubling, depending on your particular game, that somebody is so human and so full of their own motive, doing the things that they’re doing, that it’s not so easy to dehumanize them,” Khandaker said.

“I think that through good, well-considered design, we’ll get to a point where actually these interactions with characters help us to better understand the motivations that real people have.”

“This is why I think it comes down to designing photo-realistic, naturalistic AI really well. If [designers] let you push them around, you’re going to maybe transfer that to real people. If, however, they don’t — if they push back and they try and do the emotional labor of helping you to understand what it is to interact with someone in a nice, well-considered way — then you can maybe transfer that to your interactions with people,” Khandaker said. “I think that through good, well-considered design, we’ll get to a point where actually these interactions with characters help us to better understand the motivations that real people have.”

Whether AI tech will develop substantially in the next few years and, ultimately, whether improving enemy and ally AI will positively affect the player’s experience, is another question. As Compulsion Games’ Creative Director Guillaume Provost points out, making smarter enemies doesn’t matter much if the player doesn’t know what’s going on.

“Making AIs that are believable often involve stuff that’s not that technical and has a lot more to do with the acting parts that are involved in the AI,” Provost said. “So it’s not so much the sophistication of the technology behind it as it is the sophistication of expressing what’s going on in their heads to the player.”

“It’s not so much the sophistication of the technology behind it as it is the sophistication of expressing what’s going on in their heads to the player.”

For Provost, that meant tweaking some gameplay in Compulsion Games’ latest title, We Happy Few, which was released in Early Access last year. In it, players try to escape an English city whose denizens imbibe drugs en masse to forget their communal crimes — and punish those who won’t do the same. In playtesting, this meant making the hostile NPCs warn the player several times before violently reacting. They couldn’t assume players would pick up on cues because in gaming, players’ attention is focused on what they’re interacting with at the time.

“The truth is, it’s not a movie where you sit down and watch people the whole time. You’re actively doing stuff. You’re running around, you’re stealing stuff. The player has a smaller portion of their brain left to understand what the people around them are doing,” Provost said.

Which is why developers have to treat player attention as a resource and be smart about what they make intelligent. Provost recalled a story about the grunts in the first Halo who were programmed to yell out “I surrender” and wave their arms around — but players would gun them down before the little enemies could bark out their lines. Similarly, Provost doesn’t see nearly as much use for plugging more AI into enemies to make them smarter in future games.

“The biggest advances that I found in my actual experience don’t have that much to do with technology. They have to do with the sophistication that we can actually window-dress AIs as human characters. And there’s nowhere we’ve moved for faster in that area, I think, than in companion AIs that are going to accompany you, and for the simple reason that you have much more opportunities to actually build an emotional response to those people,” Provost said. “If you walk down the street and shoot a guy, you’ve literally spent 10 seconds with him.”

Which explains the success of companions like Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite or Ellie in The Last of Us. Specifically, their AI was deliberately programmed to recognize downtime and start chit-chatting — the smalltalk between action set pieces that draws the player closer to companions. But players don’t spend nearly as much time around enemies, so there’s much less opportunity for their programming to shine. And if you plug AI into their performance, well, it’s really easy to make an AI that never misses — that’s why cheaters in shooter games use aimbots.

“The biggest fun there is in AI is being able to predict successfully what they’re doing, which is completely counterintuitive to the idea of having this really deep AI. If you’re playing a game and the AI’s always completely unpredictable, it just turns into a frustrating experience for the player because they can’t learn a good strategy to actually succeed at the game,” Provost said. “[The key is] having a good balance where, over time, the player gets to master a game by understanding, whether at a conscious or subconscious level, what is likely going to result from their action and being able to strategize which actions to take. It’s a cornerstone of making AI interesting when you’re playing them as foes.”

“If you’re playing a game and the AI’s always completely unpredictable, it just turns into a frustrating experience for the player because they can’t learn a good strategy to actually succeed at the game.”

There’s an obvious question here: Why make enemies more complex if you’re just going to shoot them? Players have been dispatching foes since video games moved past Pong 45 years ago. They are obstacles. But big-budget studios are spending lots of money making them look like really pretty obstacles to shoot at. A time might come where the disparity between human-looking-but-robotic-acting enemies becomes too jarring.

“It’s a problem when you’re making games increasingly photo-realistic and though the enemies are representative of real people, they don’t really act like real people. If enemies are just cartoonish representations, then perhaps it’s not a problem if they’re not fully-formed individuals,” Khandaker said. When enemies are photo-realistic and representative of gender or race or a demographic, it’s more problematic to blur identities. “You see this a lot with games representing terrorists. It’s often this idea of ‘generic brown person.’ I think that is a problem. We need to start understanding that people who look like humans should also behave like humans.”

In 2017, imposing greater sensitivity in games to stay away from stereotypes seems like a no-brainer. Not that games aren’t still committing the sins of racial omission, but the cure is obvious: diversity and research. Striving toward accurate representation.

Whether to make enemies smarter is another question. Especially when big-budget games are crafted to be enjoyable experiences that don’t tax your brain. They spur a pleasurable feedback loop, said Miguel Sicart, associate professor at the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen.

“By the end of the day, what players want is to have enemies that have patterns that are ultimately recognizable so we can beat them. That’s the goal of every player: to get so good at something that they can beat the enemy,” Sicart told Engadget. At their core, a lot of big-budget games aren’t really designed to think deeper than providing satisfying player-vs.-computer combat. “We are never going to see Call of Duty be morally nuanced, the same as we are never going to see The Fast And Furious be morally nuanced; but they also don’t need to be. They’re just empty popcorn that feels really good.”

The violence in many games — especially ones putting the character in military boots gunning for enemies of freedom — doesn’t bother Sicart. It’s the lack of context that worries him. Why are players where they are, mowing down digital interchangeable mooks? Are there consequences to going to war?

“There’s currently a rhetoric [in gaming] about war that’s not glorifying it, but not necessarily not glorifying it,” Sicart said. “You can see this in the US media when Trump ordered strikes on Syria and the media went crazy about the beauty of these missiles. We’ve lost a little bit in the media landscape — this capacity of saying, ‘Holy shit, we are throwing missiles at people.’”

That disconnect troubles Sicart. People uploading videos to YouTube of gruesome kills and testicle-shattering sniper montages is a glorification of sorts, which is “one step toward this trivialization of war and conflict and death and violence,” he said. We’ve always had violence, stretching back to the Iliad and Odyssey graphically describing dismemberment-by-cyclops, Sicart points out, and violence is a part of how we express ourselves as humans. But a lot of war games make violence the unique selling point: They are about the carnage. They are about the death.

“… Some of these games are propaganda. To me, they are the worst type of propaganda because it’s propaganda that you not only consume by reading and listening, but you have to participate.”

“We have to be careful with how we sell what, by the end of the day, is just coppers and robbers on a computer. Careful how we sell these things and careful with how we try to tie it to real military discourse. Careful how we try to tie it to conflicts in the real world. We have to be careful with these things, because we are feeding a general media discourse that maybe we don’t want to feed,” Sicart said. “I mean, to be perfectly honest, some of these games are propaganda. To me, they are the worst type of propaganda because it’s propaganda that you not only consume by reading and listening, but you have to participate.”

The point isn’t just to be careful about what studios are making for their audiences, but how aware they are of their medium’s failings. The 2012 cult classic Spec Ops: The Line has been duly lauded for its self-awareness amid a sea of identical military shooters (what Sicart calls “these brown-looking video games where you are a disembodied gun shooting other people”) for pushing players to seriously evaluate why they thoughtlessly careen through other titles gunning down whomever is tossed in their way. But that was five years ago. Since then, which games have come along to seriously challenge the player’s relationship with violence?

“It may take five years, or maybe 10, but I think we are slowly getting to the position when video games are wanting to actively participate in the cultural debate, and therefore we will have a much more nuanced take on violence,” Sicart said. “We will be able to call bullshit on violence for violence’s sake. We will be able to call bullshit on video games that just want to glorify discourses that we don’t want in culture.”

That’s the same argument we’ve been hearing for years. But video games are slowly opening up to the increasingly widespread format of virtual reality. With top-line headsets getting bundles and smartphone-powering headsets like Google Daydream and Samsung VR getting more support, the medium is growing day by day. Its tech immerses players deeper into the worlds and experiences developers create for them.

Khandaker’s doctoral research involved putting test subjects through the paces of a game she made. Players went on a climb with a friend, simulating the tactile hand-over-hand action of ascending a rock face grip by grip. You reach the top ahead of your partner, when she suddenly drops, dangling far below on a rope rapidly fraying under the weight of both of you.

“This NPC starts screaming at you to just cut the rope and just let her die, and all of these things. As the player, you have to make the decision about whether you do that, and it’s very time-sensitive, so you have to make the decision about whether you’re going to cut this friend of yours loose and ultimately murder her, or are you going to not make a decision and let the rope break and kill the both of you,” Khandaker said. “It was really fascinating because the decisions that people made were very different in VR versus as a classic interface. People took longer to make the decision about what to do, people felt worse about it, in VR. People felt closer to the character in VR.”

“It was really fascinating because the decisions that people made were very different in VR versus as a classic interface. People took longer to make the decision about what to do, people felt worse about it, in VR. People felt closer to the character in VR.”

But after a follow-up questionnaire, Khandaker sat down to interview every player, and most of them — even the ones who were visibly upset — settled down and told her it was fun, that it was just a game. Even in the immersion of VR, players retain the double consciousness of emotional involvement in the experience with awareness that it’s still a simulation.

“That’s always been there, even if you are doing the worst kind of dehumanizing– sort of mowing through enemies in a photo-realistic game. You can slightly feel bad about it, but you also know it’s a game,” Khandaker said. “In VR, that effect is even more pronounced. We feel worse about the things we do but we also know what we’re doing is just a game. There’s a lot of potential to play with those feelings. Especially … if characters seem even more like real characters, if they’re able to respond to you.”

In other words, VR immersion augments gaming, but it’s the connections that dramatically affect the player experience. Part of that means simulating human conventions — move this way, react that way, emote like we would — softening their perfect reflexes and senses to let players compete on more even ground.

“Making an AI really good or really skilled, that’s a problem we solved day one. We spend an inordinate amount of time making them suck. Making an AI look really smart, because they’re either flanking you or they’re appearing to work as a group together, that is immersion,” Provost said. “It’s not intelligence, and the immersion is done by us collectively understanding what are the best ways to communicate to the player, ‘Hey, I’m doing something intelligent,’ whether they’re really doing something intelligent or not.”

“Making an AI really good or really skilled, that’s a problem we solved day one. We spend an inordinate amount of time making them suck.”

For Eric Zimmerman of the NYU Game Center, however, humans are still the apex of depth and complexity. We’ll probably get complex character moments from AI partners in the future, but the best examples are in human-to-human interaction, Zimmerman maintained. Skirmishes, deceptions, alliances built up over time only to get dashed by a mole intent on starting a war — you can find that, and more, in EVE Online thanks to its dedicated player community.

“The stories coming out of EVE Online are the stories people want to come out of other games,” Zimmerman said. Most recently, the space-age MMO saw the leader of one of its most elite pirate gangs get conned out of a one-of-a-kind ship worth 300 billion in-game Isk (or about $2,600 in real currency, according to this exchange). But the game is infamous for its betrayals, faction infiltration, frontier piracy and colossal space battles, all happening at a scale that would seem impossible for a single game filled with AI NPCs to mimic.

Human interaction or intention in design will bring depth, Zimmerman concludes — not purely new technology. He recalls a moment during a presentation at a Game Developers Conference in the early 2000s when a Sony executive was crowing about the latest cutting-edge development in the then-latest PlayStation console. “‘Finally, we’ll have high-resolution tears running down high-resolution cheeks as they’re crying, and we’ll finally have deep emotions in characters,’” Zimmerman recalls him saying.

“The idea that technology guarantees a meaningful experience is false. All of this tech is still just an expressive tool for people to use to express themselves, to score ideas, to make statements about the world,” Zimmerman said. “The human decisions that go into a game are far, far more important than the technology that’s driving the experience.”

But it’s the awkward attempts, the false starts and grand aspirations dashed by bizarre results that mark the progress of video games. Ambitious games that failed to live up to their hyped AI complexity, like Peter Molyneux’s Black and White or Stephen Spielberg and EA’s scrapped LMNO project, nonetheless leave conceptual scraps for later titles to pick up.

Among the disappointments are successes like Left For Dead, which debuted in 2008 with its “AI Director” that shuffled enemies and items around for dynamic and dramatically different playthroughs. Half-Life 2 debuted in 2004 with its AI companion Alex, and almost a decade later in 2013, gaming got her successors Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite and Ellie in The Last Of Us. Imagine what kind of AI-filled worlds we’ll get to play in a decade from this August’s Shadow of War.

Image credits: Matthew Lyons (lead illustration); Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment (‘Shadow of War’); 2K Games (‘Bioshock’); 2K Games/NeoGAF (‘Spec-Ops: The Line’ screenshot).

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This Week’s Cover of ‘The New Yorker’ Was Sketched on an iPad

This week’s cover of The New Yorker has been sketched using an iPad and Apple Pencil, created by illustrator Jorge Colombo. The image depicts Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn Heights that Colombo frequents, with the artwork capturing a couple of basketball games and spectators at the park.

Apple CEO Tim Cook shared The New Yorker cover on Twitter this morning, with a quote from Colombo who mentioned his fear that one of the basketballs would fly near him and hit his iPad.

It’s one of my favorite places to hang out,” Jorge Colombo says, about the park he sketched, on an iPad, for the cover of this week’s issue. “I live down the street, in Brooklyn Heights, so I go there all the time, either to take the East River Ferry or just to relax by the water.

It is a magnet—people come from all of Brooklyn’s many neighborhoods just to take a selfie by the waterfront or picnic by the water. This was a risky drawing to make, though: I kept worrying that the ball would hit me or the iPad.”

The New Yorker also shared a video of Colombo’s illustration process on its website this week. Apple’s iPad and Apple Pencil have been celebrated as tools for artists in the past, with Apple recently highlighting Rob Zilla’s NBA illustrations. Apple’s tablet was even used to create the poster for Stranger Things on Netflix.

Related Roundups: iPad Pro, iPad mini 4 (2015)
Tag: Apple Pencil
Buyer’s Guide: 9.7″ iPad Pro (Don’t Buy), iPad Mini (Caution), 12.9″ iPad Pro (Don’t Buy)
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Best Buy Memorial Day Sale Savings on Apple Watch, Mac Notebooks, 9.7-Inch iPad Pro, and More

Best Buy today launched a four-day-long Memorial Day sale that has markdowns on quite a few Apple products, including Apple Watch, iPhone 7, iPhone SE, iPad, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac. The four day sale begins today and ends on Memorial Day, this Monday, May 29.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy and may earn commissions on purchases made through these links.

The first item up for sale is Apple Watch Series 2, which Best Buy has marked down $70 for nearly all models of Apple’s wearable device. Each purchase of an Apple Watch during the event will net customers free in-store setup and advice by Geek Squad.

Aluminum case models including Nike are priced at $299 for 38mm or $329 for 42mm, while stainless steel models range from $479 to $679 depending on casing color and band combinations.

Best Buy’s iPhone 7 sale lets customers save up to $300 when they buy and activate an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus on a monthly installment plan, with carrier plan options varying by store. Similarly, Best Buy is offering up to $200 off the iPhone SE 16GB and 64GB models with the purchase of a monthly installment plan.

For Mac notebooks, Best Buy is providing discounts of between $200 and $250 on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar isn’t included in the site’s Memorial Day sale. Customers who buy one of the MacBooks will also get six months of Trend Micro Internet Security for free, which will cover up to three iOS, Mac, Android, or Windows devices for the time frame.

Best Buy has marked down numerous versions of Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad Pro, with savings between $100 and $125 off of the devices in Wi-Fi only configurations. Discounts of $100 are also available on iPad mini 4 Wi-Fi models. With the purchase of an iPad customers will receive a free six months of Kaspersky Internet Security that covers a range of three devices across iOS, Mac, Android, and Windows.

Best Buy has a few deals on iMacs, Mac minis, and Mac Pros this weekend, with savings going up to $200 on iMac and $100 on Mac mini, with the same free warranty offer as it’s offering for customers purchasing a MacBook. Best Buy is also knocking $600 off of the original price of the quad-core Mac Pro that has discontinued been by Apple.

Finally, the Memorial Day sale also includes a few smart home items, like connected light bulbs and the Nanoleaf Aurora lighting system. Beats by Dre Powerbeats3 Wireless headphones are on sale for $129.99 ($70 in savings), as well as the DJI Phantom 4 Quadcopter drone at $999.99 ($200 in savings). Customers can choose between free in-store pick up on all items, or get free two-day shipping for any orders over $35.

Visit Best Buy’s Hot Deals page here to see the full list of products available before the Memorial Day sale ends on Monday.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals
Tag: Best Buy
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The iPhone 8 is back to having an embedded Touch ID sensor according to report

The Economic Daily News, via Digitimes, has reported that Apple will in fact use a new optical fingerprint sensor technology to embed a Touch ID sensor in the front of the OLED panel. The EDN cites Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as the source of the information.

• Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus: What’s the story so far?

TSMC is responsible for developing the new A11 processing chip that will no doubt feature in the iPhone, so the source is a good one, but it does of course contradicts several other reports that suggest the iPhone 8 will have a rear-mounted Touch ID scanner. It was thought up until now that the technology to embed a sensor in the screen wouldn’t be able to be produced on such a large scale. It seems that truth be told, nobody knows for sure what will happen until the new iPhone is held aloft on stage.The sensor will show up on the screen as a virtual home button, where you will just need to place your finger, or thumb, whichever you have assigned, to unlock the phone and authorise payments.The report also mentions an infrared sensor on the front of the phone, which will be used for facial recognition functions. This is something we’ve heard before, so it’s good to have another source add some weight to the rumour.The iPhone 8 is expected to have an edge-to-edge display, similar to the Infinity Display on the Galaxy S8 phones. It will even allegedly sport the same aspect ratio as its Samsung rival, changing from 16:9 on the iPhone 7, to an 18.5:9 ratio instead.

• This latest iPhone 8 schematic shows rear-mounted Touch ID sensor
• iPhone 8 to come with “revolutionary” facial recognition front-camera system
• Apple iPhone 8 in pictures: Renders and leaked photos
• This video render shows just how gorgeous the iPhone 8 could be

We initially expected the iPhone 8 to launch alongside the iPhone 7s and 7s Plus at Apple’s usual September keynote address, but reported issues with the production of OLED panels may push it back to November. 

Far Cry 5: Release date, trailer, screens and everything you need to know

Far Cry 5 is finally official and is set to be the series’ most accomplished outing yet – no mean feat considering the excellence of Far Cry 4.

It is set in the US for the first time, allows you to fly planes and lets you create your own lead character rather than play as a predetermined protagonist.

So what else can you expect for Far Cry 5? We attended a first look briefing to find out more.

• Far Cry 5 revealed, heading to Montana for some good ol’ hillbilly mayhem

What is Far Cry 5?

Far Cry 5 is technically the sixth in the Far Cry series, if you also include the Stone Age-set Far Cry Primal. In fact, if you include the Far Cry: Instincts variants and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon it’s actually something like the tenth, but we’re not. So there.

Like Far Cry 4, it is an open-world first-person shooter with role-playing elements. We also expect it to feature some crafting elements, with the main trailer showing deer hunting so we’d expect a similar hunting/skinning and making system as in previous games.

Also as in previous games, you can drive and ride vehicles across the mission map. And this time around that includes planes.

Far Cry games have always been dark in tone, but with an underlying wicked sense of humour. We’ve been told to expect the same in Far Cry 5.

Ubisoft

Where is Far Cry 5 set?

For the first time, Far Cry is set on US soil – in the fictional region of Hope County in the Northwestern state of Montana. The official announcement trailer also shows the town of Fall’s End, which seems to be the base of the all-new villains, Joseph Seed and his family.

The Seed family is headed by Joseph, AKA The Father, plus his siblings, Jacob, John and Faith, known collectively as The Heralds. They lead a cult, the Project at Eden’s Gate, and have been recruiting civilians to their deeply religious cause, presumably for a nefarious reason that is yet to be discovered.

The surroundings, from the trailer and background information we’ve been privy to, include forests, mountains and farmlands. There are likely to be several towns and encampments too, if former Far Cry games are anything to go by.

Who do you play in Far Cry 5?

For the first time in the series, you get to choose your lead character. You design the avatar from numerous customisation options, even choosing whether to play a male or female lead.

Once your character has been designed, you start the game as a Junior Deputy of Hope County, assigned to capture Joseph Seed by the US Marshals.

Surprisingly, he comes peacefully but his followers have other ideas. “All Hell breaks loose,” we were told, and you end up kidnapped by the Seeds and the Project at Eden’s Gate cult alongside two of your colleagues. We haven’t yet been told what happens next, but can guess. We doubt the colleagues make it.

Ubisoft

What other characters are there in Far Cry 5?

There are three other main characters we know of so far, who appear to guide you and give you missions in Far Cry 5.

They are each a member of a local resistance, seeking to put an end to the cult and Seed family’s reign for different reasons.

Pastor Jerome has lost his entire flock to the Project at Eden’s Gate, so is willing to take up arms against the cult to get them back.

Local bar owner, Mary May is out to seek revenge for her father. He was killed by the Seeds and her mother and brother were taken.

And plane-owner Nick Rye has also suffered family woe thanks to the group. He is the source for flying vehicles which you will be able to pilot in the game for the first time.

What does Far Cry 5 look like?

We are yet to see actual gameplay, but the vignettes and location shots of Far Cry 5 are photo realistic – they look stunning. We’re especially impressed by the motion capture work on the rendered characters of Pastor Jerome, Mary May and Nick Rye.

Are there co-op and/or multiplayer modes in Far Cry 5?

Ubisoft is yet to reveal multiplayer options for Far Cry 5 but it has told us that the entire single-player campaign can also be played co-operatively.

There will be NPC “Guns for Hire”. And it is confirmed that you will also be able to recruit “Fangs for Hire” animals (bears, cougars and more) like in Far Cry Primal.

There will be a map editor to create all-new playing fields.

Ubisoft

What vehicles can I drive in Far Cry 5?

We can see, in the main announcement trailer, that cars, buggies and quad bikes return, along with boats and big rigs.

As previously mentioned, you will also be able to fly planes. However, we’re not yet sure whether you will also be able to fly a helicopter. One appears in the trailer, so we hope so.

Is there a trailer for Far Cry 5?

There is an announcement trailer for Far Cry 5, which you can see here:

Three character pieces, starring Pastore Jerome, Mary May and Nick Rye are also available:

Prior to these becoming available, there were also a few tiny teaser vignettes released online, which are available to view below:

Far Cry 5 release date and formats

Far Cry 5 will be available for PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Project Scorpio and PC. It is scheduled for release on 27 February 2018. PS4 owners will get a free skin pack with their purchase.

We are likely to go hands-on with an early build of Far Cry 5 at E3 2017 in June.

Best fans: Keep cool while the heat rises

When the summer months hit the UK, we all start to wonder why we never installed airconditioning as we swelter through those uncomfortable nights. So fans are in fashion again and they always sell out on the high street, so your best bet it to buy online and be ready for the heatwave.

Here are some choice fans you can buy today, so snap one up and save yourself a sleepness sweaty night.

Amazon

Dyson Pure Cool Tower

Buy the Dyson Pure Cool on Amazon UK

This really is the crème de la crème of fans. It’s expensive, sure, but there’s a reason for that. Firstly, the design makes this an attractive and easy to clean addition to your home, unlike a bladed fan. Secondly, it also contains a HEPA filter, so for hayfever or allergy sufferers, you’re not circulating the air that’s going to make your eyes itch or your nose run. Finally, it’s quiet in operation and easy to clean. There’s also a version that adds heat, but it’s cooling that we really need.

Amazon

Quality Prem-I-Air 45cm fan

Buy the Quality Prem-I-Air on Amazon UK

Sometimes you just need to sit back and let the air pour over you. The unfortunately-named Quality Prem-I-Air is big with a 45cm/18-inch diameter and rather brutal, offering plenty of fan power. It’s a simple metal design that will let you change the angle, meaning you can stick it on the floor in the corner of the room, tilt it up so it blows over you on the sofa. Job done, you’re now cool.

Amazon

Honeywell HT900E Turbo Fan

Buy the Honeywell HT900E Turbo Fan on Amazon UK

If you’re after a pretty basic fan that’s not too noisy for your desk, then Honeywell might have the answer. There are few exciting features for this fan, but it can be wall mounted of you want to put it on the wall of your garden or whatever to save space around your desk. This one is only about 30cm in diameter, but does come fully assembled, so it’s ready to go.

Amazon

Swan Retro

Buy the Swan Retro on Amazon UK

The simple elegance of a fan is boosted by the Swan Retro, which comes in a number of different colours – black, blue, red or cream – so you can fit it in with your décor and it’s less of an eyesore. It comes with three speed settings and oscillates too.

Amazon

Honeywell Oscillating Tower

Buy the Honeywell Tower on Amazon UK

One of the appealing things about this Honeywell tower fan is that it comes with a remote control, meaning you don’t have to get out of bed to turn it up, down, or off when you wake up freezing at 5am. It has an LED panel on the top and offers three different modes. The advantage of having a tower over a desk fan is that it’s typically quieter and takes up a lot less floor space.

‘Pokémon Go’ update gives cheaters lousy monsters

With a new update, Pokémon Go cheaters won’t be banned, but instead thrown into a depressing purgatory. As spotted by Reddit’s hardcore Pokémon Go site, Silph Road, Niantic is now “shadowbanning” cheaters by only letting them find humdrum monsters like Pidgey. In a statement, Niantic support said “people who violate the Pokémon Go Terms of Service may have their gameplay affected and may not be able to see all the Pokémon around them.”

For instance, cheaters often use bots that falsify their locations or power scanners to show the locations of the sweetest Pokémon. That way, you can find a Pikachu and catch it from your couch rather than hiking several miles to the local power plant. If Niantic has flagged you as an “illicit” player, however, the best you can probably hope for is a Magikarp.

Silph Road’s mods wrote that “huge numbers of bot accounts were being flagged, though many were still operating normally.” Users have debated why specific accounts were getting the hammer, with one theory being that Niantic is cracking down on accounts trying to access its private servers.

That doesn’t appear to be the only reason, though, and Niantic itself is obviously not saying. “While we cannot discuss the systems implemented, we can confirm that we are constantly refining new ways to ensure the integrity of the game in order to keep it fun and fair for all Trainers,” its statement reads.

Via: TNW

Source: The Silph Road (Reddit), NianticGeorge (Reddit)

Time-bending shooter ‘Superhot VR’ arrives on HTC Vive

Superhot VR didn’t start life as an Oculus Rift game, but it eventually made it to the VR headset. With dual-wielding guns and further tweaks to improve the title for a new interface, it turned into a short-but-sweet slice of virtual reality gaming. Now it’s HTC Vive owners’ turn to slow time, evade bullets, and return them in kind.

At least, officially. More enthusiastic Vive gamers have been able to tap into ReVive, a software workaround that let Steam VR users access to Oculus exclusives like Superhot VR since last year. That said, Github files and a little bit of hard work aren’t for all of us, and the official release on Steam is a good sign for the remaining Vive owners looking for a VR title to tide them over until E3 next month.

The game’s posit is cleverly simple: Time moves forward as you do. It’s arguably more of a puzzle game than shooter, as you plan your movement through levels to avoid getting trapped — and then filled with bullets. Available on Steam now, Superhot VR is launching with an early-bird 20 percent discount (down to $20) through til the start of June.

Via: Techradar

Source: Steam