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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-do-you-kill-that-which-has-no-life dept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgMw6punQrE

This a somewhat evil version of Neal Stephenson's "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" that follows you around across multiple platforms (including RL) and dynamically adjusts your gaming experiences (and your in-game cash shop prices) to keep you hooked and spending on a specific video game. (That is any specific game for which the publisher pays these people their service fee).

Just to be clear, this is a service being sold to game publishers. The service probably gets their data directly from AT&T or whatever.

SidAlpha on youtube got his mitts on a leak of their sales presentation, and it includes all the usual social media gimmickry, but it also listens to your home life through your phone so it knows the best time to prod you to play again or when to layoff - purportedly if your phone hears your baby crying, the service will reduce the intensity of both your gaming experience and any ads within regardless of platform. Or so they say... a truly evil product would choose that moment to intensify its efforts!

Also, based on the input it collects, the AI moderates your in-game rewards, including not just loot drops but also the quality and length of the missions/quests it gives you.

This kind of intrusiveness makes loot crates look good, which makes me wonder if the whole thing wasn't ginned up in an EA public relations office.....


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @11:24AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @11:24AM (#633745)

    Is it possible to get a comprehendible summary?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tonyPick on Tuesday February 06 2018, @02:58PM (3 children)

    by tonyPick (1237) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @02:58PM (#633844) Homepage Journal

    The video links to a set of screengrabs of the presentation this covers: https://imgur.com/a/rhFuj [imgur.com]

    TL;DR version is that "For each running game then collect in game information. Combine this with of game info from social media, and any other information you can get on this player (including direct A/V monitoring by the running app). Use AI to process this and tailor each instance of a game so as to maximise the revenue from that particular player by modifying difficulty, pricing and reward structures."

    Personally - the language makes it sound to me like it's a fake ("bait and switch" - really?) and some of the later stuff looks implausible, but it's close enough to recent industry trends (see SW-battlefront, Destiny2, etc.) and the kind of thing a vendor might _claim_ to be able to do, to be almost believable.

    Either way - SidAlpha's stuff is generally good, so it's worth listening to the videos if you can.

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:40PM (2 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:40PM (#634012) Journal

      I'm so excited to play this game!

      It sounds like all the fun of actuarial tables combined with Orwell's 1984. Sign me up!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:06PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:06PM (#634064)

        Do they cover when the customer actually has any fun when being forced to doing all of this?

        What do they do if the user decides to stop participating in this personalized dystopian future and unplug the tv and not recharge the phone?

        Or what if they don't... use social media, or gasp, have a different account?

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 07 2018, @02:56AM

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @02:56AM (#634264)

          > what if they don't... use social media

          "If it's not in the FB database, then it doesn't exist"