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Will we ever have love affairs with video game characters?

In Spike Jonze’s new movie Her, Joaquin Phoenix is an introverted writer on the verge of divorce who falls in love with his computer’s intelligent operating system. Exactly how far-fetched or credible you think that is probably depends on how invested you are in technology. It was after all, inspired by the real-life web application Cleverbot, which lets visitors engage in conversations with an AI program; and in a lot of ways the movie is a study of our growing reliance on devices as mediators in our social lives and love affairs. From Siri to Tinder, our smartphones and tablets are simultaneously humansing themselves while mechanising our relationships with other humans. How long before we fall for the devices themselves?

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theguardian.com
Malphite3706d ago (Edited 3706d ago )

I really hope we will. However I think we're at least 20 years away from such a technology. The only thing I fear is that people will spend more time in virtual reality than in real life up to the point where VR becomes our reality and we lose touch with real life.

DarkBlood3706d ago

with how resources are being used VR or matrix would seem like a godsend but hey stuff like that would help pass the time mentally in a happy/sad kind of way

AgentSmithPS43705d ago

Wow that's long. That's what she-AI said.

Hopefully this will lead to lower birth rates which will cut down on this awful traffic in my area. Maybe good artificial relationships will help people make better decisions before making bad choices in real ones. In a way people are born as "addicts" to each other, and just like drug addiction "love addiction" can have many bad consequences.

For years in the "Battlefield" series of games those few using a mic called out for teamwork and most of the time were met with a chilling silence. I wonder if this will get better or worse when people get used to having nice interactions with smart NPCs, or maybe they'll get worse since the AI will mirror their flaws and enable them to remain the a-hole that they are? ;).

Who knows if this will eventually lead to humans becoming mice-like hooked up to a pleasure button wired to their brain pressing it until they die, or if these characters will be like guides leading us to a better future.

medman3705d ago

I already had one. Her name was Liara T'Soni.

Mister_Dawg3705d ago

I think some people on here are already having an unhealthy relationship with their little black box ;-)

ShAkKa3705d ago

Hey, let's not make this a Ps4 only problem, there are some people having unhealthy relationship with their big black boxes too...

BoneBone3705d ago

Why would you want to? I hope they realese a virtual therapist before anthing down this street. It's a bit sad.

sprinterboy3705d ago

Yeah can't see or want to fall in love with a video game character lol, I enjoy games load's but that's too far

chrissx3705d ago

That would be sick lol. A video game character can't have "feelings" for a human so it would be 1 sided love

Malphite3703d ago

Believe it or not but what we call feelings is nothing more than electric signals interpreted by our brain. If we could get true intelligence computers (meaning they learn new things without being programmed for it) they could actually develop preferences and maybe even a personality.

I know it sounds like science fiction but what is normal nowadays was science fiction a couple hundred years ago. I'm pretty sure the human race won't stop until we can actually take the role of god and reproduce something in our own image.

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60°

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170°

Bethesda Needs to Reduce the Gaps Between New Fallout and Elder Scrolls Releases

Waiting a decade for new instalments in franchises as massive as Fallout and Elder Scrolls feels like a waste.

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gamingbolt.com
-Foxtrot10h ago

Microsoft have Obsidian but I feel it's Bethesda who just don't want to play ball as they've always said they want to do it themselves.

Once MS bought Zenimax in 2020 they should have put the Outer Worlds 2 on the back burner, allow Bethesda to finish off its own Space RPG with Starfield (despite totally different tone why have two in your first party portfolio with two developers who's gameplay is a tad similar) and got Obsidian for one of their projects to make a spiritual successor to New Vegas.

When the Elder Scrolls VI is finished Bethesda can then onto the main numbered Fallout 5 themselves.

The Outer Worlds 2 started development in 2019 so putting it on the back burner wouldn't have been the end of the world, they'd have always come back to it once Fallout was done and it would have been nicely spaced out from Starfields release once they had most likely stopped supporting it and all the expansions were released.

If they did this back in 2020 when they bought Zenimax and the game had a good, steady 4 - 5 years development, you might have seen it release in 2025.

We are literally going to be waiting until 2030 at the very earliest for Fallout 5 and all they seem bothered about is pushing Fallout 76.

RaidenBlack8h ago(Edited 8h ago)

Its not just only Todd not playing ball.
Obsidian have made a name for themselves in delivering stellar RPGs, but most famous once have always been sequels/spin-offs to borrowed IPs like KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Stick of Truth etc.
Obsidian wants to invest more in their own original IPs like Outer Worlds or Pillars of Eternity with Avowed.
Similar to what Bluepoint & inXile wants to do or Kojima is doing (i.e not involving anymore in Konami's IPs).
So yea, even if New Vegas has the most votes from 3D Fallout fans, Obsidian just wants to do their own thing, like any aspiring dev studio and MS is likely currently respecting that.
But a future Fallout game from Obsidian will surely happen. Founder Feargus Urquhart has already stated an year ago that they're eager to make a new Fallout game with Bethesda, New Vegas 2 or otherwise. Urquhart was the director of the very first 1995's Fallout game after all.
And don't forget Brian Fargo and his studio inXile, as Brian Fargo was the director of Fallout's 1988 predecessor: Wasteland

KyRo5h ago(Edited 5h ago)

Obsidian should take over the FO IP. They're do far better with it than Bethesda who hasn't made a great game for almost 15 years

Duke194h ago(Edited 4h ago)

I disagree. Part of these games is the support for the mod community. If they move to releasing a "next game" every 2 or 3 years, the modding support plummets and the franchises turn into just another run of the mill RPG.

Make the games good enough to withstand the test of time, to keep people coming back to them and expanding on them with mod support.

--Onilink--2h ago(Edited 2h ago)

I dont think anyone is saying they need to come out every 2 years (not to mention almost no game is released that quickly anymore)

By the time Fallout 5 comes out, it will be more than 15 years since Fallout 4 came out (same with ES6 coming out 15 years after Skyrim). Even if you want to use F76 as the metric for the most recent release, that one came out in 2018. It will be a miracle if F5 comes out before 2030

The point is that for a studio that doesnt seem to operate with multiple teams doing several projects at once, that their projects normally take 4-5 years as a minimum, and that now they even added Starfield to the rotation, it becomes a 15+ years waiting period between releases for each series, which doesnt make sense. Imagine that Nintendo only released a mainline Mario or Zelda game every 15 years…

They either need to start developing more than 1 project at a time, let someone else take a crack at one of the IPs or significantly reduce their development times

Duke1938m ago(Edited 35m ago)

Why should someone else take a crack at one of the IPs? Look at what happened to Final Fantasy as a recent example - there is pretty clear FF fatigue setting in because they are now pumping out titles in the franchise every few years. Pumping out more games faster doesn't always make a series better.

There are plenty of options to make new games, not just create more titles in the same universe at a faster pace.

mandf2h ago

Yeah I’m going to say it, who cares about the modding community when making a game? Half the time developers only tolerate modders because they fix there game for them.

Skuletor3h ago

Yeah, let's all advocate for smaller gaps between series' releases, then we'll probably get headlines about how the series have dropped in quality and they could have benefited from more time in the oven. Let them cook.

SimpleSlave2h ago

"how the series have dropped in quality and they could have benefited from more time in the oven" So every Bethesda game then? Got it.

Listen, I would agree if this was about From Software or something, but Bethesda?

🤣

C'mon now. What timeline are you from?

Skuletor32m ago

Think about it, they're already bug filled messes on their current schedule, can you imagine how much worse it would be if they rushed things?

Duke1937m ago

I mean you aren't wrong. People are going to complain about anything

isarai2h ago

Hows about you focus on quality, just a thought 🤷‍♂️

Sciurus_vulgaris1h ago

Bethesda [or Microsoft] would have to reallocate internal and external studios towards fallout and elder scrolls titles. Bethesda has the issue of developing 2 big IPs that are large RPGs on rotation. If you want more Fallout and Elder Scrolls, development will have to be outsourced.

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