From Myst to GTA V: Rockstar Nails the Branching Narrative

What stands out about the latest release in the Grand Theft Auto series is the overwhelming size of the game’s map and storyline. However, after playing the game for a while, it becomes apparent that Rockstar Games has done an excellent job at balancing the game by utilizing multiple characters to provide just enough open-endedness for players to explore, while also constraining in-game activities with careful narrative design to keep engagement high during gameplay. 

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Crossing the UI Rift with Oculus

Virtual reality opens the doors to a new era for user interface design. Oculus VR speaks to Develop about its opportunities

Virtual reality doesn’t present user interface design with its first opportunity for transformation.

The dawn of 3D long ago afforded games makers the prospect of moving beyond flat heads-up-displays and conventional menus. And when mobile gaming finally realised its potential with the arrival of smartphones, those charged with implementing UI had a chance to establish the new standards of the virtual gamepad. 

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Serious Games and the Future of Education

Are serious games the classroom tool of the future? Is the future already here?  The tablet classroom may have once been the stuff of science fiction, but modern developments in technology and brain science may have come together to create a massive change in the way we think about education. 

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Beyond Google Glass: The Evolution of Augmented Reality

The wearable revolution is heading beyond Google Glass, fitness tracking and health monitoring. The future is wearables that conjure up a digital layer in real space to “augment” reality.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Reality isn’t what is used to be. With increasingly powerful technologies, the human universe is being reimagined way beyond Google Glass’ photo-tapping and info cards floating in space above your eye. The future is fashionable eyewear, contact lenses or even bionic eyes with immersive 3D displays, conjuring up a digital layer to “augment” reality, enabling entire new classes of applications and user experiences. 

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How Google is Melding Our Real and Virtual Worlds with Games, Apps … and Glass

“The world around you is not what it seems,” says Ingress, the virtual game that uses the real world as its gamespace. And, perhaps, when Google’s semi-independent division Niantic Labs is finished with its mission, we humans won’t be, either.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usable. Note carefully that Google says nothing about the Internet in that statement. 

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The Future of Gaming – It May All Be in Your Head

Gaming as a hobby evokes images of lethargic teenagers huddled over their controllers, submerged in their couch surrounded by candy bar wrappers. This image should soon hit the reset button since a more exciting version of gaming is coming. It’s called neurogaming, and it’s riding on the heels of some exponential technologies that are converging on each other. Many of these were on display recently in San Francisco at the NeuroGaming Conference and Expo; a first-of-its-kind conference whose existence alone signals an inflection point in the industry. 

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Neuroscience Explores Why Humans Feel Empathy for Robots

If, while watching WALL-E, your heart broke just a little bit when you saw the title character desperately travel across outer space in search of true love, it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Sure, WALL-E is a robot. But its cute, anthropomorphized look and all too human desire to end its loneliness made us subconsciously forget that it is not human.

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New Media Capture and Delivery System Gives Users Immersive “Experiences”

Experience Media Studios today announced the worldwide launch of its patent-pending 3DPOV® system, a pioneering new solution for capturing, delivering, and experiencing immersive media.

Experience Media Studios’ 3DPOV® system enables the capture of a three-dimensional visual and auditory experience from the first-person perspective. 3DPOV® media delivers a higher level of sensory engagement than virtual reality that replicates a true-to-life binocular and peripheral visual field and a stereophonic auditory experience.

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