OTON - The Autonomous Game Console or The Beginning of The End of The World

[BigJKO]

Ever wanted a console that can CREATE entire games for you? Want to play a platformer in a dungeon? Boom! It's been created on-the-fly by the computer!

This has to be a joke somehow.

http://www.otonx.com/

[Roderick]

Please, no snide remarks, harsh witticisms, trolling, vulgarity, grossness, anal, potty mouth, pithy citations, wanton bullying, bullish anger, flagrant misdeeds, ne'er-do-welling, antics of ill repute, hurtful snippiness or other such clutter in this topic.

[BigJKO]

Yes, please. No such clutter at all, thank you.

[Merus]

I can contribute to this topic without any of that!

This looks like a scam.

No-one said anything about accusations or insinuations.

[Noyb]

Or an ARG. It might be an ARG. Has anyone called that phone number? There could be clues on it. One of the inventors will go "missing," a newly sentient OTON engine will be the prime suspect, and we'll all have to play its games in order to slowly uncover cryptic messages and high-def advertisements, just you wait.

A game generating engine is about as useful as the restrictions set by the developers. If the base games aren't fun at the core, no amount of palette swapping, randomly shuffling around platform and enemy locations and slightly modifying physics parameters is going to help its longevity.

Case in point: Game-O-Matic, a serious attempt by academics to build a system that generates games based on user-inputted relationship graphs, sprites, and text. Neat concept. It makes things like this: http://game-o-matic....p?code=13778669

[mikemariano]

If there's any sincerity in this at all, it's that they think it will be easier to get funding for a console than for AI-created games or laser projection displays.

No one idea on that page feeds any other as a concept.

I played an in-store Wii U and they did a "good" job of forcing me to look at the handheld screen for almost every action; they really are focusing the console around this controller. There's no focus here.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Yeah, I'm in the "this is a joke" camp. The OUYA actually seems like it might be delivering, though, which is both surprising and also a little unfortunate for people who want to make fun of it (like me).

[Twig]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mojobones/gametron-1000?ref=category

???

[TychoCelchuuu]

I don't really understand the appeal of that thing. Like, my favorite part of randomly generated games isn't whether I'm collecting bananas or cherries or whether I'm playing a twin stick shooter or a platformer. It's when the random generation is tied into complex systems to provide a uniquely tailored experience every time in the context of a set of rules I can come to understand and master. This is why roguelikes and roguelike-likes are great - they combine really great mechanics with the constant new-ness of random generation which allows them to have a brutal difficulty without making the constant repetition annoying. Randomization itself isn't at all interesting to me, and unless GameTron 1000 is just really really good at making each individual random component fun, I don't know why I'd have any assurances that the random games that pop out of it will be even close to the quality of a hand crafted game.

[Twig]

I have literally no interest in it (for basically the same reasons you stated), but I read about it this morning on the way to work. This thread made me think of it again, for obvious reasons.