1001lives

It's going to be a fantastic thing because Amico is going to blow up on Youtube. Everyone who covers E3 will have to cover Amico.

That's awesome. Tommy what does it feel like to have your company's product on an E3 list like this? Even being in the industry as long as you have and owning such crazy stuff like the Brown Box, It has to be crazy for you.

To my understanding, COPPA is specifically to prevent corporations from harvesting data on children. That should not be a government thing. It's insane companies don't have that moderation capability within themselves to the point the government has to step in because ads are targeting kids at a young age now. It's a strange case but I don't believe anyone should be able to profit off ads specifically targeted to kids, sorry Youtube creators. Getting even more Google brainwash vibes.

It was pretty odd to know that I was the user of a service that, without telling me, created a database of all my calls and my voice, of everyone's voices, accents, inflections, intonations, etc. and stored them in Google's servers, analyzed them inside and out, and created recognition applications with them. The Google Home we have now is partially the result of all that call data too. With that level of data they could accurately recreate anyone's voice, as well. Mine included. Of course no one was ever reimbursed for the voice recognition training, much less informed of it.

I used Goog411 back in the late 00s and would call all the time for nearby restaurants and whatnot. It was great. Only in the mid 10s did I find out all those calls were being used to train Google's voice recognition and they never intended to provide a long term calling service like that. So I've always had a sneaking suspicion from the start they'll provide some games, but actually want to map out and monitor player responses/stimuli and effects in games and map it to other things in their company. Like advertising spaces and human response/reaction times.

Google entered the space for ulterior motives. *conspiracy hat on* I believe they're using parameters from Stadia users playing games to train AI how to react to things. *conspiracy hat off* Or... They just had no idea what they were doing and mistakenly believed if you just provide a platform all devs will pour money into it and port their games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWESB56wcxY

Yep. The Ouya did irreparable damage to anyone in this space. Anyone and everyone trying to launch any hardware at all is dealing with the repercussions that they caused. Even very clear departures like the handheld Evercade has had a lot of "Ouya" comparisons when it's nothing like Ouya in any capacity. It's just "new hardware that isn't one of the Big 3 so it's Ouya"

He's keeping it alive with his passion and enthusiasm, for sure. And that good will spreads and makes others interested.

I completely 100% agree. Tommy's openness and willingness to communicate directly shows that he is not only a passionate creator, he's a passionate gamer. All games. Not just the ones he's making. You don't need to know anything about him to know the kind of person he is just by the way he posts and the way he posts is not like any other game developer. It must come from his musical background - the musicians in gaming are always super passionate, open and talkative it feels like (especially Grant Kirkhope). That's one of the major reasons I get annoyed when people try to say he's not "professional" by engaging people on the forums. I guess they'd prefer developers that give no communication, banning on twitter, and hush hush "no spoiler" talk.

Tommy is usually so quick to answer everything and there hasn't been a lot of real big news lately. I assume it's getting busy the later half of this month as they nail down the console and get it ready for production in March/April.

Now would be a good time to remember what concern is versus what we should define as "concern trolling." Actual concern comes when you are invested in something - as in literally. You've either spent your money, your time, and your effort as a form of investment. "Concern trolling" is when you have spent nothing - all the time you use is your own free time and of your own free will, and you have expended zero effort, but still say you're concerned. While this is great - and bringing up valid criticism can be helpful, it's not going to be that helpful in this case. You're just playing devil's advocate because you have too much time. Which is what we see a ton of in the "independent" thread, and a lot of the stuff that's been deleted and removed by mods was this form of concern trolling and argumentative analysis just to be argumentative. No end goal. Fiudr, your post is great, but it's borderline man... Some of these comments... " It may be a great controller but some of us just might not be able to adjust to it." are wholly unnecessary. If some of us aren't able to adjust to it, that's not anything anyone can help. We may also all lose our hands by the time it launches - is that a valid concern to you? How will we adjust without hands? "I could spend $250 on this system in October and another $100-$200 worth of games in the next year just to read one day that due to slipping sales they are shutting down. I truly hope that doesn't happen. But only time will tell." So... No one should spend any money at all then? Which would guarantee it's failure and low market adoption rate...? That's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. We all hope the console sells but the only way it sells is people buy it. Not worry it may not sell and it shuts down... That's just self-defeating and not worth the concern. If a whole lot of early adopters didn't buy PS4 or Xbox One they would have shut down too. Those systems barely launched with games. This is the kind of stuff that drags down the independent thread, and while your concerns are warranted and well written compared to a lot in that thread... It's still not helpful ultimately.

This is really exciting and means a lot of people on the floor are going to be gravitating to Intellivision's booth. It's cool to think about the thousands of people who will be experiencing Amico and talking about it and making videos about E3 with the Amico in it.

Tommy has not confirmed one way or the other. He's basically told us it's not just a traditional sidescroller. There are elements that require the microphone, touch screen, motion controls, etc. But he's never said party game, and I don't think they are making Earthworm Jim into a party game or Mario Party game. He's confirmed any controller will work - but that you wouldn't want to play many of their games that way, because most of the games use the touch screen and motion controls. You could map those functions to buttons but they may not come out right or even play right that way. He'll probably come into this thread later to answer questions but he wants to keep a lot of that in the Q+A thread.

It's not a party game or Mario party. Not sure why what made you draw that conclusion so definitively lol.

It's going to use everything on the controller. Tommy is saying it's not just a 2D side scroller with d-pad.

I think so too. Whether it's a unique game, or a retheme, or Spy vs Spy, something crazy like that would be great.

Beat Saber? Yeah it would be very cool. Tommy should negotiate with them and work out a version that uses both Amico controllers. To my knowledge it's not on any home console and it would work quite well with Amico having two controllers out of the box.

https://hornet.com/stories/video-games-vinyl/

And that's not to say VR won't someday be able to take the place of in person interaction. I am sure in 20 or 30 years affordable VR will be photorealistic. You may be able to emulate couch co-op quite nicely with someone across the world in VR, but, that's not where we are yet. And probably outside the scope of Amico's concerns right now haha

I believe that VR is by it's nature isolating to the player. There's no way around that. We can all gather around and laugh at someone playing VR, but that person is isolated. The same argument could be made for phone games. Yeah - there are a couple social experiences, but the main function is going to isolate the primary user. You're a good example of my example, haha. You were hanging out alone playing a game online with someone in Australia. Which is great, but it's just what any multiplayer game online is like. But yeah, it is super cool.

Power Stone 2 looks a lot like what I was thinking of, but in the Spy vs Spy realm. With items like Smash Bros but non complex mechanics. Maybe give us more than Black and White spy, and have the controllers change colors, or make the Amico flash the Spy's color when he does damage. That could turn into a rave though... Or the console turns the color of the current Spy that's winning.

Tommy - on the Spy vs Spy "fighting game" idea, I didn't realize Spy vs Spy had a PS2 release. Looks like it also had multiplayer with up to 4 players. Seems like a great little 3D party/fighting game to learn from for a potential Spy vs Spy fighter on Amico. Could gather up all the negative reviews and then do the opposite on the Amico reimagined version! Not sure if this is out of the realm of what you were thinking... could also be too "3D world" for the Amico's ideas. But yeah, some kind of 3D Battle Arena with items and fighting moves would be really cool.

Didn't see this - Tommy already tweeted about this. It's getting a physical release, launching in 2021. We don't know what the media format is. Most likely something that interacts with USB. Hopefully a cool looking Intellivision flash drive that stores the game.

Honestly - that shirt deserved that send off. Pat and Ian have become nearly insufferable. They were once fun to listen to and had interesting opinions and takes on video game related events and news... Now they've become hugely arrogant, self-absorbed, and totally convinced of their own superiority in the gaming space. If you even try to make a counter point or bring up something, or even mention that they aren't open to the idea that things could be different, they ignore you or lash out. The way they act and talk with such dripping venom and sarcasm towards literally anything they judge extends way beyond just the way they treated Tommy and the Amico. They seem like pretty sad individuals now with nothing of interest to say on their own, so they sit around commentating on news articles. I particularly like how Pat keeps mentioning his book out of nowhere. I've read a lot of that book - some of his write ups on the games are laughable. Very clearly padded out those books.