Could Table Top Holograms be a Boon to the Virtual Pet Industry

Finally a hologram we can own in our own homes. What surprises me is how cheap the i-Lusio is. It kind of makes me wonder if if the creator wouldn't benefit some from increasing the price just a bit. Still with the cost so low I'm taking advantage of this, and I believe that over time many more people well take advantage of this especially as we see interesting apps develop for it and for other holograms that are sure to follow.

So could this cause a boom in the Virtual Pet industry?

Virtual pets have had an interesting and often strange history. One of the strangest virtual pets I ever owned was Seaman. Though it's actual interaction was limited it was still fun to talk to him for short periods of time. What's more he was the third most successful game for the Dreamcast in Japan.



More recently the 2008 version of Seaman was released on Sony Playstation and sold some 300,000 copies.

Petz (now owned by Ubisoft) has had a longer lived and wider appeal selling over 23,000,000 copies as of 2006 according to Ubisoft's website, so virtual pets are big business, and affordable holograms promise to make the industry even bigger, at least for a little while.

Though as with any industry holographic pets well likely eventually see a short period of rapid expansion, bringing entrepreneurial dreams true before the industry begins to contract to some extent. In order to truly benefit long term from holograms companies will need to think of more unique ways to utilize this technology, and as the internet has shown us it's often difficult to predict at first what those will be.

Regardless of what direction this takes what I like most about this is that it has the potential to spark an increase in the demand for the work of artists, and AI programmers something we could all benefit from.

30% more time to watch TV, Read Books, and Play Games Thanks to Robots

play chess with robot by ~cuson

Robots are about to spark a revolution, but this revolution won't involve Skynet or the destruction of humanity. Instead this revolution will mean that more books, more computer games, and more movies will be sold. 


Quick question, are the number of books and web comics you read, movies and shows you watch based on your income or the amount of free time you have?

The answer is likely both as most people will tend to fill their free time with some form of activity so given the low or no cost of many forms of entertainment I would argue that the biggest barrier to growth in the entertainment industry is often a lack of leisure time.

Robots will increase the free time people have 
which in turn will increase the amount 

of entertainment people consume.

The primary impact robots have is to increase productivity, that is, to allow us to make more things. This is important because the more things that can be made the more money there is...

There are many arguments about what robots will do to jobs in the long run, but historically increases in productivity have created jobs and caused people to move from one industry to another, they have also (along with unions) decreased the number of hours people work. While not always positive this decrease in working hours does increase leisure time. In fact according to the Economic History Association the amount of life time leisure hours a person has will increase from an average of 176,100 in 1995 to 246,000 in 2040. That means that in the next 30 years or so we will be able to consume perhaps as much as 30% more entertainment and robots will be responsible for much of this increase in free time.

Of course whether we fill this demand with entertainment or things like social media is still up in the air, but I would say that there's a good chance that demand will increase in all of these areas.

In the next 30 years the time we have to
read books, play computer games and watch
 movies will increase by nearly 30%

The real question is, however, will this increased consumption, that is this additional free time bring more money into the industry? The challenge that entertainment industries will face is that people can spend more time on a single game (such as World of War Craft) and the same amount of ad dollars are typically spread over more mediums as additional mediums come into being.

Even increased sales, however, don't necessarily mean additional artists can break into the industry. So the questions we have to ask ourselves are; will increased leisure time increase the money earned by the entertainment industry? And even if additional sales are generated will these additional sales create new comic books, or simply allow large companies like Marvel to sell more units?

The answer to these questions depend on how many opportunities authors have to sell and engage the public outside of the internet and traditional retail stores. So for example how  much comic book conventions, meetups and events increase. Book stores only have so much space and people don't browse very far on the internet so the most popular things are the only things people typically find in retail outlets whether on or offline. However at comic book conventions people browse a bit more and meet a few more people. Further these events and other meetups allow some people to build a local reputation which will let them sell locally. So if comic book conventions and local meetups continue to expand than it's quite possible that this increase demand could come with an increasing number of jobs in industries like comic books where local niche people, supported not by the internet but by conventions, events, and most of all extra leisure time provided by robots are able to find fans and a market.

More than just increasing or decreasing sales of comics, changes in work habits will change peoples perceptions and the art in general. In Japan for example the fact that so many people have been pushed into dead end part-time jobs sparked an interest in activities like "Maid Cafes" as people search not only for something to occupy their time but to give them a few moments of emotional gratification, something which has greatly impacted the story lines in manga. This search for emotional gratification has also increased consumption of computer games and manga which can fulfill this need as well.

Part of the problem we see is that many of the jobs which are created by gains in productivity require people to be socially skilled, such as in sales, management, events planning, independent contracting, etc. So those who are socially awkward are often the ones left with the most free time and most unfulfilled feelings. That means that specific personality types will consume the greatest amount of entertainment, altering artists perception of what will be successful.

So how do you think more leisure time will change the industry? And will this have an impact on the art which sells.

Web Comic of the Week - No Rest For the Wicked

Okay, so I admit it I'm a sucker for a good story, even though I studied animation (in addition to economics of course) I still think story often trumps everything else which is why I'm loving "No Rest for the Wicked" Its got a story that makes me jealous I didn't think of it.

Blizzard-Activision could reap more money

The money for new creative efforts in computer games has all too often gone to those outside the industry. Having their revenue gobbled up by corporate owners who have interests outside computer games has likely stifled the industry and the art to some extent. Even Blizzard-Activision, one of the largest game makers, has been beholden to Vivendi, a company which deals primarily in music and mobile, but no more. Blizzard-Activision will likely soon become the second largest independent game maker in the world (after Nintendo) when they buy up another 50% of their shares from Vivendi, leaving the company with only 12% of the Game Maker.


Being independent will allow Blizzard-Activision to use all it's profits to develop additional games, or make it's existing games more expansive. It will also likely free them up to make decisions faster, because no matter how much freedom they were given it's likely they still had to ask Vivendi's permission to spend hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course whether or not they take advantage of these things is still to be determined.

The problem is that there aren't a lot of examples of large purely independent production companies in any industry, Pixar was briefly an indie film maker, Image and Dark Horse represent independence in the Comic Book World and of course Nintendo does in the computer gaming world. This lack of case studies does make it difficult to predict exactly how this move will shake up the industry and the art form of computer games.

Even so I'm optimistic about this deal... I do have some concerns about the cost of creating new franchises like Titan (Blizzard's next planned MMO which is intended to be a new game franchise), as well as the decay of existing franchises like WOW. If Blizzard-Activision is going to gain long term success they likely do need to find cheaper ways to discover what will be a hit than the sometimes hundreds of millions spent to develop some MMO's which often don't score very well. Perhaps the most successful MMO, World of Warcraft, based on lower cost Warcraft games, has the answer in that providing more artists more freedom to explore games and story telling on lower budgets could give companies the opportunity to create more expansive games that have a greater chance of success.