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Games & the Uncanny Valley: yet ANOTHER lecture by me


sephfire
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Just finished the fourth in my little series of game-related video lectures! Today's topic: the Uncanny Valley.

This should show up on Edge.com in the next week or so joining James Portnow's article on the issue. I'm sure most of you already have a pretty good grasp on this topic, but I always like hearing OCR feedback.

Extra special thanks to Joshua Morse for unwittingly providing outro music, and to CarboHydroM for providing me with an intro theme.

Enjoy!

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Very, very nice. I really enjoyed that "lecture". And yes, I must be living under a rock 'cause I have not heard of the "Uncanny Valley" theory before, but once you started explaining it in the introduction, I understood where you were going with it games-wise. I've dabbled in this subject before without knowing there was an actual theory around it.

Enjoyed your helium voice and humor as well. Keep it up. :)

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"You may have noticed: It's very brown looking over there."

QFT. Man, this is so true.

Great vid, as usual; very funny and informative. Keep it up!

Personally, I like the stylized characters more, because they just stand out more. You can have more fun with cartoonish characters who can become flattened or change costume in a second. When you try to go for the super realism, any minor problem stands out like a big fat pimple on a super model. But I digress: there are obviously games where the realism is needed in the graphics, i.e. war games and sports games. But really, gaming is about fun, and when the experience can be ruined by a little graphical error, what's the point?

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Finally, I can tack a theory onto why Oblivion irked me so much! Thanks for yet another awesome video! Keep em comin :razz:

I had it figured out when i realized that most characters were a different color from the neck down.

Daniel Floyd, your reviews, or whatever they are, are awesome. Very informative and cohesive, do more.

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Very nice presentation. I've never heard of the "uncanny valley" theory before, but I understood what you were getting at pretty quickly. I thought you used great examples to describe both sides of the "valley."

edit: Ironically enough I saw this not a minute after I watched your video.

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The funny part of all this, is that once people do make an engine that allows for a glimpse of that oh so tough to get to other side of the valley, it'll still likely have women with size double F tits, men with muscles that can't be achieved without steroids, and soulless eyes that whisper dark secrets into your mind late at night.

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Sephire, your voice still is made of ether cooties.

My real voice is in there for one line near the end. You can see why I speed it up. :|

The funny part of all this, is that once people do make an engine that allows for a glimpse of that oh so tough to get to other side of the valley, it'll still likely have women with size double F tits, men with muscles that can't be achieved without steroids, and soulless eyes that whisper dark secrets into your mind late at night.

Haha, I wish I could put this line in the movie retroactively.

Although, I guess we're used to seeing over-beautiful people in TV and film, so that wouldn't be too disorienting. And the "soulless eyes" thing is just one of the uncanny issues that animator's will sort out eventually. Still, funny line.

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I had you in mind. :)

Heh, I'm flattered.

This might be just my opinion, but I think "wrap it up" voice was fine. Yahtzee doesn't exactly have the most stimulating tone either, but his humor manages to keep his videos interesting. I guess it'd be hard to go to your normal voice at this point though, as you've got a bit of a precedent now.

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As ever, I find these videos to be interesting and funny. The stuff you do is definitely different from Yahtzee because of what you are doing. Sure, he is sarcastic and is essentially the Black Knight of videogame reviews, but I learn new things and how to express ideas from your videos - something that is much more valuable to me. Thank you.

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