EyePet Comments by Ellie Gibson

"but I suspect the impact of something like EyePet will be negligible compared to photo's of Paris Hilton with a dog in her bag..."

Exactly. There are far more situations involving real animals that are likely to distort an impressionable child's perception of the value of animals.


HOWEVER, I think an more important assumption has been pushed out there and accepted without proper scrutiny. The assumption being that depicting a non-real animal on the screen is going to have a negative effect on the way kids view animals. The more I think about this the more I have to declare it as being UTTER BOLLOX (thanks to quantz for inspiring the dramatic use of CAPS).

The root of this assumption seems to hinge on the idea that a kid that knows the animal is not real will not care about it, and then somehow confuse not caring about un-real animal with not caring about real animals out there in the world. I call shenanigans on that assumption, 'cos it utterly disregards the imagination of a child.

How about this as an alternative. The child plays with un-real animal, looks after it, makes sure it is happy. Perhaps they have no actual pets, so this un-real animal is their only chance to experience caring for an animal at an age where their opinions on such things are still being formed.

Look at a child playing with a toy baby. They act as if it is a real baby, and care for it as genuinely as they might a real baby (general health and safety failings not withstanding). I once folded up a pushchair that still contained my young cousin's imaginary baby, and she was in tears and screaming because I might have hurt said imaginary baby.

All EyePet is doing is turning a teddy bear into an electronic animated version of what teddy bears have always been. Do teddy bear's raise a nation of bear hating adults? I suspect not.

Edit: typos up the wazoo, none of which I can be bothered to correct :)

You all got trolled really hard. I thought it was pretty funny, actually, so well done Negotiator.

The Natal, revealed

Lol @ Tonka... funny.

Negotiator.. the proof is in the eating of the pudding, when Natal is here with non jumping, waving arm around games and its like something out of 6th Day, then I will give MS lots of kudos, I recommend you use alittle more common sense and wait and see, because I'm pretty sure though it might move camera technology alittle more forward, I dont see it changing the world.

If we just take voice recognition...Try this video to see what i mean - Windows Vista Voice... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2p2PtRUf_Y

"The assumption being that depicting a non-real animal on the screen is going to have a negative effect on the way kids view animals."

I think the adjective can be dropped. As you rightly point out, children are able to distinguish between what's real and what's not (hence the number of kids killing people correlates more with the number of psychopaths amongst kids than with the number of kids playing video games). So to summarize: There is very likely no effect.

"The 360 can't do it yet and the Wii doesn't have a camera. "

well. it could if it had the software.

But i suspect he means a 300 quid console is not the most likely one for us to buy our young kids.

"Indeed, and what's crazy is that Sony have a ready-made audience of millions of younger and casual gamers with PS2s and the original eyetoy

from experience of my ten years olds friends, most own wii's and some 360's now.

Wii would be the best home for it from a sales perespective.

Seems over for Milol. Given the chances of it coming out before 2012 are extremely small (let's face it, it's all smoke and mirrors at the moment) it looks like MS are going to miss the boat completely.

Again.

"I wonder why Sony overlooked this at the press conference, showing this charming thing off would surely have made more people notice it?"

It's an SCEE game, and E3 is SCEA's gig. It's the same reason Heavy Rain wasn't featured.

FUZZY PUMPER'S Barber Shop.

I've enjoyed watching Negotiator's Milo-induced comment thread meltdown this past week.

I'm not sure you take this too seriously, Ms. Gibson. However, as there seems to be nothing too serious about EyePet, you're forgiven!

PatrickEwing
"pathetic"

I bet you were like "ZOMG Project Natal its fucking amazing, damn, look that Milo boy..waaah, im too excited about this shit.....waaaah...I came!"

You donīt like it?, you are too "mature" (roflmfaopimp) for this eyepet thing? Nice, I respect that, now can you good sir kindly just shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of here, please? The are some people interested about this, so we don't need your stupid 10 yo comment.

Thank you in advance for your collaboration. Have a nice day.

so presumabley, according to the Milo=pedo logic, by playing nintendogs I want to rape puppies?

it all makes sense now!


(agrees with what Kangarootoo said about it)

@Rodney

a 30 year old man playing fetch or tug of war with his dog doesnt make him starnge. A 40 year old man playing with a 10 year old boy thats not their own is...Hence why everyone gets on MJ's back.

So playing with a small virtual pet is the same as playing with a real pet. Playing with a 10 year virtual boy, is the same as playing with a real on (thats what MS claim anyway so their logic not mine)

At the end of the day Milo was a tech demo, Eye pet is a nearly complete project which works in the same way, using a camera you ineract with a virutal character. The eyepet was announced a year ago, so all MS have done is take what Sony have already done, then made a tech demo showing a few more advanced features. Which what happens now a days just like Sony have take what Nintendo have already done and built on that.

sounds like it was made for geordies....eyepet

I've got to say here i'm really interested in this. As someone who has never seen, interactive pets of any sort are interesting for me. I have the pleo, some furreal pets etc. The fact that it's a monkey is also nice as I like the sounds they make, also, they're a bit like humans to me, just bigger hands and ears. Perhaps I am coming over simple, but the AI in this thing seems quite fascinating, plus the lovely squeeky sounds it makes are fun. My partner's going to love this as she's always on the lookout for things that would be interesting for me to try.