Save the Robot – Chris Dahlen

So I landed an invite to Google Wave last month (thanks to Ed Atwell), and I finally took a stab at using it for something. And boy, this is something that will change the world: it’s a bot that tells, and learns, “Yo Mama” jokes.

Google Wave makes it very easy to make bots in Java or Python. The documentation that I followed includes:

- The App Engine “getting started” guide

- The Google Wave Bots tutorial

After setting up Eclipse and using these guides, I had a simple bot up and running in a couple of hours (and my Java is rusty). The whole project took five hours.

Wave offers sample codes for very simple bots that will pipe up during your Waves. The trick here is that I wanted to save jokes as well as telling them – and idea I picked up from the game Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. This seemed like the real hook: as people across Google Wave interact with the Yo Mama Bot, it’s learning and then dishing out new jokes.

And it was pretty easy to code, using Google’s almost dummy-proof data store feature. Basically you set up the class you want to persist (e.g. Joke), add tags to the properties you’re persisting, let the built-in Data Nucleus thing “enhance” the class, and you’re all good. The App Engine gives you a dashboard where you can see and edit all the saved data, as well as browse logs, look at traffic, and so forth.

That said, although Wave does most of the heavy lifting for me, I also ran into weird bugs. At first, everything my bot said was repeated – like, “Yo mama! Yo mama!” I made plenty my own mistakes, but this turned out to be a Google Wave bug; luckily, it was easy to find a workaround. I also made a small change that was supposed to improve performance and then, somehow during my build, managed to screw up the Joke class so that it wouldn’t persist anymore, which made me go, “WHA?” and led me to the simplest solution, which was just to rename the class and rebuild the whole thing. The “new” class was correctly enhanced and persisted, and the app ran again.

Other hassle here: you still can’t deploy and test the bots locally; you have to do it in Wave. So the bot I was sharing with my close pals kept crashing all day Saturday. Whoops!

But now it’s up and running and I’m pretty pleased with it. I just need to spread the word, to people who actually have Wave access. If you want to give it a whirl:

1. Add “yomama-bot@appspot.com” as a contact.
2. Add it to a wavelet.
3. It’ll say hi. And after that, type in a “Yo mama” joke to get one back, or just say “Oh yeah?” to hear one that it knows.

Don’t run anything too offensive – I record the names. (Google Wave does not, so far as I know, have anonymous users.)

What did I learn from this? One, a lot of “yo mama” jokes. Two, even though this is a simple example – that was fairly simple to build – it’s also powerful. You could run a sophisticated Java app on the app engine, use Google’s data store for your data layer, and really be in business. If you wanted to run a tabletop-esque game session on Wave, you could code any number of very powerful bots to enforce rules, persist characters, deliver content, or really anything you want. Apparently, Wave can also be embedded in other apps, which opens the door to bringing a sophisticated chat-type thing right into your game or app.

And of course, the nice thing about bots in Wave, as opposed to Twitter, is that you can invite them in to specific waves. You only see them when you need them. Gaming on Twitter appears to have stalled because seeing other people’s posts and autoupdates is lethally annoying. But Wave is fertile ground for bots, and I see a lot of potential here.

I’m behind again. So again, call it a two-fer:

Power Fantasies – Are games – and comics – just “power fantasies”? Or rather, what does it take to be more? I compare the new Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 – which really is just a beat-’em-up, bash-’em-all – with Batman: Arkham Asylum, which, while still not rocket science, is a subtler, smarter and more engrossing experience.

The Rise of Ugh-Meck – I wrote about this topic here in January; here are some more thoughts, which are now informed by the game project I’ve been working on (which I still need to write about, but I also need to finish it).

Three other things to announce.

- I’m working on this new magazine called Kill Screen with mastermind publisher Jamin Brophy-Warren and faboo designer Anthony Smyrski. The whole thing’s almost ready to go to press and thanks to Kickstarter, it’s funded. Impossibly badass. We have a great slate of art and text for issue one, which I’ll post more about later.

- I’m in the new Onion AV Club Inventory book, which hits stores Tuesday. The advance copy is terrific – great writing on every pop topic under the sun, and with illustrations. The one that went with my “tragic masturbation scenes” list was a total hoot.

- A comic book script that I wrote was accepted for Terminal Press’ Zombie Bomb anthology, edited by Adam Miller and the awesome Rich Woodall. The story’s called “My Little Zombie,” and it’ll run in Volume Two. This is the first piece of fiction I’ve written that’s been accepted by anyone. It feels really cool. If you’re at the Baltimore Comic Con this weekend, Woodall’s bringing a sample book with some fantastic art and stories from the book, so be sure to check that out!

See, this is why I like fall – everybody gets stuff going. I just posted links to a bunch of great projects that involve some of my favorite people in the world, and I get to be involved in all of them. Next time I start whining about the recession or how there’s nothing on television, I’m going to reread this post.

So I forgot to update last week. If you follow my column through my blog, this is like a double feature! Check ‘em out:

The Undeniable Case for Pink Floyd: Rock Band

Now that Harmonix Music Systems has shipped The Beatles: Rock Band, they have nowhere to go but down. PR guy John Drake says they spent 17 months on research and development for the game, investing more personnel than they’d ever sunk into a single title. Who else deserves that kind of treatment? Led Zeppelin? U2? Herman and the Hermits?

My money’s on Pink Floyd. Not only could they move enough copies to make it worth everyone’s while: they would also push the music game genre in directions that even the Beatles couldn’t muster.

Tell Me a Story: Corvus Elrod and the Honeycomb Engine

Elrod raises a classic problem of how to make an interactive narrative in games. Those of us who look for a good story with our gameplay will keep pushing for more subtlety and freedom in the choices we make. But if you take away the rules, you don’t have a game – you have something closer to improvised theater, or campfire storytelling, or at worst, a student drama club exercise. Creativity’s great, but how do you judge it? And what about the players who don’t want to tap their imaginations? I can only guess what would’ve happened when I played D&D as a kid, if we didn’t have rules to keep us in line. We would’ve spent the whole night just punching each other in the face.

Oh wow, I almost forgot to post this stuff from last week.

“The Superjoke” – My new Edge Column, about how The Mighty Boosh, Blueberry Garden and game as a whole can make the left and right lobes of your brain rub happily together.

The Beatles: Rock Band – My review for Pitchfork. Lots of folks were curious if this review heralds more game coverage at the ‘Fork. Boy, I would love to see (and contribute to) that. Also: big thanks to Tom Clancy for hosting the party that I talk about in the review, where we played through pretty much the whole game ’til late at night and had a hell of a lot of fun.

The Brainy Gamer Confab – Michael Abbott, Manveer Heir and I hold down the fifth installment of this excellent set of podcasts, and listening to it now, I didn’t ramble as much as I thought I did. Also, I was glad to hear so many people on the Confab still remember The Path. For all its shortcomings, I don’t think we’re through talking about it – and I want to put it right back on the radar at the end of the year.

I’m hard at work at this week’s column right now. I have one written but I don’t know if it’s … special enough. So wish me luck.

By the way, I continue to post to Twitter, and every week or so I shoout out a bunch of one-tweet reviews of comic books. I might post some of them here for posterity. After starting out with 800-1000 word record reviews, it’s fun to sum up a comic in a single 140-character tweet. But some of the books I’ve been reading deserve a little more attention, so maybe I’ll come back to the blog for those.

I’ve got a new column at Edge Online. It started this morning and it’ll run every Wednesday on the site. The gist? I’ll be covering the “offbeat” beat, looking for unusual angles or strange topics. I’ll err on the side of the obscure, the strange, and the irrelevant. I’m not positioning myself as any kind of an expert. I’m opinionated, but I’m setting out not to write an opinion column, or say that “games should do this” or “games should be that,” or publish my 600-800 word thought nuggets for the world to disagree with. Rather, I’m going for a column that asks, “Hey, did you know … ?”

Looking back on the other columns and features I’ve written, the ones that I enjoyed the most were based on discovery – like covering what the music scene is like in Antarctica, or sneaking onto the Avril Lavigne eTeam. I wrote 40 columns for Pitchfork and the ones I still remember the best were the first ones, where I interviewed a burlesque dancer or internet film critic Mr. Filthy, just to find out, “Okay, what’s your deal?”

In that vein, this’ll be rooted in games – but if I talk to a comic creator or a TV personality for another interview, and I find something I can use here, I will. I’ve always wanted to do a truly multimedia column, and let’s face it, not many people consume just one or two or eight media in their daily routine. The more I can crossover, the better.

I’ll also riff on whatever I’m playing that week, or bug my friends and colleagues for their opinions. Or I’ll make fun of my four-year-old. I’ve got about eight columns in draft form, they’re all over the map, and I get a kick out of all of them.

This should be fun.

Interviews are a hoot. Nothing puts art in context like talking to the person who made it and learning what was really going on in their head at the time. But the best interviews I’ve done are the ones where you sit with a master and learn things that change the way you think about art, work, and life.

My interview with Steve Bissette, which I conducted in Vermont in February and which just went up on the Onion AV Club, was one of the most educational, most valuable, and most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever conducted. To their kudos, the Onion let it run long on the site today, and I can’t stress enough: even if you don’t know Bissette from his work on Swamp Thing, Tyrant, or Taboo, you should read this.

On top of detailed and often very funny or very tragic stories from his long career, Bissette also had a ton to tell me about creators’ rights and independent publishing. He’s a rigorously ethical person who’s put a great deal of thought into his business practices – more than most indies (in say, the games field). But also read what he says about the nature of horror. Or the creative process. Or “the trance.” Or parenting. Or dinosaurs.

I’ve done interviews where I just tried to get information, or once in a while even ferret facts out of a subject. But at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, most of my best interviews were like this one – an opportunity to learn from the masters, get it into text, and pass it on. This was one of the best.

So I’m here at my first morning of GDC. I would publish a Work Links but even though I’ve been eye-achingly, head-scratchingly busy for the past month, I don’t have many links to show for it. A lot of my coolest work (including stuff in Edge #200) has been done with no byline. Other stuff – a press release for David Sylvian’s upcoming album, Manafon, which is one of the most engrossing and beautiful things I’ve ever heard – will run soon. So, if you stop by regularly, just know I’m keeping myself active and interested and busy as hell.

I’ll post goodies from GDC as I get ‘em. I’m going to do a couple of blog posts for the Onion AV Club, look around for story ideas, and of course, meet all kinds of people I’ve never seen in real life, a process that started yesterday morning when I ran into Darius “Tinysubversions” Kazemi and his colleagues right at Logan Airport. First business cards swapped. Achievement unlocked.

I also wrote a feature for the Wire alt-weekly about Kittery-based performance and art space Buoy. I’m really proud of this feature. I wish I’d given myself for more time to work on it, but this is a group of talented and lively artists who I’ve been following for a while, and it was great to speak with them about how they approach this awesome and “no proft” venture. If you’re traveling through Portland or Boston and you either want to see a show or book one, check the place out. The awesome Nat Baldwin plays regularly, and they’ve booked Dirty Projectors, Sister Suvi and Shapes + Sizes (who were both AMAZING), and Chriss Sutherland, and they have a show coming up in April with Mary Halvoron and Jessica Pavone. And a gallery show with Jacob Ouillette is on the calendar for April 3. Whatever you’re into, they’ll find a way to blow your mind.

And I wrapped up the Battlestar Galactica recaps. You can read them all here. Now that it’s over, (and now that I have my Friday nights back), I realize I’m really gonna miss that show. I don’t watch many shows but when I’m in, I get sucked into my fiction, and that was one of my favorites.

Too bad the ending was a dud.

In case I owe you an e-mail or you’re just wondering why you haven’t heard from me, well, we had this badass ice storm here in New Hampshire, and I still don’t have power. No need for sympathy or condolences, all it means is that my family’s holed up in a perfectly clean Motel 6 and I’m a little fried and annoyed every waking moment. And yet I’m still filing reviews! I’m a madman!

Working right now on a write-up for this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition winners, and I’m sure whatever I cough up is going to stink, so be sure to check ‘em out yourself.

UPDATE: Back online as of Tuesday night! All’s well that ends well. Hmm, so now what’s my excuse for not blogging more …

Judge for yourself – here are the top six most-emailed articles as of this moment:

1. Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
2. Thomas L. Friedman: Making America Stupid
3. Frank Rich: The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
4. Maureen Dowd: Bering Straight Talk
5. Bob Herbert: She’s Not Ready
6. Editorial: Gov. Palin’s Worldview

Noticed this because I was e-mailing that first one to my father-in-law. Not sure that’ll do any good – earlier I heard my wife arguing with her mother and trying to convince her that Obama’s not a Muslim.

The Frank Rich column (#3 above) was really good. In all the fuss about what a train-wreck she is as the person who’s a heartbeat from the presidency, I never considered what she’d do before taking McCain’s place. When this all started, people said that McCain didn’t take her seriously and would never listen to her; now, it’s pretty obvious that she’d be running roughshod all over him, pushing her agenda and so, the right wing’s. I wonder just how much he regrets this decision.

And in that light, her reference to Harry Truman is pretty fucking disturbing. When they picked him as FDR’s VP in ‘44, the party had a pretty good idea that Roosevelt might not make it through his fourth term. Now we’ve got a 72-year-old man with melanoma on the top of the ticket … if you wanted to get really conspiratorial you might ask, what do they know about McCain’s health that we don’t?

Also, this is awesome: Alaskans themselves rally to reject Sarah Palin. 1,400 people showed up – and if that sounds small, remember that the entire state has fewer people than Brooklyn. Lots of great pics. A friend of mine said that the Palin thing has made him rethink his opposition to ANWR: now he’s ready to turn the whole state into a nuclear waste facility. But maybe this rally will change his mind.

UPDATE: Man, they nailed it on SNL.

… to be a little kid.