Echo and Home will start to talk back
Both of the major smart home platforms have a long-running problem with “discoverability”: it’s very hard to let users know what their devices can do, particularly if they’re always improving thanks to rapid software updates.
Amazon and Google are constantly Experimenting with ways to get around this, but so far they have been timid. Amazon sends a weekly email, while Google includes some tips in its app. Expect to see them be bolder, particularly as powerful rivals such as Apple appear on the scene with worse AI but better sound.
So don’t be surprised if your Google Home or Amazon Echo begin to talk back, rather than simply following commands. They might ask for a bit more contextual information, to better carry out the role you’ve assigned them, or they might suggest something that you hadn’t even thought to ask them, based on your use patterns (and, in Google’s case, near-omniscient knowledge of your movements and habits).
Actual conversations will probably be rare for the core assistants, though. Both companies know that they need to avoid irritating their users and are loath to insert themselves too forcefully into their lives.
But with both platforms also open to third-party developers, we can expect to see an evolution of the sort of chatbot-based narrative experiences with which organisations such as the BBC are already experimenting. Want to have Alexa acting as your on-tap dungeon master for a weekly pen-and-paper role playing game? OK, you’ll probably have to wait a bit longer for that one.
Facebook screws up the 2018 US midterm elections
There is not really any good outcome for Facebook in 2018 and the company seems to know it. It’s stuck between two competing imperatives and it’s hard to see how it can chart a course between Scylla and Charybdis.
On the one hand, the company has to demonstrate conclusively that it has managed to protect the US against further Russian interference. That’s an almost existential concern for Facebook, at this point: the investigation into the Internet Research Agency’s actions on the site has blossomed into the worst press it has ever had and already made 2017 hell for the company.
That defensive need goes further than just Russia, though. Facebook still has a problem with “fake news” and its efforts to stymie the spread of hoaxes, bad reporting and deliberate propaganda haven’t worked. The rot has got so bad that Facebook is experimenting with simply deprioritising news full stop, trialling a news feed in six countries around the world that removes news posts to a secondary column, the “explore feed”.
But commercially, Facebook still needs to show it can swing elections. It’s reaching out to elected officials and candidates around the world – even running a special elections page, walking them through the process of buying an advert, optimising it for organic engagement and getting “honest, real-time” voter feedback.
It’s easy to see Facebook managing to achieve the worst of both worlds. In an effort to guard against misinformation, it has already started to promise new restrictions on political adverts, which could hurt the bottom line when it comes to creaming a portion of the enormous US electoral ad spend. But those restrictions won’t be enough to prevent a determined campaign – nor could they, without completely changing the nature of Facebook’s site.
Pay to play
The world of videogames saw a long-overdue backlash in 2017 against the concept of “loot boxes”, slot-machine style collections of virtual items that gamers can buy for real Money to improve their characters. With tales of children spending hundreds of pounds on new players for Fifa and the latest Star Warsgame launching to terrible reviews for its “relentless” money-grabbing, the trend looks as if it might be dialled back in the coming year.
But the economics behind it haven’t changed. Making serious money from games, particularly casual and mobile games, remains a prospect of identifying “whales” – players who will spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on your game in order to be the best there is – and milking every last cent from them, even if the experience hurts the Normal Players who just want to have fun without pulling their wallet out.
So what’s next? Paying those normal players to stick around, of course. After all, no one is going to spend a thousand pounds on new weapons and armour if there isn’t anyone to shoot them with. And people will do silly things to earn money, even if it’s just pennies an hour.
Crycash, a cryptocurrency launched in partnership with major developers Crytek, offers one mechanism to do just that, providing a “decentralised ecosystem of custom-tailored products providing gamers a means to monetise their game time”. The project suggests that users could be rewarded for achieving simple goals in-game (say, 3 crycash for 100 kills); they could then use that money to buy in-game items or sell it to the whales to cash out.
