NEWS

Role’s video role-playing platform makes a $2.75M charm attempt on the burgeoning tabletop world

Published

2 years ago

August 19, 2021

roles video role playing platform makes a 2 75m charm attempt on the burgeoning tabletop world

Tabletop gaming is in the middle of a historic boom, despite recent restrictions imposed on in-person gatherings by COVID. The tools adopted by game masters and casual players to play remotely are powerful, but not always the easiest to use or adopt. Role hopes to change that with a super-accessible video platform focused on the social aspect of role-playing games, and it has raised a $2.75 million seed round to do so.

It’s hard to say what has powered the incredible growth of the tabletop gaming space, which just a few years ago was perceived as a sleepy realm of basement-dwelling nerds, a niche within a niche. But it was a different kind of sleeping giant, one that has proven to be immensely diverse, valuable and surprisingly tenacious in the face of the pandemic.

Some platforms, like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, have seized on this opportunity to provide online video collaboration platforms for playing games like D&D, strategy titles and many others of the general tabletop type.

But Logan Dwight and Ian Hirschfeld, co-founders of Role, felt these approaches tended to emphasize the mechanics over what they felt was a more important aspect of RPGs.

“We asked ourselves, why is it that people, when they have all these options, choose to play D&D on the internet? And what we figured out is, it’s the people,” said Dwight. “The game lives in the minds of the people, a shared social experience. It’s about the conversation, the face-to-face interactions.”

Image Credits: Role

This is the start of something new, they said — and big. As an analogue, they referred to the social gaming explosion a decade ago.

“People always find a way to play. Because we had social media platforms and mobile phones then, we were socializing over those — so we naturally looked for ways to play over them,” they said. “We’re at another one of those inflection points now with the explosion of online video and the creator economy in gaming. Video has become so good and so ubiquitous it’s becoming the dominant way people socialize — and then what naturally happens is we look for a way to play. And it turns out the, answer was right under our noses, and it’s been there since the ’70s: it’s role playing, a game that takes the form of conversation.”

Role was designed from the ground up to smooth out and simplify how the complex mechanics of these games are implemented, putting the players visually and cognitively at the forefront. After all, when you’re playing D&D or another game around the table, you spend most of your time looking at each other, not the game board — because it’s a game and you’re having fun with each other, right?

Of course, it’s easy to say the face-to-face interactions should be front and center, but the truth is these games are mechanically complicated and involve sheets, dice, maps, rulebooks and so on. Dwight said the problem here is not so much keeping them always in view, but making them simple and intuitive to access and involve in gameplay.

Take a character sheet with some attributes and associated bonuses, and a standard combat encounter. Depending on how well the GM has prepped, it may be that the dice rolls need to have bonuses added manually, and the results compared manually to the defending monster’s sheet. But if the bonuses, the dice and the monster’s stats are all aware of one another, you know if you hit as soon as the die is cast.

Screenshot of Role's interface for building game systems.

It looks complicated, but compared with scripting it manually, this is a cakewalk. Image Credits: Role

This can be done in many games, but it’s not always easy, and becomes much harder the further one goes from official, canon rulebooks. House rules are common enough, but these days there are entire variant game types being built out from open-license rulebooks that have no “official” support from a major gaming company like Wizards. Prepping a game for play online might be weeks of work that’s relatively technically demanding.

Some GMs and creators take pleasure in the intricacy of these systems, but as Dwight pointed out, the expansion of the community means more people are coming to this from non-gaming and non-tech backgrounds.

“The core skills people are bringing to this are that they’re a writer or something. So the ability to create together needs to be really easy and really powerful,” they said. “We want to give people like… a Squarespace for tabletop RPGs. It’s a WYSIWYG editor, the RPG equivalent of a box of LEGO. You can make a whole set of templates for whatever game you want to run, tweak sheets, create animations, all without having to touch code, and you can share it easily.”

The platform has already seen major growth in user-created campaigns and variants for games designed to be built upon, like Mörk Borg and Lancer, with thousands being shared.

Role first raised money via Kickstarter (though the idea goes back to 2015), then via some angel funding, but this seed round brings in their first proper VC money. The $2.75 million round is co-led by Konvoy and London Venture Partners, with whom Dwight said they were pleased to find willing partners who understood the opportunity perfectly. That’s a feat, considering the skyrocketing value and diversity of tabletop has taken even industry veterans by surprise.

The money is going toward effecting the lessons the company has learned from its early adopters, with a renewed focus on ease of use, accessibility and extensibility. As for making money, the company intends to do so through a marketplace for games and scenarios, and for premium features like extra online storage and so on. But for regular users who just want to play with friends, Role is free to sign up for and use right now.

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We asked ChatGPT what will be Google (GOOG) stock price for 2030

Published

9 months ago

March 20, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

We asked ChatGPT what will be Google (GOOG) stock price for 2030

Investors who have invested in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock have reaped significant benefits from the company’s robust financial performance over the last five years. Google’s dominance in the online advertising market has been a key driver of the company’s consistent revenue growth and impressive profit margins.

In addition, Google has expanded its operations into related fields such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. These areas show great promise as future growth drivers, making them increasingly attractive to investors. Notably, Alphabet’s stock price has been rising due to investor interest in the company’s recent initiatives in the fast-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI), adding generative AI features to Gmail and Google Docs.

However, when it comes to predicting the future pricing of a corporation like Google, there are many factors to consider. With this in mind, Finbold turned to the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to suggest a likely pricing range for GOOG stock by 2030. Although the tool was unable to give a definitive price range, it did note the following:

“Over the long term, Google has a track record of strong financial performance and has shown an ability to adapt to changing market conditions. As such, it’s reasonable to expect that Google’s stock price may continue to appreciate over time.”

GOOG stock price prediction

While attempting to estimate the price range of future transactions, it is essential to consider a variety of measures in addition to the AI chat tool, which includes deep learning algorithms and stock market experts.

Finbold collected forecasts provided by CoinPriceForecast, a finance prediction tool that utilizes machine self-learning technology, to anticipate Google stock price by the end of 2030 to compare with ChatGPT’s projection.

According to the most recent long-term estimate, which Finbold obtained on March 20, the price of Google will rise beyond $200 in 2030 and touch $247 by the end of the year, which would indicate a 141% gain from today to the end of the year.

2030 GOOG price prediction: Source: CoinPriceForecast

Google has been assigned a recommendation of ‘strong buy’ by the majority of analysts working on Wall Street for a more near-term time frame. Significantly, 36 analysts of the 48 have recommended a “strong buy,” while seven people have advocated a “buy.” The remaining five analysts had given a ‘hold’ rating.

1679313229 737 We asked ChatGPT what will be Google GOOG stock price — *Wall Street GOOG 12-month price prediction: Source: TradingView*

The average price projection for Alphabet stock over the last three months has been $125.32; this objective represents a 22.31% upside from its current price. It’s interesting to note that the maximum price forecast for the next year is $160, representing a gain of 56.16% from the stock’s current price of $102.46.

While the outlook for Google stock may be positive, it’s important to keep in mind that some potential challenges and risks could impact its performance, including competition from ChatGPT itself, which could affect Google’s price.

Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.

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NEWS

This Apple Watch app brings ChatGPT to your wrist — here’s why you want it

Published

9 months ago

March 10, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

ChatGPT feels like it is everywhere at the moment; the AI-powered tool is rapidly starting to feel like internet connected home devices where you are left wondering if your flower pot really needed Bluetooth. However, after hearing about a new Apple Watch app that brings ChatGPT to your favorite wrist computer, I’m actually convinced this one is worth checking out.

The new app is called watchGPT and as I tipped off already, it gives you access to ChatGPT from your Apple Watch. Now the $10,000 question (or more accurately the $3.99 question, as that is the one-time cost of the app) is why having ChatGPT on your wrist is remotely necessary, so let’s dive into what exactly the app can do.

What can watchGPT do?

Now if you need a quick refresher on ChatGPT in general, you can read our handy guide answering what is ChatGPT, but in short the artificial intelligence (AI) tool understands and responds to natural language questions based on its vast trove of knowledge gleaned from around the web. Now that can be applied in lots of different ways, to answer questions for you or produce written content based around a prompt.

That core functionality of ChatGPT is a big part of what you can do with watchGPT, quickly accessing it through a complication on your watch. Imagine an actually useful version of Siri on your wrist, that’s what watchGPT promises. Whether the answers are incredibly helpful or completely off-the-wall (which happens), you can easily share the results of your chats over text, email, or on social media (internet celebrity here you come).

The other major use case for watchGPT is generating longer messages quickly on your watch without trying to type with the built-in keyboard or relying on the at times questionable dictation results. Tell watchGPT the type of message you want and it will just write it for you, whether that’s a sonnet for your spouse or a lengthy explanation to your boss on why you are going to be in late this morning.

The app doesn’t store any data, so your watchGPT questions and prompts are yours alone unless you share them with people.

The developer is at work on a number of updates as well. At present you can only pose a single question/prompt at a time, typically the conversational nature of ChatGPT is part of its appeal, that will be possible in the next update. Other updates include a history, the ability to set it to vocal input by default, and the option to have its responses read out loud.

For a one-time fee of $3.99 it’s certainly an interesting application for ChatGPT and one that I think is worth giving a try.

u9wsX2K6BM3DEYRMZyLZsf 1200 80.jpg

(Image credit: Modum B.V.)

How to get ChatGPT on your Apple Watch

Just download watchGPT from the App Store (opens in new tab) and you’ll be on your way. Again the app allows you to set it up as a complication for easier access, but otherwise just ask it your question or ask it to type something out for you and it will quickly get the job done.

While ChatGPT may feel omnipresent already, we are still just seeing the tip of the iceberg for its potential usage, so we’ll be keeping our eye out for any unique or interesting applications of the versatile AI tool.

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NEWS

Discord goes all in with AI: chatbots, automods, whiteboards and more

Published

9 months ago

March 10, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Discord goes all in with AI: chatbots, automods, whiteboards and more

AI is the future, at least over on Discord.

The messaging application originally made for gamers has become Gen Z’s favorite online hangout destination of choice, and now it’s rolling out a number of features powered by artificial intelligence.

In an announcement(Opens in a new tab) on Thursday, Discord shared what’s coming to the platform soon: an AI chatbot, an automated AI moderator, a conversation summarizer, an avatar remixer, and a whiteboard. Some of these features begin rolling out today, March 9. Others will launch in the coming weeks and months.

While AI has jumped into the mainstream thanks to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Discord has had an active AI community for quite a while now. According to the company, third-party AI apps already on the platform already have more than 30 million monthly users. Nearly 3 million servers on Discord have some AI element integrated into the community.

In fact, the biggest community on Discord is Midjourney, a text-to-image AI project which allows users to generate art from right within the server. Discord says Midjourney’s server has more than 13 million members.

So, with AI being such an integral part of Discord already, it seemed like only a matter of time before Discord itself started bringing AI directly into the platform.

images

AutoMod AI
Credit: Discord

The first feature coming to some Discord servers as soon as today is AutoMod AI. Discord already has an AutoMod feature, which basically automatically moderates rooms for admins based on the rules of the server. Discord has now integrated OpenAI-powered AI into AutoMod, allowing it to search the server and contact moderators when it thinks rules are possibly being broken. According to Discord, AutoMod AI can also consider the context of a conversation so, for example, users don’t get penalized for posts that are misconstrued.

Clyde is a bot that Discord users may already be familiar with, and starting next week, Clyde is getting an AI upgrade. Currently, the Clyde bot provides information, such as server error messages, and also responds to timeout or ban requests from users and mods. However, that’s pretty much all Clyde was able to do. Until now.

Clyde
Credit: Discord

Clyde will now be able to answer all sorts of questions from users, much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Users simply have to type “@Clyde” followed by their prompt. Clyde will be able to pull up information and also help find specific emojis or GIFs based on a user’s description.

Another AI feature coming to Discord next week is Conversation Summaries. Again, the name is fairly descriptive of what it does. With users all over the world, many Discord channels are always moving regardless of time of day. Conversation Summaries will allow users to catch up on what they missed on a Discover Server. The AI-powered feature will “bundle” chats into topics so users can easily read up on what they find most interesting.

Conversation Summaries
Credit: Discord

Starting today, developers can start playing with Avatar Remix, an open-source Discord app that integrates AI art into the messaging app. Avatar Remix allows users to take a fellow user’s avatar and change it up “using the power of generative image models.” What does that mean? In the demo that Discord showed Mashable, a user was able to add a party hat or a mustache to a friend’s avatar by simply mentioning their username and describing what changes they’d like to make.

Avatar Remix
Credit: Discord

The company is also launching an “AI incubator,” offering support for developers creating AI-powered apps on Discord.

Finally, Discord revealed a feature that’s coming soon that has long been requested by the Discord community: a whiteboard. But, of course, this won’t be just any collaborative whiteboard feature. It’s going to be AI-powered, allowing users to collaborate in generating AI art and more.

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