Surely you have an Amazon Echo device at home and at some point you wanted to find out from pure boredom how smart Alexa is, your virtual assistant.
I have one myself, and when my friends come home they try to make all kinds of jokes to find out their ingenious and jocular responses.
Amazon Echo | With this game you will know how smart Alexa is
Now there is a specific board game for it. Hey Robot is a traditional board game that interacts with both devices compatible with the Amazon assistant and with other assistants, such as Siri or as Google Assistant.
The game has a very fun performance; players are given a selection of words and should try to have the assistant say a word from that selection trying to keep the other players from finding out.
Challenge your friends using your Amazon Echo (or other assistants) with this board game
We live in the era of virtual assistants and it is not uncommon therefore to find and use them. Our mobile, whether Android or iOS has its own assistants just like Amazon. This game aims to use them as an addition to the game that is based on another very popular called Taboo.
As explained by Frank Lantz, one of the creators of the game, one of the keys to this game is that the attendees usually do not work quite well. They do not respond to absolutely everything we tell them, and they have to receive very specific voice commands to give you a concise answer.
“The game works because these devices don’t work so well. It’s very funny. You think, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy. How hard can it be?’ But that’s the point. Actually, it can be very challenging and play with how crazy these things are. ”
Lantz is the director of the NYU Game Center and has already created other similar games, such as Drop7 and Universal Paperclips. The idea of Hey Robot arose based on the example we have set before; Lantz and his wife Hillary, during dinner, were talking to Alexa and created their own games like ‘Alexa Tennis’, which consisted of riddles with numbers and words. “We got hooked. We stayed up all night trying to get different words.”
The game is in a campaign of micromanagement in Kickstarter, with a goal close to 9,000 euros. At present they carry just over 3,000 euros, and they hope that in the remaining month of the campaign they will reach their goal. The game will cost about $ 30 and is expected to be sent in March to those who have contributed to the campaign.
The most interesting thing about this initiative is that the game, according to Lantz, will evolve as the attendees also evolve and can spoil the game completely. These assistants are improving as they are used, learning from the voice commands that their users give them and the new capabilities that manufacturers are adding.
The example is set by Lantz himself. Lantz says he has observed how the answers change in the last six months or so that they have been testing the game. As these assistants better understand what the players are saying, the Lantz game may no longer make sense. This is something that the creator of Hey Robot knows and admits. However, this does not worry you too much.