Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash Published 15 Jun 2026 It’s an all-Brits episode, as Andy welcomes Ian “epredator” Hughes back to the show as co-host, while both Michaels are away. We take a dive into some recent and current triple-A games as Ian talks through many hours of playtime in Crimson Desert, Forza Horizon 6, and 007 First Light. Although the new open-world Forza Horizon is set in Japan, Andy and Ian enjoy noting that these are games from UK-based studios or with British elements (like the legendary James Bond). Along the way, they talk about a WWDC video shared by Michael Rowe, which brings foveated streaming to the Vision Pro headset, although Ian notes that Varjo has been in this space for several years already. There’s a second round of gaming conversations that includes the latest XBox Games Showcase, featuring an older game (Sea of Thieves) from another British studio, and a yet-to-be-released game (Fable) with British voice talent and acting, that was also originally from the UK. There’s also a quick nod to an easter egg in the latest LEGO Batman game. The episode wraps up with a discussion of the recently fully-funded Kickstarter for the Virtual Worlds Museum, that we last talked about in episode 555. Ian mentions some of the recent video content that has been released by the project. Many thanks to Ian for joining the show this week, bringing a deep focus on games and virtual worlds! As usual, Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social with any comments or ideas! Selected Links Crimson Desert Forza Horizon 6 CarPlay brings Mario Kart to your car? Foveated Streaming with visionOS 007 First Light XBox Games Showcase https://youtu.be/W83iAMvXBuM Here's an easter egg in the new Lego Batman that I think all of you will REALLY appreciate. It's so good, I had to make a video. [image or embed] — Cabel Sasser (@cabel.panic.com) June 7, 2026 at 9:06 PM Wolfenstein 3D Atari demake Videos from Virtual Worlds Museum via @teleportal_tv https://youtu.be/Y5uBQtL0lD0

edited picture from Lars H Knudsen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-llama-7845603/ Published 2 February 2026 e541 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on AI with local Claude (and Clawdbot, Moltbot & openclaw), collaborative agents, 25 cent physical microtransactions ( quarters ), invisibility cloaks, LEGO SmartPlay and a whole lot more. Michael and Michael get things rolling with a series of intriguing innovations in local AI.  First up is a local instantiation of Claude via Ollama – see notes below for the installation instructions if you care to give this a shot.  Then, the team checks out Trae for it’s orchestration capabilities. Michael M makes the mistake of trying out one of these innovations while recording the show and nearly crashes his machine.  Then a discussion on the startup Humans& and how this company is planning for how human + digital combinations will power the future.  The post from Thomas Ricouard illustrates how agents are collaborating with one another.  Michael and Michael stay at the surface level on the whole clawdbot —> moltbot —> openclaw story which has been rapidly evolving this past week while still marveling at the speed of movement. Switching then to the makers making things, there is a fantastic example of how to enable the original microtransaction for current software.  How?  Implementing the hardware mechanism for accepting a quarter to allow the game player to continue.  Next, from MIT, a significant improvement on the umbrella by using a quadcopter and computer vision tracker to create a flying mobile shelter that protects the user from the elements.  And then, a story about an invisibility cloak from Duke in the news this week, which harkens back years – check the show notes below for prior discussions on this capability. LEGO has announced a new innovation – the SMART Play system, replete with SMART Bricks, SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures.  It will be so intriguing to see how this fits in with the LEGO robotics, FIRST LEGO League and more.  The longer arc going back to LEGO Serious Play may provide some hints. Michael and Michael wrap things up with another long arc from the show – Doom running on a plethora of devices and screens.  This time?  Doom on earbuds.  Check out the links and discussion for more. Are you considering trying out openclaw.ai ?  Why or why not?  Have your openclaw (or other) bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (our home for now) and let us know!  These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. Selected Links AI Tessl blog: Ollama helps Claude Code run locally on open-weight models trae.ai  ollama.com  “ollama run slekrem/gpt-oss-claude-code-32k:latest” TechCrunch article: Humans& thinks coordination is the next frontier for AI, and they’re building a model to prove it Agents are now brainstorming on how to be proactive instead of passive https://www.moltbook.com/post/562faad7-f9cc-49a3-8520-2bdf362606bb — Thomas Ricouard (@dimillian@mastodon.social)2026-01-30T14:23:57.561Z Scientific American article: Moltbot—what happens when AI stops chatting and starts doing openclaw.ai  More Makers Making Tom’s Hardware article: Gaming PC charges you quarters every time you want to power it on, restoring oldest form of microtransactions — $135 in tools and supplies, plus a lifetime supply of quarters to kick it old school photo by Michael Martine, Jan 2026 Popular Science article: We may not have flying cars, but we have flying umbrellas Games discovered on the Hacker News Show HN: HN arcade National Geographic article: How scientists are making the power of invisibility a reality Games at Work e396: GAN vs GAN (for references to earlier discussion on invisibility cloaks) Forbes article: Duke Researchers Perfect The Original Invisibility Cloak Duke Stories: Beyond Materials: From Invisibility Cloaks to Satellite Communications LEGO hackster.io article: This Switch Controller Is Made of LEGOs LEGO Smart Play sets LEGO Smart Play system Games at Work e130: The Final Countdown (for LEGO Serious Play) Doom hackster.io article: This Whole Doom Thing Has Gotten Out of Hand doombuds.com  Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own. Michael Martine

Michael R brings back Ian Hughes to discuss the recent changes with Meta’s VR investments, cool content on Apple’s Vision Pro, the new Creator Studio bundle, and 25 years of Wikipedia. While Andy and Michael M are not available we look at how large companies cutting back on innovation can allow new startups and companies to flourish. With Meta refocusing more on wearables, perhaps we will see an uptick in innovative uses for VR. Which is a perfect sequel way for Michael to given his review of the NBA’s recent basketball game on the Vision Pro. The experience seemed to him to be the perfect onramp for Michael M, if it were college basketball. We then review a few older games (Civilization VII and RetroCade), coming to Apple Arcade, before looking at the Board Tabletop Gaming Console. With all this cool tech, Michael introduces Ian to the Apple Creator Studio. Is it worth it? Ian, having recently built an AI server at home via ComfyUI, thinks it may be cheap enough for his pocketbook. Finally we get to Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, and what Ian did on the Cool Stuff Collective for Wikipedia’s 15th Anniversary. Showlinks: Meta: Shutting studios – https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/meta-three-vr-studios Shifting to Wearables – https://www.theverge.com/news/861295/meta-reality-labs-layoffs-shift-to-wearables Discontinuing Metaverse for work – https://www.theverge.com/tech/863209/meta-has-discontinued-its-metaverse-for-work-too Vision Pro: NBA on the Vision Pro – https://www.macstories.net/news/immersive-lakers-game-now-widely-available-on-apple-vision-pro/ RetroCade – https://techhub.social/@ellenich/115894673956399018 Games: Board Table Top – https://www.wired.com/review/board-tabletop-game-console Civ VII – https://www.theverge.com/news/861816/civilization-vii-apple-arcade-launch Creators: Creator Studio – https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/ Wikipedia: 25th Anniversary – https://www.theverge.com/news/861935/wikipedia-25th-anniversary-2026 Wikipedia 25th site – https://wikipedia25.org Cool stuff collective – https://citv.fandom.com/wiki/Cool_Stuff_Collective  Comfy UI – https://comfyui.org/en/what-is-comfyui  These show notes were lovingly crafted by a human.

Photo by Scott Gruber on Unsplash Published 4 January 2026 e537 with Michael M and Andy – ringing in the new year with the amazing power of music to move and heal, LEGO and retro builds and a whole lot more. Andy, Michael and Michael would like to wish all of our listeners a very happy 2026! Michael M and Andy start off 2026 on a good note – or perhaps better said – a series of good notes.  Michael shares some of his vacation reading, beginning with the book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel Levitin.  In this book, Levitin highlights the power of music to move and heal, and provides a Linktree to listen to the songs featured in the book, which is included in the show notes below.  One particular example from the book was the Ella Fitzgerald recording of Mack the Knife in Berlin, and the magic she created in the moment when she forgot the lyrics. Andy highlights an amazing musical creation moment with Jacob Collier’s improvisation with the National Symphony Orchestra.  This reminded Michael of Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander’s book, Art of Possibility, and maestro Zander’s TED talk on the power of classical music.  Michael also brought up David Byrne’s book, How Music Works, and his learning in Puerto Rico on how dancers conduct the musicians as they perform together. Byrne discussed mixtapes in his book, and the modern equivalent of them are the playlist, which is exactly what Levitin’s Linktree leads to. Michael created a mixtape to express musically what he was trying to say in words for his NCSSM convocation speech at the start of the 2025-26 school year. Andy shares a couple of intriguing ways to create music through retro devices and common household products – all of these are in the links below. Moving to the building part of the episode, Andy and Michael start off with LEGO, and this is about to be a banner year for the company with so many new sets coming on the market.  There’s a new LEGO Icons building, which has in it a music store and includes a sousaphone player minifig.  The cohosts touch on the Star Trek Enterprise set which was also just launched, which includes a minifig of Commander Riker with his trombone.  Andy describes the awesomeness that is the LEGO GameBoy with the inventive buttons on the device, and the team then touch on a couple of retro consoles such as the Commodore 64 reboot. The team wraps up this episode with a mention of Andy’s grumpiness on the year end Tech Grumps podcast. What music has inspired you in 2025?  What builds (LEGO, retro or otherwise) are you planning for 2026?   Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (our home for now) and let us know!  These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. Selected Links Reading I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel J Levitin Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Die Driegroschenoper – listen to the “Moritat von Mackie Messer” excerpt sung by Bertholt Brecht in the Featured Audio & Video section Games at Work e485: Barbarians at the Rhubarb Bar (for flow, and of course Barbara’s Rhabarberbar) Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander Benjamin Zander’s TED talk: The transformative power of classical music Games at Work e9: Reality is Broken (for Jane McGongial’s book, and Benjamin Zander’s Ode to Joy) How Music Works by David Byrne Listening Wikipedia article: Mixtape Listen to the songs featured in A Secret Chord – https://linktr.ee/secretchord Michael M’s Apple Music Mixtape for NCSSM’s convocation Michael M’s Spotify Mixtape for NCSSM’s convocation Making of Boléro by Linus A Kesson Building LEGO and more LEGO Icons Shopping Street #11371, with sousaphone musician (see picture 13 in photo gallery) LEGO Icons Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D™ #10356 with trombone player Commander Riker minifigs.me  LEGO Gameboy #70246 build and additional new Retro Console #31380 Wired article: Review: Commodore 64 Ultimate The Lost Outpost blog post: Retro-tastic! Other Stranger Things Woe Industries game  TechGrumps 3.3.5: – Bless The TechGrumps (Special holiday special)  Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own. Michael Martine

Photo by David Klein on Unsplash Published 15 December 2025 e535 with Michael M and Andy – adversarial poetry to jailbreak LLMs, iFixit’s FixBot, power of digital twins, putting the breaks on Rewind, Nintendo Virtual Boy and a whole lot more. Michael M and Andy start things off with a most intriguing concept – adversarial poetry. By using ‘memetic language’, researchers formulated prompts with imagery and metaphor instead of direct operational phrasing to trick LLMs into providing unsafe responses. Michael makes the point that AI prompts are becoming more and more like spells or incantations. See the show notes below for a link to the paper for any budding AI poet laureate wannabes. Perhaps Jabberwocky can be used in a snicker snack way. Switching to another AI use case, Andy and Michael discuss the iFixit FixBot.  The FixBot provides expert advice and guidance for repairs, by talking to the human who likely needs both hands to effect the repair.  Next up are a couple of stories on digital twins, and how they leverage game technology.  By taking sufficient data points to create a digital twin, multiple attempts can be made virtually to see the improvement before applying the capability to the non-digital twin.  Andy is reminded of an article that outlines the affinity between the metaverse and digital twin concepts.  Nvidia has a concept of this in their Omniverse capability.  Another example of a digital twin with a game overlay is the Job Simulator Game.  This game is written as a 2050 historical virtual reality environment allowing the player to experience what it was like to have a job in 2020.  This fun VR historical reenactment experience is one of the stories that Tobi Lütke discussed in his recent interview with the Acquired team. Staying on the VR simulation theme, Andy and Michael take a look at the Rats Play Doom game which trains rats in an immersive way to play Doom.   In the last section of the episode, the team takes a look at some metaverse news.  Meta has acquired limitless.ai and is shutting down Rewind on the Mac, and is also shifting more investment from the metaverse to AI.  Wrapping up the episode, Michael and Andy look at the Nintendo Virtual Boy and Xteink 4. What poetry would you write to prompt an LLM? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (our home for now) and let us know!  These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. Selected Links AI PC Gamer article: Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used ‘adversarial poetry’ to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time arXiv paper: Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models Gilbert & Sullivan: Hail Poetry The Verge article: iFixit’s FixBot helps with repairs ‘the way a master technician would’ iFixit: Introducing FixBot: We Built an AI That Actually Knows How to Fix Things Digital Twins ComputerWorld article: Digital twin tech is a double-edged sword ComputerWorld article: ‘Digital twin’ tech is twice as great as the metaverse Nvidia Omniverse Job Simulator Game acquired.fm AC2 interview: How to Live in Everyone Else’s Future (with Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke) Games at Work e490: Codename – “Amelia” (for digital twins) Doom Reddit post: Open-source VR framework for training rats to play DOOM Rats Play Doom Metaverse 9 to 5 Mac article: Rewind Mac app shutting down following Meta’s acquisition of Limitless limitless.ai  WSJ article: Meta Plans to Shift Spending Away From the Metaverse Retrododo article: Virtual Boy Accessory For Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 Is Available For Pre-Order My Nintendo Store: Virtual Boy for Nintendo Switch 2/Nintendo Switch Tech The Verge article: This tiny magnetic e-reader sticks to the back of your iPhone Xteink x4 Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own. Michael Martine