Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-02-2018, 11:24 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Put your merch to work: An indie’s guide to merchandise
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
Weather Factory – who made Lovecraftian card game Cultist Simulator, you should buy it – recently opened a merch shop. We’re a microstudio of two people (Alexis Kennedy, creator of games like Fallen London and Sunless Sea, and myself), so I wanted to see whether selling physical merch was a worthwhile side-project for an already over-busy indie team.
We launched our Church of Merch on Monday 17th September 2018. The following three-parter will take you through the deets: set-up, the merch itself and how it did in Month 1, and then some searingly insightful takeaways on, like, the ontology of enamel pins. It’ll be a zinger.
If you can’t be bothered to read ’em all, my conclusion is that if you have anybody in your team who’s interested in doing it, you should totally set up your own merch shop. Read on to find out why. ?
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TLDR: merch is just another game dev project. Be clear about what you’re trying to achieve.
Weather Factory has a rich, weird, jazzy IP that lends itself nicely to merchandise. I wanted to lean into this and personally design rich, weird, jazzy items (#branding). Cultist is a niche game, so I also wanted to see if I could make merch that appeals to people who haven’t heard of Cultist as well as its core fans.
This meant our stuff had to be high-quality enough to attract buyers without relying on the quality of Being From That Game You Like. This put extra pressure on initial design, but Ihope pays long-term dividends by enabling us to reach beyond our game’s user base and generate sales from a wider, non-Cultified audience.
Finally, we want to incorporate physical items into future Weather Factory games, so our merch experiment was also about market research and practicalities. Is it possible to set up and manage a merch store with only one part-time resource? What sort of items do our fans particularly respond to? Are there any types of merch which are a particular pain in the butt to make, so we can avoid them in the future?
In short, and in order of importance, the Church of Merch’s aims were to:
Create attractive, boutique, on-brand merch within a sensible indie budget
See if selling physical merch was a viable long-term option for us, in terms of pipeline, storefront, profit and time
See what sort of items go down well with ‘our type of people’: people who are already playing Cultist Simulator + the people who aren’t but like weird occult stuff
Make some money!
TLDR: there’s no single ‘best’ place to sell merch. Pick the best shop for you, based on your project aims.
I looked into a bunch of different options. Did we want a dedicated page on our Weather Factory site somewhere? Did we want an entirely separate site? Did we want a ‘buy’ button on our website which would lead to some external seller like Shopify?
Bearing in mind our whole studio ethos is boutique, personable open production, I ended up settling onEtsy. It’s friendly and personable too; it’s full of weird individuals making weird individual stuff; it’s entirely controllable by us, without complicated add-ons; it gives our merch the chance to be seen by a wider consumer audience who are looking for other things; and I personally understand it, because I’ve shopped on Etsy for years.
So far I’m very happy with it. The back-end is slick, there’re a lot of marketing options I haven’t yet made much use of, there’s a nice app, etc. If we scale up, maybe it’ll be less sparkly, and it’s a shame there isn’t (yet!) a Slack integration. But otherwise, it’s pretty perfect for what we’re trying to do.
TLDR: we spent time and resource on this. It was worth it.
The Church of Merch cost ~£7k to set up. This includes all stock costs, store listings, and my time. Our estimatedprofitfrom selling all our base stock comes to ~£7.7k, which already tells you merch stores are worth it for cashflow-delicate indies!
I love getting my art on, so I wanted to be the core designer on our merch where possible. I drew up a list of some feasible-sounding but not entirely generic merch ideas then looked around for specialist producers, who’d offer me the biggest range of highest-quality options. This meant I took on a time-cost of looking for specialists and talking to multiple people (rather than a quicker, more expensive one-stop supplier), but Ithinkit also meant the end result was unusually weird and wonderful. YOU DECIDE!
For each item we made, the basic process went something like this:
The first step is your GRAND VISION. You take your GRAND VISION and you email a supplier and you say are you able to make my GRAND VISION a reality.
They email back politely saying yes if you make it less stupid, how about this mock-up?
You have a back and forth about colours, material and costs per volume.
It all ends with a big boss battle between yourself and TNT delivery who insist you haven’t been home since March 1943 but eventually you receive your goods and weep delightedly over their beauty.
Leave time in your schedule for these initial designs. If you want to open your merch shop in time for a specific event (e.g. Christmas), leave waaaaay more time than you think you’ll need. All in all I think I spent 2-3 months setting up the shop, though I wasn’t working to a fixed deadline, or working full-time on it.
One final thing to note is: even though I spent considerable time on finding suppliers and commissioning weird stuff, the majority of this pain is now over. Restocking is as simple as pinging someone an email or clicking a big blue REORDER button. If I branch out and decide to make a new bit of merch that’s totally unlike the others, I’ll probably need to go out and look for a new specialist supplier again. But over time – as I collect a larger and larger group of friendly people to make my stuff – this’ll go away, too.
TLDR: what’re your brand and project aims? How much do you want to be involved?
We worked with a different supplier for each bit of merchandise you see on our shop. This is because I wanted specialists, I wanted to keep costs down, I wanted unique rather than scalable items, and I figured we’d have more creative control with a smaller producer than in the production line of a bigger company.
All of our producers are in the UK, bar one that’s in China, because it didn’t make sense to pay international shipping for stuff I can get made here for roughly the same amount. China makes sense in one instance (our USBs) simply because the cost per item is so much cheaper than in the UK, even with vastly more expensive shipping + hefty customs charges.
If you’re looking for quantity and budget-friendliness instead – less ‘ooh, so boutique’ and more ‘make this not my problem’ – here’s a list of larger suppliers. This isn’t remotely exhaustive, it’s just a collection the various names I’ve been recommended by kind devs who passed on their own pearls of merch wisdom when I was asking around.
In case it needs to be said, there’s no shame in wanting to fling your merch over the fence to make it someone else’s problem. It may well make more sense for what you’re trying to achieve. Please don’t take my interest in the strange and smol as a critique of a more scalable, economic approach!
TLDR: it’s a total pain in the butt, but you get there in the end.
Let me introduce you to the Babadook that’ll haunt your own Church of Merch. It was hard working out shipping costs ahead of time (see mad scrawlings, above), as there’s a lot of inconsistency across weight, size, service speed, item value, delivery country, etc… You also have a significant time-cost of actually posting stuff when the orders start coming in, the fact that countries are constantly buggering about with customs checks and postal strikes, deciding whether your profit margins can eat the cost of postal fees (which significantly helps shift items), and managing ongoing customer queries about where things are. Budget for all of this!
BUT. Once you’ve shipped a few things you’ll know how it all works, you’ll learn all the boring parcelly things you didn’t know you didn’t know before, and you’ll realise how insane you were to not have a Drop & Goaccount. The admin side of shipping stuff is a real, significant pain in the butt, but so long as you *expect* it to be a pain in the butt and leave time to get to grips with it all, you’ll be fine.
One final bit of advice here: draw this tedious shipping stuff back up into your #branding. For example, every Weather Factory parcel comes in some fun colour-coded parcel, with ribbon and hand-written cult thank-you cards and some of them are holographic fuschia parcels. You could opt for the most economic options, but then your studio’s brand becomes ‘Most Economic’. Maybe that’s you! But if it isn’t, seek ye some jollier packaging.
☽★☾
Thus endeth Part the First of my merch research! Next time: the stuff we actually made and sold, and the numbers the Church did in its first month (with little to no marketing, I might add).
If you’re an indie and have questions or stories about setting up your own store, ping me in the comments here, or onTwitter. ?
Behind the Creative Audio & Art for Thief of Thieves
Thief of Thieves: Season One is a game about heists and the people who do them, based on a comic by Robert Kirkman of “The Walking Dead” fame. The protagonist is Celia, the apprentice of the titular Thief of Thieves, Conrad “Redmond” Paulson. The game blends comic frames with gameplay featuring stealth and social engineering – after all, a great thief never uses violence. The game is now out on Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass. Our art and audio teams did a pretty awesome job, and here are a few words from our Audio Director and Art Director.
Tommi Hartikainen, Audio Director: Designing Thief of Thieves: Season One offered a unique yet welcome challenge in incorporating the graphic novel feel to the audio. Simultaneously creating a cohesive and comprehensive soundscape for the entire game while extending the same atmosphere from the comic frame scenes to the action sequences required careful planning and attention to detail.
A heavily post-processed classical quartet plays in the graphic novel sections, menus and credits. It reflects the puppet-mastery of the main character’s mentor Conrad “Redmond” Paulson in a jesting but classy way. This feel is then extended to the player character’s “homebase” and certain key events to promote consistency and provide dynamic and textural contrast with the modern rock- influenced music within the action sequences. Bowed electric guitars with similar “sound-designy” post-processing are used as drones, with additional sound effects bridging the gap between the soundscapes of classical music and rock.
One of the technical challenges was spotting music and sound effects to the graphic novel parts of the game. Since the player controls the pace of the scenes, the musical segments had to be short and meticulously timed to the events in the comic frames. The sound effects were carefully selected to either include and/or omit sounds not visually portrayed in the graphics to create the same kind of high contrast storytelling found in the comic.
KJ Kallio, Art Director: As someone whose background is in illustrating, coming up with a fresh and unique style for Thief of Thieves: Season One gave a perfect opportunity to think outside the box. Instead of following the beaten path of game art, we applied all the things we learned working within the illustration field, resulting in a look and feel that you rarely see in games. This approach had many advantages, along with some pitfalls.
Instead of using tiling or baked-in texture maps, every single character, object, backdrop, and detail have been meticulously hand painted with a heavy and expressive ink style and strong and vibrant colors. As a result no two levels look alike. This combined with the saturated, volumetric, bleeding lighting gave the scenes an almost dreamlike atmosphere. The goal was to make every scene and detail look like a painting, where the viewer could rest their eyes while marveling at the nuances of even the most ordinary and everyday objects.
The toughest challenge was creating a seamless, coherent comic book style that works in the game world, while also being original. Objects viewed from several different angles had to be drawn with ink lines, rather than relying on toon shaders or cel shading. Painting everything piece by piece meant long hours at the office – especially with the major change in the overall visual style in the middle of the production, which meant everything done so far had to be painted again. In retrospect, we have no regrets.
7.20c: == * Wraith Band: Attack speed bonus reduced from 7 to 6 * Wraith Band: Recipe cost increased from 210 to 220 * Bracer: Recipe cost increased from 210 to 220 * Null Talisman: Recipe cost increased from 210 to 220 * Sange: Recipe cost reduced from 650 to 600 * Yasha: Recipe cost reduced from 650 to 600 * Kaya: Recipe cost reduced from 650 to 600 * Bloodstone: Charges increased from 12 to 14 * Bloodstone: HP/MP regen per charge increased from 0.25 to 0.3
* Bounty Hunter: Agility gain reduced from 3.0 to 2.7 * Bounty Hunter: Track cast range reduced from 1200 to 1000 * Brewmaster: Cinder Brew activation mechanic has been reworked. It now ignites anytime a target is dealt 80 spell damage or more, dealing 20/25/30/35 DPS for 3 seconds. (If you activate it while the debuff is already going, it will extend the ignite debuff duration. If activated after the ignite debuff wears out, a new ignite debuff will be added) * Brewmaster: Cinder Brew primary buff duration is no longer extended when activated (they are seperate debuffs now). * Brewmaster: Level 25 Talent reduced from +200% Drunken Brawler Critical Strike to +175% * Centaur: Stampede slow duration increased from 1.8 to 2.3 seconds * Chaos Knight: Chaos Strike lifesteal increased from 35/40/45/50% to 35/45/55/65% * Clinkz: Attack range increased from 640 to 650 * Clinkz: Burning Army base attack time improved from 1.65/1.5/1.35 to 1.5/1.35/1.2 * Clinkz: Level 20 Talent increased from +100 to +125 Attack Range * Dazzle: Shadow Wave cooldown increased from 13/11/9/7 to 14/12/10/8 * Death Prophet: Base movement speed increased from 310 to 315 * Death Prophet: Level 10 Talent increased from +12% Magic Resistance to +15% * Death Prophet: Level 20 Talent increased from -2s Crypt Swarm Cooldown to -3s * Doom: Devour hp regen reduced from 5/10/15/20 to 4/8/13/18 * Drow Ranger: Marksmanship now deals bonus 120 physical proc damage against heroes * Elder Titan: Astral Spirit attack damage per hero reduced from 20/40/60/80 to 15/30/60/80 * Elder Titan: Astral Spirit cooldown increased from 16 to 17 * Ember Spirit: Sleight of Fist bonus damage increased from 35/70/105/140 to 40/80/120/160 * Ember Spirit: Level 10 Talent increased from +200 Flame Guard Absorption to +250 * Ember Spirit: Level 15 Talent increased from +50 Flameguard DPS to +60 * Enchantress: Base armor increased by 2 * Faceless Void: Time Lock damage reduced from 30/40/50/60 to 25/30/35/40 * Gyrocopter: Strength gain increased from 2.1 to 2.3 * Kunkka: Tidebringer cleave damage increased from 150% to 165% * Lina: Base armor increased by 1 * Lone Druid: Base armor reduced by 2 * Lone Druid: Agility reduced from 24 + 2.7 to 20 + 2.4 * Lone Druid: Spirit Link cooldown rescaled from 44/36/28/20 to 43/36/29/22 * Lone Druid: Level 10 Talent reduced from +175 Attack Range to +150 * Lone Druid: Level 20 Talent changed from +40 Spirit Link Attack Speed to -0.2 Spirit Bear Base Attack Time * Luna: Agility gain reduced from 3.3 to 3.1 * Luna: Level 10 Talent reduced from +20 Attack Speed to +15 * Luna: Level 20 Talent reduced from +10 All Stats to +8 * Luna: Lunar Blessing night vision reduced from 250/500/750/1000 to 200/400/600/800 * Lycan: Howl attack speed reduced from 21/34/47/60 to 20/30/40/50 * Meepo: Divided We Stand XP gain reduced from 50% to 40% * Meepo: Level 15 Talent reduced from +40 Poof Damage to +30 * Nature’s Prophet: Base armor increased by 1 * Nature’s Prophet: Agility gain increased from 2.4 to 2.8 * Naga Siren: Level 15 Talent reduced from +15 Agility to +12 * Outworld Devourer: Intelligence gain increased from 2.7 to 3.0 * Outworld Devourer: Base armor increased by 1 * Outworld Devourer: Equilibrium slow from 12/20/28/36% to 12/22/32/42% * Outworld Devourer: Arcane Orb no longer ignores Ancients * Phantom Assassin: Level 15 Talent reduced from -4 Armor to -3 * Phantom Assassin: Blur manacost increased from 20 to 30 * Puck: Intelligence gain increased from 2.4 to 2.7 * Sand King: Base damage reduced by 2 * Sand King: Strength gain reduced from 2.9 to 2.8 * Sand King: Agility gain reduced from 2.1 to 1.8 * Spectre: Haunt damage increased from 40/50/60% to 40/55/70% * Spirit Breaker: Greater Bash damage reduced from 16/24/32/40% to 12/20/28/36% * Storm Spirit: Intelligence gain increased from 3 to 3.2 * Storm Spirit: Static Remnant damage increased from 120/160/200/240 to 120/170/220/270 * Slardar: Level 20 Talent changed from +50 Attack Speed to +30% Lifesteal * Slark: Pounce duration reduced from 2.75/3/3.25/3.5 to 2.5/2.75/3/3.25 * Slark: Dark Pact manacost from 55/50/45/40 to 60 * Slark: Shadow Dance duration from 4/4.5/5 to 4/4.25/4.5 * Slark: Agility steal now also occurs when an enemy dies within 300 units from you with the debuff, rather than only when you get the killing blow * Slark: Level 10 Talent reduced from +8 Agility to +6 Agility * Slark: Level 20 Talent reduced from +2s Pounce Leash to +1.5s * Slark: Level 25 Talent reduced from +120s Essence Shift Duration to +100s * Timbersaw: Strength gain increased from 2.1 to 2.4 * Timbersaw: Whirling Death tree bonus damage increased from 10/14/18/22 to 10/15/20/25 * Tusk: Strength gain increased from 3 to 3.4 * Undying: Level 20 Talent reduced from +6 Tombstone Attacks To Destroy to +5 * Undying: Level 25 Talent increased from Gains Reincarnation 200 CD to 250 CD * Ursa: Fury Swipes damage reduced from 12/18/24/30 to 10/16/22/28 * Ursa: Level 15 Talent reduced from +16 Agility to +14 * Venomancer: Base agility increased by 4 * Venomancer: Level 15 Talent increased from +6% Poison Sting Slow to +8% * Visage: Strength gain reduced from 3.2 to 3.0 * Visage: Grave Chill cast range reduced from 650 to 625 * Visage: Level 20 Talent reduced from +80 Familiars Movement Speed to +60
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-02-2018, 06:13 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Surprise PS4 Flash Sale Is Live (US & UK)
Getting in the holiday spirit isn't the easiest thing for some people. If you could use a little help, Sony has a boost for you this weekend. The PlayStation company is running a flash sale on PSN, dropping prices on PS4 games of all kinds in both the US and UK. Let's look at some of the highlights you can get between now and December 3.
On the US PlayStation Store, you can save a bunch of cash on the Assassin's Creed series. The Ezio Collection, which bundles together Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood, and Revelations, is on sale for $15. The London-set installment, Syndicate, is on sale for $15 as well, and the side-scrolling Assassin's Creed Chronicles Trilogy is down to $7.50.
One of the best deals in the sale is Gravity Rush 2 for just $6. Strategy game fans can grab XCOM 2 for $15. Anyone with an interest in twisted visual novels can pick up the Zero Escape games for cheap: the first two are bundled together in Zero Escape: The Nonary Games ($15), while the third, Zero Time Dilemma, is on sale for $12.
PSVR owners are well served this weekend too, with the boxing game Creed: Rise to Glory down to $9 and the realistic flying sim Ultrawings on sale for $7.50.
For us, revisiting Kanto has been a joyful trip down memory lane and we thought we’d pull out our favourite Pokémon-related artist designs on TeePublic, which is currently offering 25% off using the code HOLIDAYCOOL at the checkout until Dec 2nd.
Please note that some of the links on this page are affiliate links. If you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale which helps support the site. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.
There you have it, those are our favourite designs at the moment, let us know in the comments below if you have any other favourites.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-02-2018, 06:13 AM - Forum: Windows
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New batch of Xbox Game Pass titles are on their way
Hello, Xbox Game Pass members!
Now that we’ve had our annual dose of turkey and family, normal service resumes here at Xbox Game Pass. And on that note, we’re excited to share three important public service announcements:
If the 16 games we announced at X018 were not enough, we are adding three more to the Xbox Game Pass catalog over the coming week, starting with The Gardens Between on November 29, Mutant Year Zero on December 4, and Strange Brigade on December 6. We require you to play these, as well as the over 100 other great games included in your membership – no negotiation.
If you have a mobile telephone, you need to download the Xbox Game Pass app for iOS and Android. Through this app you can remotely install Xbox Game Pass games to your Xbox One so they’re ready to play when you come home from school or work. We’ll also send you notifications to let you know when games are added, so say goodbye to FOMO (and your job/free time).
Follow our Xbox Game Pass Instagram and Twitter You don’t want to miss out on life-changing memes and gaming banter.
What’s that sound? It’s like a voice on the wind saying “We want more…” We hear it. Keep it tuned here to Xbox Wire, the Xbox Game Pass Twitter and Instagram channels (see above) and the Xbox Game Pass app (again, see above) where we’ll be dropping even more games throughout the month of December.
Without further ado, let’s dive into some details on the new games coming soon to Xbox Game Pass:
The Gardens Between (November 29)
Follow two best friends Arina and Frendt who fall into a surreal world full of dreamlike garden islands. Together they’ll embark on a nostalgic journey through a world built around objects from their childhood, lighting constellations and illuminating threads from a time when friendship was the most important thing in the world. Manipulate time to solve puzzles and traverse each precious memory to reach the summit of each island in this single-player puzzle adventure.
Mutant Year Zero (December 4)
A tactical adventure game with turn-based combat and real-time exploration of a post-apocalyptic world, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden puts you in command of a unique squad of mutant soldiers as you scavenge through the remains of civilization to survive. From the creators of Hitman and PayDay, experience a mix of story, exploration, stealth, and strategy in the brutal environment of a decimated planet Earth as your band of heroes embark on a quest to discover the legend of Eden.
Strange Brigade (December 6)
Join an elite agency of extraordinary adventurers and investigate the darkest corners of Egypt, where mythological menaces manifest! Strange Brigade offers a rip-roaring, 1930s-style campaign full of peril, intrigue, and good old derring-do for one to four players as you tackle an army of mummified monsters! Solve mind-bending puzzles, defy dastardly traps, unearth incredible treasure in a mysterious, ancient landscape and use the most marvelous firearms known to man in thrilling third-person combat to defeat the witch queen Seteki and send her petrifying minions back to the afterlife.
Join Xbox Game Pass Today
With over 100 great games for one low monthly price, including highly-anticipated new Xbox One exclusives the day they’re released, including the highest-rated* Xbox exclusive of this generation Forza Horizon 4, plus more games added all the time, Xbox Game Pass gives you the ultimate freedom to play. If you haven’t tried Xbox Game Pass, join today and get your first month for $1, and discover your next favorite game.
For the latest Xbox Game Pass news, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and stay tuned to Xbox Wire. Until next month, game on!
Red Dead 2 Online PS4-Exclusive Gun, Horse, And Outfit: How To Access Them
Red Dead Redemption 2's online component, Red Dead Online, is now live to all players after a staggered rollout. If you're playing the game on PS4, you're entitled to some exclusive items that are not yet available on Xbox One. Here's how to claim them.
Before being able to get any of the items, you'll first need to play through the opening tutorial section of Red Dead Online, which takes around 45 minutes or so. Once you've officially entered free roam, you're given access to things like the catalog, and it's at this point you can claim your freebies, as outlined on the PlayStation Blog.
The easiest of the bunch to grab is the Grizzlies Outlaw outfit. Simply open your satchel by holding left on the D-pad, go to the Outfits section, and you can add it to your collection. Once you own it, you can change into it (or any other clothing you own) by heading to your camp and accessing the wardrobe.
The other freebies require you to go to a particular location. For the High Roller Double-Action Revolver, you'll have to head to a Fence (which you can spot on the map), where it can be claimed.
And finally, you'll head to a stable to grab both the Red Chestnut Arabian horse and the Alligator Skin Ranch Cutter saddle. You start out in Red Dead Online with only a single slot for a horse, so if you want to grab the new horse immediately, you'll need to ditch your starter steed to claim this one. This horse has better stats than the starter one, while the saddle provides bonuses to the health and stamina Cores of the horse you equip it on.
All of this is separate from the exclusive goodies available in Red Dead Redemption 2's single-player mode. While we've become accustomed to timed exclusives like these lasting for long stretches--some Destiny content has been PS4-only for 1-2 years--the exclusivity period here lasts only 30 days. If you pre-ordered the game or bought a special edition, you may have other bonus content to claim in Online.
Although Red Dead Online is now available to all owners of Red Dead 2, it is still in beta form. Rockstar promises many updates to come, and one thing we know is coming is the ability to buy in-game gold with real-world money.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-01-2018, 06:10 PM - Forum: Windows
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Feeding the world with AI-driven agriculture innovation
In the 1950s and 1960s, plant biologist Norman Borlaug famously led the “Green Revolution,” developing high-yield grains that helped drive up global food production when paired with innovations in chemical fertilizers, irrigation, and mechanized cultivation. By so doing, Borlaug and his peers helped save a billion people from starvation. However, this new form of farming was not sustainable and created multiple environmental issues.
The good news is that we’re now in the midst of a second Green Revolution that’s part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Here’s how technology innovation, driven by big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, will reap a more bountiful harvest.
A vision for AI in agriculture
Farmers are deploying robots, ground-based wireless sensors, and drones to assess growing conditions. They then capitalize on cloud services and edge computing to process the data. By 2050, the typical farm is expected to generate an average of 4.1 million data points every day.
AI and machine learning interpret findings for farmers, helping them continually tweak crop inputs to boost yields. Farmers can use AI to determine the optimal date to sow crops, precisely allocate resources such as water and fertilizer, identify crop diseases for swifter treatment, and detect and destroy weeds. Machine learning makes these activities smarter over time. It can also help farmers forecast the year ahead by using historic production data, long-term weather forecasts, genetically modified seed information, and commodity pricing predictions, among other inputs, to recommend how much seed to sow.
Such precision farming technology augments and extends farmers’ deep knowledge about their land, making production more sustainable. Advanced technology can increase farm productivity by 45 percent while reducing water intake by 35 percent. However, the key is ensuring equitable access: Often the communities that need AI the most lack the physical and technology infrastructure required to support it.
Connecting communities with broadband
Access to high-speed connectivity and reliable power are still challenges in many parts of the world. That’s one reason Microsoft and its partners are bringing affordable broadband to rural communities in countries such as Colombia, India, Kenya, South Africa, and the United States through the Airband Initiative.
When communities are connected, farmers can benefit from AI and machine learning, even if they lack internet access to their individual farms. Microsoft employee Prashant Gupta and his team used advanced analytics and machine learning to create a Personalized Village Advisory Dashboard for 4,000 farmers in 106 villages and a Sowing App for 175 farmers in a district in the southeastern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh in India. Farmers with simple SMS-enabled phones can access Sowing App recommendations, which apply AI to data such as weather and soil conditions to optimize planting times. Farmers who followed the AI-driven advice increased yields by 30 percent over those who adhered to traditional planting schedules.
Using IoT and AI on individual farms
Farmers with connectivity can use IoT to get customized recommendations. The Microsoft FarmBeats program, driven by principal researcher Ranveer Chandra, has developed an end-to-end IoT platform that uses low-cost sensors, drones, and vision/machine learning algorithms to increase the productivity and profitability of farms. FarmBeats is part of Microsoft AI for Earth, a program that provides cloud and AI tools to teams seeking to develop sustainable solutions to global environmental issues.
In the United States, FarmBeats solves the problem of internet connectivity by accessing unused TV white spaces to set up high-bandwidth links between a farmer’s home internet connections and an IoT base station on the farm. Sensors, cameras, and drones connect to this base station, which is both solar- and battery-powered. To avoid unexpected shutdowns due to battery drain, the base station uses weather forecasts to plan its power usage. Similarly, drones leverage an IoT-driven algorithm based on wind patterns to help accelerate and decelerate mid-flight, reducing battery draw.
IoT data processing—for bandwidth-hogging information like drone videos, photos, and sensor feedback—is done by a PC at the farmer’s home. The PC performs local computations and consolidates findings into lower-memory summaries, which can be distributed over bandwidth more easily, while also serving as a backup during network outages.
AI for everyone means more food for the world
Over time, AI will help farmers evolve into agricultural technologists, using data to optimize yields down to individual rows of plants. Farmers without connectivity can get AI benefits right now, with tools as simple as an SMS-enabled phone and the Sowing App. Meanwhile, farmers with Wi-Fi access can use FarmBeats to get a continually AI-customized plan for their lands. With such IoT- and AI-driven solutions, farmers can meet the world’s needs for increased food sustainably—growing production and revenues without depleting precious natural resources.
Be the first to know about new advancements in the Microsoft AI farming initiative. Follow us at FarmBeats.
To stay up to date on the latest news about Microsoft’s work in the cloud, bookmark this blog and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-01-2018, 06:10 PM - Forum: Windows
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Fishy business: Putting AI to work in Australia’s Darwin Harbour
Identifying and counting fish species in murky water filled with deadly predators is a difficult job. But fisheries scientists in the Northern Territory are working on an artificial intelligence project with Microsoft that has incredible potential for marine science around the world.
Your mission should you choose to accept it, is to go into one of Australia’s largest harbours and count the fish. Think this sounds daunting? You don’t know the half of it.
First, there’s the water. There’s a lot of it in Darwin Harbour – five times more than Sydney Harbour, to be precise. Heavy tides swell more than seven metres then retract, leaving little visibility in their wake.
And if you think you’ve got some occupational hazards at work, try getting your job done in an environment teeming with some of the world’s most intimidating apex predators – saltwater crocodiles, along with tiger, bull and hammerhead sharks. More than 300 salties are caught in the harbour each year.
This is the daunting task of the Department of Primary Industry and Resources for the Northern Territory Government, as it goes about ensuring fisheries resources are sustainably managed and developed for future generations.
Murky water filled with deadly predators like the saltwater crocodile make diving to count and identify fish species impossible.
“If you’re in the water with a crocodile you aren’t taking a calculated risk. You’re going to be a statistic. That’s it. If you’re in the water and he’s there, he wants you and you’re gone.” – Wayne Baldwin, Research Technical Officer, NT Fisheries
If shooting fish in a barrel is a metaphor for something all-too-easy, the correct metaphor for something exceptionally challenging might be counting fish in Darwin Harbour. Yet the NT Fisheries team, led by Dr Shane Penny, Fisheries Research Scientist, do it every day. As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, so their work begins with knowing how many fish there are.
But they were bogged down by the time it took to wade through hours of underwater footage. The team needed to assess the abundance of critical fish species faster and more accurately, while maintaining a safe distance from deadly predators.
A meeting of the minds
It was from these murky depths that an innovative project showed the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to support the important work being done by this team of marine biologists. Amid rising debate about the potential impact of AI on society, a collaboration between these scientists and Microsoft engineers became an opportunity to test out its powers as a force for good. Could technology hold the key to safely, accurately and rapidly counting fish – giving the NT Fisheries team more time to devote to analysing this data and improving the sustainable management of NT fish stocks?
The NT Fisheries team had high hopes. They had been using a baited remote underwater video (BRUV) to help with high-risk data gathering. The camera allows the team to see what’s in the water without going in. But even with BRUV on their side, the task was formidable.
Shane Penny, Fisheries Research Scientist and his team using baited underwater cameras.
“We’ve had quite a few problems with sharks coming in and taking the baits away. Tawny sharks have learned how to open our baits and suck it all out before we have a chance to collect any video.” – Wayne Baldwin, Research Technical Officer, NT Fisheries
Then there was the sheer quantity of work involved. Once the video is collected, terabytes of footage must be viewed, and its content scoured and quantified. To put this in perspective, a single terabyte would store 500-hours of your favourite movies. The team was identifying vast quantities of different fish species and tracking their behaviour. This diversity and the murkiness of the water meant classification was often far from simple.
Steve van Bodegraven, a Microsoft machine learning engineer and Darwin local, worked with the NT Fisheries team over several months to see whether computer vision would be up to the ambitious task of identifying fish in underwater images.
In a similar way to how tags are suggested for friends and relatives in the photos you upload to social media – through repeated exposure and the discovery of patterns – the project’s success depended on feeding the system with training images. Along the way they had to confront an array of unusual problems. For example, how would Microsoft’s AI solution respond to fish like gold-spotted cod that can change colour to blend into their environment?
“We went in and talked to them about how they work and the challenges they face,” van Bodegraven says. “From that we tried to figure out how we could help. Everything we do is explorative, so we don’t necessarily have solutions out of the box.”
Three months and thousands of images later, results are encouraging to the scientists. To date the system is showing great potential, having learnt to identify 15 different species, from black jewfish to golden snapper which are under careful management to rebuild breeding stocks.
The AI solution automates the laborious process of counting local fish stocks by progressively learning to identify different varieties of fish.
“We threw a few test images of fish it’s never seen before and it’s managed to pull those out and differentiate them from the fish it does know about. Once we had that first positive identification of a fish, we really felt we were onto something. From there it was just a matter of finding the right tools to improve and optimise.” – Dr Shane Penny, Fisheries Research Scientist
With each new fish analysed, the power of the machine learning technology increases. Samantha Nowland, the team’s Darwin-born research assistant, sees the potential for such systems to change the game in marine management. NT has some of the most pristine waters in the world with healthy populations of endangered species such as sawfish and sharks. The development of this technology and its availability may help other areas of the world to improve their understanding of aquatic resources and ensure they are managed sustainably.
Beyond the harbour
While there’s already talk of using the system to create a global database of fish species, the NT Fisheries team is focused on analysing trends, coming up with management plans and expanding its reach.
“It’s going to help us monitor any marine species in Darwin Harbour and around the region,” Penny says. “We have a lot of endangered species and many more where we don’t have enough data. We need research projects that can identify species accurately.”
Microsoft’s van Bodegraven hopes it will open people’s eyes to the transformative potential of AI in fisheries and marine management and beyond. The project has already piqued the interest of fisheries departments across Australia, while the possibility of using the technology to monitor other animal species, like the iconic Kookaburra, is being actively explored.
Microsoft is also exploring how it could support similar projects elsewhere. By making the technology available via open source platform GitHub, the technology giant is encouraging others to build AI solutions that address their unique scenarios.
“Projects like this set a new precedent. Hopefully it will make people curious and give them the confidence to explore the application of AI in their industries,” van Bodegraven says. “It’s going to change industries and societies. The potential is only limited by imagination.”
The Weekender: Back to Regular Programming Edition
Now that the chaos of Black Friday is over, we can return to our usual programming in the run-up to Christmas. It’s been a quieter week – we reviewed Royal Adviser and Farabel, but then nothing else aside from some news. On the horizon we’ve got reviews coming in for a few new projects, including C & C Rivals, but we’ll mainly be looking towards Christmas now for the big push.
Out Now
The Elder Scrolls: Bla-
Oh never mind. As you may have heard by now, Bethesda has officially pushed back the launch of The Elder Scrolls: Blades, until Match 31st, 2019 (at least). There hasn’t really been anything official from Bethesda on this, we’ve just got the iOS pre-order entry to go by.
We’re expecting preview code sometime soon, so if they do follow through with that at least we might be able to report back some early impressions before the year is up, but don’t get your hopes up.
This one was actually out last week but we didn’t do a Weekender update because of Black Friday. Still, it exists, and Richard’s reviewing it as we speak to expect the formal PT verdict to land sometime soon.
Vengeance is the next entry in Ironhide’s Kingdom Rush Tower-Defence/RTS games, featuring new towers, upgrades heroes and countless other bits as the devs continue to try and innovate their brand of strategy. It’s also fully playable offline, which is nice.
Another card game port, Morels won a bunch of card game awards in 2012 and 2014 when it was originally release and depending what version you’ve seen you might also know it as ‘Fungi’. It’s finally made the jump to digital platforms.
This is a two-player game where you must forage mushrooms and acquire other ingredients and accessories to cook meals for yourself. The more and better quality meals you cook, the more victory points you gets. I’ve played the physical version – it’s a very easy, casual game for two people (although it needed a fair amount of room), but it wasn’t quite exciting enough for prolonged exposure. It’s not one you’d have busted out a lot.
The app seems to be ticking all the boxes though – a colourful design, a tutorial and in-app rulebook, new ways to play the game, and more importantly, plenty of different options. Solo player vs. an AI (with 3 difficulty levels), local pass & play and then online asynchronous or real-time versus another player.
Finishing off this segment with another quirky logic puzzle, Marching Order sees you as a rather stressed out band manager trying to get their troupe in order. It may not sound like a challenge, but every animal you’re trying to sort has a specific set of preferences to keep them happy.
The trick of the game is to put the animals in the correct/optimum order, so that all animals are as happy as possible and the music is good when you eventually go on your march. The presentation and theme makes me think this one might be a good one for kids, but we haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. If anyone does, do let us know what you think!
Sales & Updates
I would have thought you’d all be sale’d-out from last week, so I’ve not looked this week to see if anything’s going cheap – most of the good ones were part of Black Friday and Cyber Monday anyway.
On the update front there’s been no recent things that we can see worthy highlight, but we will use this as an excuse to drop in another bit of news that we know is relevant to your readers.
You’ll remember 2012’s Plague Inc.? Well developer Ndemic Creations are finally releasing a brand new game – Rebel Inc. It’s a bit of a departure – you’re not the insurgency itself, but you’re having the balance military and civilian priorities within your region to win the hearts of the people and stamp out the rebels.
The official feature list is:
Stabilise five different, richly modelled regions
Innovative representation of counter insurgency tactics
Use realistic initiatives to empower the local government
Highly detailed, hyper-realistic world based on extensive research
Intelligent strategic and tactical AI
Sophisticated narrative algorithms shaped by your decisions
Five unique governors with radically different abilities
Comprehensive in-game help and tutorial system
Full Save/Load functionality
Internet connectivity not required
It’s worth nothing that this appears to be trying to treat the subject matter seriously, even though it’s a fictional game. It’s already available for pre-order via iTunes if you’re interested, and it will be releasing on December 6th.
That’s all for this week’s update, enjoy your weekends!
