#39: Creativity in Games, Streaming Movie Rentals, Books and Movie Adaptations

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI Unfiltered with me Ian Bowie and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom, where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Michael Stormbom
Well, coming back to the creativity thing, so creativity while playing games is an interesting topic.

Ian Bowie
Right?

Michael Stormbom
Do you know of Minecraft for example?

Ian Bowie
I’ve heard of it. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Or actually there’s just getting game that I’m playing quite a bit called No Man’s Sky, which is quite… but the point is that in the game you can, in these games, you can build things. You can unleash your creativity in these virtual realms.

Ian Bowie
I mean, the only thing I know about Minecraft is the guy who developed it was a Swede. And what’s this one? You’re playing? No Man’s Sky. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Well, the gimmick of the thing is that you’re you’re just for like a space traveller. There’s basically this procedurally generated universe. So there are different planets you can go to and explore. And then there are various different types of animals and nature and the gimmick is that it has sort of been like programmatically created no one designed this per se but rather it’s automatically generated and there’s like quintillions of planets and…

Ian Bowie
So what what’s the creative part for you personally? Then what?

Michael Stormbom
Because then you can build your own like space bases and stuff. So that goes into the Minecraft thing where you can design your own base and have various components and things like that.

Ian Bowie
Okay. See when I was a kid and I wanted to be creative I got the Lego building blocks.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Well, like Legos except without the phsysical pieces of it.

Ian Bowie
Mecano was another one. Yeah. This is actually quite interesting, because I mean, I’ve got to, like I say, you know, late 50s, and these sort of things have never been part of my world. And I don’t feel that I’ve actually missed anything. At all, you know, to me, being creative is writing poetry writing a story. Maybe write a song, or draw a picture or take a photograph?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, yeah.

Ian Bowie
But the idea of playing a game until you literally mentioned it five minutes ago, just wouldn’t have entered my head.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Well I mean, as you say, it’s basically playing with Legos except, you know, in a virtual realm. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, quite therapeutic actually. Quite well. It’s therapeutic. It’s a nice way to sort of take your mind off other stuff and just build your space base.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, see I would take out my, my notebook that I have here. And then I would start sort of writing and doodling like I do. You see this? This is me being creative, and silly and just writing down funny little things. Pretty basic, simple stuff. But actually, it’s quite funny. Yeah, this was something I didn’t even date this one when I wrote it.

Ian Bowie
The Days of Robin Hood. What is the hope for all mankind. Consumer society materialist mind, credit and the never never hopes and dreams last forever shattered by the boom and bust fueled by greed and populist lust. The time has come we must decide for from our sins we cannot hide. We have the only ourselves to blame stand in line heads bowed in shame. But do not cry. Do not despair, for there is hope for those that care. We can rebuild we can make good just like the days of Robin Hood.

Ian Bowie
So that’s how I entertain myself. Yeah, little funny rhymes and poems. And stuff like that. Maybe I should look at your…what was it called again? No Man’s Sky.

Michael Stormbom
No Man’s Sky, the space game yes.

Ian Bowie
Is it popular?

Michael Stormbom
It’s very popular, isn’t it? Yeah. It also sort of like a long story because they’re, well they had a very ambitious vision for the game and when it was released, they were nowhere close to realizing that vision yet. So it was very, very limited compared to what has been promised. There was a huge backlash against it, but then they’ve spent like the last 6-7 years, then gradually adding more stuff.

Ian Bowie
Do you pay a monthly fee to play this game?

Michael Stormbom
No, it’s a one-off.

Ian Bowie
So one-off fee and that’s it? Yeah. Okay. And they keep developing it and…

Michael Stormbom
They keep on, because they want to realize the original vision.

Ian Bowie
Is it part of a larger gaming company where they have many games. Yes. It’s just one of them. Yeah. Okay.

Michael Stormbom
Well, I don’t know how large the company is. But yeah, they have other other stuff as well. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
So how old is this game?

Michael Stormbom
It was released in 2016. Been around a while.

Ian Bowie
They’re obviously making money from it. Otherwise they couldn’t afford to, I would think so. Yeah, it’s a massive industry, isn’t it?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. I mean, it’s a bigger industry than the movie industry and bigger than the music industry.

Ian Bowie
Gaming. Yeah. Wow.

Michael Stormbom
It’s huge. Yeah, and of course, it became a even larger during the pandemic, because…

Ian Bowie
People had nothing else to do. Yeah, yeah. Mind you, I think. Again, alright, of course, there are games and there are games, but I always seem to bring things back to education but I think you could gamify education.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, we’ve spoken about it in previous episodes. But yeah, I mean, imagine teaching architecture through… build the Tower of Pisa, and make sure it doesn’t fall.

Ian Bowie
There was something called Sim City back in the day. It wasn’t a remember. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. And that was about building a whole town. Or something.

Michael Stormbom
They are still around and there are plenty of those. Skylines is a popular one as well. On the same theme. City building.

Ian Bowie
Create your ideal world.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, you can create your Utopia.

Ian Bowie
Absolutely. Would it be possible to actually create an AI that would then make games? That would be funny, it goes back to that thing we were talking about, you know, where you would have an AI just writing books that were then launched onto Kindle.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, so we could do that. You could do the same with games. Hey, I just feed it and just feed in tons of already existing game code. Right.

Ian Bowie
And then it could write a new game.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. It’d be handy.

Ian Bowie
A new hit game, preferably. I mean, that there must be limits. Like you know, for example, when you’re programming a game. The basics are always the same, aren’t they? For any game? Pretty much.

Michael Stormbom
There are some fundamentals that are.. That’s why there these game engines that takes care of the fundamentals for you. Right? So you don’t have to write the whole thing entirely from scratch.

Ian Bowie
All right, okay. So you got a base that you can start with.

Ian Bowie
But actually the other day, we wanted to rent a film from Apple. Because we’ve got Apple TV, and it was a film called Battleship, which is a…

Michael Stormbom
That is some high quality cinema right there, yes.

Ian Bowie
It’s based on the World War Two Atlantic convoys. So there’s a little bit of history.

Michael Stormbom
Oh, you mean a different one, not the Battleship I was thinking of.

Ian Bowie
No, no, sorry. No, it’s not called Battleship. It’s called is it called Greyhound or something? Anyway, it’s about

Michael Stormbom
The movie Battleship is based on the board game.

Ian Bowie
It wasn’t that. No, I remember that. I’ve seen that film. Load of rubbish. Was it called Greyhound, it might have been called Greyhound, shows you how much attention I pay to these things. But anyway, it’s about during World War Two the North Atlantic convoys and they were trying to get right stuff across to the UK. Of course, yeah, I was quite happy to rent it and I never see the point in buying these things because not very many films in the world I’d ever watch twice. Couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t rent it couldn’t buy it. Because it’s an Apple original product. You had to sign up to Apple TV. Right? But I didn’t want to.

Michael Stormbom
But they very much wanted you to.

Ian Bowie
Sure they do. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
No speaking about seeing movies twice. I used to have a quite sizable DVD collection. Back in the day. This was before Blu-Ray, which was before the current streaming…

Ian Bowie
Blimey, that far back.

Michael Stormbom
So literally hundreds of them. Yeah, well then my girlfriend moved in and I ran out of space so I needed to get rid of them. But by that point already, you couldn’t even give the DVDs away. So we tried to sell them off. No one nothing. Not even for a Euro. Not even for a Euro. You literally couldn’t give them away.

Ian Bowie
I mean, streaming has taken over. Yeah, I mean, I know there are people that have gone back to for example vinyl records and…

Michael Stormbom
When it comes to music, I do like to have like a physical copy if it’s an artist that like I mean, for one thing, I mean they get basically no compensation for it, so not that they necessarily get a whole lot for just a physical copy. But it’s nice to have a physical copy as well, because of course, it has happened that if you listen to… that music goes away from Spotify. Like, for example, you can listen to Neil Young on Spotify for example, because he took his stuff off the air for example.

Ian Bowie
I don’t see that as a big loss personally.

Michael Stormbom
Just as an example.

Ian Bowie
Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
But imagine if an artist that you actually liked…

Ian Bowie
Yes, yeah, no, right. You lose like all of Elvis or Abba or the Beatles.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Par exemple. Yes.

Ian Bowie
So where is his music now?

Michael Stormbom
On alternative music service of your choice.

Ian Bowie
On Apple, for example,

Michael Stormbom
I imagine that it is. Yes.

Ian Bowie
We can do a quick check. Let’s have a look and see shall I see… Neil? There he pops up, Neil Young. Yeah, and yep. You can get Neil Young on Apple people if you really want to. Yeah, why not? Yeah, okay.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, or for the younger demographic. It used to be that for example, Taylor Swift, she did not have her music on Spotify, as an objection to how the compensation worked, or rather, the lack of compensation.

Ian Bowie
So Taylor Swift. She also seems to like Apple, people. There you go. So Neil Young and Taylor Swift both on Apple Music. Yeah. Excellent.

Michael Stormbom
We are also not sponsored by Apple.

Ian Bowie
I can highly recommend living inside the walled garden, as they call it. Yes.

Michael Stormbom
And in fact, we’re using the Spotify ecosystem to get this podcast out.

Ian Bowie
Oh s**t yeah… But we’re also on Apple music as well. Oops.

Michael Stormbom
Yes, I hunted down a book from a secondhand bookshop, because I had remembered that in my childhood I had read this book, but all I remembered, was this like to be central premise of the book. So the protagonist, he wakes up in a foreign country. He has no idea how he got there. He doesn’t speak the language. So he can’t make himself understood. He doesn’t even know where he is. So then this mystery unfolds. So that was all I could remember off the off of the book. I’ve been googling that sort of plot point for years to try to figure out what

Ian Bowie
Yeah, what the book was.

Michael Stormbom
What the book was, and to no avail. But then, then suddenly, it struck me that maybe the author was Hungarian, and then and then it came up. So the book in English is called Metropole, the book. So then then I found it.

Ian Bowie
Right. And you bought it.

Michael Stormbom
And I bought it.

Ian Bowie
In what language?

Michael Stormbom
In Swedish because I had read it in Swedish. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, that was sort of interesting because I’ve always taken pride in my Google search skills. I’ve been able to find…

Ian Bowie
Right and this one was eluding you.

Michael Stormbom
This was my white whale.

Ian Bowie
Yes. Yeah. It’s funny. Actually, I think that’s probably one disadvantage of being English, is that, you know, there’s so much literature available in English from English authors, that you don’t tend to spend a lot of time hunting down other books from even translated authors, you know, I don’t know about other people, but I always think there’s something missing from a book that has been translated. You know, whether it’s the feeling or there’s something always missing from it.

Michael Stormbom
I agree. It’s, I mean, if I happen to speak the source language even passively, then I prefer to read it in the original language.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, it’s the same with films. I think it’s only recently when you know, Scandinavian noir became such a huge thing, that I really started taking an interest in non-English series or films or whatever. Yeah. I’ve also notices actually the French makes some very good action films, and detective films and things like that.

Michael Stormbom
Well, they invented cinema after all.

Ian Bowie
Of course, because I know like, for example, in Finland, you know, you’re so used to having all kinds of literature and also film from all over the world. You know, German detective series, very popular. Swedish, of course, and many, many others. So in a way, you’ve got sort of a richer variety of source material.

Michael Stormbom
Oh, yeah. I mean, there’s only so much domestic material available. So indeed.

Ian Bowie
Much of which is due to budgetary restraints, indeed, questionable quality, sorry to say. Yeah. But yeah, no, no, I think it makes you lazy. When your native language is English. You kind of lose that curiosity, you know, oh, I don’t want to watch that French rubbish. Let’s find something English.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I guess you’re just not used to foreign languages in a way.

Ian Bowie
Or is there an English version of Seven Samurai?

Michael Stormbom
There’s that western. What’s the name of it ?

Ian Bowie
Western?

Michael Stormbom
There’s a western movie that’s basically you know, it says a remake of Seven Samurai.

Ian Bowie
Well there was The Magnificient Seven.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, might have been that one, I don’t know my Westerns.

Ian Bowie
And I think you maybe you miss out as well, you know, on on cultural understanding, cultural empathy.

Ian Bowie
It’s difficult because of course, I write, and in my opinion, what’s happened with the ability to allow everybody to become a writer is, yes, of course. You allow new voices to be heard. But you kind of devalue the whole area, because suddenly, there’s so much more dross out there as well. And it becomes very difficult to find the gems, because there is so much rubbish that you’ve got to sift through.

Michael Stormbom
Maybe AI could play a role there.

Ian Bowie
Literary detective.

Michael Stormbom
No I mean an AI quality assessor who goes look for and aha, this is a good piece of writing right here. So if you get a literary critic…

Ian Bowie
…who only likes James Bondesque, sort of, you know, plots, then that anything else is just gonna get thrown in the slush pile, isn’t it?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Yeah. So then we need AI literally agents with different tastes.

Ian Bowie
Well you do. And actually, what is quite interesting is if you read, for example, think it was Leslie Charteris, wasn’t it? Who wrote The Saint books? If you try and read The Saint books, they are just heavy going. Right. But if you watch The Saint television program, it’s great fun, right? There’s there are three examples that I’ve got of where the books are not as good as the television series that were a spin off from them. One is The Daint. Another one is Lovejoy. And another one is Morse. You know, the Insector Morse.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I read a couple of the Morse books. Well then there are some books that are just completely forgotten. Gone With the Wind, for example.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Because of the programs ,the movies. Yeah, yeah. But then you see, you go to children’s literature, and we talk about my absolute all time favorite children’s author. Roald Dahl. And a lot of his books have been turned into films, but I would still go for the book every single time. You know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach. You know. They’re just such good stories and such good books. But in my opinion, the film’s just don’t do them justice. You know, even though they had was it Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and all that kind of stuff. But no, well, I’m sorry.

Michael Stormbom
There’s the one from the 70s as well. You know, with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

Ian Bowie
Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Didn’t work for me. Well, first of all, I mean, Roald Dahl. Okay. He was sort of English via Norway and Wales. But, you know, two Americans, playing Willy Wonka. Come on, guys, you know, would have been better off with Ken Dodd, but ya know, they didn’t work. And actually, if you’ve ever read the Ian Fleming James Bond books, they’re very good. I mean, I liked the films as well, that I think there’s an example of where the book and the film work quite well together. Even though the stories of the latest James Bond films diverge quite considerably.

Michael Stormbom
Sure.

Ian Bowie
From from the original book, I mean, The Spy Who Loved Me, the book and the film, you know, I mean, the only thing they share in common is the title. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Well, then there are, of course, those pieces of work where the movie and the book are adaptations of each other. So 2001 comes to mind. A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick movie. The movie and the book were created at the same time in a way.

Ian Bowie
It’s not really my thing.

Michael Stormbom
They’re both classics in their respective…

Ian Bowie
T only sort of science fiction thing that I ever really had half an interest in was Star Wars. And that was the original film of what, 1976, yeah. Yeah. I grew up with Star Trek, in the sort of 70s and very early 80s. And the early Doctor Whos. So yeah, I think you would definitely need many AI critics. For all the different sort of styles and genres. So there’s something for everybody.

Ian Bowie
You’ve been listening to me, Ian Bowie, and my colleague, Michael Stormbom, on AI Unfiltered, and for more episodes, please go to aiunfiltered.com. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai