In partnership with animators at the London Film Museum, Z/Yen has begun a six month Technology Strategy Board (TSB) research programme called “Avatars In Rich Data Worlds”. The research aims to graft animated characters onto PropheZy trading programmes so that the avatars’ expressions convey an algorithm’s evaluation of complex data environments. For example, an Avatar tipster might frown and point, indicating that something is probably the best choice, but a bit confusing. Or point angrily when you ignore something it’s sure is good for you. Naturally, we hope to let people create their own avatars to do their trading.

Michael originally had an idea for automated PropheZy bots to make our ExtZy game experience more interesting. Ben Morris and Nick Danev worked up some ideas and backtested PropheZy’s predictive performance. All of Z/Yen participated in developing characters for the automated players – what’s their favourite film? Avatar. How do they get to work? Spaceship. What’s their favourite colour? [enough - Ed.] Some clients in financial services, gaming and gambling wondered aloud if they too could use automated tipsters to make their own websites simpler and livelier to use. Then Stephen Haggard noticed that “Avatars In Rich Data Worlds” was eligible for partial funding under the TSB’s Creative Industries stream, pulled together a formal project, found an exciting partner in the London Film Museum, and roped in our new recruit, Damee Adesokan, to help him.