New York Times Article about Mattel's Avatar

New York Times November 13, 2009

An article discussing the Mattel Avatar Action Figure campaign

By ROB WALKER
Published: November 13, 2009

The action figures for James Cameron’s “Avatar” started appearing in stores last month. The movie won’t be out until December, but the toys have their own multimedia selling point: an “augmented reality” feature. This phrase has become one of the pervasive buzz concepts of 2009, and as is often true in such cases, it seems to describe a variety of manifestations from the practical to the pointless to the pie in the sky.

Very broadly, augmented reality can be thought of as an inversion of the venerable “virtual reality” buzz concept. Instead of plunging us into a completely digital environment, augmented reality means placing digital things into the regular old world. Those things might be bits of information or renderings of imaginary objects. And they, of course, aren’t really in the real world at all — they just appear to be there if you filter your gaze through the proper screen.

O.K., let’s try an example. Suppose you buy the Mattel action figure depicting the “Avatar” character Jake Sully. (Actually there’s more than one, but say you buy the one wherein he’s a blue guy with stripes and a spear.) It’s four inches tall, costs around $11 and comes packaged with a plastic tray that directs you to a Web site. Follow the steps and hold the tray up to the Web cam on your computer. In real life, you’re waving a tray around. In the image of yourself that you see on-screen, however, the tray you are holding now seems to support a complicated control center with a screen that you can move about, scrutinize and admire. Depending on the toy, the digital object might be a fighting machine you can manipulate so that it appears to move around your desk, firing off rounds.

The underlying technology for adding digital information to a real-time image of reality isn’t incredibly new, and in fact, Total Immersion, the company that worked with Mattel on the “Avatar” toys, has been using it for about 10 years for kiosks at trade shows and the like. Basically, a camera “reads” information that’s on a physical object (like that plastic tray) and converts it into something digital that it lays over the real-world image the camera records. The current wave of excitement about augmented reality often involves peering at a smartphone screen, rather than a computer. For example, Yelp, the online service that reviews restaurants, bars and small businesses, has added a feature to one mobile app: point your (properly enabled) phone at a row of restaurants as if you were going to take a picture of it, and in addition to seeing what’s really there, you’ll see the Yelp ratings hovering in front of each.

Augmented-reality hype has also been fueled by traditional advertisers, who are also keen to exploit new technology. Greg Davis, Total Immersion’s general manager of U.S. operations, says this has become the fastest-growing part of his company’s business. Thus Burger King creates an online ad that requires you to hold up a dollar bill in front of your Web cam; you see information about the chain’s dollar-menu items popping over the real-time image of you, holding up a dollar bill. Total Immersion wasn’t involved in that one, but its clients have included McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Nike and other huge companies.

The “Avatar” project is a newer direction, tacking the technology on to an actual product to create what Davis calls a “digital accessory.” Total Immersion has also worked with Topps, the sports-card company, on cards that show a player leaping into action and that can be used in conjunction with an online game. But it’s the mobile-device variation that suggests a different way of looking at the world. Core77, the online design magazine, suggested one amusing possibility earlier this year: fold in facial-recognition technology and you could point your phone at Bob from accounting, whose visage is now “augmented” with the information that he has a gay son and drinks Hoegaarden. More recently, a Swedish company has publicized a prototype app that would in fact augment the image of Bob (or whomever) with information from his social-networking profiles — and they aren’t kidding.

If this sounds off-putting, it’s worth noting that most assessments of the augmented-reality trend include the speculation that the hype will fade. Davis doesn’t think so, of course, and argues that hypothetical scenarios making the rounds are “not as far off as you might think.” Breakthrough applications will give consumers the rationale to buy into augmented reality the way we bought into DVD players or texting. One assessment of augmented-reality possibilities suggested a future in which you might point a smartphone at the “Mona Lisa” and access a documentary about Leonardo da Vinci. And maybe someday it will seem normal to look at a Burger King location through a portable screen and see Yelp ratings, diners’ tweets and possibly a character from “Avatar” enjoying a $1 Whopper Jr. Perhaps this will seem advantageous. Why just look at a restaurant, a colleague or the “Mona Lisa,” when you can you can “augment” them all?