Technology

The Fourth of July has just passed when this IT pilot fish is called to a meeting about a piece of software that has persistent problems.

"I and a programmer were to go to a customer and solve the issues," fish says. "We were told, 'We'll be sure you get to come home for Christmas.'

"At the customer site, as the hardware member of the team, my job was mostly to get the programmer up and fed in the morning, ask questions and observe."

But progress is slow. The troubled system is live, which means fish and his co-worker have to keep it up and running as they hunt for the problem. Worse still, symptoms are intermittent.

Then one day as July is turning into August, the customer's IT head walks into the workspace and asks fish's co-worker, "Did you know they just eliminated your division"

Facebook is diving deeper into in-house game development with the launch of its own version of Snapchatmultiplayer augmented reality video chat games. Today, Facebook Messenger globally launches its first two AR video chat games that you can play with up to six people.

&Don&t Smile& is like a staring contest that detects if you grin, and then users AR to contort your itan exaggerated Jokersmirk while awarding your opponent the win. &Asteroids Attack& sees you move your face around the navigate a space ship, avoiding rocks and grabbing laser beam powerups. Soon, Facebook also plans to launch &Beach Bump& for passing an AR ball back and forth, and a &Kitten Craze& cat matching game. To play the games, you start a video chat, hit the Star button to open the filter menu, and then select one of the games. You can snap and share screenshots to your chat thread while you play.

The games feel less polished than the launch titles for SnapchatSnappables gaming platform that launched in April

Facebook tells me it built these games itself using the AR Studio tool it launched last year to let developers create their own AR face filters. When asked if game development would be available to everyone through AR studio, a spokesperson told me &Not today, but we&ve seen sucessful short-session AR games developed by the creator community and are always looking out for ways to bring the best AR content to the FB family of apps.&

For now, there will be no ads, sponsored branding, or in-app purchases in Messengervideo chat games. But those all offer opportunities for Facebook and potentially outside developers to earn money. Facebook could easily show an ad interstitial between game rounds, let brands build games to promote movie releases or product launches, or let you buy powerups to beat friends or cosmetically upgrade your in-game face.

The AR video chat games live separately from the Messenger Instant Games platform the company launched last year. These include arcade classics and new mobile titles that users can play by themselves and challenge friends over high-scores. Facebook now allows developers of Instant Games to monetize with in-app purchases and ads, foreshadowing what could come to AR video chat games.

Facebook has rarely developed its own games. It did build a few mini-games like an arcade pop-a-shot style basketball game and a soccer game to show off what the Messenger Instant Games platform could become. But typically itstuck to letting outside developers lead. Here, it may be trying to set examples of what developers should build before actually spawning a platform around video chat games.

Now with over 1.3 billion users, Facebook Messenger is seeking more ways to keep people engaged. Having already devoured many peopleone-on-one utility chats, itfun group chats, video calling, and gaming that could get people spending more time in the app.

Itbeen a long and trip-filled wait but mixed reality headgear maker Magic Leap will finally, finally be shipping its first piece of hardware this summer.

We were still waiting on the price-tag — but itjust been officially revealed: The developer-focused Magic Leap One ‘creator edition& headset will set you back at least $2,295. So a considerable chunk of change — albeit this bit of kitis not intended as a mass market consumer device but is an AR headset for developers to create content that could excite future consumers.

The augmented reality startup, which has raisedat least $2.3 billion, according toCrunchbase, attracting a string of high profile investors including Google, Alibaba, Andreessen Horowitz and others, is only offering its first piece of reality bending eyewear to &creators in cities across the contiguous U.S.&.

Potential buyers are asked to input their zip code via its website to check if it will agree to take their money but it adds that &the list is growing daily&.

We tried the TC SF office zip and — unsurprisingly — got an affirmative of delivery there. But any folks in, for example, Hawaii wanting to spend big to space out are out of luck for now…

Magic Leap specifies it will &hand deliver& the package to buyers — and &personally get you set up&.

So evidently it wants to try to make sure its first flush of expensive hardware doesn&t get sucked down the toilet of dashed developer expectations.

It describes the computing paradigm itseeking to shift, with the help of enthused developers and content creators, as &spatial computing& — but it really needs a whole crowd of technical and creative people to step with it if itgoing to successfully deliver that.