The Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock Skill
RAIN’s attention to voice experience earns Skill a mention on CNET.
CNET recently reviewed a handful of games available on the Amazon Echo. One of those games, Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock, was developed by RAIN’s Octavio Menocal as part of our internal push to get our developers and designers familiar with the platform.
As Octavio told me, his first thought was to develop a game, to make it fun. He noticed that Rock Paper Scissors was available out-of-the-box with the Echo, but as the CNET author noted, gameplay was “a bit sterile, and it doesn’t give you any information, like who won the round.”
Octavio decided to up the ante on Alexa and started developing an advanced version of the game.
“I enjoyed watching the Big Bang Theory episode when Sheldon Cooper explained to Raj the rules of [rock paper scissors lizard spock], so I thought it was going to be very funny to develop,” Octavio said.
Octavio worked with RAIN’s voice experience (VX) guru Greg Hedges to hone the skill’s VX. It improves on the built-in experience by making it a contest between Alexa and the user, providing a score at the end of a match. Alexa boasts when she wins: “I’m the best in this game. Come back to challenge me — I’ll be waiting for you.”
Spending extra time on improving the voice experience for this skill made the result noticeably better for at least one person. And since that person writes for CNET, the skill will now undoubtedly see a bigger audience.
Octavio says he thinks designing and developing for voice experiences is a growing sector. People are eager to interact with a variety of devices and he is excited that developers have more tools to create great interactive experiences. He likes to joke that we’ll each have our own Jarvis soon.
Octavio has been developing Android apps for more than three years and already has four Alexa Skills under his belt. He’s based out of RAIN’s Nicaragua office.
Christijan Draper is the Director of User Experience at RAIN. He holds a PhD in Instructional Psychology and Technology and has been designing user experiences professionally in a variety of media since 2001. He is the proud father of five children and is based at RAIN’s Utah office.
