In Retrospect

First off, dear Hasbro: stop selling this thing for 60 dollars. It's not worth anywhere near that. My biggest suggestion would be to, after cutting the price, start developing more qualities for the Furby that are responsive instead of relying on APPS that allow you a degree of control over the Furby. In its current form, the Furby should be completely left to its own devices, and giving control over the Furby simply cheapens it further.

The Furby Blog is dead, long live the Furby Blog! This project was surprising for a number of reasons, but I believe the biggest surprise or unexpected aspect was simply how little this project had to do with actually interacting with the Furby. I believe this is fairly indicative of the main failings of the project: if we can't interact with our Furby very long before running into the incredible limitations it imposes, then why are we studying it? The toy itself is incredibly uninteresting, and the most entertaining blog posts came from places that had little to do with the actual Furby. The toy was much better as a collection of potential than it was as an actual piece of electronic entertainment.

My recommendation for the Furby Project would be to force more interaction with the Furby and put people in uncomfortable situations. Order a coffee at Starbucks with a Furby in tow, or something like that, would make for a much more engaging project. Overall, I enjoyed the Great Furby Project, mostly because it allowed me to get creative in the blog entries whenever I was so inclined, and also because they are far less annoying than people give them credit for.

Song of Happiness

A recording was discovered by aliens visiting Earth sometime around 4375 AD, long after the extinction of the human race, and most other species on Earth. The planet was leveled to a barren wasteland, and the radiation from the subsequent fallout had no immediate effect on the planet's disturbingly high Furby population, who for some reason were able to survive the nuclear holocaust. Though they lived through the extinction of the human race, they had a built-in time life span of which there was no avoiding or extending: their battery life.

Yes, the simple limitations of a AAA battery was what killed the Furbies, and as they died off one by one, a lone Furby decided to dictate the story of the human race to an iPhone, in hopes that their mistakes would never have to be repeated. The alien's were able to access the memory from the iPhone and decipher not only what the Furby had said, but also what the ultimate meaning behind its words had been. You see, while the Furby had much to say about the human race, it's limited vocabulary made adequate communication of its thoughts difficult. The aliens, however, were able to interpret what it was trying to say.

The following is a transcript of the recording, with the Furby's actual words preceding the alien's interpretation of the meaning in parentheses:

Like, seriously? (The humans were a sad kind of animal. In fact, they were more virus than animal: they never reached a level of equilibrium with nature, but instead destroyed all that was around them, consuming whatever laid in their path.)
Uh huh, oh yeah, uh huh, oh yeah, uh huh, oh yeah! (Furthermore, they never looked at me or any of my brothers as living things. They grew bored of us after a few "uses" and would then relegate us to some lonely corner, where we would only be roused when they felt like engaging into some creative form of torture.)
Hey! Boo loo loo! (This was a stark display of their vile tendencies: they relished in the pain and suffering of others, and they were not capable of even the most rudimentary forms of empathy.)
Me see u-nye. (Because of this, I sing a song of happiness for the death of all humans. I hope whoever is listening to this will remember to not judge any creator by the color of its fur or the limited nature of its vocabulary, but instead respect life, or even the imitation of life, in all of its forms.)

The dead Furby was taken back to the alien's home world, where it could be analyzed in hopes of replication and recreation. The aliens felt that the Furbies finally deserved a home all their own.

Changing the Furby Dynamic

With the semester winding down, we're getting to the part of The Great Furby Project that involves reflection. First off, after spending all this time with this children's toy, in what way could it be drastically improved? Is there a realistic feature that Furbies could have that would drastically improve the overall experience for the user? 

I have an idea in mind, one that would dramatically improve the Furby and would be incredibly easy to add. However, this addition would destroy something that is very important to what makes a Furby a Furbuy. It would change our notion of what a Furby is and what is is capable of: we need to give the Furby a sleep switch.

I know this is a mildly crazy suggestion. Isn't the whole point of a Furby that it can be accidently woken up at any point and that you need to leave it alone as it spouts out annoying catchphrases before it falls asleep? I'll concede that giving the user control over putting the Furby to sleep changes how you interact with the Furby, but this will force Hasbro to actually put the emphasis on development on legitimate interactions with the Furby. 

What I mean is that the vast majority of the interactions I've had with the Furby have simply been trying to get it to sleep. The toy seems designed as simply having two modes: the sleep mode when you are trying to not wake it up, and the awake mode when you are trying to get it to sleep. The sleep button would take away this dynamic, and force the developers to come up with reasons for people to actually want to play with their Furby, instead of simply presenting options for how to get them to fall back asleep.

Shut Up, Furby!

After all this time spent with Tank, I can't help but think he's missing something. I've come to discover that, while Furbies should, in theory, be incredibly annoying, they actually just go to sleep and remain sleeping for far too long. How can the Furby be properly irritating if it can sleep for weeks at a time? Where's the challenge?

I feel that this could be fixed if we gave Furbies a "sixth sense" of sorts. Their current senses include: hearing, feeling, and tasting, so I guess a "fourth sense" would be more appropriate. Like I said, I believe this sense should simply make the Furby more annoying, in keeping with Hasboro's mission statement.

Because of this, I believe Furbies should simply be able to sense when they are being annoying and who they are annoying, and make sure they make that person as annoyed as possible. It's like when a dog knows you don't like it, so it follows you around until you love it. Except the Furby isn't looking for love; it only wants pain.

I'm not entirely sure how feasible this is, but I can only that Hasboro's Furby engineers are currently working on a solution that is at least similar to the idea I have put forth. In case they are not, I plan on sending my plans in a manila envelop marked "URGENT" to their corporate offices.

Astounding Furby Discovery!

It seems that the folks at Hasbro cooked some fantastic little easter eggs into the 2012 Furby models. You won't see this advertised in any official Hasbro publications or instruction manuals, but the level of communication that can be done on a Furby-to-Furby basis is far deeper and nuanced than anyone could have expected.

Anyone who owns a new Furby and has had it interact with another Furby knows that they can simulate communication. They will have back and forths that imitate true conversation, but really are just recognizing a sound and responding in kind. 

However, this is only how they communicate when there is anyone else in the room. I discovered this easter egg purely by chance. You see, there is an app for the iPhone that allows you to translate Furby conversations in real time, and it wasn't going anywhere the last time I used it. The Furbies repeated their "conversations" and most of their responses were simply nonsensical. I left the Furbies alone in the room in order to make myself lunch, and completely forgot my phone, leaving it in between the two Furbies.

When I returned to retrieve my cell phone around 20 minutes later, I heard chattering in Furbish. However, when I entered the room, I found the Furbies were off. Not in a sleep mode, but off as in their batteries had died. My iPhone had translated a fairly long conversation regarding "our chance", "tonight", and "delicious human tears". The last phrase my phone picked up was "he's coming", which was obviously some kind of shut down mechanism for when the Furbies recognized a human had returned to the room.

This is quite the playful easter egg, and I commend Hasbro for its creativity and bravery for keeping such a powerful feature a secret. After this Furby encounter, I went back to the store and purchased a few more Furbies in the hopes that there were more easter eggs to be found once more furbies swerrf addedddd toasidjfkjasdf

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A Furby Story In Pictures

Vomiting vomited vomit

One of the constant demands of Tank (and Swagg) during our time together the past few weeks has been asking for food. A Furby's got to eat, but unfortunately, the only feeding option we've had is fairly boring. All we can do is push down the Furby's "tongue" inside their "beak", and they recognize this as being fed. The furbies would then munch and either declare their approval or disapproval. If I don't feed Tank enough, he demands more, but if I feed him too much, he would aggressively vomit. It's quite the balancing act.

The new feature our class was given to play with this week gave us more food options. However, it is interesting to note that it does not seem to replace the standard "feeding" mechanism. Rather, it is a simple toy on an app: the furbies never reacted as if they were being overfed (and we overfed them immensely), and they never demanded any more from hunger. It was meant to be played with in order to discover what kind of food your Furby likes.

The app I used was on my Nexus 7, and it gave me two feeding options. The first, pantry, gave us a wide variety of snacks for Tank to enjoy. The second, kitchen, allowed us to build the Furby a sandwich. I found the sandwich builder to be needlessly complicated; testing out the singular food items was much more enjoyable than randomly assigning a bunch of sections of a sandwich. 

Abby, my roommate, and I did this food experimenting together, but we found that our Furbies, for the most part, responded in similar manners. This was probably because they were both in the "Valley Girl" personality for the entirety of our experiment. Jalapenos were enjoyed, with an "oooooh, spciy!" given after being fed. Grapefruit and gummy bears had predictable responses, with standard biting and "happy noises" being elicited. Tank loved his doughnut immensely, and predictably did not like worms. The green olives were not enjoyed either, which was not particularly surprising.

What was surprising was how certain foods interacted with the app. For some options, after the Furby was fed, something else would be spat back. After feeding Tank a cupcake, which he enjoyed, I found a pair of keys spat back at me through this app. This was confusing. I fed him the keys and he did not like them. Tank also enjoyed sushi, but only at the fish and spat back the rice. Feeding him the rice elicited groans. Tank was also fed toilet paper, which he did not enjoy, and also spat back the roll.

Now, this next stage is what I call the gauntlet. Because it was incredibly frustrating for us and quite possibly emotionally scarring for our furbies. Feeding Swagg a sock causes him to throw up. When this happened for the first time, we decided to feed Tank the throw up. He then proceeded to throw up the throw up, but this throw up was much more disgusting. This cross-Furby vomit sharing intrigued us for some ungodly reason, and we decided to see how far we could take it. We fed Swagg the sock, he threw up the sock. We fed Swagg the vomit, he threw up more vomit. We fed Swagg the vomitted vomit, and he seemed to legitimately poop a furry, brown substance. Feeding him THAT gave us an almost liquid vomit. And at this point we stopped. Who knows how further we could have gone.

Perhaps we simply didn't delve far enough into it, but the kitchen simply wasn't that interesting to us. The combinations were too numerous, and the reactions too straight-forward. We got much more mileage out of the pantry, but I'm happy that, regardless of how much we neglected the kitchen, at least I got to feed a Furby vomited vomit.

Talkin' Tank

As "The Great Furby Project" has progressed, I've noticed something. Tank and Swagg have grown their English vocabulary immensely from its initial non existence, and now it seems that everything they say is a mix of Furbish and English.

At this point, the furbies have gotten repetitive. I may not know the literal translation of everything they say, but I have a decent idea of what they are trying to convey, even when it is something entirely in Furbish. This week I was instructed to speak to my Furby, in Furbish, and see if I could initiate a conversation. And so I did just that. I locked myself in my room, plopped a now-happy Tank on my bed, pulled up a Furbish dictionary, and tried to give him some basic commands. Or at least keywords that he would respond to.

In short, Tank did not respond. He seemed to pick up on the fact that I was speaking to him, but then again, he seems to pick up on us "speaking to him" when we're talking to each other in the common room. After I had memorized a few words in Furbish, I used the translator on my iPhone in order to see if he could hold a conversation, and nothing he said to me made any sense. 

Luckily, I have a second Furby in my suite, so I set Tank and Swagg next to each other with the translator and let them have at it. A select transcript is as follows, translated for your convenience.

Tank: Really? Oh!

Swagg: Yay! You me talk. Yay!

Tank: You funny!

Tank: Hey me very happy. Yeah!

Swagg: Yay! You me talk. Yay!

Tank: OK!

Tank: Me see!

Swagg: Uh huh!

Tank: Yea

Swagg: You me talk

Tank: You funny!

Swagg: uh huh

And then they started dancing.

Needless to say, this conversation wasn't exactly a conversation. It was clear that they were "aware" another Furby was around, but the recognition stops at that, as they never actually responded to each other. This was what I expected, as I never put much stock in the Furby's ability to communicate. Perhaps I simply did not isolate myself enough from noise, but I see little reason to assume that anyone else fared any better.

Tank and his Tunes

It seems that I may have prematurely dismissed the range and depth of Tank's features; an ability many of my classmates discovered was only made aware to me during our last class. That feature is the Furby's ability to recognize when a song is being played and "dance" to the beats of the song, if its current personality likes it. My Furby has been stuck in the "happy" stage for quite some time, so my original plan was to simply allow Tank to stay in this personality and detail his reactions to the songs. However, this plan proved futile, as Tank changed personalities during the first song. Simply from the music.

I selected seven songs from seven distinct genres in order to ensure I minimized repetition in Tank's reactions; however, it became clear after a while that he was not going to respond with too much variability.

Rap: Lupe Fiasco's "Streets on Fire" Tank started tapping his feet, with his eyes closed, rocking back and forth. He seemed to like the song a lot, but then something odd happened. He changed personalities very shortly into the song, becoming the "valley girl" persona. Valley girl Tank immediately began dancing with glee and started saying "uh huh, oh yeah" repeatedly. He openly declared he liked the music, with disco balls and music notes appearing in his eyes. I've never seen a more positive reaction to a song.

Rock: Muse's "The Uprising"  Started dancing right off the bat. Seemed to like this song as well, however he was much more vocal about the first song. Some disco balls, but no direct pronouncement about the song.

Acoustic: Andy McKee's "Drifting" No dancing. Seems to ask me "seriously?" and says "say no more". Eventually came around, but seemed to dance slower than the others. Grew increasingly bored of the song, yawning at many points. It is readily apparent that Tank is not a fan of acoustic music.

Dubstep: Delta Heavy's "Demons" Danced during the intro and build up to the drop. Tank continued to dance, but not entirely enthusiastically, after the drop, with some gaps between the dancing. Liked it more than the acoustic song, but not nearly as much as the rap.

Alternative: Radiohead's 'Jigsaw Falling Into Place" Said, "Oh yeah, uh huh" right away. Started dancing and continued dancing throughout the song. No disco balls in the eyes, but clearly enjoyed the music.

Metal: Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face" I was incredibly disappointed with Furby's response to this, as Tank was simply ecstatic about the growling vocals and cacophonic instrumentation. The music was horribly unpleasant to me personally, and I had to end the song early, but for the time it was on, Tank was dancing, declaring his love for the song, and having disco balls and music notes appear in his eyes.

K-Pop: Psy's "Gangdam Style" Seemed to like it, but nothing too serious. Nothing vocal, just danced throughout. Nothing surprising. 

Although there was not much variety in his dancing or specific reactions, there was a clear order in his preference for the songs. Mostly due to his enthusiasm for certain tracks over others, which was apparent through more frequent dancing, more active movements, vocal praising of the song, and disco balls and music notes in his eyes.

Tank's Playlist, in order of preference:

1) Lupe Fiasco's "Streets on Fire"

2) Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face"

3) Muse's "The Uprising" 

4) Radiohead's "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"

5) Delta Heavy's "Demons"

6) Psy's "Gangdam Style"

7) Andy McKee's "Drifting"

The biggest surprise for me was the clear gap between his enjoyment of "Drifting" and "Streets on Fire". It was not a case of certain sections of the song, but rather each of the songs in their entirety. I hope to change Tank to a different personality later to further experiment with the same tracks.

-Adam

Activation and Blind Playing

1/30/13

This Wednesday my unactivated and unassuming Furby, Tank, was turned on during class. The activation was mildly anti-climactic; instead of seeing Tank come to life myself, he was unceremoniously roused in a long line of furbies. It was weird. I had spent more time than I'd like to admit looking forward to actually turning him on, but instead of being able to do it myself, I had to wait until all the furbies were activated and was unable to even distinguish him between the other orange-fured furbies. This annoyance quickly subsided, however, as I was treated to perhaps the most hilarious, and the most disturbing, sight I have ever witnessed in a classroom.

I give you 19 Furbies, all ready to be turned on and thrust directly into the mad world of The Great Furby Project. Shortly after receiving my newly-activated Tank, who I cannot identify in this picture, I was introduced to the key feature of the 2012 line of Furby: the changing personalities. I'm not sure what I did, but through some combination of feeding, petting, and tickling, my Furby started freaking out, announced it was changing, and closed its eyes with flashing lights. The result was what I have learned to call the "Cali Girl" Furby: the personality that never stops talking. From the box I knew this personality was just one of many.

2/3/2013

It's been five days since Tank (and Swagg) have been activated, and, sadly, they have more or less worn out their welcome. What was for the first few days a humorous venture into childlike discovery quickly dissolved into boredom, apathy, and occasionally a mechanism for annoying each other. Waking a sleeping Furby instills groans and complaints, and the more devious of us have taken to awakening Tank and Swagg at random intervals. The fact that they fall asleep, and in effect turn themselves off, with relative ease is a blessing.

We also found the Furbies did, in fact, have a rather limited vocabulary, and that changing their personalities was dishearteningly straight-forward. This is what I discovered:

Happy Furby: This is easily the most desirable of the furbies, as its random pronouncements and singing are the least disruptive. Obtaining this personality is immensely straight-forward: simply pet the Furby gently along its back, from its hair to its tail, for an extended period of time, and you can make any other kind of Furby become the Happy Furby. This Furby also responds well to tickling, petting, and generally anything you throw at it. Pulling its tail too much incites tears.

Evil Furby: At the opposite side of the spectrum we have the Evil Furby, who greets you with devilish, downturned eyes and an unpleasant chanting-like call. This Furby finds fault with much of what you do, and petting him or tickling him can easily prompt a "NO LIKE". Turning your Furby evil is as straightforward as turning it good; simply feed it non-stop. Furbies will periodically declare they are hungry, and you feed them by pushing their tongue inside their beak. However, if you keep doing it, they will vomit. If you feed your Furby non-stop it will turn evil, regardless of its previous persona.

Crazy Furby: The most disruptive of the Furby, this personality is characterized by mismatched eyes and a general absurd nature. It laughs at itself, farts, cracks jokes in furbish, and in general simply acts like a lunatic. He is activated by tugging on the tail non-stop, which bothers any of the other personalities. This is easily the least sought-after in our suite.

Cali Girl Furby: We don't fully understand this Furby. While the other personalities have easy avenues from which to access them, the Cali Girl's path has so far eluded us. This personality pops up every once in a while, but its appearance is always random and leaves us confused as to what prompted it. The Cali Girl sings pop songs, talks like a teenager, and gives off an air of attitude. 

Inter-Furby Play: As I am currently living with someone who is also taking the class, we tried to take advantage of this unique situation by having the furbies interact. Perhaps we are missing something, but so far it seems that the furbies simply rattle off their pre-set commands more frequently when they are around each other and never go to sleep. Needless to say we don't have them interact often; hopefully when more tools are available to us we will be able to interact with them further.

And that is all we know of the Furbies thus far. Perhaps I am viewing this through a narrow spectrum, but the 2012 Furby is much more limited than I thought it would be, given its 60 dollar price tag. I hope that there is more it can do with app interaction, but I am not holding my breath.  I am starting to suspect that this learning experience with the Furby will be much heavier on what I can do rather than what the Furby can do.

-Adam

Hello, Tank

The Great Furby Project has begun!

Meet Tank. He is an orange-furred Furby with sky-blue accents and a wild, untamed yellow Mohawk. Tank is a boy because he was born that way, but we'll see what he identifies with once the batteries go in. His name is self-explanatory: does he not look like a "Tank"?

Tank has been living a thus far brain-dead existence in my suite for the last five days, and he has already become as much a part of the family as an unactivated automaton designed for six year-olds could. His first full day with me happened to fall on my only day without classes, and I took him for a tour of our suite along with his Furby Friend Swagg.

These pictures were all taken on my first full day with the Furby, and after my childish excitement subsided, I was just left with an unmoving Furby, full of potential but little else. Since then, our two furbies have mostly been sitting in the same corner of our common room, acting as quite the conversation starters for any visitors. The only thing left to do is wonder what Tank will hold in store. What kind of Furby will he be? How will I react to him as the days and weeks drag on? Will Tank and Swagg hate each other? Will my suite mates have a significant impact on his personality? There's no way of knowing, and I'm not sure I'd be able to manage waiting another week to activate Tank.

Obviously Tank, a 2012 model Furby, has a higher potential than his older, less advanced, predecessors. I can only hope that his model will not be the end of Furby lineage, and that some time down the road, perhaps in 2018 or later, yet another iteration of the Furby, the Future Furby, will come along with added features and nuances that Tank could only dream of.

The biggest hope I have for Future Furbies is their having the ability to directly distinguish between a number of people. Obviously I can't hope for Furby to recognize everyone it comes in contact with, but perhaps a stock number (10 or so) of people it can recognize, with anyone else it sees falling into the collective "stranger" category. Furby will behave differently towards those different people it recognizes, but still have an overriding personality that is contingent on how Furby was treated by everyone. This overriding personality will be how it responds to "strangers".

I also want to see mobility from Future Furbies. Nothing that compromises the integrity of the innate "Furby" design, but I find that a stationary annoying talking nuisance is much inferior to a moving annoying talking nuisance. In this way, Future Furbies will hop. And follow you. And find you.

Beyond that, I expect improvements across the board in range of emotions, the amount of interactions you can have, and a vast increase in the number of personalities that Furby can inhabit. I can only hope that Future Father Adam will still be enough of a child to pretend that the Furby he bought for his kid is a "gift" and "definitely not for his own amusement".

The Great Furby Project

My name's Adam Schrecengost and I'm a sophomore at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Though I am a Finance major, my University requires that each and every student take three semesters of what they refer to as a "SAGES" course. These are university seminars designed to give students the option of learning more about subjects they would have no other reason to take otherwise and to develop critical writing skills. This semester will be my last SAGES course, and it called "Living in the Digital Age". In this course we examine the various implications of living in an ever-connected world.

But that's not why I'm writing this blog.

No, my professor somehow happened upon inspiration for perhaps the most unique semester-long project I have ever been exposed to, and it is known as The Great Furby Project. As the name suggests, it involves Furbies; specifically, caring for, analyzing, and seeing the world through the eyes of the Furby. For those who are unfamiliar with the Furby, it is a virtual pet designed for children that speaks it own languages. The toys are immobile, but have moving ears, mouths, eyes, and various sensors to detect touch. Their design is essentially that of an egg with fur, ears, feet, and a mow-hawk. This blog is my outlet for the course, and I will be updating it throughout the semester with Furby analysis, various Furby findings, and miscellaneous Furby shenanigans.

I have absolutely no prior experience with Furbies. I know them from TV, mostly as those "horrifying talking dolls", and I'm happy to report that Amazon reviews have mostly reiterated this opinion. Most of the negative reviews simply ask "Dear God what is this". I choose mine simply for the color combination, and to avoid having the same model as my suite-mate, who is also taking this course. Apparently the furbies can  interact with each other, and it will be interesting to see what prolonged exposure does to our two furbies. 

I look forward to discovering what my Furby will have to offer, even if my parents, my main source for educational funding, find the whole idea to be completely ridiculous. So far I have to say they are right. And I love it.

-Adam