It has taken seven years to finish the story of Clementine, the girl forced to survive a zombie apocalypse with no hope of rescue – and we almost didn't get to see it end at all. In 2012, the excellent first season of The Walking Dead video game made its developer Telltale synonymous with player-driven storytelling, forcing gamers to make choices that influenced how things progressed. But just one episode into this final season, in 2018, Telltale closed its doors without warning, leaving all but 25 employees without work, benefits or access to healthcare. Skybound Entertainment, owned by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, stepped in to see the game through to completion, but due to the abrupt change in circumstances, most of the creatives who spent years working on it couldn't be there for the end. The video games industry is dependent on teamwork, but the profit imperative often leads to an unsustainable environment that rarely meets its workers with empathy.

Time to drive stakes in the ground about the year ahead. First, a brief look back to see if last year's predictions aged well. You can read them here. My predictions come with a lifetime guarantee: if you are not completely satisfied with them, I will return to you, in cash, the amount you paid to read them. It's hard to measure data science maturity, which makes this an excellent topic for predictions.

When we we first met Clementine in Telltale's The Walking Dead, she was a scared eight-year old hiding in her tree house from the zombie hordes. Over time, she learned how to shoot, scavenge and survive as the world crumbled around her. Mostly, that was due to her great mentor: Lee, the first season's ex-convict lead. Now in The Walking Dead's final season, Clementine is a teenager with a young charge of her own. It's her job to keep him alive -- but also, to make sure he grows up properly. Welcome to parenthood in the zombie apocalypse.

The 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Montreal, Canada, in conjunction with the 1995 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The competition was designed to demonstrate state-of-the-art autonomous mobile robots, highlighting such tasks as goal-directed navigation, feature detection, object recognition, identification, and physical manipulation as well as effective humanrobot communication. The competition consisted of two separate events: (1) Office Delivery and (2) Office Cleanup. The exhibition also consisted of two events: (1) demonstrations of robotics research that was not related to the contest and (2) robotics focused on aiding people who are mobility impaired. There was also a Robotics Forum for technical exchange of information between robotics researchers.

The 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Montreal, Canada, in conjunction with the 1995 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The competition was designed to demonstrate state-of-the-art autonomous mobile robots, highlighting such tasks as goal-directed navigation, feature detection, object recognition, identification, and physical manipulation as well as effective human-robot communication. The competition consisted of two separate events: (1) Office Delivery and (2) Office Cleanup. The exhibition also consisted of two events: (1) demonstrations of robotics research that was not related to the contest and (2) robotics focused on aiding people who are mobility impaired. There was also a Robotics Forum for technical exchange of information between robotics researchers. Thus, this year's events covered the gamut of robotics research, from discussions of control strategies to demonstrations of useful prototype application systems.