Creating adaptive and individual personalities in many characters without hand crafting behaviours

Believable characters significantly increase the immersion of users or players in interactive applications. A key component of believable characters is their personality, which has previously been implemented statically using the time consuming task of hand-crafting individuality for each character. Often personality has been modeled based on theories that assume behavior is the same regardless of situation and environment. This paper presents a simple affective and cognitive framework for interactive entertainment characters that allows adaptation of behavior based on the environment and emotions. Different personalities are reflected in behavior preferences which are generated based on individual experience. An initial version of the framework has been implemented in a simple scenario to explore which parameters have the greatest effect on agent diversity

Artificial Companions with Personality and Social Role

Subtitle: "Expectations from Users on the Design of Groups of Companions"International audienceRobots and virtual characters are becoming increasingly used in our everyday life. Yet, they are still far from being able to maintain long-term social relationships with users. It also remains unclear what future users will expect from these so-called "artificial companions" in terms of social roles and personality. These questions are of importance because users will be surrounded with multiple artificial companions. These issues of social roles and personality among a group of companions are sledom tackled in user studies. In this paper, we describe a study in which 94 participants reported that social roles and personalities they would expect from groups of companions. We explain how the resulsts give insights for the design of future groups of companions endowed with social intelligence

A conceptual affective design framework for the use of emotions in computer game design

The purpose of this strategy of inquiry is to understand how emotions influence gameplay and to review contemporary techniques to design for them in the aim of devising a model that brings current disparate parts of the game design process together. Emotions sit at the heart of a game player’s level of engagement. They are evoked across many of the components that facilitate gameplay including the interface, the player’s avatar, non-player characters and narrative. Understanding the role of emotion in creating truly immersive and believable environments is critical for game designers. After discussing a taxonomy of emotion, this paper will present a systematic literature review of designing for emotion in computer games. Following this, a conceptual framework for affective design is offered as a guide for the future of computer game design

Designing and Testing an Experimental Framework of Affective Intelligent Agents in Healthcare Training Simulations

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe purpose of this study is to investigate how emotionally enabled virtual agents (VAs) in healthcare provision training simulations allow for a more effective level of understanding on how an emotionally enhanced scenario can affect different aspects of learning. This is achieved by developing virtual agents that respond to the user’s emotions and personality. The developed system also provides visual and auditory representations of the virtual agents’ state of mind. To enable the fulfilment of this purpose an experimental framework for incorporating emotional enhancements (concentrating on negative emotions such as stress, fear, and anxiety) into virtual agents in virtual training applications for healthcare provision is designed and implemented. The framework for incorporating emotional enhancements is designed based on previous research, on psychological theories (with input by experienced psychologists) and from input of experts in the area of healthcare provision. For testing the framework and answering the research question of this thesis the researcher conducted nine case studies. The participants were nursing students in the area of healthcare provision, and more specifically in the area of mental health, specialising in caring for patients with dementia. The results of the study showed that the framework and its implementation succeeded in providing a realistic learning experience, stimulated a better set of responses from the user, improved their level of understanding on how an emotionally enhanced scenario can affect the learning experience and helped them become more empathetic towards the person they cared for