Affect and believability in game characters:a review of the use of affective computing in games

Virtual agents are important in many digital environments. Designing a character that highly engages users in terms of interaction is an intricate task constrained by many requirements. One aspect that has gained more attention recently is the effective dimension of the agent. Several studies have addressed the possibility of developing an affect-aware system for a better user experience. Particularly in games, including emotional and social features in NPCs adds depth to the characters, enriches interaction possibilities, and combined with the basic level of competence, creates a more appealing game. Design requirements for emotionally intelligent NPCs differ from general autonomous agents with the main goal being a stronger player-agent relationship as opposed to problem solving and goal assessment. Nevertheless, deploying an affective module into NPCs adds to the complexity of the architecture and constraints. In addition, using such composite NPC in games seems beyond current technology, despite some brave attempts. However, a MARPO-type modular architecture would seem a useful starting point for adding emotions

Educating moral sensitivity in business: An experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of a serious moral game

Serious games have emerged as a promising new form of education and training. Even though the benefits of serious games for education are undisputed, there is still a further need for research on the efficacy of such games. The main goal of our research is to examine the effectiveness of a serious moral game—uFin: The Challenge—that was designed to promote moral sensitivity in business, a precondition of ethical decision-making and behavior and a core moral competency of moral intelligence. A second goal is to examine the role of metacognitive prompting and prosocial nudging in influencing learning effectiveness. Participants (N = 345) took part in an experimental game-based intervention study and completed a pre- and post-test questionnaire assessing moral sensitivity. The analyses of both questionnaire and game data suggest that merely playing this game is effective in promoting moral sensitivity. Neither self-reflection nor exposure to prosocial nudges, however, were determined to be factors that improve learning effectiveness. In contrast, those interventions even decreased the learning outcome in some cases. Overall, findings demonstrate the potential for game-based learning in the moral domain. An important avenue for future research is to examine others ways of increasing the effectiveness of the game

Adventures in the Classroom Creating Role-Playing Games Based on Traditional Stories for the High School Curriculum

The goal of this thesis is to develop a template for turning traditional stories into role-playing games for the high school curriculum. By developing 3 sample games based on Greek mythology, Arthurian legends, and a widespread folktale type, I explored the process of creating games that fit the limits of secondary classrooms and can be used to address specific educational standards. The sample games were tested with groups of high school and college students, and the results of the testing sessions evaluated in a narrative case study format. Feedback from the testing sessions was incorporated in the template, the final product of the thesis project. By exploring tabletop role-playing as a form of emergent interactive storytelling, a connection has been created between traditional storytelling and popular culture with the hope of reaching out to new audiences and introducing a stronger interactive element into storytelling in secondary education

A Taxonomy for Virtual and Augmented Reality in Education

In this paper, a taxonomy for VR/AR in education is presented that can help differentiate and categorise education experiences and provide indication as to why some applications of fail whereas others succeed. Examples will be presented to illustrate the taxonomy, including its use in developing and planning two current VR projects in our laboratory. The first project is a VR application for the training of Chemical Engineering students (and potentially industrial operators) on the use of a physical pilot plant facility. The second project involves the use of VR cinematography for enacting ethics scenarios (and thus ethical awareness and development) pertinent to engineering work situations.Comment: European Society for Engineering Education Conference 201

Tekoälyn käyttö videopelien NPC-hahmoissa ja sen vaikutus pelaajan immersioon

Tiivistelmä. Tietokoneiden ja videopelien kehittyessä pelaajat vaativat jatkuvasti enemmän peleiltä ja pelikokemukselta. Vaikuttavien grafiikoiden lisäksi pelaajat vaativat peleiltä myös miellyttäviä kokemuksia ja tilanteita. Tietokoneen ohjaamat hahmot eli non-player-characterit (NPC) ovat suuressa roolissa miellyttävän pelikokemuksen ja immersion luonnissa. Tekoälyn kehitys onkin tuonut uusia ulottuvuuksia ja mahdollisuuksia NPC-hahmojen käyttäytymiseen. Tutkielman aiheena oli tekoälyn käyttö videopelien NPC-hahmoissa ja sen vaikutus pelaajan immersioon. Rajaus tehtiin NPC-hahmoihin, sillä aikaisemmat tutkimukset ovat useasti tutkineet aihetta esimerkiksi oppivien agenttien näkökulmasta. Tutkielma toteutettiin kirjallisuuskatsauksena. Tutkielmassa huomattiin, että tekoälyn käyttö NPC-hahmoissa on suurimmaksi osaksi keskittynyt NPC-hahmojen käytöksen uskottavuuteen. NPC-hahmoista on pyritty tekemään tekoälyllä ihmisen kaltaisia ja on huomattu, että tekoälyn avulla niistä voidaan tehdä persoonallisia. Persoonalliset NPC-hahmot ovat pelaajan immersion kannalta tärkeitä ja onnistuneella toteutuksella ne voivat vaikuttaa useaan pelaajan immersioon vaikuttavaan asiaan. Tutkimusta NPC-hahmojen äänien ja tekoälyn yhdistämisestä oli vielä melko rajallisesti, mutta äänien vaikutus pelaajan immersioon oli huomattu tutkimuksissa. Jatkotutkimus NPC-hahmojen äänien luonnista tekoälyllä olisikin hyödyllistä. Tutkielmassa huomattiin myös, että pelaajan immersion parantaminen NPC-hahmojen tekoälyllä vaatii tekoälyn laadukasta toteutusta. Hyvin toteutettuna tekoäly tukee pelaajan immersiota, mutta huonosti toteutettuna tekoäly vaikuttaa immersioon negatiivisesti. Jatkotutkimuksessa olisi hyödyllistä selvittää milloin tekoälyn omaava NPC-hahmo on oppinut sopivan verran pelaajan immersion kannalta

Comprehensive Believable Non Player Characters Creation and Management Tools for Emergent Gameplay

This thesis seeks a way to integrate popular psychosocial components required for believability to build a believable Non Player Characters (NPCs) model using the techniques of emergence. The believable NPCs model is scalable in terms of psychosocial models, customizable, flexible and data-driven. Comprehensive believable NPCs creation and management tools were developed to compose, generate, and maintain the system configuration data, as well as NPC profile data, using XML. Furthermore, a run-time prototype has been developed based on our proposed model to test its effectiveness. The prototype has also been evaluated for believable emergent behaviours in different social scenarios

Time and Space in Digital Game Storytelling

The design and representation of time and space are important in any narrative form. Not surprisingly there is an extensive literature on specific considerations of space or time in game design. However, there is less attention to more systematic analyses that examine both of these key factors—including their dynamic interrelationship within game storytelling. This paper adapts critical frameworks of narrative space and narrative time drawn from other media and demonstrates their application in the understanding of game narratives. In order to do this we incorporate fundamental concepts from the field of game studies to build a game-specific framework for analyzing the design of narrative time and narrative space. The paper applies this framework against a case analysis in order to demonstrate its operation and utility. This process grounds the understanding of game narrative space and narrative time in broader traditions of narrative discourse and analysis

Project knole: an autocosmic approach to authoring resonant computational characters

Project knole, consisting of this thesis and a mixed reality installation artwork centred around a computational simulation, is a practice-based response to the question of how a character in a work of computational narrative art might maintain their defining quality of dynamic agency within a system (arguably one of the key potentials of the form), while achieving the ‘resonant’ qualities of characters in more materially-static artforms. In all aspects of this project, I explore a new design philosophy for achieving this balance; between the authorship of a procedural computational system, and the ability of that system to ‘resonate’ with the imagination of an audience. This philosophy, which I term the ‘autocosmic’, seeks inspiration for the curation of audience response outside the obvious boundaries of artistic discipline, across the wider spectrum of human imaginative engagement; examples often drawn from mostly non-aesthetic domains. As well as defining the terms ‘resonance’ and ‘autocosmic’, and delineating my methodology more generally, this thesis demonstrates how the ‘autocosmic’ was employed within my creative work. In particular, it shows how some of the perennial problems of computational character development might be mediated by exploring other non-aesthetic examples of imaginative, narrative engagement with personified systems. In the context of this project, such examples come from the historio-cultural relationship between human beings and the environments they inhabit, outside of formal artistic practice. From this ‘autocosmic’ launchpad, I have developed an artwork that starts to explore how this rich cultural and biological lineage of human social engagement with systemic place can be applied fruitfully to the development of a ‘resonant’ computational character