An Appraisal-Based Chain-Of-Emotion Architecture for Affective Language Model Game Agents

The development of believable, natural, and interactive digital artificial agents is a field of growing interest. Theoretical uncertainties and technical barriers present considerable challenges to the field, particularly with regards to developing agents that effectively simulate human emotions. Large language models (LLMs) might address these issues by tapping common patterns in situational appraisal. In three empirical experiments, this study tests the capabilities of LLMs to solve emotional intelligence tasks and to simulate emotions. It presents and evaluates a new chain-of-emotion architecture for emotion simulation within video games, based on psychological appraisal research. Results show that it outperforms standard LLM architectures on a range of user experience and content analysis metrics. This study therefore provides early evidence of how to construct and test affective agents based on cognitive processes represented in language models

Paying for loot boxes is linked to problem gambling, regardless of specific features such as cash-out and pay-to-win

Loot boxes are items in video games that may be bought with real-world money but contain randomised contents. Due to similarities between loot boxes and gambling, various countries are considering regulating them to reduce gambling-related harm. However, loot boxes are extremely diverse. A key problem facing regulators is determining whether specific types of loot boxes carry more potential for harm, and should be regulated accordingly. In this study, we specify seven key ways that loot boxes may differ from each other: They may involve paid or unpaid openings; give opportunities for cashing out; allow gamers to pay to win; involve the use of an in-game currency; feature crate and key mechanics; show near misses; and contain exclusive items. We then use a large-scale preregistered correlational analysis (n=1200) to determine if any of these features strengthen the link between loot box spending and problem gambling. Our results indicate that being able to cash out, showing near-misses, and letting players use in-game currency to buy loot boxes may weakly strengthen the relationship between loot box spending and problem gambling. However, our main conclusion is that regardless of the presence or absence of specific features of loot boxes, if they are being sold to players for real-world money, then their purchase is linked to problem gambling

Theories, methodologies, and effects of affect-adaptive games : a systematic review

Affect-adaptive games gained in popularity over the last years in human computer interactions studies, promising potential benefits for player experience, performance, and even health. It is however not yet clear how affective games are being evaluated, what the precise effects are, and how they are based on emotion theoretical concepts that are still not universally agreed upon. This systematic review investigated these questions by analysing relevant high-quality evaluation studies of the effect of affect-adaptive video games on various outcomes in regards to their effects, theoretical assumptions, and methodologies. Out of 3,930 papers, 26 studies were included based on preregistered inclusion and exclusion criteria. A high variance regarding theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches was observed, as well as an overall poor methodological rigour, leading to the conclusion that more work is needed in constructing better methodological standards for game evaluation studies and theoretical considerations when developing and testing affect-adaptive video games

The Underwood Project : A Virtual Environment for Eliciting Ambiguous Threat

Threatening environments can be unpredictable in many different ways. The nature of threats, their timing, and their locations in a scene can all be uncertain, even when one is acutely aware of being at risk. Prior research demonstrates that both temporal unpredictability and spatial uncertainty of threats elicit a distinctly anxious psychological response. In the paradigm presented here, we further explore other facets of ambiguous threat via an environment in which there are no concrete threats, predictable or otherwise, but which nevertheless elicits a building sense of danger. By incorporating both psychological research and principles of emotional game design, we constructed this world and then tested its effects in three studies. In line with our goals, participants experienced the environment as creepy and unpredictable. Their subjective and physiological response to the world rose and fell in line with the presentation of ambiguously threatening ambient cues. Exploratory analyses further suggest that this ambiguously threatening experience influenced memory for the virtual world and its underlying narrative. Together the data demonstrate that naturalistic virtual worlds can effectively elicit a multifaceted experience of ambiguous threat with subjective and cognitive consequences

Face identification in the laboratory and in virtual worlds

Investigations into human cognition typically control variables tightly in the laboratory or relinquish systematic control in field studies. Virtual Reality (VR) can provide an intermediate approach by facilitating research with complex but controlled environments. However, understanding of the correspondence between VR and laboratory paradigms is still limited. This study addresses this issue by comparing established laboratory tests of face identification with passport control at a VR airport. We show that test characteristics transcend comparison of the laboratory tests and VR and demonstrate consistent correlations between these tasks. However, person identification in VR was also marked by bias to accept mismatching identities. These findings support correspondence between laboratory tests of face perception and VR but also highlight the importance of understanding human behaviour under more complex conditions. This problem arises in many areas of psychology, and our study shows that VR offers a solution by providing complex but controlled environments

Avatars with faces of real people: A construction method for scientific experiments in virtual reality

Experimental psychology research typically employs methods that greatly simplify the real-world conditions within which cognition occurs. This approach has been successful for isolating cognitive processes, but cannot adequately capture how perception operates in complex environments. In turn, real-world environments rarely afford the access and control required for rigorous scientific experimentation. In recent years, technology has advanced to provide a solution to these problems, through the development of affordable high-capability virtual reality (VR) equipment. The application of VR is now increasing rapidly in psychology, but the realism of its avatars, and the extent to which they visually represent real people, is captured poorly in current VR experiments. Here, we demonstrate a user-friendly method for creating photo-realistic avatars of real people and provide a series of studies to demonstrate their psychological characteristics. We show that avatar faces of familiar people are recognised with high accuracy (Study 1), replicate the familiarity advantage typically observed in real-world face matching (Study 2), and show that these avatars produce a similarity-space that corresponds closely with real photographs of the same faces (Study 3). These studies open the way to conducting psychological experiments on visual perception and social cognition with increased realism in VR

Queues, Crowds, and Angry Mobs: Face Identification Under Distraction in a Virtual Airport

In visual environments, selective attention must be employed to focus on task-relevant stimuli. A key question here concerns the extent to which other stimuli within the visual field influence target processing. In this study we ask whether face identity matching is subject to similar effects from irrelevant stimuli in the visual field, specifically task-irrelevant people. While most previous studies rely on highly controlled face and body stimuli presented in isolation, here we use a more realistic environment. Participants take the role of passport officers and must match a person’s face to their photo-ID while other people appear in the background, waiting to be processed. Presenting an interactive virtual environment on screen (Experiment 1 and 2) or in immersive VR (Experiment 3), we generally found no evidence for distraction from background people on face-matching accuracy. However, when immersed in VR, an angry crowd in the background increased matching speed, while not affecting accuracy. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results and their potential importance in practical settings