@inproceedings { vala04, abstract = {As AI techniques become more widespread in computer games, and the area of synthetic characters matures, avatars in such computer games also tend to gain autonomy and become more clever. However, this autonomy may bring also some change in the interaction between users and game characters. Players may become less in charge of their characters and lose the power of complete motion or behaviour control. On the other hand, characters may become more clever exhibiting much more interesting autonomous actions and behavious. This paper presents, defines and discusses the concept of “influence", as an alternative to "direct" control of game characters, describing how influence can be achieved in computer games. To illustrate the notion of “ influence” we will present a game called FantasyA where players interact with it by influencing the emotions of they semi-autonomous avatars using a tangible interface called SenToy. We show how "influence" was built into this game, the role of SenToy as an influencing device, and the reactions of the users to this type of control.}, address = {Eindhoven, The Netherlands}, booktitle = {ICEC'2004 - 3rd International Conference on Entertainment Computing}, keywords = {synthetic characters, tangible interfaces, semi-autonomous avatars, games}, month = {September}, pages = {21-55}, publisher = {Springer Berlin / Heidelberg}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, title = {Tangible Influence: towards a new interaction paradigm for computer games}, volume = {3166/2004}, year = {2004}, author = {Marco Vala and Rui Prada and Ana Paiva} }

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