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Agents That Relate: Improving the Social Believability of Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Games


Abstract As the video games industry grows and video games become more part of our lives, we are eager for better gaming experiences. One field in which games still have much to gain is in Non-Player Character behavior in socially demanding games, like Role-Playing Games. In Role-Playing Games players have to interact constantly with very simple Non-Player Characters, with no social behavior in most of the cases, which contrasts with the rich social experience that was provided in its traditional pen-and-paper format. What we propose in this paper is that if we create a richer social behavior in Non-Player Characters the player’s gaming experience can be improved. In order to attain this we propose a model that has at its core social relationships with/between Non-Player Characters. By doing an evaluation with players, we identified that 80% of them preferred such system, affirming that it created a better gaming experience.
Year 2008
Keywords role-playing games, non-player characters, artificial intelligence, social behavior, relationships, personality, theory of mind
Authors Nuno Afonso, Rui Prada
Booktitle ICEC'2008 - 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing
Volume 5309/2009
Pages 34-45
Series Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
Address Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Month September
Pdf File \"pdf
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@inproceedings { afonso08, abstract = {As the video games industry grows and video games become more part of our lives, we are eager for better gaming experiences. One field in which games still have much to gain is in Non-Player Character behavior in socially demanding games, like Role-Playing Games. In Role-Playing Games players have to interact constantly with very simple Non-Player Characters, with no social behavior in most of the cases, which contrasts with the rich social experience that was provided in its traditional pen-and-paper format. What we propose in this paper is that if we create a richer social behavior in Non-Player Characters the player’s gaming experience can be improved. In order to attain this we propose a model that has at its core social relationships with/between Non-Player Characters. By doing an evaluation with players, we identified that 80% of them preferred such system, affirming that it created a better gaming experience.}, address = {Pittsburgh, PA, USA}, booktitle = {ICEC'2008 - 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing}, keywords = {role-playing games, non-player characters, artificial intelligence, social behavior, relationships, personality, theory of mind}, month = {September}, pages = {34-45}, publisher = {Springer Berlin / Heidelberg}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, title = {Agents That Relate: Improving the Social Believability of Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Games}, volume = {5309/2009}, year = {2008}, author = {Nuno Afonso and Rui Prada} }

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