Agent Emotions in Games: Terminology

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Agent Emotions in Games Terminology

• Stuart Slater

The Reign of Catz and Dogz? The role of virtual
creatures in a computerised society.
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Overview

• Research Objective.
• Why Emotion In Games?
• Emotion in Games Examples.
• The Emotion Terminology Problem.
• A Contribution Towards Understanding Emotions.
• Continuing The Research.

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Research Objective

• To develop an emotion architecture for use in
  commercial games and/or middleware solutions.
• A critical aim was that the architecture should
  be based on a solid basis of formal psychology to
  support both
• Human-like believable behaviour in agents.
• Increased credibility of any such architecture
  through its strong psychology underpinning.

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Why Choose Emotions in Games?
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Agents Continue to Evolve

• Agent Physiology
• Human-like movement (Most FPS Games)(Pixar
  Movies)
• Agent Decision Making
• Human-like decision making (F.E.A.R).
• Sensory Input
• Human-like senses (Thief Thief 2).
• Supporting Technologies Include
• Motion capture (Sports Sims)
• Shaders (i.e. realistic lighting effects)
• Immersive sounds (Halo, F.E.A.R.)
• Physics engines plug in cards (Karma,
  Havok,Half Life 2)
• Improved AI techniques. (F.E.A.R.)
• The above elements add to the games realism, and
  will continue to evolve as hardware and software
  technologies improve.

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But What of Agent Emotions?

• One aspect of realism that is lacking is,
  agents that have more realistic emotions.1
• Agent Emotion
• Human-like emotions.
• Important because emotions affect human actions.

1 Slater,S.(2006) Body Mind and Emotion, An
Overview of Agent Implementation in Mainstream
Computer Games. ICAPS 2006. English Lake
District. June 2006.
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Current Emotion Usage in Games

• Low usage including
• Finite state machines used in Halo for simple
  actions such as surprise and anger.
• Some game agents have limited facial emotions
  within the game, but developers rely on cut
  scenes to add emotion.

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Potential Hurdles

• Difficulties constraining agents to the game
  architecture
• Developer concerns with increased processing and
  memory storage requirements.
• Developer knowledge.
• Differing of scientific ideas.
• The paper produced addresses points 3 4.

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Emotions in games, a brief overview of
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World Of Warcraft

• Biggest MMORPG on the planet, over 7.5Million
  Players.
• Seemingly scripted on screen responses as shown.
• Animations for Rage (Fighting Frenzy) and Fear
  (Run Away) when agents suffer substantial damage.

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F.E.A.R

• One of the top selling games of 2005/2006. FPS
  action game.
• Uses sophisticated planning algorithms for agent
  actions (GOAP).
• Uses subtle crafting to facilitate strong
  emotions in the user.
• Almost an interactive horror movie.
• One of the most anticipated games coming to the
  Playstation 3.

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Researching an Emotion Architecture
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The Emotion Terminology Problem

• Early discussions with Psychologists, AI
  specialists and middleware developers showed a
  major hurdle. This problem was a lack of
  agreement on emotion related terminology.
• i.e.
• What is the emotion jargon, such as moods,
  feelings etc?
• How do we define emotions?
• Many questions, and few answers.

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• Why Did Humans Evolve Emotions?
• Emotions Terminology.
• Are Emotions Innate or Learned?
• How Many Emotions Are There?
• Categories of Emotions
• Category 1
• Category 2
• Emotion Triggers
• Emotion Models
• OCC
• Ekman

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• Intensity of Emotion
• Emotional Control Memory
• What is a Mood?
• Individual Emotions
• Fear
• Aggression
• Pathological Emotions
• Phobias-
• Panic Disorder
• Depression
• Anxiety

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• Emotions Personality
• Paper concludes with a quick and easy
• Glossary of Emotion Terms
• That can be used by developers or researchers to
  narrow and reduce background research.

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Where to Next?
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Ongoing Development
Industry Support
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Comments Questions?
Contact s.i.slater_at_wlv.ac.uk