Proposal: Towards Emergent Gameplay: A Framework for Realistic Psychosocial Behaviour in NPCs

7/28/2019 Proposal: Towards Emergent Gameplay: A Framework for Realistic Psychosocial Behaviour in NPCs

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Towards Emergent Gameplay: AFramework for Realistic

Psychosocial Behaviour in NPCs

Proposal by Christine Bailey


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Outline Game AI in general

Believable characters in games

Mental states

Reputation systems

Social awareness

Emergent Gameplay Proposal

Future work


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Artificial Intelligence in Games A different purpose than traditional

Support immersion

Entertainment

AI in games is realtime

Restricts accuracy/complexity


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AI in Games Not intelligent

Agent design

Behaviour modelling

Context-driven expertise


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Believable Characters/NPCs Usually:

FSMs for state of mind

Scripting for behaviour

Whats the big problem with this?

Need to define EVERY possible situation

Time, money,


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Character Believability What kinds of things contribute?

Autonomy, Interaction, Presence

Emotion

Personality

Self-motivation

Illusion of life Change

Social relationships


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Character Believability Mental States

Emotion

Personality

Reputation Systems

Social systems


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Mental States Simple

Patrolling -> See enemy -> Fight until death

More complex

I.e. emotions

Having memory of past events

Forgetting


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Emotion Affective computing!

Identify

Process

SYTHESIZE

Many many different models possible

The sum of past events


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Personality Pattern of behaviours/interactions

Agreeableness and Dominance

Chris Crawfords model

Intrinsic variables (i.e. integrity, intelligence)

Mood variables (i.e. anger, revulsion, joy)

Volatility Relationship variables

Accordance


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Sociology stuff Roles (i.e. minion, arch enemy, sidekick)

Cultures (and subcultures)

Worldview

Goals

Norms (guides for behaviour in situations) Values (personal moral systems)


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Booorrrrrinnnngggg - Who cares

about this stuff anyway? Designers

Supports suspension of disbelief

Realism

Drama

Bully &Assassins Creed

Characters are becoming more important


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Reputation SystemsThe

Simple (?) Stuff i.e.Fable, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Ultima

Online

NPC opinions of player

Immediate and global

No individual opinions (groups) No opinions about other NPCs


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Reputation Systems Sounds pretty straight forward

Brockington (2003): take much more time

and effort than expected

Space requirements


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What about true social systems? Socially Intelligent Agents


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Socially Intelligent Agents Alright! Theres a whole field of this stuff!

Right??


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Socially Intelligent Agents Despite the name, SIAs typically DO NOT

exhibit realistic social behaviour

Multiagent problem solving

Reduce resource usage, increase efficiency


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Will the Real SIAs please stand

up? Some interesting research in this area:

Remembered interaction histories

Change of attitude/familiarity assessment

Opinion flow

High level architecture for social agents


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Something else interesting Emergence (with a capital E)

A.K.A. Emergent Gameplay

Stimulus-Response in components (no

system-level algorithms)

Typically used in simple behaviours

More later


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Okay, enough background My proposal

Framework for realistic psychosocial

behaviour using Emergence


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Solutions Previously on Realistic NPC Behaviours:

Filters

Graph querying

State machines

Yeah, but

My idea: Why not try using that Emergent Gameplay

stuff?


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And that was? Emergent Gameplay:

Simple component-level behaviours

(Mechanics)

+

Interaction between those behaviours

(Dynamics) =>

Complex system-level behaviour (Aesthetics)


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Emergent Gameplay A bottom-up view of the game world

Every object is ONLY concerned with its

own needs/reactions

Every object is selfish


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A real world exampleGlobal

warming Global warming -> ice caps melt -> ocean

currents shift -> less warm air in England -

> colder England

This is a surprising result (system-level

behaviour)


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More examples Flocking algorithms

Board games

Chess: 24 rules

Video games


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Emergent Gameplay in video

games SimCity, The Sims, Spore,Deus Ex, Thief:

Deadly Shadows

Problem: developers dont reveal their

secrets


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I love you Ion Storm Developers dont reveal their secrets

Except: Ion Storm talked

Deus Ex and Thief: Deadly Shadows

Stimulus System

Not rule-based, not scripted

Stimulus responses at component level

Fire, oil, guards, poisonous gas barrels,


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Previous Emergent Gameplay Simple concrete components

Bullet + Barrel => Poison gas leak

Candle + Oil => Fire

Fire + Guard => Corpse


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Soooo. Can Emergent Gameplay concepts be used

to create more believable characters?

Non-concrete components?

Instead of candles, oil, and guards as

components, can we use psychosocial

concepts? i.e. personality traits and emotions as

components?


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Future work Further research into Emergent Gameplay

Refine requirements of a unified

psychosocial framework

Design of unified psychosocial framework

using Emergent Gameplay concepts

Simple implementation

Assessment


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Summary General game AI

Believable NPCs

Mental states Emotion

Personality

Social sci. concepts

Reputation systems & SIAs Emergent Gameplay and how it could be used to

develop a unified psychosocial framework

Future work


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The End Questions?

Documents

Proposal: Towards Emergent Gameplay: A Framework for Realistic Psychosocial Behaviour in NPCs