This article describes an architecture for a dialogue management system to be employed in serious games for natural language interaction with nonplayer characters. The aim of this work is to improve the learning experience by enhancing the immersiveness felt by the player. The system is implemented in a Service Oriented Architecture perspective and it exposes its functionalities through Web services. It also provides an easy to use authoring tool, which allows cultural heritage experts to define the character's knowledge without the need for learning a scripting language. We tested the system by embedding it in a simple serious game, where the user could interact with the virtual representation of a XVI century Geneoese artist, Luca Cambiaso, in order to acquire knowledge about his life and artworks. These early lab test results showed a high level of appreciation for the usability of the system and for the user engagement. Tests also showed that the system is a good didactic tool, since players demonstrated a similar level of knowledge acquisition to that achieved by reading a text.
The biggest Internet portal-site in Japan is NTT's "goo" site, wwvL:goo.tie.jp. Its specialty is its abilih to handle the Japanese language. It uses the most powerful it formation search engine for the Japanese language so it provides a con fortable environment for the users who want or who must read Japanese irforniution. Unlike the maiiuully structured directon shle of I' Yahoo!", the coniputer-based robot-style search mechanism in "goo" automatically retrieves itformation from the net. Furthermore, "goo" provides the most up-to-date information through its original service "mogitate goo" which means "freslily-squeezed goo". Information categories such as the news site "Nikkei goo", also work perfectly to help the user find what he is looking for: In this papel; we describe the key technologies behind the "goo '' site and its services. The keys are the "ItfoBee" itformation handling technologies, such as the information retrievel; crawlel; indexer and Japanese analyzer: The system described here doesn't require a high performance super-computer: It works effectively on a workstation-clustec even a whitebox-based personal computer cluster: It is economical, scalable, and offers the same per$ormance as a super-computer:
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