Moody5: Personality-biased agents to enhance interactive storytelling in video games

Abstract

In story-driven video games, such as Role-Playing Games (RPGs), a static and repetitive interaction with Non-Player Characters (NPCs) can negatively impact fun and immersion. On the contrary, an NPC able to show emotions and endowed with a personality that matches its behavior can keep the user engaged for a longer time, thus increasing the game's replayability. Unfortunately, this aspect is still an open issue. We propose a preliminary solution: Moody5 has been designed to help game designers create "personality-biased" agents able to interact in sensible ways in the framework of interactive storytelling. In particular, it supports the creation of agents that exploit the Goal-Oriented Action Planning technique to reach their goals but whose chain of actions is affected by their personality and emotions. To obtain this result, we have borrowed some ideas from the Big Five theory [1] and the Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS) by Ekman & Friesen [2]. Therefore, we obtain NPCs that are a proxy good enough to approximate human behavior in games. We validated the proposed solution in a narrative test scenario inspired by the Harry Potter universe. Our preliminary survey demonstrated that Moody5 could improve the gameplay experience and replay value while providing a helpful Unity plugin for game developers.

Complejidad y videojuegos, un acercamiento a los comportamientos sociales en los Role Playing Games (RPG) a través de la programación

“…Aun cuando el desarrollo de estas herramientas se vean como únicas para cada uno de los casos del narrador, se empieza a vislumbrar el uso de patrones ya establecidos para modificarlos y permitir adaptar estos a las necesidades propias de los narradores y sus propuestas narrativas. Como se puede observar en Moody 5 (Garavaglia et al, 2022) una aplicación que sirve para la generación, interacción y construcción de narrativas a través de la simulación de las emociones de los agentes inteligentes. Para ello, se hace uso de un Goal-Oriented Action Planner (GOAP) modificado para hacerlo consciente de las emociones y usar esto como heurística para la selección de tareas.…”