Keynote

The role of AI in social games

Uppsala August 2011

Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari Gotland University, Sweden

Common views: • ”Social games doesn’t have any AI”

• ”Social games doesn’t need any AI – they have people”

In this talk: • What does ”AI” and ”social” mean anyway?

• Social actions in terms of operational logics

• AI based game design

• Research prototype(s)

• A recipe

AI Artificial intelligence

the study and design of intelligent agent where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. (Russell & Norvig 2003 – a commonly used textbook)

the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.

(McCarthy, 1956 – coining the term)

Social

The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of other animals).

It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

Games on social networks

• We say “social games” – we mean “social network games” (Siegel 2011). Usually that means:

• Facebook

• Asynchronous play (like old chess-by- mail games)

• Metaphors for socializing (like sending gifts)

Social game types If Critera: Interactions between players

mediated by game rules • LARP

• Table top & card games

• MMORPGS

• Competitive FPS

• Asynchronous games on social platforms….

• etc

Broad! Most games except single player games would fit the critera, making it irrelevant.

Social actions

In games, many low level processes together represent metaphors for actions.

We often to call games “social” if these processes are metaphors for social actions. (ie, “greet” is social, while “shoot” isn’t seen as social in and everyday context.)

Operational logics has been defined as follows (Wardrip-Fruin and Mateas, 2009): “An operational logic defines an authoring (representational) strategy, supported by abstract processes or lower-level logics, for specifying the behaviors a system must exhibit in order to be understood as representing a specified domain to a specified audience.”

Illustration:Invade (though nice re game mechanics the mataphore isn’t social)

• Empires and allies

In this talk Social games are

• (game) Systems where coexisting organisms interact.

• The organisms are intended to appear life-like (or believiable)

• The actions avialable to organisms in the system are metaphors for social actions (in the everyday sense of living beings socialising)

AI based Game design

AIGD is the practice of creating games where the AI is an intrinsic part of the game design, intertwined in the game mechanics.

When we talk about AI in games we approach it not only as a set of techniques, such as BDI architectures or path planners, but from a more philosophical perspective: the AI in AI based game design refers to when computational processes are designed and implemented to create the impression of something that acts with intentionality. This ‘something’ can be an agent, such as a non-player character, but it can also be a process that creates content for the game, such as quests, or new levels in a game.

www.aigamedesign.com

Why AIGD

• In the space of AI based game design, established AI technologies are used for innovative game design, and the needs emerging from game designs push forward the innovation of AI technologies.

• A commonly held view regarding AI and games:

• it is enough to create the impression of intelligence, the “smoke and mirrors”, by choosing the right cues that makes players use their mental models of a representation, relying on players’ immersion and imagination.

• This is not a reason to not go beyond smoke and mirrors!

• We can do real magic! Especially if we use the intelligence of the players. (again, remember Else’s talk on A-Life yesterday)

AI to support the player character

Semi Autonomy

Semi-autonomous avatars are agents whose

actions are controlled partly by users and

partly by artificial intelligence (AI) components.

Approaches to semi-autnomous avatars

• Relief

• Players can be relieved of cognitive and operational load by for example automating the animations of body-language of avatars.

• Expression

• Means of expression through body-language, types of actions performed, and reaction tendencies can express the nature of specific avatars to other players in the same world.

• Impression

• Character-information available only to avatars' own players and personalised, subjective world-representations create individual impressions of worlds and avatars' parts in them.

More info here: Semi-Autonomous Avatars in Games, Eladhari, M.P, 10th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, September 2010.

Goals

A shared aim of these approaches is to increase the believability of elements in the game worlds and the sense of presence and immersion for players.

Social game examples (that are ”social” as described earlier in this talk)

Game examples

• PromWeek: Social physics

• Pataphysic Institute: mental physics

• Sims Social: avatar simulations

Prom Week

• Prom Week: simulates characters in a network of relationships. God-perspective for player. Goals: play with the characters’ social actions in order to reach relationship goals.

• AI: CiF architecture

Comme il Faut 2: A fully realized model for socially-oriented gameplay, by Josh McCoy, Mike Treanor, Ben Samuel, Brandon Tearse, Michael Mateas, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. In Proceedings of the FDG Intelligent Narrative Technologies 3 Workshop (FDG-INT3 2010), Monterey, CA. June 2010.

Pataphysic Institute • PI: simulates characters in networks of

relationships. 3rd person Role playing persoective for player: Goals attune own others mood in order to defeat common enemies.

• AI:

The Mind Module

Sims social Taking the multiagent

simulation model and applying a main-character- perspective on it.

Using real-world relationships – the character the player controls interact with characters of facebook friends. (timely illustration of the 3rd era of gaming as described by Garriot 2011 GDCE)

Social Perspectives • PromWeek: Player manipulates many other

characters (multi-agent simulation) from a top-down perspective.

• PI: Player control own avatar while interacting with other players’ characters, mobs and NPCs.

• Sims Social: Player controls a single character while it interacts with representations of facebook friends’ characters. (asyncronous play, hybrid of multi/single player)

Working with the pataphysic institute

prototype

follow the work at www.projectconstructive.com

Goal: support Role-Play in VGWs

• Cater for complex, interesting avatars

• support players in expressing consistent, interesting player characters in VGWs?

• body-language etc.

• Support by rule system in order to make the actions performed characterising for particular avatars.

University of Californa Santa Cruz Mirjam P Eladhari, Michael Mateas

Characterising Action Potential (CAP)

CAP is what characters can do at a given moment that characterise them, both in terms of observable behaviour and in expression of true character - a character's essential nature, expressed by the choices a character makes.

The observable characteristics include visual appearance, what body language characters use, what sounds they make, what they say, and most important, what they do and how they behave.

Experimental set-up

• Agent architecture: The Mind Module

• Prototype Game World: The Pataphysic Institute

• Play-tests and interviews which are video taped and transcribed verbatim. Allows assessment of:

• Interaction

• Players’ attitudes

• Players’ mental models of system. More on the method in Design for Results: Considerations for Experimental Prototyping and Play Testing Using Iterative Game Design, by Eladhari M. P., Ollila, E.M.I. Game Research Methods, University of Tampere, Finland, 8-9 April 2010.

Mind module

The Mind Module

• Spreading Activation Network of Affect nodes

• Semiautonomous agent architecture.

• Semiautonomous agents are partly controlled by their players, and partly controlled by context-sensitive action potential and expression possibilities, as well as by varying degrees of autonomous reactions to in-game situations specific to the VGW the agents inhabits.

• Gives avatars virtual minds in addition to virtual bodies.

Affect Nodes of MM

Personality Trait Nodes

Define avatar personality

Traits: Five Factor Model

Emotion Nodes

Active emotion nodes define how an avatars feels ‘right now’

16

Mood

Define how an avatar feel today

Sentiment

Define how avatar generally feels about specific things

An emotional disposition towards a specific object or class of objects.

Node Weights

Personality Trait -> Emotion Emotion -> Mood

Personality traits affect how strongly characters feel emotions. Emotions affect characters’ mood.

Pataphysic Institute

emotional combat system!

Personality trait based characters!

Player-created bosses!

Manifestations of own Traumas and epiphanies!

Pataphysic Institute

• Prototype virtual game world where the personalities of the inhabitants are the base for the game mechanics.

• When interacting with other characters, the action potential depends upon the player character's current mood and personality

production

PI is built in the company Pixeltamer's framework for web based multiplayer games and is played in a web browser through a Java applet.

PI is an application developed for conducting experimental game design research using iterative design and guided play tests. The MM is used as a library.

• Programming of Client and Server by Christoph Pech.

• IPIP NEO - scoring system and report routines provided by John A. Johnson, rewritten to C++ by Christoph Pech

• Graphics: 3DS Max models by Ola Persson

• Leveldesign by Musse Dolk

• Scripting by Johan Sköld

Basic Game Play

• Players need to defeat physical manifestations of negative mental states by using

• Spells

• Affective actions

• The spells available to characters depends on their personality and current mood.

• The affective actions available to a character depend on the current mood.

’pataphysics

Jarry (the early 1900s, Paris)

"the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments“

Raymond Queneau has described 'pataphysics as resting "on the truth of contradictions and exceptions."

’pataphysics

‘Pataphysics is an inner posture, a discipline, a science and an art; it allows every human to live her life as an exception, which doesn't prove any other law than its own.

Above my favourite definition. My translation from a book in Swedish by Claes Hylinger

’pataphysics

Back-story • Players are introduced to the back story of PI before they

log on, by reading the diary of Katherine, an investigator who was sent in to PI to investigate the consequences of a mysterious event called the Outbreak. In PI, reality has been replaced by the inhabitants interpretation of reality, and their mental states are manifested physically in the environment.

• The head of human resources at PI has taken upon himself the task of understanding the new and unknown world by applying personality theories. He forces everyone in PI to take personality tests, and studies what types of abilities these persons get: Mind Magic Spells.

• Teresa focuses on the finding that social interactions between people suddenly in acutely concrete emotional reactions. She calls these Affective Actions (AAs), and tries to understand her changed environment by studying the patterns of these.

The gate keeper

Character Creation

Big Five (OCEAN, FFM) assessed using IPIP NEO

Mind Module Info

Dialog with Karl

Node Weights Karl: what I can do and can’t do is tied to my mood! The mood seems to be connected to my personality and my emotions. I

think its like that for all of us. But we seem to be able to gain more resistance and energy as we learn to act in this world.

Personality Trait -> Emotion Emotion -> Mood

Personality traits affect how strongly characters feel emotions. Emotions affect characters’ mood.

Mind energy and resistance

Karl: what I can do and can’t do is tied to my mood! The mood seems to be connected to my personality and my emotions. I think its like that for all of us. But we seem to be able to gain more resistance and energy as we learn to act in this world.

Mood status display

Teresa

Mood Area restrictions for affective actions

Teresa: Affective actions are quite remarkable. They force an emotional reaction! If you are in a receptive mood that is.

Players can perform affective actions towards other characters in order to change their mental state in both positive and negative ways. By affecting others mood's the selection of their available spells and AAs is changed. Example: The AA Comfort can be used successfully on targets that have an active emotion node of Sadness, but only if the player's own avatar is not in the area of Furious on the mood co-ordinate system

Affective actions

Manifestations Single Sentiment Manifestations (SSMs) Compound Manifestations (CMs)

- unique, that is, there is only one

- CMs are stronger than SSMs in terms of larger maximum amounts of MR and ME

- more versatile in their behaviour, they can cast both spells and AAs.

- In order to vanquish a CM generally several players need to co-operate.

Instantiation: CMs are scripted or authored by players.

- origin in a single emotion

- limited amount of mental resistance and energy. - The spells an SSM can cast increase the value of 'their' emotion in targeted entity. Instantiation: scripted or created automatically when avatars experience strong emotions. For example, if a PC 'feels' a Joy intensely the SSM Joy Jumbo is instantiated in proximity to the PC.

Colossuses of Confusion

Curses and Blessings • Avatars can be affected by the spells

Sentiment Curse and Sentiment Blessing.

• Sentiment Curse gives an avatar a strong negative sentiment that has a zero decay rate.

• Example: curse of Guilt. The way to get rid of this sentiment is to create a manifestation of the sentiment, a compound manifestation (CM). If the CM is vanquished, the sentiment disappears.

Player created CM

Spells

Mood Area restrictions

for spells

Mind Magic Spells

Defeating guilt

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The well-known notions of role taking from MMORPGs where avatars normally have functions such as 'tank', 'healer' or 'damage dealer' are comparable to possible avatar-roles in PI. However, where in MMORPGs the role normally is given by character class, it is in PI given by an avatar's personality. The role of tank \index{tank} in a group of avatars engaging in combat in a MMORPG means that the avatar tanking takes the damage dealt by opponents. The tank protects the other members of the group by making sure that the opponent's aggression is directed to her. The damage dealer \index{damage dealer} normally lacks health and resistance to be able to be in direct contact with the opponent, but may be located a bit further away from the tank and the opponent while using powerful ranged attacks. The role of the healer\index{healer} is to heal the tank, and if needed also the damage dealer or herself. For an extensive explanation of the game-play strategies involved in these roles, please refer to Musse Dolk's MMORPG Gamer's handbook \shortcite{dolk08}. In PI, a neurotic introvert avatar would be an eminent damage dealer since the avatar's current mood would easily move towards the depressed mood spaces which are required to be in, in order to casts spell decreasing the mind energy of opponents. Another type of effective damage dealer would be an avatar with a neurotic extravert personality, who quickly could generate both energy and resistance if in a mood of fury while damaging the pool of resistance of the opponent. An avatar prone to extraversion in general might function especially well as a healer if in a jubilant mood, being able to give mind energy to group members. Avatars who naturally deviate towards inner harmony might be able to function especially well as tanks given that they would regenerate mental resistance quicker than others.

Play test

Play testing

Player 2

Film Camera

1 Player 1 (Object of Desire)

Film Camera

Game Master

Player 3

In Clients: -Log files of play (one file for each avatar)

-Camtasia recordings of :-voice (microphone in

headset), -Face (webcam), - Actions (taping of screen)

Play testing

Player 2

Player 1 (Object of Desire) Game

Master

Player 3

Plat test scale and scope

• Multi-player tests – 3 players + 1 game master

• 3 scenarios:

1. use AA’s according to roles in a group

2. learn to use spells towards manifestations

3. Player’s authoring of manifestation. Cooperate in group to overcome them.

Scenario 1-AAs Scenario: Two avatars competing for the affections of the third

GM asked players to picture a situation where two of them (Player 1 and 2) had played together for a while, and that the third (Player 1) was new to them,

2. Learning spells Defeating manifestations

Scenario 2: GM takes group to area with negative single sentiment manifestations.

Goal: cooperate to overcome them, and learn own special personality spells.

3 player authored foes

GM ask player to curse each other. Cursed player manifests the emotion they cursed with. Players’ goals: deafeat the foe using grouped indivuals’ spells. Use AAs to affect each others moods needed to defeat foe.

Players’ Strategies

uses of Affective actions in scenario 3:

1. as authorial building blocks when creating their compound manifestations,

2. to manipulate the mood of each other’s avatars when they attempted to neutralize the manifestations, and

3. to diminish values of the emotion nodes of the opposing manifestations.

Vertical slice test outcomes

• In the test: Using vertical slice in order to narrow down

• Successful designs

• Results of general interest

• Design-wise for prototype: Players’ creation of manifestations, and the strategies used to defeat them: a combination of rule-set, and ”real” past experiences.

• General regarding avatar & agent behaviors: levels of autonomy & focus on secondary behavior (read more in digra’11 paper)

Game Mechanics and Dynamics of Social Actions in a Prototype Multiplayer Game World, by Eladhari M.P, Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play, Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands, 2011.

Wrapping up

AI + ’social’ games = = New AI tech!

Design challenges in social games can drive new develelompent in AI technicues – new problems, new solutions

= New types of games! Games with metaphores for social actions –is in the domain of beleviable agents and expessive AI – new game experiences built using knowledge about social behaviors.

www.aigamedesign.com

Why it works

• Leverage the power of relationships in the “third era” (Garriott 2011) – both between individuals, and formations of groups.

• Notion of what is ”real” (Bartle 2003). Player-created ’real’ content in frameworks of fiction: compelling. (If the balance suits players’ golden mean for real-connection vs escapism.)

Final words. I suspect that:

Player created/generated “realness”

+

mental/social physics

+

rule-systems giving appropriate affordances for action

+

support for avatar expression, impression & relief

=

meaningful fun.

Reading

• Comme il Faut 2: A fully realized model for socially-oriented gameplay, by Josh McCoy, Mike Treanor, Ben Samuel, Brandon Tearse, Michael Mateas, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. In Proceedings of the FDG Intelligent Narrative Technologies 3 Workshop (FDG-INT3 2010), Monterey, CA. June 2010.

• Game Mechanics and Dynamics of Social Actions in a Prototype Multiplayer Game World, by Eladhari M.P, Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play, Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands, 2011.

• Design for Results: Considerations for Experimental Prototyping and Play Testing Using Iterative Game Design, by Eladhari M. P., Ollila, E.M.I. Game Research Methods, University of Tampere, Finland, 8-9 April 2010. The paper was selected for publication in a special issue of the journal Simulation & Gaming

Thank you for listening

Mirjam Eladhari

contact: mirjam.eladhari@hgo.se

www.projectconstructive.com

Recent Play tests

Play-tests of the PI prototype focussing on - Authored relationships within the group (triangular tensions

given by sentiments)

- Players’ authoring of CMs – their contributions to the game world

- patterns of play when the group deals with the CM’s they created. Role-takings and strategies.

FUTuRE TESTING: - players’ attitudes towards CAP in PI for

role-play

- Sentiments for story construction (more)

- Semi-autonomy – balance of player-control versus autonomous behaviours of avatars

- Autonomous agents (NPCs) with MMs, use of reactive planning for behaviour selection

Current Work

Analysis of play test data

• Video’s of game play in the client, along with player’s face and voice

• Surveys

• Log files • counts of Affective Actions towards group.memebers,

depending on sentiments between avatars

• Counts of Affective Actions and Spells between entities when conquering the CMs players authored

Future Directions

Prototyping and play-testing methods for game design research.

Utilisation of bio-feedback from players, both for design and for play-testing.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Graphics: inspiration from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Here a concept art picture I made and gave to the 3D artist.

Narrative Potential

in VGWs

Stance

How affordances and action potential of avatars in multiplayer settings can affect narrative potential.

Outline

• Semi Autonomy

• Relief, impression, expression

• PI and MM

• Agent Architecture: The Mind Module

• Prototype: The Pataphysic Institute

• CAP of semi-autonomous avatars and narrative potential.

Impression Character-information available only to avatars'

own players shows the action potential of the avatars - what they can do at a given moment and how. The properties of avatars can be used to represent the game world subjectively, helping players to identify with their representations and immerse themselves into story worlds.

Ex: in Michael’s Subjective Avatars users receive text descriptions of environments which react avatars emotional states.

Control