Paper Information
| Title | What Do You Mean by Believable Characters? : The Effect of the Character Newness, Rating and Evilness on the Perception of the Character Believability |
| Presenter(s) | Michael Lee and Carrie Heeter |
| Session | Optimizing Emotion, Believability, & Choice |
| Time | Friday, October 22, 1:00p-2:00p |
| Location | Green Room |
| Format | Paper Presentation |
| Description | Computer scientists working on Artificial Intelligence have recognized the importance of believable characters. Studies on the character believability have been relatively rare, and the definition of believability has different meaning in different disciplines. A multi-disciplinary literature review explores various qualities of computer characters. Different scholars and practitioners have described five believability attributes.
For the test of those five attributes, eight NPCs were chosen for the study based on game quality (high and low Metacritic scores), modernity (games released before and after 2006) and game function (good guy or bad guy). The believability of each character was surveyed with an online survey by research subjects recruited from a sophomore level introductory digital media course at a large Midwestern university. Within the survey, participants were shown a one to two minute video of each NPC interacting with a player; participants then answered believability questions about the NPC they had just seen. Role-play gaming experience and demographics were also measured. ANOVA analysis of the results suggested that NPCs from newer and/or high rated games were perceived to be more believable than characters from older or lower rated games. NPCs from newer and/or higher rated games were also found to be more enjoyable than characters from older or lower rated games. |
| More | View PDF of full paper |