My keynote at SGames 2016

1. Socio-emotional Agency
in Applied Games
Rui Prada
SGames 2016, 17 June - ISEP Porto

2. Serious games

3. Games are serious

4. Entertainment and play are
very important

5. Play is related to learning

6. Applied games
Games with purpose
Games targeted at specific learning

7. Two main reasons why applied
(learning) games work

8. Games enable practice,
exploration and failure

9. Games promote personal
emotional experience

10. Image Source: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2200/2203264249_9fe46e5bbd_b.jpg

11. One can only learn about what a
game play space affords

12. 8 Ball Pool, Miniclip
Learn about
the rules of the game
the force and angle of shots
general tactics and strategy
position play
Not about
the execution details of the shot
how to handle the cue
the interaction with the opponent

13. Image sources
http://a5.mzstatic.com/eu/r30/Purple1/v4/ba/fc/cc/bafccc5b-7644-7497-a633-d3effa944ed9/screen800x500.jpeg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/VR_Glasses.jpg/800px-VR_Glasses.jpg
Virtual Pool 4 Virtual Reality

14. Coverage and fidelity of the
game interaction space

15. The case of learning
social skills

16. The interaction space should
support exploration and failure
of social actions

17. The socio-emotional dimension
of the game experience should
be promoted

18. AI characters increase the size of
the social interaction space
(coverage)

19. AI characters need to be socially
intelligent and believable
(fidelity)

20. Socially intelligent AI
Act socially
According to context
Have social needs and goals

21. Understand the social reality
Understand others
Adapt to the situation

22. Believability requires a balance
of several qualities

25. Research Goal
Increase the behaviour qualities
and social intelligence of AI
characters

26. Group and relationship dynamics
Social influence and social power
Rui Prada, Ana Paiva: “Teaming Up Human with Synthetic Characters” in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 173 (1), pp. 80-103. 2009. Elsevier.
Gonçalo Pereira, Rui Prada, Pedro Alexandre Santos: “Conceptualizing Social Power for Agents” in proceedings of IVA'2013 - 13th International
Conference on the Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 8108, pp. 313-324, Edinburgh, UK. August 2013. Springer.

27. Social theatre (SIREN – FP7)

28. Social importance dynamics
Cultural behaviour
Samuel Mascarenhas, João Dias, Rui Prada, Ana Paiva “A Dimensional Model for Cultural Behaviour in Virtual Agents” in Applied Artificial Intelligence,
vol. 24 (6), pp. 552-574, July 2010. Taylor & Francis.
Samuel Mascarenhas, Nick Degens, Ana Paiva, Rui Prada, Gert Jan Hofstede, Adrie Beulens, Ruth Aylett: “Modeling culture in intelligent virtual agents:
From theory to implementation” in Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. pp. 1-32, 2015. Springer.

29. Traveller (ECUTE – FP7)

30. Social robots
Embodiment and non-verbal
communication
Iolanda Leite, André Pereira, Samuel Mascarenhas, Carlos Martinho, Rui Prada, Ana Paiva: “The influence of empathy in human-robot relations” in
International Journal of Human Computer Studies, vol. 71 (3), pp. 250-260, January 2013. Elsevier.
André Tiago Pereira, Rui Prada, Ana Paiva: “Improving social presence in humanagent interaction” in proceedings of CHI’2014 - 32nd annual ACM
conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1449-1458, Toronto, Canada. April 2014. ACM.

31. Emys Risk Player (LIREC – FP7)

32. Social practices
Social identity and self-esteem
Joana Dimas, Phil Lopes, Rui Prada: “One for all, all for one: Agents with social identities” in proceedings of CogSci‘2013 - 35th Annual Meeting of
the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 2195-2200, Berlin, Germany. August 2013. CSS.
Frank Dignum, Rui Prada, Gert Jan Hofstede: “From autistic to social agents” in proceedings of AAMAS’2014 - 13th International Conference on
Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 1161-1164, Paris, France. May 2014. IFAAMAS.
Frank Dignum, Virginia Dignum, Rui Prada, Catholijn M. Jonker: “A Conceptual Architecture for Social Deliberation in Multi-Agent Organizations: a
position paper” in International Journal of Multiagent and Grid Systems. vol. 11 (3), pp. 147-166, 2015. IOS Press.

33. AI characters may take
different roles
populate the social world
tutors, peers, learners

34. http://rageproject.eu/
Realising an Applied Gaming Eco-system
(H2020)

35. Create a platform to support diverse
stakeholders in the development,
application and business
of Applied Games
http://rageproject.eu/

36. Create a set of reusable
game assets
http://rageproject.eu/

37. Strategic and social agency
http://rageproject.eu/

38. Strategic and social agency
http://rageproject.eu/
Social and
Emotional
Behaviour
Embodiment
Natural
Language
Personalization
Virtual Characters
Interactive Storytelling
Social Gamification

39. Emotional Appraisal + Embodiment
http://rageproject.eu/

40. Soft Sails Game Demo
http://rageproject.eu/

41. Research partners:
OUNL (NL), UCM (ES), UOB (UK), FTK
(DE), INESC-ID (PT), Utrecht University
(NL), Sofia University (BG), TU Graz (AT),
Polytechnic University Bucharest (RO)
Education providers:
Stichting Praktijkleren (NL)
Hull College of Further Education (UK)
Randstad (FR)
Escola de Policia Judiciára - Ministério da
Justicia (PT)
Games industry:
Playgen (UK)
Gameware (UK)
BipMedia (FR)
Nurogames (GE)
Business innovators:
Inmark (ES)
Okkam (IT)
19 key partners from 10 European countries
http://rageproject.eu/

42. Develop an international
joint interrogation training system
(H2020)
http://www.law-train.eu/

43. Virtual suspect for an
interrogation game
http://www.law-train.eu/

44. Virtual trainer for joint
investigation teamwork practice
http://www.law-train.eu/

45. 10 partners from 5 different countries
Including 4 end-users (police and prosecutors)
http://www.law-train.eu/

46. Concluding
Socially intelligent AI has a
prominent role in applied games

47. Concluding
Enhancing the game interaction space to enable
player exploration
Sustainning a good socio-emotional experience
Supporting personalisation of the experience

48. Concluding
The challenge of achieving good fidelity
(quality of behaviour)
Need to provide tools to developers and
content providers

49. Thank you!
rui.prada@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/rprada
http://spcvideojogos.org
http://rageproject.eu/ http://www.law-train.eu/