Slides of my talk at MagicX (http://www.magicx.my) in the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (www.utm.my/). I discussed the vision of Engaging People and Machines together and the need of Social Intelligence for that. Presented examples of applied games and discussed why AI characters are important for games targeting social skills. Finished with a discussion of the RAGE project (http://rageproject.eu).

1. Socio-emotional Agency
in Machines
Building Human-Agent Playful Interactions
Rui Prada

2. Associate Professor
Instituto Superior Técnico
Universidade de Lisboa
Coordinator
Specialisation in Games
Game’s Lab Gamification
Consultant
Co-founder, President
Portuguese Society of
Science of Videogames
Author
Avid Gamer

3. Senior Researcher Founding Member
http://rageproject.eu/
Applied
Games and
Gamification
Experience
and Game
Design
Human-Agent
Interaction
Socially
Intelligent
Agents
Imagineering Institute
Visiting Researcher

4. Part I
People and Machines
Together

6. Memorable
Interactions

7. Unforgettable
“Characters”

8. Socially Intelligent
Act Socially

9. Understanding of
Others
Social World
Situation

10. Socio-emotional
Emotions, social relations,
social identity
Instrumental
Shared plans, coordination

11. People’s Perspective
Accept
Engage
Trust

12. Coherence
Expectations
Purpose
Context

13. Human-like qualities
“Personhood”

14. Believability
“The illusion of life”

15. Believability requires a
balance of several qualities

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

19. 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 A. Santos: “Integrating social power into the decision-making of cognitive agents” in Artificial
Intelligence. vol. 241, pp. 1-44, December 2016. Elsevier.

20. Reciprocity
Balance
Heider Balance Theory

21. influence = power- resistance

22. Sources of power
Reward
Coercive
Legitimate
Expert
Referent
French and Raven Sources of Power

23. Social Theatre (SIREN – FP7)

24. 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.

25. Claim and Confer
Social Importance
Kemper Satus-power Interaction Dynamics

26. Cultural traits
Individualism/collectivism
Power distance
Uncertainty avoidance
Masculinity/femininity
Long term/short term orientation
Indulgence/restraint
Hofstede Model of Culture

27. https://geert-hofstede.com/malaysia.html

28. Traveller (ECUTE – FP7)

29. 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.

30. Identity
personal, social (group
memberships)
Tajfel Social-identity Theory

31. salience = accessibility x fit
Tajfel Social-identity Theory

32. INVITE (UTAustin-PT)

33. 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.

34. Emys Risk Player (LIREC – FP7)

35. Playing together a
cooperative physics-based
puzzle platformer
Rui Prada, Phil Lopes, João Catarino, João Quitério, Francisco S. Melo: “The Geometry Friends Game AI Competition” in proceedings of
CIG’2015 - IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, pp. 431-438, Tainan, Taiwan. August 2015. IEEE.

36. Geometry Friends Game AI Competition

38. Part II
AI Characters
in Applied Games

39. Games with Purpose
Games targeted at specific
Learning

40. Treme-treme (2014)

41. MD for a Day (2014)

42. Festarola (2015)

43. JAMP (2016)

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

45. #1
Games enable practice,
exploration and failure

46. #2
Games promote personal
emotional experience

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

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

49. 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

50. 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

51. Coverage and fidelity of the
game interaction space

52. Learning Social Skills
The interaction space should
support exploration and
failure of social actions

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

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

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

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

57. Create a set of reusable
game assets
Push the TRL of research outputs
http://rageproject.eu/

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

60. Get Involved
Try the Assets
http://rageproject.eu/rage-ecosystem/software-
assets-inventory/
http://rageproject.eu/

61. Thank you!
rui.prada@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/rprada
http://labjogos.tecnico.ulisboa.pt
http://spcvideojogos.org
http://rageproject.eu