Abstract
Virtual Reality is a technology which is quickly leaving the laboratory and being placed in the hands of the consumer. With many large hardware manufacturers and games development studios investing heavily in the future of the technology, we are starting to see the first VR-based games become available. But will the consumerization of VR hardware change how games developers consider Artificial Intelligence? In this study, we begin by discussing how the perception of an AI-based character may change how a user interacts with it. Based on this survey, we ask the following question: “Do AI characters appear more or less human-like though Virtual Reality, as opposed to typical monitor-based viewing mediums?” We conduct a study where 16 participants play two games (a First Person Shooter (FPS), and a racing game), both played through VR and a monitor (4 games in total). In this study, the participants are told that they will play two games against another human participant, and two against an AI driven character and that they must make a judgement on what they are playing against for each game. However, they actually play against identical AI characters in both viewing instances of the two games. The results show a clear split in assessment for the two games; when the racing game was played through VR, the participants concluded that their opponent was Human; however, when played through the monitor, they concluded they were playing against an AI. However, the opposite trend is apparent when the participants played the FPS game. We conclude the VR does change the way we perceive AI characters; however this change in perception needs to be further investigated.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank HPC Wales for providing their facilities and technical support during the running of the experiments described in this research. Chris Headleand would also like to thank Fujitsu for their ongoing financial support.
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Headleand, C.J., Henshall, G., Cenydd, L.A., Teahan, W.J. (2015). The Influence of Virtual Reality on the Perception of Artificial Intelligence Characters in Games. In: Bramer, M., Petridis, M. (eds) Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XXXII. SGAI 2015. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25032-8_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25032-8_26
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