A Taxonomy of Social Roles for Agents in Games

Exploring user experience and performance of a tedious task through human–agent relationship

“…www.nature.com/scientificreports/ Regarding the effect of an agent's responsiveness, previous research has shown that when individuals are faced with certain situations (for example, tedious or stressful situations), only presenting a virtual partner is insufficient; what significantly improves an individual's emotional experience is the explicit demonstration of attentiveness and responsiveness by the partner 34,55 . Providing appropriate verbal/nonverbal feedback from agents helps users feel cared for and understood, leading to a high degree of acceptance of the agent 4,66 . Therefore, agents with responsiveness can facilitate a sense of rapport and personal involvement through which users can more easily feel closeness and intimacy in human-agent interaction [67][68][69] .…”

“…Persona effect and social cues of agent. Using agents in a virtual environment is a typical element and an added value that has a significant impact on user experience 4 . The positive effect of virtual agents occurring in an interactive virtual learning environment has been studied and is known as the persona effect.…”

“…The co-existence of people and these agents significantly promotes the study of human-agent interaction 2 . Agents are often given roles (for example, the roles of the teacher and partner 3 ) based on which agents interact with people and assist people through virtual activities 4 .…”

The Moral Service of Trans NPCs: Examining the Roles of Transgender Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Video Games

“…The various schemas that have been used to describe or categorize video game NPCs (e.g. Aarseth, 2012; Bartle, 2004; Brusentsev et al, 2012; Rato & Prada, 2021; Warpefelt, 2016) focus on either the gameplay dimension, the narrative dimension, or both. While this is useful in analyzing NPCs’ in-game functions and, to some extent, their relationship to players, it does not capture the political role of NPCs representing minoritarian identities.…”

“…In digital games, human players control PCs via input devices like controllers or keyboards, and the game system and AIs control the NPCs. Rato and Prada (2021) define NPCs as any game agents who are not controlled by players, and emphasize that NPCs often have both narrative and gameplay functions; in other words, their social interactions have "some interpretation in the narrative world" (p. 79).…”