Methodology for building believable social agents

Abstract

Believable agents are defined to be interactive versions of quality characters in traditional artistic media like film. Such agents are useful in applications such as interactive drama, improvisation systems, virtual environments, and user interfaces. The focus of this work is to create believable agents that are able to consistently display an artistic personality (as opposed to a psychological personality) during social interactions. I provide a two-part methodology for building believable social behaviors on a character-by-character basis. The methodology suggests heuristics to help agent builders create personality-rich social behaviors. The methodology also proposes a minimalist approach to modeling other characters in the environment that I have found can lead to social behaviors with surprisingly simple representations of other characters. I have created a number of agents with this methodology that users have found to be good characters with clearly defined personalities and that only occasionally disrupt the user's suspension of disbelief.