Jessy: A conversational assistant for tutoring digital board games

Abstract

We present Jessy, an interactive intelligent digital board game assistant for The Royal Game of Ur. Jessy is capable of answering questions regarding the game rules, giving suggestions for best moves considering the player's state, and informing the player about the important events in the game. An explanatory non-comparative study was conducted to evaluate the usability and usefulness of Jessy in engaging and learning how to play the game. The study showed Jessy was helpful in general and the findings suggest insights on how to craft Jessy for its target application - difficult board games.