Behavioural modelling is an important part of NPC development for games. Should emotive modelling be part of that development?

Behavioural modelling is an important part of NPC development for games and it has grown overtime. What it does is add character to the game you are playing, behavioural modelling impacts the player experience and how satisfied within the game, behavioural modelling also crosses over with interactive storytelling, the reason why this is that behavioural modelling is mainly focused on giving the NPC high levels of AI. It also creates a basis for game developer to give their game, their own twist on the game.

I do think that emotive modelling should be part of that development process, the reason why I think is that everyone has emotions, that is what makes us human, therefore if I play a game and the character that I playing has not emotion or facial expression what so ever it makes the game really dull and sometimes a chore to play and video games should not do that, as the whole point of video games is to have fun and forget about everything else and be immersed into that game universe that the developers have created. I think emotive modelling is an important part of game design, Game AI agents today do not reflect the affective aspects of human behaviour.  Sometimes games do not reflect the effects of human emotional state on an agent’s decision-making behaviour.  So, I think developers should focus more upon emotive modelling as it could have a bigger impact upon the game that they are creating.

Consider your favourite video game. If it contains AI controlled agents how individualistic are they and their behaviours, and, how might you set about improving them?

One of my favourite video game is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt created by CD Projekt Red has very connected and complex open world and different elements and it always changes every time that you play the game, and the game revolves around the decisions that your character ‘Geralt Of Rivia’ does and that is all up the player decisions made within the game. The Witcher 3’s AI is very complex and very well done there are monsters in this game and they react to everything that you do, at times if you don not want to face the monster head on its own lair you can always try to lure them into a town/village, but it is extremely difficult and at times monster would know when they are in danger and they tend to flee back, even at times the towns people would also help or some of them would run away, which I think is awesome. There is time even animals and monsters fight each other in the distance and that had nothing to do with the player, the world has a mind of its own and it can sometimes be punishing or rewarding and that is makes the game fun to play, overall, this is a living world, it interacts with itself as well as with the player. One AI element that I would change is the combat between human’s opponents as it is very easy because they always do the same thing and it is very easy to counter, so the way I would change is that the humans adapt and find different ways to kill you rather doing the same thing every battle and making it easy.

The Witcher 3 CM Explains Advanced AI and Why Decapitations Might Not Be Physically Accurate