Authors:
Joan Casas-Roma
1
;
Mark J. Nelson
2
;
Joan Arnedo-Moreno
3
;
Swen E. Gaudl
1
and
Rob Saunders
1
Affiliations:
1
The Metamakers Institute, Falmouth University, Cornwall and U.K.
;
2
Department of Computer Science, American University, Washington D.C. and U.S.A.
;
3
Estudis d’Informàtica, Multimedia i Telecomunicació, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona and Spain
Keyword(s):
Role-Playing Games, Multi-Agent Systems, Morality Systems, Artificial Societies.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agent Models and Architectures
;
Agents
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Bioinformatics
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Methodologies and Technologies
;
Multi-Agent Systems
;
Operational Research
;
Simulation
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
Computer role-playing games (RPGs) often include a simulated morality system as a core design element. Games’ morality systems can include both god’s eye view aspects, in which certain actions are inherently judged by the simulated world to be good or evil, as well as social simulations, in which non-player characters (NPCs) react to judgments of the player’s and each others’ activities. Games with a larger amount of social simulation have clear affinities to multi-agent systems (MAS) research on artificial societies. They differ in a number of key respects, however, due to a mixture of pragmatic game-design considerations and their typically strong embeddedness in narrative arcs, resulting in many important aspects of moral systems being represented using explicitly scripted scenarios rather than through agent-based simulations. In this position paper, we argue that these similarities and differences make RPGs a promising challenge domain for MAS research, highlighting features such
as moral dilemmas situated in more organic settings than seen in game-theoretic models of social dilemmas, and heterogeneous representations of morality that use both moral calculus systems and social simulation. We illustrate some possible approaches using a case study of the morality systems in the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
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