Affective Computing for Computer Games: Bots with Emotions

Just like traditional AI applications, game AI mainly focuses on rational inference. But in the real world, human decision making is not only involving rationality, but also sense. In this book, we propose an architecture for the bot designers to include affective computing in a game bot by attributing emotions to the bot. The architecture is based upon a variety of theories, including the famous OCC model. It treats Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Distress as five basic emotions. It uses three emotional variables, namely, Desirability of an event, Blameworthiness or Praiseworthiness of an action, and Appealingness of an object, to evaluate how a specific emotion is affected by the environment. In addition to an ordinary Rational Action Engine, which controls the rational behavior of a bot, we add an Emotional Action Engine in the architecture to make the emotional behavior possible. An Action Arbitrator is equipped to decide, given a specific time and space, whether a bot should follow the rational or emotional inference. The arbitrator simulates how humans solve the conflicts between reason and emotion.