IMD Forum for 3/21/07: Mark Meadows
Speaker: Mark Stephen Meadows
Time: Wednesday, March 21, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)
Title: "The Emotion Machine called 'NPC'"
Abstract: As any DM worth his dice will tell you, the NPC is a literary form it's a storytelling tool. But in order to do their job NPCs need to be able to change the story, understand the players' emotions, react to them, and affect how the player feels. This talk shows how it can be and is being done technically and psychologically.
Session Description: This talk looks at psychology and AI. In the first half of the session we look at player psychology and examine how mirror neurons (which we all have) cause us to identify with characters, and why. We look at Jungian archetypes and their important role in games and our emotional responses. We then consider a system for an "Emotional User Interface" which will allow a game to keep track of how a player is emotionally responding, thereby increasing storytelling capacities. In the second half of the session we look at how characters can be harnessed with EUIs so that an NPC can be what it was meant to be; a narrative vessel. This examination looks at the emotional, social, intellectual, and physical characteristics of NPCs and discusses why it is important that we throw out traditional A.I. approaches and work towards designing true digital humans with today's technology. We close the session with a few questions, such as, "What happens when we begin falling in love with our robots?" and "What is the emotional equivalent of a Turing Test?" Discussion is welcomed.
Background: Mark is a visual artist, writer, and engineer. He designs digital humans, builds virtual worlds, and engineers emotional interfaces. In 2006 he founded HeadCase Humanufacturing, a company that builds digital humans, where he currently works as Creative Director, designing and building autonomous characters. He is also author of the acclaimed text: " Pause & Effect; The Art of Interactive Narrative" (book website here.) .
His extensive bio is here.