EAGER: Spy Feet: Natural Language Generation for Games for Girls

这个探索性的项目研究了如何自动生成对话贡献和管理对话的技术可以纳入到户外角色扮演电脑游戏的叙事结构中，如任务和神秘。基本假设是，在交互式游戏中有效使用自然语言和对话技术最终将导致更引人注目和更具吸引力的游戏，吸引更广泛的人群，并可用于更广泛的教育，辅助和娱乐应用。作为测试团队研究理念的工具，我们开发了一款基于身体活动的社交角色扮演神秘游戏原型《间谍的脚》，旨在鼓励年轻女性和女孩进行身体活动。《间谍的脚》运行在配备GPS的移动的设备上，游戏世界被映射到一个由游戏中情节点使用的路径和地标组成的户外环境。玩家必须在与游戏角色对话的地标之间行走，或者在线索所在的地方行走，从而在玩游戏时覆盖大量的自然地形。 Spy Feet使用原型自然语言生成引擎Spy-Gen，动态生成对话游戏叙事序列，其特征和交互风格针对年轻女性和女孩。Spy Feet使用Spy-Gen动态地调整游戏的各个方面以适应用户及其环境，以探索这些技术如何导致不同的游戏体验和结果。

This exploratory project examines how techniques for automatically generating dialog contributions and managing dialog can be incorporated into the narrative structures of outdoor role-playing computer games, such as quests and mysteries. The underlying hypothesis is that the effective use of natural language and dialog technologies in interactive games will eventually lead to more compelling and engaging games, appealing to a much wider segment of the population, and usable for a much wider range of educational, assistive and entertainment applications. As a vehicle for testing the team's research ideas, a prototype novel physical-activity based social role-playing mystery game, Spy Feet is implemented, aimed at encouraging physical activity in young women and girls.Spy Feet runs on mobile devices equipped with GPS, and the game world is mapped onto an outdoor environment consisting of paths and landmarks that are used by plot points in the game. Players must walk between landmarks where dialogs with game characters take place or where clues are located, thus covering a significant amount of a natural terrain while playing the game. Spy Feet utilizes a prototype natural language generation engine, Spy-Gen, that dynamically generates dialogue game narrative sequences whose characterizations and interaction style is targeted at young women and girls. Spy Feet uses Spy-Gen to dynamically adapt aspects of game play to the user and her environment in order to explore how such techniques lead to different game play experiences and outcomes.