Jesse Schell is one of the most articulate, insightful people developing games and talking about their future. At a recent keynote at a Unity3D conference, he talked about virtual characters as a crucial part of the future of games and other online experiences. As usual he makes a lot of excellent points about virtual characters remembering you and conversing with you, but on one — how we interact emotionally with virtual characters — I have to disagree with him:
“Emotions are easily recognized by humans, but computers must be part of that, said Schell. “Once we can do that we can sense your emotions,” said Schell, developers can create “a game where you actually have to act, or feel emotions. A game where someone tells you where there dog just died and if you can’t manage to cry then no, you’re not getting to the next level!”” (as covered by Gamasutra)
First, I appreciate Jesse stepping up with concrete predictions and other musings — as he says, this is a great way to predict (and create) the future. That said, this one is exactly backwards: the emotional connection with virtual characters doesn’t come because we emote effectively, but because the characters themselves have and display emotions that we then relate to. Their emotions make them more real to us, and allow us to feel something similar. (more…)
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