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An easy to author dialogue management system for serious games

Published: 24 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

This article describes an architecture for a dialogue management system to be employed in serious games for natural language interaction with nonplayer characters. The aim of this work is to improve the learning experience by enhancing the immersiveness felt by the player. The system is implemented in a Service Oriented Architecture perspective and it exposes its functionalities through Web services. It also provides an easy to use authoring tool, which allows cultural heritage experts to define the character's knowledge without the need for learning a scripting language. We tested the system by embedding it in a simple serious game, where the user could interact with the virtual representation of a XVI century Geneoese artist, Luca Cambiaso, in order to acquire knowledge about his life and artworks. These early lab test results showed a high level of appreciation for the usability of the system and for the user engagement. Tests also showed that the system is a good didactic tool, since players demonstrated a similar level of knowledge acquisition to that achieved by reading a text.

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    Published In

    cover image Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
    Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage   Volume 6, Issue 2
    Special issue on serious games for cultural heritage
    May 2013
    82 pages
    ISSN:1556-4673
    EISSN:1556-4711
    DOI:10.1145/2460376
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 24 May 2013
    Accepted: 01 December 2012
    Revised: 01 October 2012
    Received: 01 July 2012
    Published in JOCCH Volume 6, Issue 2

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    Author Tags

    1. Serious games
    2. and natural language
    3. conversational agents
    4. dialogue systems
    5. nonplayer character

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    • (2024)Alessandro De Gloria, a Pioneer in Electronic Engineering ApplicationsApplications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society10.1007/978-3-031-48121-5_1(3-11)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2024
    • (2023)Curb your enthusiasm: Examining the customer experience with Alexa and its marketing outcomesJournal of Retailing and Consumer Services10.1016/j.jretconser.2022.10322071(103220)Online publication date: Mar-2023
    • (2020)Intelligent Pedagogic Agents (IPAs) in GEA2, an Educational Game to Teach STEM TopicsMethodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, 10th International Conference. Workshops10.1007/978-3-030-52287-2_23(226-236)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2020
    • (2017)Review of the Use of AI Techniques in Serious Games: Decision Making and Machine LearningIEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games10.1109/TCIAIG.2015.25125929:2(133-152)Online publication date: Jun-2017
    • (2017)Interaction and Communication in an Immersive Learning Game: The Challenges of Modelling Real-Time Collaboration in a Virtual Operating RoomSerious Games and Edutainment Applications10.1007/978-3-319-51645-5_7(147-186)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2017
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    • (2016)Game@School. Teaching Through Gaming and Mobile-Based Tutoring SystemsIntelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment10.1007/978-3-319-49616-0_4(34-44)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2016
    • (2015)Communication and Knowledge Sharing in an Immersive Learning Game2015 7th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-Games)10.1109/VS-GAMES.2015.7295768(1-8)Online publication date: Sep-2015
    • (2014)Interacting with Traditional Chinese Culture through Natural LanguageJournal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)10.1145/25971837:3(1-19)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2014
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