Believable and Effective AI Agents in Virtual Worlds

Abstract

The rapid development of complex virtual worlds (most notably, in 3D computer and video games) introduces new challenges for the creation of virtual agents, controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Two important subproblems in this topic area which need to be addressed are (a) believability and (b) effectiveness of agents’ behavior, i.e., human-likeness of the characters and high ability to achieving their own goals. In this paper, the authors study current approaches to believability and effectiveness of AI behavior in virtual worlds. They examine the concepts of believability and effectiveness, and analyze several successful attempts to address these challenges.