The Importance of Creating a Believable Character
We at the Interbots Initiative have always felt that a believable character is critical to creating a truly immersive, entertaining interaction. While much of the work we have done is highly technical, our end goal is a solid and engaging experience. We don't implement technology for technology's sake, and would rather not support a feature or capability if we feel that it doesn't meet the standards of the character we're trying to create. This is key to what we do. Guests should forget they're interacting with an autonomous hunk of wires, metal, and plastic. They should see the character in front of them, not the robot. No matter how impressive and complicated the technology becomes, if an engaging personality has not been created then you don't have an audience.
If a believable character is so important, why don't you just use live actors in your interactive experiences?
While a trained actor can be more immersive, entertaining, and interesting than a synthetic being, an animatronic character can do many things that a live actor cannot, such as:
- Working 24 hours a day / 7 days a week
- Taking completely non-human forms (e.g. talking soup cans)
- Ensuring that the show content is always delivered accurately
- Being able to be duplicated and distributed exactly
- Offering an audience the novel experience of interacting with a robot
- Operating completely autonomously
Why not create a software agent instead of going through the trouble of designing and fabricating physical robots?
First of all, interactive software agents have been done before, and here at the ETC we enjoy breaking new ground in the field of entertainment technology. As far as we know, nobody else has created complete, interactive experiences with an animatronic character.
We acknowledge that it's much easier to make a software agent that lives in a virtual space, whether embedded on a web page or as a dedicated application, but building a physical character has benefits that make it worthwhile:
- It's a tangible real-world interface to a virtual character entity - embodying the character places it in the same realm as the people sharing its physical space.
- We believe it will assist those unfamiliar with digital conventions connect more readily with it as a "real" character that they can interact with.
- It closely parallels the benefits of traditional "active" mediums such as stage theater or improv comedy, in which the guest is more likely to connect with the performer on stage, whether it's through eye contact or the ability of the actor to alter their performance based on the response of the audience.
Are you trying to create artificial intelligence?
Nope! What we are really doing is akin to designing a clever magic trick -- if the audience gives in, they think they are talking to a living, breathing character. In other terms: the suspension of disbelief. And, if we are successful in suspending the audience's disbelief with technology, that's a cool thing!
Our focus is on engaging humans in an entertaining experience, not creating artificial intelligence. In terms of creating the illusion of a living character, the audience cannot distinguish between a character that "thinks like a human" and a character that "appears to think like a human." To this degree, we are not concerned with replicating human intellect and emotional processes; rather we wish to emulate it. Artificial Intelligence is an incredible challenge in and of itself that does not necessarily need to be solved in order to make a character believable.
There's a mantra that's making its way around the video game and movie industries now that the graphics (the interface in their cases) in an average work are approaching unprecedented detail. It's the desire for believability rather than realism. Similarly, we have an embodied character that lives in a physically detailed reality, but is only as "smart" as what's been pre-programmed into him. We're trying to create an experience in which you interact with a character that you believe is real, but not necessarily because they're truly intelligent. The characters in Pixar's movies aren't real and independently intelligent, but you believe in them as characters in their own domain.
Character Profiles
Quasi:
Around 12 years old, shy, introverted, uncoordinated, can't play sports, no legs, allergies, smaller range of motions, restricted to kiosk, doesn't get out much, glasses, that awkward big kid from middle school, doesn't look anyone in the eyes, has an overprotective parent who won't let anyone play with him because he might break, parents won't let him travel, wears water wings: "the river is dangerously close", kind of jaded and cynical.
"Bling" (working title):
Around 10-11 years old, more outgoing, more social, more daring, extroverted, sassy, likes to dance, tries to get Quasi to come out of his shell, respects and looks up to Quasi but wants him to have fun, wants to work with kids and help animals, is a hippie, dispenses granola, only gives you granola/candy if you throw your recyclables in her recycling bin, more naive, more idealistic, when she travels she collects stickers and patches from places she's been, loves taking pictures and takes pictures all the time, "hey, I've visited Florida, why won't you come with me?", "come on, just come out and play this once."