Modeling realistic altruism for nonplayer characters (NPCs) is an interesting problem with substantive potential benefits to game creators and players, in the form of more believable game characters and immersive games. As an attempt at showing the potential for altruistic behavior in non-player characters, this paper first describes an experiment to investigate how those behaviors will change the behavior of game agents being acted upon by other well-established behavioral algorithms. A second experiment was conducted to investigate how humans would interpret altruistic behavior in game agents. In particular, the experiment focused on whether human observers would attribute emotional characteristics and motivations to altruistic game agents.

Recommended Citation: Palmer D., Guinn C., Kline D., Patterson E., (2013). Measuring the Effects of Altruism on Game Agent Survivability and Player Perceptions. UNCW MS CSIS Proceedings. V. 7 , N. 8 .