Modelling loitering character agents in conflict situations: Visualizing and evaluating interpersonal conflict strategies

The Human Media Interaction (HMI) group is developing a serious game for police officers in training with the cooperation of the Dutch national police and Dutch police academy. This serious game uses interactive storytelling techniques and is focused on giving the police officers some practical training when it comes to their social skills and social awareness regarding juveniles and their environment. In this research I looked at modelling the character agents that represent the loitering juveniles. The scenario that is used presents a conflict between the juveniles and the police officer. I modelled interpersonal conflict behaviour and visualized it in the non-verbal behaviour of the virtual agent. The visualizations of the conflict strategies are tested before they are used to test the model. The model is evaluated in a user experiment with several short conversations presented in comic form.