A Realistic Reaction System for Modern Video Games

The substantial growth of the video game industry has fueled a search for new technologies and methodologies for providing rich and rewarding experiences for players of modern video games. Many of the most popular games offer visually rich and compelling environments to support a higher level of believability and immersion for the players. Recent generations of games have also offered great advancements in areas like realistic physics, engaging audio, and believable artificial intelligence. Our current work, however, focuses on oft-overlooked and neglected area of development– providing societal-like relationships between the characters and objects of the game world. A dynamic and reactive relationship system opens up new directions for interaction within a game world to be explored. In this paper, we discuss our work on the development of a realistic reaction system to support relationship modeling and representation in modern video games, and outline our experiences in using it to date.