Summary:
As the first application I was a part of creating and publishing, Gods of Neon City was also the first HCI study I worked on. I worked on the project from February 2016 to May 2017. As a developer, I worked as a lead scene designer where I worked on QA Testing, scene design, writing process, and final polishing for publishing. As a researcher, I worked on research methodologies, analyzing results, and presenting our results at the Intelligent Virtual Agents Conference (IVA).
What is the Gods of Neon City application?
Gods of Neon City is a VR application created to study the relationship between humans and Embodied Conversational Agents, otherwise known as ECAs. Specifically, our research lab was interested when hints of betrayal is sowed between the human, or the player of the application, and the ECA. Thus, Gods of Neon City was created where the player follows detective Taema Lenz (ECA) who is searching for the missing amulet of Te Pourri. Playing as the co-detective, the player must work with Taema by talking to her and figuring out the puzzle of the missing amulet before the city comes to a disastrous end.
My Contribution
During the development of Gods of Neon City, I worked as a lead scene developer in charge of designing and testing scenes, as well as assisting in the implementation of the Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) Taema, and the writing process. I also helped improve and assist with the final production for publishing.
The Research
For the research aspect of Gods of Neon City, we posed the main question:
How will users react when they are constantly given hints an ECA (Embodied Conversational Agent), such as Taema, is going to betray them?
The research paper discussing our methodologies and research results was accepted at the Intelligent Virtual Agents Conference (IVA). I had the honor of presenting our results at the conference taking place in Sydney, Australia. Additionally, our research project also won Best Video at the IVA Gala. Watch the video below soon.
Check out the paper here where I am featured as a co-author.
