Lit Review Proposal

Synthetic characters are in more places than one might think. On websites, they function primarily as a more comfortable means of site navigation for users by providing an illusion of human-to-human interaction. In video games, they act as non-player characters, characters whose actions are not directly controlled by the player, to give the game world an illusion of actuality. Regardless of their interactive capabilities, they are still superficial illusions. And in order to create more believable synthetic characters, thus deepening the illusion, we must impart our social norms and expectations onto them. By doing so, we provide ourselves with opportunities to better identify with these created characters.

The critical component in developing any believable synthetic character is personality, which defines his or her motivations which in turn calculates his or her actions. Currently, many models and frameworks provide psychologists, and others interested in human behavior, a means to analyze various personality types. For instance, a value-based framework is where a synthetic character's sensory perceptions are evaluated by predefined emotions, motivations and prior perceptions; this evaluation results in the character performing an action. However these models are rudimentary. They lack the ability for characters to remember previous sensory input, thus disrupting the immersion of their actions.

But because these models and frameworks can ultimately produce more believable character interactions (with minor modifications), they can be applied in video games and virtual reality therapy. The creation of more immersive characters, with a broad range of emotionally structured motivations, engenders a more immersive virtual environment. This new immersive virtual world enables users to project themselves into the world providing them with human-to-human interactions with these synthetic characters.