body language and the need for body language generators

As more serious games are created, the study and use of body language will increase. And we will see a growing use of dynamic body language generators.

Specifically, the body language generators will take a few analogue variables, such as tension (high to low) vs. alignment with player or current topic (high to low), and output the appropriate body language. So in this case, if both alignment and tension were high, the computer character might be excited, and express the appropriate behavior to the player.

Civilization IV uses one dimension, happiness on one extreme and anger at player at the other, to generate body language animations.

Likewise, the generator must also take into account a few others, longer term attributes such as culture, position, props, and "last thing done." Thus an Iraqi police officer standing up with a weapon will respond differently than a female reporter sitting in Chicago.

This, as Stephen Downes points out, is not unique to serious games. But in the same way that computer games over the years have built up increasingly rich libraries of animations (and langague) around combat, movement, and interacting with on-screen objects, so now must serious games build up libraries of people in tight, dynamic, real-time, first person interpersonal situations. Here, nuances of expression will be as meaningful as a an enemy taking cover in a first person shooter.

Motion Capture: Here I am during a motion-capture session.

It will be challenging to creat dynamic body language generators, but still far easier than the subsequent challenge of making dynamic language generators.