Facilitative Agents with Deliberate Handicaps in Traditional Competitive Games for Improved Playability

Abstract

With the necessity of oral communication, traditional games have shown advantages in cultivating players' social skills. Recently with the widespread of consumer-oriented virtual reality devices, remote traditional games have also been introduced to the post-pandemic era. Meanwhile, individual difference in manipulation proficiency can lead to unintended gaps in play skills and thus jeopardize the communication quality between players. To compensate for such gap, we investigate the effectiveness of a facilitative agent. We conducted a Wizard of Oz experiment with an agent that is able to provide handicaps based on the game dynamics. This paper presents an evaluation of the impact of robot facilitator intervention on the improvement of social skills and entertaining, offering insight into novel methodologies for social skill development in an increasingly remote and digital society.