A study on human like characteristics in real time strategy games

Computer controlled characters (NPCs) are important in any video game to make the game world interesting, give more depth to a game and make the game playable. In almost any game the player has to cooperate with, fight against or interact with NPCs. This is especially true for single-player games but NPCs are also important in most multi-player games. When creating NPCs the developers often strive to create human like characters that behave reasonably intelligent in most cases. We have performed a study aiming to give an idea of the characteristics of human like NPCs in real-time strategy (RTS) games. In the study participants were asked to watch a recording of an RTS game and decide and motivate if the players in the game were controlled by a human player or a computer. We recorded matches were human players played against bots as well as bots playing against other bots. The results were categorized into different groups and they showed that some characteristics, for example simultaneous movement, are perceived as very bot-like and other things such as ability to try different tactics are perceived as humanlike.