Cute Helper: A Study on the Effect of Virtual Character Expressions on Players’ Engagement in a Game for Collecting Artwork Descriptions

This study implements a virtual character as a moderator in JUSTIN, a game designed and developed for collecting descriptions of ukiyo-e artworks on a live-streaming platform. The game has shown to be effective. However, the repetitive nature and the necessity to play JUSTIN many rounds make its players less interested in continuing the game. Hence, we examine if a virtual character can improve the player’s enjoyment and engagement experience. To conduct a control experiment, we develop a prototype that simulates JUSTIN, but with only one player playing the game at a time, and run an experiment with it. Our preliminary results show that a virtual character that changes its expression according to the game situation is promising in promoting the enjoyment and engagement of JUSTIN players.