Chemical Life: Knowledge-based Personality, Emotion and Action Cues in Educational Games

Fengsen Gao, Ke Fang, Wai Kin Victor Chan

Abstract: This paper proposes an educational game design framework named the Knowledge-based Personality, Emotion, and Action Cues (KPEAC). It aims to naturally enhance the user's intrinsic motivation and learning effectiveness by employing these novel Anthropomorphic Design Cues (ADC). As an example of this framework, we developed Chemical Life, a chemistry education game, where existing atoms and molecules act as characters with assigned personality traits, emotions, and reactions according to chemical rules. For instance, sodium atoms with unstable properties exhibit neuroticism, while oxygen molecules, which readily engage in various reactions, demonstrate openness. These characters engage in dialogues generated with the assistance of a large language model (LLM). Players initially interact with these chemical characters, immersing themselves in their personalities and emotions, before guiding them to perform the appropriate chemical reactions. Preliminary experimental results indicate that this framework stimulates users’ intrinsic motivation and facilitates knowledge acquisition in a proactively goal-driven manner. It also provides new directions for the application of ADC and LLMs in the field of educational games.