Artificial Playfulness - A Tool for Automated Agent-Based Playtesting.

Usertesting is commonly employed in games user research (GUR) to understand the experience of players interacting with digital games. However, recruitment and testing with human users can be laborious and resource-intensive, particularly for independent developers. To help mitigate these obstacles, we are developing a framework for simulated testing sessions with agents driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Specifically, we aim to imitate the navigation of human players in a virtual world. By mimicking the tendency of users to wander, explore, become lost, and so on, these agents may be used to identify basic issues with a game's world and level design, enabling informed iteration earlier in the development process. Here, we detail our progress in developing a framework for configurable agent navigation and simple visualization of simulated data. Ultimately, we hope to provide a basis for the development of a tool for simulation-driven usability testing in games.