Information and Decision-making in Immersive Digital Environments

In this paper, we describe an interactive three-dimensional environment for exploring historical scenarios, and testing theories of decision-making, such as prospect theory or expected utility. The created environment exists within the Neverwinter Nights game engine. The vuser interacts with multiple agents, whose dialogue and action are defined in the NWScript scripting language. The scenarios, which attempt some degree of historical accuracy, are designed to present historical decision points encountered by political or military leaders in the past. By bringing about these decisions, the vuser experiences a sense of agency. In addition to entertaining and teaching about historical circumstances, the scenarios can evaluate hypotheses about decision-making; in our scenario, we demonstrate how hypotheses can be tested with respect to prospect theory. We provide as an example scenario the period between the first and second Punic Wars, in which historically inspired dialog immerses the vuser by framing a decision problem.