DARPA IMMERSE

IMMERSE is a US military funded program to simulate social interactions using the Unity game engine. As described by Dr. Joshua Allen McCoy:

"The goal of the project is to produce a game-based training environment that teaches people how interact as 'good strangers' via practicing the skills necessary to have successful social interactions in unfamiliar languages and context. This will be accomplished via virtual dramatic scenarios, realized within the Unity game engine, in which the player interacts with computer-controlled autonomous characters in high-consequence social environments, learning how to quickly recognize and navigate the social interactions norms in these environments. We build upon the autonomous character and story management technologies successfully demonstrated in the interactive drama Façade, and the social simulation system successfully demonstrated in the experimental game Prom Week."

People
Five teams worked on IMMERSE.

UC Santa Cruz
People at the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz:


 * Dan Shapiro Project director
 * Andrew Stern Games R&D
 * Joshua Allen McCoy - postdoctorate
 * Reid Swanson - postdoctorate
 * Mike Treanor - Co-author of a paper on IMMERSE titled "Creating Playable Social Experiences through Whole-body Interaction with Virtual Characters"
 * Karen Tanenbaum - Assistant Project Scientist
 * Craig Reynolds - Developer

BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon located in Boston.


 * William Ferguson - lead scientist.

Organizations

 * DARPA Strategic Social Interaction Modules
 * American University Game Lab
 * UC Santa Cruz Center for Games and Playable Media Expressive Intelligence Studio

Popido's conspiracy theory
Popido at the Escapist forums alleges that Zoe Quinn's friends are funded by DARPA through the IMMERSE project, based on DiGRA having posted a job announcement for IMMERSE and Maya Kramer having attended DiGRA.


 * Zoe is friendly with Maya on Twitter.


 * Maya works as PR for Silverstring Media.


 * An employee and an advisor of Silverstring Media attended the DiGRA conference.


 * Staff members of the IMMERSE Project have volunteered for DiGRA.


 * The IMMERSE Project is funded by DARPA.