The Author Behind The Joke : The effects of perceived authorship and humour style on player engagement in a visual novel

Sammanfattning

This thesis addresses the research gap regarding how perceived authorship and humour styles affect engagement in a gaming context within the field of HCI. The study explores how perceived authorship influences engagement with AI-generated scripts, using Self- enhancing and Self-defeating humour styles embedded in a visual novel prototype. This mixed method study employs a two-by-two design to examine the user’s perceptions of an AI author versus a falsely attributed human author, achieved through a placebo-based authorship manipulation. Key findings indicate that the perceived authorship is a key factor in shaping engagement, favouring human authors over AI. Furthermore, perceived authorship influenced participants’ interpretations and evaluations of humorous dialogue in AI authored content. Both humour styles showed higher engagement when attributed to the human author. Self-defeating humour was preferred for the AI author, while Self-enhancing showed higher engagement in the human author. The research contributes to a deeper understanding of how engagement is influenced by perceived authors and humour styles, offering insights into how authorship framing can influence users’ interpretations and evaluations within a humorous dialogue context, while providing design implications for engaging Human-AI interactions.