From Instructor to Collaborator: What a 90-Participant Study Reveals about Human-Agent Collaboration in a Mobile Serious Game

ArXi:2605.27384v1 Announce Type: cross This position paper reflects empirical data collected during my PhD from a large-scale within-subjects study (N = 90). The study compared a highly human-like, spoken embodied conversational agent (ECA) against a low human-like text base agent (no embodiment, text bubble only) within a mobile, Unity-developed game about pre-decimal UK currency. The game included two agents with different roles-an Instructor (Alex) and a Shopkeeper/Collaborator. Users interacted using voice and mouse input.