The Trees Framework Meets Generative Ai: Evaluating Player Readiness For Ai-Enhanced Npcs In Educational Game Experiences

Starting from in-game virtual tourism, an emerging phenomenon in which players explore rich game worlds as if visiting real destinations, this study examines how artificial intelligence-equipped non-player characters (AI-NPCs) may support touristic engagement, ethical reflection, exploratory learning, environmental awareness, and narrative depth. The TREES framework is adopted as a theoreti-cal lens to investigate five dimensions of responsible game-based experiences: Tourism, Responsibility, Exploration, Environment, and Story. A preliminary exploratory study was conducted using a 77-item custom questionnaire adminis-tered to 23 serious gamers. The findings suggest generally positive attitudes to-ward AI-NPCs as virtual guides, educational mediators, and story companions across all TREES dimensions, while also highlighting the exploratory nature and limited generalizability of the results. Overall, the study offers an initial empirical contribution to ongoing discussions on how TREES-aligned AI-NPCs may sup-port engagement and learning in serious game contexts.