  Kawaii is the Japanese concept of cute++, a global export with local
characteristics. Recent work has explored kawaii as a feature of user
experience (UX) with social robots, virtual characters, and voice assistants,
i.e., kawaii vocalics. Games have a long history of incorporating characters
that use voice as a means of expressing kawaii. Nevertheless, no work to date
has evaluated kawaii game voices or mapped out a model of kawaii game vocalics.
In this work, we explored whether and how a model of kawaii vocalics maps onto
game character voices. We conducted an online perceptions study (N=157) using
18 voices from kawaii characters in Japanese games. We replicated the results
for computer voice and discovered nuanced relationships between gender and age,
especially youthfulness, agelessness, gender ambiguity, and gender neutrality.
We provide our initial model and advocate for future work on character visuals
and within play contexts.
