Khoo, A., Zubek, R. 2002. “Applying Inexpensive AI Techniques to Computer Games.” IEEE Intelligent Systems. 17(4): 48-53.

Also, after reading a transcript between ALICE and Alan, I’m starting to be more convinced of the importance of a sense of humor, or at least a display of attitude. Of course, getting back to motivation, it helps that Alan has something he wants to prove.

Also, the need to make us want to talk to them obviously starts before the conversation. Bots are pitched as characters at present — you go and talk with a personality (just about all bots have names and this is probably due to the community being Loebner Prize oriented rather than creatively). Many bots aren’t really pitched as a personality in a dramatic situation (like character comedy, a fish out of water type tensions). Good characters imply a story, like Saucy Jacky as you mentioned, and John Lennon (both from the same company: Persona Bots). There are some bots that are framed around an event though, rather than a personality. See Timothy Marsh’s Elevator Bot and another that I don’t have permission to cite as yet but which is an audition scene. This later addresses nicely your second point:

How is the user being assimilated into the encounter through the address of the chatbot?

It has the user represented on the screen as a co-bot-actor. The users role is implied, therefore, visually and in the content with direct address from the bot informing the user what they are supposed to do. Elevator bot outlines the situation and you know pretty quickly what you’re trying to do. They’re both goal-oriented. These are, of course, the same issues that game designers face with integrating and representing the player. Some papers on first and third person integration in games would be good here…

To combine some of these comments you quote, it seems to me that more important than the character of the bot is the context suggested by the character.

As in:

the author invented a method of making the rules for a conversation serve as a dramatic structure for an interactive scene.

and here:

they represent, not “chat machines,” but a novel Storytelling medium

.
When I think of Saucy Jacky or Julia, I think about the cyberspaces in which one encounters them, the context of the conversation. The chatbot, written into its identity, must have, like an actor, motivation, except it must have motivation for the user. Why are we chatting with it? How is the user being assimilated into the encounter through the address of the chatbot?

In short to answer:

What do they NEED to have as traits?

They need to make us want to talk to them.