Character Development in Video Games

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Character Developmentin Video Games

• Miranda Steed

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Outline

• Goals of character design
• Relationship between player and avatar
• Art-driven character design
• Story-driven character design
• Putting theory into practice
• Summary

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Goals of Character Design

• Enhance story
• Emotional response
• Characters to identify with and care about
• Competently constructed
• Credible within the game style

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Goals of Character Design

• Create characters that people
• Find intriguing (even if a villain)
• Can believe in
• Can identify with
• Distinctive enough to be memorable

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Avatars

• Player-designed
• Specific nonspecific avatars
• Control mechanisms
• Designing an avatar character

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Player-Designed Avatars

• Flexibility differs by genre
• Role-playing games usually greatest
• Race, sex, hair, physical attributes, etc.
• Typically no personality but what is created
• Goal is tools for players to create themselves

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Nonspecific Avatars

• Designer doesnt specify anything
• Text-based adventure games
• Allows very tight connection between player and
  avatar
• Half-Lifes Gordon Freeman
• Limiting for designer

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Specific Avatars

• Goals
• Personality of their own
• Belong in the game
• Begins with visual depiction
• Players relationship more complex
• Identify with, not become
• In extreme, avatar can reject players guidance
• The Longest Journeys April Ryan

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Semi-Specific Avatars

• Only partially characterized
• Better to make cartoonish
• Common with action game avatars
• Mario
• Lara Croft
• Beyond the bare facts of her biography, her
  perfect vacuity means we can make Lara Croft into
  whoever we want her to be. Steven Pool,
  Laras Story

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Control Mechanisms

• Indirect (point and click)
• Doesnt steer avatar, points to where to go.
  Player as disembodied guide friend
• More likely specific avatar
• Direct
• Player steers avatar through game world, doing a
  variety of actions as necessary
• More likely nonspecific or semi-specific

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Designing the Avatar

• Nonspecific, semi-specific or specific
• Visual, psychological, social
• Direct or indirect control
• Goal character the player can identify with
  qualities can appreciate

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Art-Driven Character Design

• Creating a character by first thinking about his
  visual appearance
• Visual design
• Character physical types
• Physical design
• Defining attributes
• Sidekicks

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Visual Design

• Realism doesnt matter, self-consistency does
• Pac-Man
• Lara Croft
• Purely artistic characters tend to be more
  superficial and one-dimensional
• Lets the player impose his own personality

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Character Physical Types

• Humanoids
• Non-humanoids
• Hybrids

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Physical Design

• Methods to attract
• Hypersexualization
• Cuteness
• Cartoonlike qualities
• Cool, tough, cute, goofy
• Culture differences in art styles
• Japanese large eyes and tiny/huge mouths
• Cute faces with sexually provocative women
• European often ugly and strange to Americans

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Defining Attributes

• Clothing, weapons, symbolic objects, name
• Color palette reflects characters attitudes or
  emotional temperament
• Superman, upholder of truth, justice, and the
  American way bright/cheery, American flag
• Batman, Dark Knight of Gotham City (grittier,
  more run-down than Metropolis) somber

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Sidekicks

• Most prominent common element in game design
• Combine qualities (e.g. tough with cute) to
  provide variety and comic relief
• Benefits
• Give player additional moves and actions
• Extend emotional range of game
• Can give player information they couldnt get
  otherwise

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Story-Driven Character Design

• Starting with the story behind the character and
  developing his traits and personality before
  considering his appearance
• Character dimensionality
• Language accent
• Developing believable characters
• Character growth
• Character archetypes

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Character Dimensionality

• Zero-dimensional
• May display only discrete emotional states
• One-dimensional
• Have only a single variable to characterize a
  changing feeling or attitude
• Two-dimensional
• Have multiple non-conflicting variables that
  express their impulses
• Three-dimensional
• Have multiple emotional states that can produce
  conflicting impulses

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Language Accent

• Key cue to characters personality
• Vocabulary age, social class, education
• Grammar and sentence construction education and
  class
• Accent place of origin and social class
• Delivery (speed and tone) excitement, boredom,
  anxiety, suspicion, attitude or emotional state
• Vocal quirks distinguishing
• Sound effects also tell about personality
• Confirm players command
• Signal injury, damage, death
• Pitch describes

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Believable Characters

• Major characters need rich personalities
• Answer many questions about them
• Where was he born?
• What is his education?
• What are his favorite activities?
• What were his biggest triumphs in life?
• What are his interesting or important
  possessions?
• Etc.
• Show through appearance, language, and behavior

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Believable Characters

• Attributes location, health, relationships,
  etc.
• Can change as the player plays the game
• Status attributes change frequently and by large
  amounts
• Characterization attributes change infrequently
  and only by small amounts or not at all

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Believable Characters

• Three golden guidelines to developing effective,
  believable characters
• Needs to intrigue the player
• Needs to get the player to like him
• Needs to change and grow according to experience

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Character Growth

• Must include growth to have a meaningful story
• Growth varies by genre
• Must decide
• Which characters will grow
• How they will grow
• Implementation in game
• Affect on gameplay
• Representation to player

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Character Growth
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Character Archetypes

• Shape shifter
• Form changer
• Threshold guardian
• Progress delayer
• Trickster
• Mischief maker
• Shadow
• Ultimate evil
• Herald
• Used to facilitate change in the story

• Hero
• Outer problem is aim of game
• Inner problem is flaw or dark secret
• Mentor
• Guide character
• Higher self
• Hero as he aspires to be
• Ally
• Meant to aid the hero