Better game characters by design: A psychological approach

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Better game characters by design A
psychological approach

• Katherine Isbister, Ph.D.
• Rensselaer (RPI)

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Overview

• Motivations
• Approach
• Findings
• On measuring effectiveness
• Some concluding thoughts
• Q/A

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Motivations
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Primary motive despair
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lemons and oranges
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What makes game characters so much better?!
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Approach
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Approach

• 2002-ongoing
• Analyzing characters in a wide range of game
  genres, looking for design patterns grounded in
  social psychological principles.
• Student research team and course projects
  magnified efforts and evolved pattern
  descriptions.
• Presentations at GDC 2004-2006 elicited input
  from industry experts.

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Approach

• Why social psychology?
• Applying human-human responses to human-character
  dynamics makes sense and is experimentally
  justified (The Media Equation)
• Game industry had relied heavily prior to this on
  linear media (film, writing) for guidelines, but
  games are inherently interactive.

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Approach

• End result book!
• Meant for game developers, game design
  students, and the HCI/believable character
  community

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Findings
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Example Patterns

• Astute use of first impression cues
• Clever automation of nonverbal cues
• Emotional expectation management through social
  roles

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Example Patterns

• Astute use of first impression cues
• Baby faces
• Stereotypes
• Dom/sub and friend/foe

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Baby faces
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Baby faces
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Stereotypes
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Stereotypes
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Dominance and Friendliness
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Example Patterns

• Clever automation of nonverbal cues
• Gaze
• Social body language

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Gaze
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Social body language
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Example Patterns

• Emotional expectation management through social
  roles
• Minions
• Arch enemy

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Minions
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Arch-enemy
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On Measuring Effectiveness
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How do you know if it worked?

• Game industry folks do not typically make use of
  benchmarks/advanced usability testing.
• They rely on some combination of
• Design vision
• Astute developer management and Q/A
• Market (evolutionary selection)
• Informal user feedback/folklore

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How do you know if it worked?

• They can benefit from shared terminology,
  well-grounded in research.
• My book focuses on giving them a common language
  to help calibrate their informal (but rigorous)
  process of evaluation.

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How does this help believable character
researchers?

• Researchers can learn from best practices of
  industry--the structural framework based upon
  psychology provides scaffolding.
• Sub-areas usually have accompanying measures that
  can be leveraged to test particular effects in
  isolation (e.g. baby face, dom/sub and
  friend/foe).

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Some concluding thoughts
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Some concluding thoughts

• Perhaps oranges come from orange trees, not lemon
  trees

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Some concluding thoughts

• Perhaps oranges come from orange trees, not lemon
  trees(process and contextual pressures
  profoundly shape outcomes)

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Some concluding thoughts

• Perhaps oranges come from orange trees, not lemon
  trees(process and contextual pressures
  profoundly shape outcomes)
• Emphasis on biggest impact on user experience
• Extreme time pressure rich resources
• No need for theoretical rigor or implementation
  elegance

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Some concluding thoughts

• Can we make lemonade?

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Some concluding thoughts

• Can we make lemonade?(setting valuable and
  meaningful research agendas)

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Some concluding thoughts

• Can we make lemonade?(setting valuable and
  meaningful research agendas)
• Addressing industry issues with respect and
  seriousness
• Finding ways to translate and re-translate other
  areas of theory between domains

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Thank you

• http//www.friendlymedia.org
• Isbisk_at_rpi.edu