1. Designing a Video Game
Character

2. Goals of Character Design
• Enhance story
• Emotional response
• Characters to identify with and care about
• Credible within the game style
• Create characters that people can:
– Find intriguing (even if a villain)
– Can believe in
– Can identify with
• Distinctive enough to be memorable

3. Avatars
• Player-designed
• Flexibility differs by genre
–Role-playing games usually the best at this
–Race, gender, hair, physical attributes, etc.
• Typically no personality at first and is given by
the player.
• Goal is tools for players to create themselves

4. Non Specific Avatar
• Designer doesn’t specify anything.
• Allows very tight connection between player
and avatar
– Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke
• Limiting for designer

5. Specific Avatar
• Goals
• Personality of their own
• Belong in the game
• Player’s relationship more complex
– Identify with, not become

6. Semi Specific Avatar
• Only partially characterised
• Better to make cartoonish
• Common with action game avatars
– Mario

7. Control Mechanisms
• Indirect (“point and click”)
– Doesn’t 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

8. Designing the Avatar
• Nonspecific, semi-specific or specific
– Visual, psychological, social
• Direct or indirect control
• Goal: character the player can identify with
qualities they can appreciate

9. Character Physical Types
• Humanoids
• Non-humanoids
• Hybrids

10. Defining Attributes
• Clothing, weapons, symbolic objects, name.
• Colour palette reflects character’s 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

11. Side Kicks
• 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 couldn’t get
otherwise.

12. Believable Characters
• Major characters need rich personalities
– Where was he/she born?
– What are his/her favourite activities?
– What were his/her biggest triumphs in life?
– What are his/her interesting or important
possessions?
• Attributes
– location, health, relationships, etc
– Can change as the player plays the game

13. 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

14. Character Archetypes
• Hero
– Outer problem is aim of game • Shape shifter
– Inner problem is flaw or dark • Form changer
secret
•Threshold guardian
• Progress delayer
• Mentor
– Guide character •Trickster
• Mischief maker
• Higher self
•Shadow
– Hero as he aspires to be
• Ultimate evil
• Ally •Herald
– Meant to aid the hero
• Used to facilitate change in
the story

15. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7YT8Aj
r0c&feature=related