Developing a New Major

some big questions I like – how are game characters diff from characters in other media? what are some character tyeps/archetypes?, what are several purposes of dialogue in games? – questions from teh end of hte chapter – #4 – pick 3 fave game characters – why do you like them, what are their types, archetypes, pick a game iwth  strong characters and talk abou tthe roles, movements, objects, behavior associated with each, how are the characters related and how are those relationships sshown

player characters (player controls their actions, can be one like in a fps or several like in a strategy game) and non-player characters (NPC – computer controls their actions) and no characters (like puzzle games)

when there’s one player character and it shows some emotion, easier for player to bond with and identify with than when the player has to control a squad of kind of distant vague characters – she says that with the right kind of character development, players can bond with many characters such as in her example Fire Emblem where all the characters are given histories and personalities and when characters die, they stay dead so you feel responsible for losing them

talks about parasocial interaction – is that what people feel with their game characters, is it the same or different in an mmo when you’re playing with other people? – like those WOW commercials with Mr. T – I’m a Night Mohawk (or whatever) – they seem to have identified with their characters – (might be nice to do a little thing with interactivity and parasocial interaction)

character types for either player character or non-player characters – animal (usually anthropomorphized, lots of games for kids like with cartoons), fantasy (no real world or other media counterpart – like pac man or mario, aliens, totally made up by you or some other game designer), historical (people from history – duh – like cleopatra – nice thing is you have their character and kinds of behaviors but since they’re dead you can extend that some – some dead people have estates from which you have to license the use of their likeness), licensed (from another media that you’ve gotten permission to use – harry potter, frodo – nice thing is you have their character already developed for you, bad thing is your version better act how players expect from the other media), mythic (orcs, trolls, medusa, greek/norse mythological characters – nice thing is you have some character development and typcial behaviors layed out for you already)

character archetypes -like from the hero’s journey and vogler book – don’t have to have all these but you should think about which of your characters are in which archetype – players recognize these types and it helps them to know what to expect and helps them to identify with the characters so good to use, some of the character types seem to overlap to me (like shadow and antagonist so I need to find some other stuff to read about it) – character types that we all recognize

• hero (the player’s character, the good guy)
• shadow (the opposite of the hero, the ultimate evil character, maybe someone who causes the hero’s problem – think Dr. Jekyll – the hero – and Mr. Hyde – the shadow – in the same person)
• mentor (someone who guides the hero, some games have advisors built in to give hints and warnings to player, could give bad advice so not always a good character)
• allies (help the hero out, help with taksks they can’;t do alone)
• guardian (stops the hero’s progress and makes hero prove his worth – doesn’t have to be a character, could be a personality trait of the hero that keeps them from progressing)
• trickster (makes mischief, neither for or against the hero but can mess them up with the pranks, she says c3po and r2d2 are such characters, could be a sidekick or a shadow character)
• herald (she says princess leia is a herald, gives the story , the quest to the hero, gives them direction)

every story has the following character types – they’re not from teh jungian philosophy like the other archetypes

• protagonist (the main character, like the hero, they have to act/not react, doesn’t have eto be a goody goody type, usually has some flaw to make them seem more human, could be a physical flaw or some bad personality trait like being stubborn or angry)
• antagonist (opposite of the hero – like the shadow above, doesn’t have to be a bad person, just like the hero isn’t always good, could set up opposition along political lines or being pro business/pro family or being privacy oriented versus security oriented – would be fun to play with these different kinds of oppositions and see if players recognize the protagonist/antagonist), players can be attracted to the evil character
• antagonist subtypes- transformational (bad guy who could have been the good guy and they have to be punished at the end because they went bad – think carrie – she was seriously wronged but she used her powers and innocent people were killed so she had to die), mistaken (people think they’re the bad guys at first but they turn out to be innocent or even the protagonist), exaggerated (larger than life bad guys, like the bad guys in Batman tv show or Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, sometimes tey’re more interesting than the good guy), realistic (hardest kind of character to create – they’re normal people, guy next door kind of killer, mild mannered, usually paired with more colorful heroes)
• co-protagonists – work with the protagonists to accomplish something (group of near equals not protagonist and sidekick) or a bunch of characters band together in an MMO to defeat a bigger evil – each is a protagonist in their own story but co-protagonists in the bigger evil story. Interesting technique – set people up to compete and then force them to cooperate (how do they build trust in that situation)
• supporting characters – keep the protagonist from walking away from the challenge/quest they’ve been presented with, can be protagonist’s or the antagonist’s sidekicks

unity of opposites – when protagnist and antagonist want the same thing – the girl, the treasure – they get linked in the story, gives them a reason to be fighting

ways to develop your characters

• character triangle – protagonist, antagonist, supporting, love triangles where the love interest is the supporting character, story can have lots of triangles, just need to connect them in some way and each triangle gets its own subplot
• character arc – characters have to grow (personality wise) during a game – become strong enough to succeed, shown thru behavior not dialogue, might be they’re moving up the hierarchy of needs, they move from being selfish to having a more universal focus (intropersonal, interpersonal, team,community, humanity)

pont of view

• FPS = usually  thought to help the player the most in identifying with hte character – they see everything thru the char’s eyes, but they can’t see what “they” look like – games use marketing materials to show you and reflective surfaces in the game. Cut scenes can be really jarring in First person POV games because all of a sudden you’re looking at yourself (can there be first person pov cut scenes?)
• 3rd person – you see the character on the screen, sometimes makes ya feel like an observer, your character has to stand out from the rest of the action – coloring or their look – to make your character easy to find

has a box about character names and how they tell us something about the character’s personality or role. Some seem a stretch – kate walker is good because she’s an adventurer who walks about buildings ???

what the characterlooks like

• develop their personality first bcause that drives some of their visual look, think about how they will change visually if/when their personality changes (like trickster characters) – gotta t hink gender, age, hair/eye color, body type, skin color, any distinctive physical characteristics (ticks, moles), need a pose that is theirs alone – some way to stand that labels them to help you find them in a crowd. Gotta think costume, color scheme of the costume, do they have any props (does your character have some prop that no one else has?)
• concept art – sketches, different views, maybe show the color scheme and it’s unique features
• modeling – turn your td art into 3d character, all skinned and with costumes and weapons, have to be able to move and react ni real time in a game so can only have as much detail as the game processor can handle. as processors get faster, characters get more detailed
• textures – skins, clothes – 2d surfaces applied to 3d models/wire frames. texture artists create texture maps
• animation – how the character movees. flash uses key framing. some games done with motion capture
• style – look and feel of the characters, world – to me this is the reason to study art history – look and feel over time of great art – influenced not just be previous games that we’ve all seen but styles of art that convey their own meanings
• movement – in its own section but to me it’s a visual thing to the player – signature (something only they can do that shows off their personality), idle (soemting the character does while it’s waiting for you – talks about leisure suit larry holding his breath and turning colors), walk cycle (the character’s basic gait, again shows their personality)

verbal character development – narration, monologue, dialogue among the characters – could be voiceover or on-screen text (which is better for immersion – what if voice doesn’t sound like you expect?)

• many games have a narrator – might never see them – might give the back story or just make comments about what’s happening n the screen (think the weird voice in the dukes of hazzard?)
• characters can give monologues (longer than just a couple of lines) – tells something about their emotions, reveals their inner thoughts. like shakespeare’s soliloquies and monologues – to be or not to be…
• dialogue – conversation between characters -characters shouldn’t talk about the story (?) – conversation is context-specific, NPC dialogue should help move the story forward – give some clues maybe for the hero, reveal some emotion, talk about conflict, help set up relationships between characters for the player to better understand what’s going on, maybe the dialogue can comment on teh action – don’t want “thrwow-away dialogue” – has some examples of game dialogue – discussion about how it’s different from movie script – in game you have to think of all the possible answers the player might give and talks about if then statements

gonna write up a character description aka  character synopsis – summarize briefly the character’s life – where did the character come from, what motivates them, hep the designers see the characters as real people – how will they react to different situations and people – include name, type, gender, age, physical appearance, background/history, personality, vocal characteristics, relevance to story synopsis — ha a one paragraph description of a character on p. 178

additional notes from the gameplay mechanics book ch on character

talks about creating a classification system to make programming more efficient – lay out what they have in common, try to group characters that can be built on same skeleton or shared weapons or skins or animation

develop your characters early on – after you figure out the core systems of hte game – save a lot of time later. probably best to do the development of hte player characters first and then the npc’s. give your character a backstory. After the character concept done get the character artist to make sketches to make sure your idea works visually, then make several 3d models, high and lo polygon count models for different purposes — character development is one of those things you might brainstorm with your dev team – characteristics of different types of characters,name for different characters, how far can ya push the character design. Group your characters by function to make sure you have all the basic functions covered. Group them by things they have in common to make programming easier. All characters can’t be unique – no one’s saying htat – just be conscious about what features they share, how they’re different.

if your game has lots of enemies – make them very different from each other to be more interesting to the player – not just look different or have different guns but different AI is the way to go – they should behave different from each other, NPCs are becoming more and more complex – might have 500 animations they can do especially in combat games

types of NPCs – allies, civilians, background, story (in a cut scene), vendors, enemies (like melee, grunt, heavy wewapons, ranged like archer, long range like sniper, indirect lob attacks, defensive, leader), creatures (hostile or neutral), vehicles (they’re controlled by player and some have character traits – might include transport, tanks, jeeps, bikes), creatures (like swarmer, animal that’s harmless, insect that follows set paths)

different kinds of games (genres) have different mix of characters to make sure it stays balanced and fun  – they suggest coming up with a list of generic verbs for the characters, list of roles you want them to fill

hard thing – avoid stereotypes and cliche characters – easy to say, hard to do

character movement – one way characters can be different from each other – not everything has to move like ahuman. could be multilimbed, wheeled,could move fast or really slow. Just need to consider how you’ll have to adjust the AI and the game balance. game characters don’t act like real world – don’t bounce off of fwalls right, they can stop immediately even after running or flying – need momentum or kinetic motioin – games don’t support it yet

lots of ways for characters to fight – can use their bodies, magic, tech, weapons they’re carrying, things they pick up on teh trip – part of designing hte character is figureing out how they fight, what kinds of weapons they can use, how they look fighting

characters want lots of differences in the weapons nad how characters fight to keep game from getting boring – consider stuff like rate of fire, accuracy, penetration, targeting, range, spread, reload speed, clip size, ammo type, how much ammo is available, can weapon be upgraded, is chaacter movement restricted while they use the weapon, does the weapo make sound, is there any kickback from use, can attacks be combod, does it have any secondary abilities

think about how character behaves – not a lot of choices but you need to think about them – how they attack, how they react to things, how they interact with other characters, can they make mistakes – shoot their friends, trip and fall, isfire, get hurt – tho yahave to make sure player knows it was the character and not bad AI programming. can ya build in some player behaviors that will be funny – slapstick physical comedy – tho ya gotta make sure everybody sees it as humorous

allies can help gather info about the world/the mission, can discover new missions or new items, can get help from NPCs – repair items, heal you. let the character talk to the npcs – that’s more interesting way to find out stuff than just watching a cut scene

games need good enemies – they ahve to be entertaining, fun to compete with, there needs to be a good balance of enemies – and htey should n’t all be able to beat you from teh get go. don’t have to create erfect enemies – brainstorm early on to get better characters including enemies, need to think of how you’ll intro enemies into a scene – and how ou’ll get them out of the scene/get the player out of an interaction with the enemy, enemies can be preplacedin the world or they can magically appear when player does something specific, if enemy on the screen but not engaged withhte character give them something programmed to do – eve  if they do it repeatedly they at least look busy till the player approaches them

bosses/massive enemies – think shadow of the colossus – has to be special, tough to beat, maybe impossible for most players, bosses can be characters, transport, props. sometimes there’s a specific location where you meet the boss. might be special animations for boss fights

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Games, Non-player character, Player character, Video game