Characters

Though the role of protagonist/hero in a traditional story or traditional medium is taken over by the player, much of the interest and pleasure in a game still evolves from the characters that the player encounters.

For me, this is one of the most enjoyable areas of game writing. Creating characters allows me to play with personality types, biographies, and speech patterns.  Characters can be simple, referring to known standards or archetypes (Hamlet, Indiana Jones, fairy godmother, evil stepmother, etc.).  They can also be more complex, springing from lesser known examples or from pure imagination.

What drives the character? Why do the player's opponents do what they do?  Is the bad guy motivated by his convictions, like Magneto, or by his ambitions, like Macbeth, or by his needs and hungers, like Hannibal Lechter?

Over the years that I have been writing games, I have developed a format for the creation and description of characters.  Several relatively rich examples I did for the Might & Magic games are on the left, plus a simplified example that I did for a tutorial voice in a Ghost Recon game.

When creating characters I use the following elements:

  1. Name -- there is a great deal that goes into a name, and players will react quite differently to characters named Matt Jansen, Millicent Farnsworth, or Beelzebub.

  2. Backstory -- the biography of the character; what made them the way they are today.

  3. Character arc -- a character will live through a series of controlled experiences during the game.  They will end up changed by these events and develop a a new view of themselves, their friends and family, their society, and their world.  Characters that do not change for good reasons may still be as interesting as those who do.

  4. "Character diamond" -- this is a very practical tool from the book creating emotion in games by David Freeman.  The basic idea is to create four distinct character traits for a character which not only define their actions but can be clearly reflected in their dialogues.  While three of these may be archetypical or stereotypical, it is interesting to make sure one of them is unique, individual, and makes that particular character stand out.

  5. Examples -- for designers, artists, and voice actors it is useful to give some guidelines as to who the character resembles in other games or other media.

Please click on the portraits in the left column for some examples.