Character Development - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 129

in the Conker series.) Characters should be distinctive rather than derivative. Even a
stereotypical character should have something that sets him apart from others of
the same type.

A good character should also be credible. Players come to know a character through
her appearance and actions, and if that character then does something at odds with
her apparent persona, players won't believe it. An evil demon from the underworld
can't be seen worrying about orphans. For that matter, neither can James Bond.
Simple characters must be consistent. Richer characters, with more human frailties,
may be more inconsistent, but even so, players must feel that the character holds
certain core values that she will not violate.

Avatar characters have an extra burden: The player must want to step into their
shoes, to identify with them, and to play as them. The next section discusses ava-
tars in more detail.

Important business considerations enter into character design as well. Customers
identify many games by their key characters; that's why so many games take their
name directly from their characters, from Pac-Man to the latest in the Ratchet &
Clank series. Good characters occupy what the marketing people call mindshare ,
consumer awareness of a product or brand. You can use the character in a book,
movie, or TV series; you can sell clothes and toys based on a character; you can use
a character to advertise other products. It's more difficult to license a game's world
or its gameplay than its characters.

TIP A good character
is the most financially
valuable part of any
video game's intellec-
tual property.

The goal of character design, then, is to create characters that people find appealing
(even if the character is a villain, like Darth Vader), that people can believe in , and
that the player can identify with (particularly in the case of avatar characters). If
possible, the character should do these things well enough, and be distinctive
enough, to be highly memorable to the players.

The Relationship Between Player and Avatar
Lara Croft is attractive because of, not despite of, her glossy blankness—that hyper-perfect,
shiny, computer look. She is an abstraction, an animated conglomeration of sexual and
attitudinal signs—breasts, hotpants, shades, thigh holsters—whose very blankness
encourages the viewer's psychological projection. Beyond the bare facts of her biography,
her perfect vacuity means we can make Lara Croft into whoever we want her to be.

—S TEVEN P OOLE , “L ARA ' S S TORY ”

The game industry uses the term avatar to refer to a character in a game who serves
as a protagonist under the player's control. (The original term is Sanskrit and in the
Hindu religion refers to the bodily incarnation of a god.) Most action and action-
adventure games provide exactly one avatar. Many role-playing games allow the
player to manage a party of characters and switch control from one to another, but
if winning a role-playing game is contingent upon the survival of a particular