Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
personal, if the story is rich enough; skills, such as the ability to use magic or
weapons; and strength, intelligence, or any number of such character attributes.
To build character grow th into your game, you'll have to decide which characters
will grow (most often the hero, if there is one) and how they will grow. Physically?
Intellectually? Morally? Emotionally? Games use physical growth, in abilities and
powers, more than any other kind of growth because it is easy to implement and
show to the player.
Then ask yourself how you will implement this growth within the game—through
changes in numeric or symbolic attributes, or through changes in the plot of the
story, or some other means? How will growth affect the gameplay, if at all? Finally,
how will it be represented to the player? Some of your options include displaying
numbers on the screen to show the growth (the crudest method), changing the
character's appearance, changing the actions available to the player if the character
is an avatar, and showing that the character has matured by changing his language
and behavior (a more subtle method).
Character Archetypes
In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell, 1972), folklore scholar
Joseph Campbell identified a pattern that many stories follow, which he called the
Hero's Journey . Stories that follow this pattern frequently include archetypal charac-
ters—that is, characters of types that have been fundamental to storytelling since
the days of myth, that are found in the stories of virtually all cultures, and that
may even be fundamental to the human psyche. These characters assist or impede
the hero in various ways on his journey. In Banjo-Kazooie , for example, Bottles the
mole teaches the protagonists (and thereby the player) a number of things they
need to know to fulfill their quest, so he fits neatly into the archetype of the mentor
character.
NOTE The psychol-
ogist Carl Jung
originated the concept
of character archetypes,
and although his work
is increasingly out of
fashion in psychological
circles, students of the
humanities and litera-
ture still find it useful.
There isn't room to discuss each of Campbell's character archetypes here, but
Christopher Vogler's book The Writer's Journey (Vogler, 1998) gives a condensed
treatment of Joseph Campbell's work for screenwriters and discusses archetypes in
depth. For how to make best use of characters who represent these archetypes in
your own games, refer to The Writer's Journey .
You should not implement character archet y pes slavishly, nor must a game have all
or even any of them. Video games do not necessarily have to be heroic journeys,
and good characters don't have to fit into neat little boxes.
Audio Design
Audio design, both sound effects and language, is also a part of character design.
You will need to work with your team's audio director—and sometimes defer to her
experience—to find the right effects and voice for your character.
 
 
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