Over at Gamasutra they have a detailed and well researched piece on crafting compelling characters in video games. But I think something’s missing. It’s not that what Tychsen is saying is wrong, technically he’s just reporting his observations as he sees them. His honest goal is give people the knowledge they need to design better characters in games, that you can see. Unfortunately, the way he approaches what a character is dooms him to repeat the same mistakes that have lead game after game to implement flat, boring characters.
From a systems’ point of view, a character is just a unit within the game, with attributes, relations, statistics, and behaviours. This is Tychsen’s viewpoint, and it’s fine when creating a game for gameplay’s sake. But as soon as you introduce story, you need to look at characters in a different way.
[…]if the character is not interesting to play, the gaming experience will not be of a sufficient quality to motivate the player to continue player.
Fascinating characters can make a game and create lasting relationships with the player that keep them coming back for more – as is evidenced in the game series featuring characters such as Lara Croft, April Ryan, Max Payne, Crash Bandicoot and Sonic the Hedgehog.
First off, you could have the most interesting character in the world and it won’t save you from plain old bad gameplay. Consider the wildly popular and completely unsuccessful Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. I love that little guy, and I have fond memories playing Sonic games on my Sega Genesis, but I really haven’t enjoyed the 3D versions that have been coming out over the years. Sonic the Hedgehog is a character, yes, but moreso, he’s the embodiment of a specific kind of gameplay that I really enjoy. Take away the gameplay, and I don’t enjoy Sonic anymore.
And this leads me to my point: If experiencing gameplay is to experience a game’s procedural plot, and Sonic is the embodiment of that gameplay, then Sonic isn’t just a character but an actantial component of the plot.
Actants aren’t units in a story; they don’t exist and affect the fiction as agents, “causing” things to happen. Instead, actants only exist because you want a certain action in your plot to occur. It’s a subtle change of perspective that has you constantly acknowledging the fictionality of the plot, the fact that the story is a construction. Uncle Ben doesn’t die at the hands of some burglar because one rolled lawful good and the other chaotic evil, or because the burglar had a higher agility score, or because the burglar had a bad day, really needed the money and got careless. The reason Uncle Ben dies at the hands of some burglar is to provide the realistic motivation needed by the plot to fulfill Peter Parker’s transformation into the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman we all know. As far as Spiderman’s origin story goes, that’s the only reason why the actants of Ben and the burglar exist in the plot.
That’s interesting, you might think, but what does that have to do with game design? Well, like I said, Tychsen’s systematic approach isn’t wrong, it’s just lacking the depth needed to implement characters that are well rounded and feel like they belong in the game’s procedural plot. For that, you need to consider what that character’s actantial role in the plot will be. And this is where the two meet: once you know exactly what an actant’s purpose is in the plot, then you can start thinking about what game mechanics, attributes, statistics and behaviours best serve to coherently fulfill that purpose. The end result is a character that’s both structurally and actantially sound, the kind of character that really emphasizes the plot and brings your game to life.
Spake gian mancuso, tagged as: dialectic
