Creating Strong Video Game Characters

[Music] [Applause] [Applause] all right I can't I can't I'm sorry I just can't I just can't do it anymore I cannot take it this guy Gordon Freeman regularly makes every list of the greatest video game characters of all time and I don't understand why I can't possibly be the only person in this room who every time he picks up a controller thinks that there is something wrong with him as he's walking around picking up ammo and health packs and people are trying to tell him important things before I go on I've been asked to remind everyone to turn off their cell phones and to please fill out your evaluations after the session unless of course you work for valve in which case maybe that just got a little awkward all right where was I all right I was making fun of this guy but this problem this Gordon Freeman problem is to my mind just one manifestation of a common problem in video games today and that is weak character work right now character is hard and it's hard in any medium it's particularly hard in games which have some unique requirements for doing a good job of establishing character right first and foremost in games the audience is expected to become the character we are one of the characters it's not enough to have empathy or sympathy with the characters we actually have to have a sense of oneness a sense of unity between the two and secondly there are so many different types of games so many different subgenres and almost every one of them has its own peculiar particular requirements for establishing characters I mean linear games write fully scripted narratives these have completely different requirements from open-world sandbox games where anything can happen and on top of the different types of games we have different ways of presenting characters within those games we have the silent characters right the ones who have no voice we have the cinematic characters the ones who are fully scripted we have the open characters the ones where we let the players choose who they are and most games I think fit within these broad category they're spectrums right so there's some hybrids that fall in between you have game like a game like halo where your character speaks but he doesn't really say anything and you've got games like Mass Effect right where there's lots of player choice but it's still heavily scripted so many different types of games out there with so many different demands is it even conceivable that there could be some kind of grand unified theory of character in games that applies to all of them well as it happens I think there is and over the next 45 minutes I'd like to tell you all about it but first I'd like to talk about myself my name is Jeremy Bernstein I am a - at writer and game designer I have designed games about everything from ben10 to congressional redistricting super-sexy and I've written games on everything from dead space to to pretty in pink I've also recently been working in Hollywood as a television writer for the hit series leverage now I've gone and used a dirty word just there Hollywood writers are not usually very well thought of in the video game industry it's generally perceived that they don't understand the specifics of games as a medium the things that make them different from film or television and in general I believe that's true however as someone who's worked on both sides of that particular divide I also believe that sometimes we in the games industry have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the ideas that come out of Hollywood because despite the problems these ideas are grounded in 3,000 years worth of fundamental human storytelling traditions and whether you're talking about Oedipus Rex or Walter White it all kind of works the same so maybe just maybe there's something that we can mine out of these ideas that'll give us some insight into this guy know before I go any further a disclaimer every game that I talk about today is a game that I love games that I don't love I left out of the talk now as you may have noticed I am going to be from time to time speaking critically about some of these games particularly about certain elements of character right but these are bits these are pieces these are moments that don't work for me and I find deconstructing those moments to find out why they don't work to be extremely instructive but every game I talk about is a game that I love are we clear all right let's start off with a question then why bother why characters why our character is important in games our character is even important in games Tetris didn't need characters well the answer of course is no we don't need characters well we need in games as avatars we need something that we can control and this is one of the first pitfalls that we run into when we're talking about character in games is confusing character and avatar for example I think most people would say that pac-man is one of the most popular video game characters of all time but really when push comes to shove pac-man is not all that different from this he's an avatar not a character and if I were looking to start a fight which it's just possible that I am I might argue that the original incarnations of these two guys are really basically just Tetris blocks so what's the difference between character and avatar well the difference is context avatars give a game mechanical context I mean when you think about it games are really just systems of numbers what is space invaders other than some vector calculations three hit point reservoirs and collision detection but nobody wants to play that so we create an avatar to make some sense of it it's a way to create engagement with the players that the sheer system of the math wouldn't have so avatars provide a mechanical context but characters characters provide emotional context and this is important because we are emotional beings characters engage us emotions engage us and if you want proof look no further than this game now if you played this game and you didn't have an emotional experience I don't think you're fully human but it was because of the character work not because of the gameplay there's barely any gameplay in fact there's a whole talk this morning on whether or not this is actually a game and by the way if this isn't a game then I don't want to be a gamer but more than that there's even data that suggests that characters are more engaging in games to players the narrative is if anyone was at the game narrative summit earlier this week there was a presentation from Deborah Henderson a user researcher at Microsoft about measuring player engagement in games and one of her key findings was that game characters were more memorable to players than the plot so those who asked why character I would respond in short because science says it will make people like your game more I'm paraphrasing dr. Henderson slightly there so character where do we start well as with all good things let us start with a definition what exactly is character well broadly speaking I would say the people in the story I bet everyone is feeling really good about paying for those badges right about now but I bring this up for a reason right because character are the people in the story so in order to understand the definition of character we first need to understand the definition of story now whenever somebody at a games conference gives a talk about story someone in the audience inevitably asks this question story and games must we and like character know of course we don't need stories but we want stories we like stories we crave stories human beings apply storytelling to every form of art that we have invented music doesn't need story but we create opera paintings are perfectly happy to be landscapes or portraits but we're not happy with that so no we don't need stories in our games but damn it if we're gonna have stories in our games let do them right and good stories require good characters not just for all of the reasons I'm about to explain but also because science all right so back to our definition of story if you've ever heard me talk before then you know the definition of a story that I subscribe to and that is this someone who wants something badly and is having a hard time getting it and the reason that I like this definition so much particularly for games is that it splits stories into two fundamental elements objectives and obstacles and these are terms that were used to thinking about when we think about games objectives are so important we put them right up front on the HUD an obstacle well that's just another word for game play and right here is why good story requires good character all stories start with someone this someone is our character we generally call them our protagonist the protagonist has an objective something that they want badly in between the character and their want there are a series of obstacles the character proceeds forward pursuing their want overcoming the obstacles till they reach their objective and the story ends that in a nutshell is every story so if this is our definition of story someone who wants something badly and is having a hard time getting it then our definition of character must logically be someone who wants something badly someone who wants something badly and by the way this isn't just a good definition for a protagonist ideally this is a definition for all of your characters all the characters in your story want something the antagonist wants something and whatever that something is it is that which creates the obstacles that are puro must face love interest wants something presumably what they want is the protagonist every character every sidekick every quest figure every Mook every random NPC every character in your story should be someone who wants something badly and that's one of the reasons why I think the story in this game is so effective all the major characters in uncharted to have a strong want and more than that these wants are almost always in direct competition with each other it's not mutually exclusive from each other let's start with Drake now Drake actually has multiple wants in this game first and foremost he wants the treasure a want in which he's opposed by the antagonist lazarevich who also wants a treasure well they can't both have it so right there our wants lock us into conflict now Nate also wants revenge on Flynn for double-crossing him and this is a want that Flynn understandably opposes and by the way Flynn also wants the treasure right so there's another angle to that particular conflict romantically Nate wants a relationship with Elena or possibly also a relationship with Chloe the two of them both want a relationship with him which outside the realm of fan fiction are mutually exclusive once and by the way Chloe also wants the treasure so she is part of that whole mess as well so you have all these different characters all with their conflicting objectives all with their diametrically opposed wants all bouncing off of each other to make life difficult for our hero for the player and that is why good story requires good character because opposing launce create conflict and conflict is not just drama conflict is going to play so this is how we define character someone who wants something badly all right now how do we create character well character has three elements and the first most fundamental of those is this what do they want which makes sense right this is our definition of character it seems like a good place to start when we start thinking about character and the best part is that thinking about this first want excuse me this first element leads us directly to our second element and that element is action what do they do to get what they want our protagonist has an objective they're opposed by obstacles they progress towards their objective overcoming those obstacles through action and the actions that they take the things that they do to get what they want those tell us who that person truly is if the whomped is a definition of a character then the action they take in pursuit of that whomped is what defines them as a character Hamlet wants to avenge his father what does he do he differs and that did the ring is what defines him Luke Skywalker wants to avenge his father what does and fight the Empire right what does he do he becomes a Jedi like his father maybe a bit too much like his father and that is the emotional conflict of this movie Batman wants to avenge his parents what does he do he wages a never-ending crusade against crime and we've heard this before right that character is action it's an old chestnut but I think it's particularly applicable for games why well because if character is action an action is gameplay well then character is going to play and oh my god is that not the best definition for character in video games of all time and by the way that's one of my problems with Gordon Freeman what is Gordon's overriding action what is the thing that Gordon Freeman hero of the resistance in every level the thing that he does time and time and time again what Gordon does is what other people tell him to do so what does that define Gordon's main quality as obedience yeah there's a hero I want to be and I pick on Gordon but this is certainly not a problem that's unique to Gordon it happens with a lot of silent heroes it happened in Dead Space 1 in fact I used to refer to this specifically as the Isaac fetch my slippers problem and I think it's one of the things that makes players disengage from story in games this is the opposite of what we're trying to do with character it's the opposite of engagement it always makes me think of that old far side cartoon right what dog what we say to dogs what dogs hear blah blah blah blah blah ginger blah blah blah blah blah well come on all right so our first two elements of character what does the character want what do they do to get what they want and the third element is all the things I haven't talked about yet which is to say all of the things that we usually think of when we think about character we think about what they look like we think about where they live how they grew up who their family is what their job is their class all of that stuff this isn't character it is an element of character and that element is characterization who a character seems to be what their traits are how you would describe them not define them but describe them and the thing that's important about characterization is the characterization is external it is the outward appearance that forms a shell around the character and if you want to know who a character really is you need to get past that shell you need to get to what's inside well we can't see what's inside and some games we can but what's inside the character is there won't that comes from within and want leads to action an action is external so action becomes a window that what's a see past the characterization into the heart into the core of who that character really is and that's why when you put these three elements together you get a fully developed character who they seem to be outside who they really are inside and how we can compare the two all right that's all well and good but does any of it actually apply to games well I think it does because when we take a look back at all those different types of games that we looked at before what we find is that not only do these three elements of character apply to games they're also explanatory towards games what differentiates these types of games from each other is who gets to decide those elements of character right the difference between a linear game and a sandbox game is who makes the choice about what the player does in a linear game it's the designer in a sandbox game the player has that choice what do I do to get what I want now there's a spectrum there to be sure right many linear games are very wide railroads and many sand boxes have tracks running straight down the middle but by and large the difference lies in who chooses and how much choice you give the player as to what they do similarly with the various character types right the difference between silent cinematic and open characters lies in who chooses their characterization in cinematic characters that choice is made by the designers and open characters that choice is made by the player and silent protagonists well in those cases no one chooses now it's not as bad as that sounds right there's actually a very deliberate choice being made there the choice being made there is to create a negative space that the player can then fill with whatever they read into it and this can be extremely effective once again right this is a silent protagonist but she's negative space by and large we know a couple things about her but she's firing away the least interesting person in his family from what we know in the game but we're still on board with her we're still I at least was supremely invested in her but not because of her characterization because of her want she wants to find out what happened to her sister and the character work they do with the sister the way that they establish her that makes me want to know what happened to her as well there's the engagement because want is the central element of character and this is another place where things get interesting because when we look at all these varying types of games and all their differences the choice of blonde is almost always made by the designers now sometimes you get a little bit of player choice of Blanc right mostly in open character games or sandbox games but it's almost always at the low level you don't get a choice in the high level wants in these sorts of things in Fable your high level one is established for you you want to stop Lord Lucien you want revenge for your sister the low level wants all the things you want while you're on that quest those are the things you get to make your choices about you get married you get a job are you gonna be good are you gonna be evil you're gonna kick chickens right that's the stuff that you get to choose not what's also interesting is that there is in fact a whole class of games in which the players get to decide what they want games like minecraft games like The Sims but what's particularly interesting is that in almost all of those games you're not playing a character you're playing a god or you're playing an avatar generally not a character so because of that they kind of fall outside the scope of a talked about character in games but I thought it was worth mentioning right that this theory of three elements of character it predicts there should be a whole range of games based around this and sure enough there they are alright moving on these three elements we can see that they apply very well to an understanding of how to treat character in all the different subgenres of games so clearly this theory is applicable now what about the other difficulty that we run into with character in games that I mentioned before this issue of unity between player and character in linear media we don't have to worry about this we just need to get the audience on the characters side but in games we want to take those two separate entities and we want to make them one we want to create unity between them and this of course is why we get these negative space characters like Gordon the idea is that anything that the character does that the player wouldn't do anything he says any opinion she expresses any element of characterization that's opposed to the player will shatter that unity and you end up with a non immersive experience well now we have a slightly different framework to use think about unity because if there are three defining elements of characters what they want what they do and how they seem then creating unity between player and character means we need to accomplish three different things we need to establish three different kinds of unity unity of trait unity of action and unity of purpose we need to talk about these three things each separately because they are not all created equal what happens if we don't have unity of purpose if I as the player can't get behind the want of the character well what happens in short is we have a problem because I don't care I don't care what they're going through I don't care what they're doing and that means I don't care about the story I have no emotional context and by and large that means I quit right now here's an example I want to stress this as a personal story in no way should anyone think this is a problem with the game if anything it's a complement to the game because it managed to get me role playing so well I screwed myself out of being able to play the game the original Dragon Age my character was a dwarven Noble and every time there was a choice that was smug or arrogant or superior I went with that particular choice as a result the way I ended up playing this character which says a wildly racist dwarf who had nothing but contempt for all non dwarves to the point that when NPCs started saying to me the bad guys are going to destroy the world I actually found myself thinking not the Dwarven part I mean use surface guys you're pretty much screwed but we're dwarves bring him on my one no longer aligned with the wants that the game was pushing on me and I couldn't play anymore so I broke unity of purpose I did that to myself but nonetheless it meant I had to stop playing a game I was enjoying because I just wasn't engaged so unity of purpose critical now what about unity of action if we don't have unity of action things get interesting because there's two different ways that a break in unity of action can play the first way that it plays is that the player looks at it and says that's not what I would do now this is a problem because basically this is a form of ludonarrative dissonance the story in the system are at odds with each other and the as a result the play experience is broken and I check out and this again by the way this is one of my big Gordon Freeman problems Gordon and I do have unity of purpose right I'm down with getting rid of the combine we're good there but unity of action that's where we have a problem because Gordon doesn't do what I would do what would I do I would answer people who talk to me these are scared worried people who are excited to see you because you are their hero and what does Gordon do give them the cold shoulder unity of action is broken and I'm how and the problem here isn't the silence it's not a silent protagonist thing because gone home works and portal works the portal channel is my hands-down favorite silent protagonist of all time but those games work because those characters don't have anyone to talk to there's no violation of unity of action and gone home she's all alone in portal GLaDOS is talking to you over the PA system but she's not actually present and by the time you are actually in the same room with her there's really not that much left to say so unity of action is preserved in portal and there's a great controlled experiment for this which is portal to Wheatley and GLaDOS are both right there with you during a huge chunk of this game and as much as I love it as much as I love the gameplay as much as I love the writing am I the only one who really at some point wanted to say - GLaDOS you know what you're a french fry and I have a portal gun I'm gonna take my chances but you can't so portal gives perfect unity of action challenge or two - not as much now I said there were two responses to a breakdown in unity of action first is I wouldn't have dude I wouldn't do that the second is I wouldn't do that but my character would and this one actually turns out to be okay in fact there's no better example of this in games than this guy right Batman and I we totally have unity of purpose he wants to stop crime I am good with that unity of action do we have that well what does Batman do to get what he wants now none of these are things that I would do but what's awesome about the game is that I get to be Batman the fantasy is the attraction so even if I wouldn't do it he would so he'll is yes let's do it together and that creates unity of action but imagine for a moment imagine that the Arkham games let you do this well now we have a problem because killing people is not only something that I wouldn't do it's something Batman wouldn't do it's out of character which breaks unity of action and I quit and some people have this response to the Uncharted games right as Nathan Drake there are certain things that I expect to do I expect to jump I expect to climb to sneak to solve puzzles to fight what I don't expect to do is Nathan Drake is go on a murder spree now personally this didn't bother me right to me it just read as an extension of the fighting body count I didn't care but I know that some people do and I can see why because it's a break in unity of action and again it's just because that doesn't seem like something Nathan Drake would do right if I were playing a Gears of War game then murder spree makes total sense in fact I'm not sure any other action makes sense in a Gears of War game all right so unity of purpose critical unity of action variable can be fatal if you break it but it can also be a critical element of the fantasy to break it so what about the last element unity of trait what happens if we don't have unity of trait well as it turns out not so much unity of trait is kind of not that important I mean think about this insanely popular video game badass now this may be the only game the original Metroid the only game I can think of that used a silent protagonist to establish unity of trait with the audience and then deliberately shattered unity of trait for half the audience and minds were blowing and it's not like it heard of popularity honey so it's okay if we don't get all the way to here to unity of trade it may even be okay if we don't get all the way to unity of action as long as we get to unity of purpose because two people who aren't the same who want the same things but aren't the same do you know what we call them we call them partners and partners can work together very well you don't have to be the same you don't have to have the same worldview you don't even have to like each other if you want the same thing you can work with them but if we end up here if we end up with two people who are the same but who don't want the same thing who have unity of traits but not unity of purpose you know what we called them them we usually call enemies this right here this is the real silent character problem when the push for unity of trait the push of for seeming comes at the cost of unity of purpose or unity of action you don't need to make me be your care I just need to want to work with them so these are our three unities of character shown by order of importance unity of trait largely optional unity of purpose important but fungible shoot me even if you have action important but fungible unity of purpose that one is critical okay so these elements are so important right let's get practical how do we establish them well there are a lot of different techniques that one can use to establish these various types of unity and games each sub-genre of course has some of its own unique requirements but I do think that there are some best practices that apply across all of them right so let's talk about unity of trait first now I just said that you don't need it but it's nice right it can create identification with a character if it's open it can create agency you can create ownership for a character and these are both forms of engagement so if we can get there it's nice okay let's not break our backs so how do we establish unity of trade well let's look at each of our three different types of characters for silent characters we don't establish unity of trait we establish nothing that's what they're there for for cinematic characters we also don't establish unity of trait we just let them be themselves and we get to be their partners although by the way as long as we're on the topic I'd just like to say that given that unity of trait isn't as important as everyone seems to think maybe we could share it a little bit with people who don't look like this alright our last type of character open character's right where the player gets to decide who their character is how do we establish unity of trait here well that's pretty well a solved problem so that's unity of trait how about unity of action things get a little bit more interesting here are two different types of games that are differentiated by action linear and sandbox right both have very different requirements in this case but in both cases the easiest way to determine if what you're doing is going to help maintain a unity of action is the same it's ask yourself one simple question what would I do does this action make sense to me or to my character given the situation and once you've got unity of action maintaining it particularly in a sandbox game it's usually pretty easy because we let the player choose what they want to do if they don't think their character would do something then they don't do it the tricky bit here is just making sure you've got your bases covered enough right so that you've got most of the wants that people want that's what play testings for now in linear games where the player doesn't get to choose where the designer tells the player what it is that they're going to do there a couple of different techniques to use to establish unity here first and foremost I cannot stress this enough don't make them do anything that's stupid this is a real pitfall particularly in games right because sometimes somebody comes up with some really cool gameplay but there's no narrative reason for it so they just slap together some half-assed excuse and you get a tortured story players look at this and think what am i doing why am I doing this that's the opposite of engagement now the other thing that you need to do to establish unity of action is that you need to make sure that you have already secured unity of purpose action comes out of want and nine times out of ten if you're violating unity of action it is probably because the player isn't onboard with the same launch that you're pushing right now this was something that happened to me in the original dead space alright and this game did a fantastic job of establishing launch I absolutely had unity of purpose I wanted off that ship right so I go to hell and back in order to try to fix a shuttlecraft so we can get the hell out of there we had unity of action on that front too and then I meet this guy this guy is still alive on a ship full of people where everyone else who's still alive is entirely batshit crazy and this guy says to me you know maybe just maybe I'm just throwing this out here I know you fixed that shuttle because what you really want to do is get the hell out of here but I was thinking that maybe instead of getting the hell out of here what you could do is take this giant obviously evil artifact that we think was probably the cause of this whole mess take it down to the planet below and just kind of put it back where we found it boom that is not what I wanted to do I wanted to get out so a disconnect and unity of purpose disconnect in the whomped caused a disconnect in unity of action right what actually happened well Isaac went ahead and said oh yeah what did I want to say I wanted to say this nine times out of ten problems with unity of action are really problems with unity of purpose so that being the case let's talk about how we establish unity of purpose and this takes us back to our definition of character someone who wants something badly now as it suggests there are two components to unity of purpose what do we want and why do we care and this last part is critical it's not enough just to get the player on board with the characters warmed you have to get the player to want it badly you have to make them care and this is where we talked about creating empathy in games this is where we talk about the fields making the player and the character share feelings now for my money there is no better example in games of establishing unity of purpose than the opening minutes of this game so let's take a look at the first minute in 13 seconds and see what they do [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah that's my blood there's my life part of my blood [Music] okay is anybody here not clear on the launch anybody here not onboard with the launch right this is a great example and by the way in that minute and thirteen seconds they spend like the first 20 seconds on that quote which does nothing so how do they pull this off right how do they create this degree of unity well the first thing they do we start on the inside of the train and what are we as the player thinking in that moment we're thinking what is this what's happening here right and then we cut to Nate and what's the very first thing that he says what's going on that's exactly what we're thinking right so we're sharing thoughts we don't know where he is he doesn't know either we are in the same boat together and this is a technique that I like to call sharing is caring this is the easiest way to create empathy right by sharing something between player and character right it can be a thought having the characters say what it is that the player is thinking it can be a mystery or a secret right this is the Princess Bride moment I am NOT left-handed right we knew that so we have a shared moment shared emotion make them feel what the character with what the character is feeling right it's possible in your game depending on the type of game shared choices or it's a moment where it feels like the player is turning to you and say I don't know what do you think and maybe my favorite way to get players and characters sharing in games is this shared experiences because interactivity experience ality that's the art of games in film we say show don't tell in games we say do don't show and you can use gameplay to create empathy heavy rain does a fantastic job of this right your want in this game Ethan's want I should say is to save his children what does he do to get what he wants that's what the games about right you get to decide how far he'll go will you crawl through broken glass will you chop off your own finger will you pull the trigger on another human being well none of those questions mean anything if you don't want to save his children badly so they have to get you on board with that and how do they do that they let you play with his kids you play Ethan's love for his children and that's what makes you care all right back to uncharted the next trick that they use after sharing a thought right Nate realizes that he's been shot he looks down he's covered in his own blood right that's my blood that's a lot of my blood what does this do well it makes him an underdog and the thing about underdogs is that everybody loves an underdog right so what is this duel it's a trick to make him likable that's another great way to get people to be on board with your character to care about them to engage with them make them likable let them be an underdog and be funny or maybe like someone who makes them laugh wouldn't be noble what can be admirable make him sympathetic someone that we feel for not just feel with because the more that the player likes the character the more that they want to be partners with them so to walk through the rest of that opening right next thing that happens at the same time that Nate does we realize the Train is hanging on its side and in that moment BAM something falls on top of us another shared emotion surprise then he falls down the back of the Train right he slams into the rail as he falls wow that looks painful oops right sympathy poor boy that hurt and then my favorite bit he's hanging off the bottom of the Train I don't know if you could hear this on the audio but what does he do hang it on the bottom of the Train he laughs he laughs and he says haha crap right and this is all the above first of all it's likability because he's funny and second off it's a shared joke because he's thinking I can't believe this at the same time that we were thinking can you believe so boom were there we're thinking what he's thinking and then we finally get to his wand what is his want to not die that's a pretty easy one to grok as these things go and that's another great trick and another great take-home when it comes to establishing unity of purpose keep it simple if the player can't understand the wand then the player is not going to share the launch this is a bonus the more basic the more elemental the wand the less time you have to spend establishing it unless you run into exposition overload survive avenge escape avoid acquire these are all very elemental wants very easy for people to get so that's unity of purpose establish what they want establish why we care by and large you built unity of purpose so that's what I got as far as things to talk about I hope I have managed to convince you all to hate this guy as much as I do any questions they're microphones up at the front yeah I I it's more of an opinion on your part but going through my head while you've been explaining all this I've been trying to figure out how the original bioshock's character Jack kind of fits into it because there seems to be a lot of pros and cons for that character that you've talked about but just your opinion on him um he's not my favorite silent character but I think he works pretty well it's a little they have a kind of clergy excuse for why he never responds but you don't know that for a huge chunk of the game and so I think you kind of have to put your it's a silent protagonist I'll roll with it hat on and then you get that surprise later on which is oh wait hang on this is not you know this is this exactly intentional so he works he works all right but I think there are moments where you definitely have that disconnect of like why am I just standing here not having any kind of agency in this conversation thank you I kind of had a similar question to what he stated but it's about another naughty dog game The Last of Us I think that's a pretty good example of a change in the unity of purpose with what the player thinks I'm just wondering if because it's something so ingrained in what the character would do if that makes it okay um yeah I mean I think that I think that even when the actions in that game are not what the player would do I think that you look at them and you say yeah but that's totally something the character would do and I mean I've spoken to people who have said in so many words like I really didn't want to do it but I couldn't begrudge you know so yeah I mean III think that works regarding establishing unity of purpose like we all know that how like different things about games affect different people in different ways like a friend of manic I personally liked gone home another friend of call it a walking simulator so is there like any like golden rule of making and making even casting a net wide enough or is it just something that's just stumbling in the dark I mean I think that's a decision that you need to make project a project is is are you gonna try to appeal you're gonna try to be all things to all people I think from the way that I phrased that answer I think you can tell what my opinion on that is which is that is madness um you know I think gone home in particular I think was gonna run into problems from people who it's an expectation management problem people who went in expecting a conventional video game are going to be disappointed you know and that's true with anything you know if you have huge expectations for something and you come in and it's completely subverts them that's often a very disappointing experience you know so I think that's a that's a unique and interesting edge case but yeah I mean I think if you get get someone on board with a want right if they want what the character wants then they're gonna be invested that's fundamentally what it all comes down to thank you thank you could you tell us some more Texas you loved drama t-piece or anything games for well certainly Walter White I think from Breaking Bad is one of the most I I will freely admit that I maybe felt like identified with him a little more than I'm comfortable with but he's I mean he's a great example one of the things especially in linear media it's harder to apply to games but it's not untrue in games right one of the things that makes characters really interesting is when you have maximum contrast between their characterization and the actions that they take right so you look at someone like Walter White he's characterized as a meek chemistry teacher what does he want he wants success or money depending on you argue it what does he do he becomes a meth kingpin and runs a crushing drug empire chemistry teacher crushing drug empire that's an interesting character and it's consistent it makes sense right you know you see that in a characterization in a GLaDOS was actually another great example all right one of the reasons GLaDOS worked so well especially early on I mean everybody knows that GLaDOS is almost idle lunatic now right but when you first start playing that game she's cold she's clinical she's robotic right she comes across character I had characterized as a machine as something a logical being of science right and it takes a while and about the time the she starts to try to set you on fire when you realize no this is actually a passive-aggressive murder machine right that's what makes her such an interesting character so you know those are the things that I look for when I'm creating characters and when I'm looking for what media I'm going to consume so I have a question about sidekicks and other side characters sometimes you you have all unit of action and trait and everything with your main character but some time when he is interacting with other NPCs and other characters sometimes can the the main character like another NPC that the player hates like kind of mascot then it's really annoying but the main character really likes that can help to break the any kind of unity yeah that is I would argue that's a problem in terms of what your sidekick does when it comes to what do they do to get what they want if what they do to get what they want even inadvertently is annoy the crap out of everyone around them I would consider that a poor choice on the designers part so it's a good question my question is mostly regarding multiplayer games or cooperative games I'd like to take the example of journey which in my opinion works with the hero's journey in in a very interesting way because usually the first time you're playing you're like the hero so you don't know what to do and then you find a mentor around which is the other player and after you finish the game and play a game you become the mentor so in the gameplay they've found a way an amazing way my opinion to kind of close that cycle and make you feel that journey and I mean in the in this case it was a brilliant solution for that kind of gameplay it matches very well but I was wondering of other types of cooperative employees how do you do to make all the characters and look as important as I don't know the hero mm-hmm well I think I mean one of my favorite examples of establishing character through gameplay is also the left 4 dead games right and they do that through the enemy design because there are multiple types of enemies that you cannot defeat on your own right the ones who pull you away from the group my favorite ever where they call the Belcher's right where they they vomit on you and you go blind and all of the zombies in the area come running towards you right that mechanic would be unconscionable in a single-player game right but because you are dependent on other people to survive right it creates an emotional connection between you as as characters right or between you as players I guess I mean that's a game where trait is pretty minimal in that game right but want and purpose those two things I think you create a great degree of unity if I'm not working with these people I'm gonna die therefore what do I do I work with these people so it's typical to say in TV or movies that a character has a fatal flaw and for a lot of it because they're outside you're not you're not their avatar you know you can watch them do horrible things and you can root for the difference between what someone wants and what they need can you speak a little bit to how character flaws work in video games character flaws are tricky in video games they're easiest in cinematic games like Uncharted right and that's you know Drake pulls off a perfect arc in that in that perspective but they're easiest because you can script it when you're dealing with flaws with characters in video games because the player to some extent is getting to choose what they do you know the question with a fatal flaw is always do I succumb to my flaw or do I overcome my flaw right and that becomes a choice for the player to make in most games that try to deal with that now there's one way you can do that you can do that explicitly right which is pretty much what fable 2 does right when all is said and done you have a choice do you save the dog or you save or do you do take the money right that's a question to ask who are you and what's really important to you what are you going to do but they make that explicit in lots of games that stuff becomes implicit and when it's implicit this choice between whether I'm going to shoot someone in the face or not right a lot of times it passes unnoticed by the players there's no question there you know and that to me is a problem so I think fatal flaws can work but they're tricky and you need to make sure that the player understands the choice that they're making you know you need to make that a dramatic moment for the player not let that be something that's thrown away in the in the heat of combat time for one more question yes all right so one of the major things about the unity of purpose I've noticed was one game that I played The Legend of Dragoon 1 the main character had a purpose unity of purpose and I could have relate to this purpose because despite it being a very I don't want to evil but very like vengeful because he won't basically the main character wanted to avenge the death of his parents by killing the very thing that did this action and despite it being a very heinous act on my book like something I wouldn't normally do or anything like that but I could relate to it and understand that what my question is later on down the road the character gets to the point of finding out who this character is and it turns out so it's someone that has been close to him and it's been like a friend to him if not one of his closest friends of all time the one is it a good thing to change the unity of purpose because the unity of action would prevent him from accomplishing the original unity of purpose well what you're talking about is changing his wand yes right so you've got unity of purpose the two of you are together and all of a sudden he jumps to the left-right the question is whether or not you move with him right if you stay behind that's what that was the dead space problem which would all of a sudden Isaac wanted to go down to the planet and I was still like no call the Marines for cryin out loud like I'm an engineer I'm not gonna fix this right so the question is whether or not you can make that leap with them if you can then it's perfectly fine to all of a sudden say you know what this is what we wanted all along but oh my god I want this other thing more now and so that's what we're gonna do right that's a that's a very classic you know character arc is the whole time I was going after a but it turns out what I really needed was B so as long as you can keep unity of purpose in that jump then that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do with a with a character or the other thing to do of course right is to leave it up to the player whether or not we're gonna change our purpose right what are we gonna do about that my friend betrayed me I could shoot them in the face or not what do you do so that's the other way to handle that kind of thing thank you all right thank you very much everybody you guys the rest of the show

Channel: GDC

Views: 65,615

Rating: 4.8984842 out of 5

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, game narrative, storytelling, writing, game writing

Id: 4mgK2hL33Vw

Length: 58min 2sec (3482 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

The "Isaac, fetch my slippers problem." I liked DS1 but damn if that's not the perfect summation. Great talk. Fantastic video. Definitely worth the watch.

[u/DFYX]

Just watched that earlier today and it's absolutely great advice.

[u/[deleted]]

If you truly are passionate about game development, you owe it to yourself to watch this.

[u/EitherObjective]

this is a gem

[u/8bithjorth]

Great vid, thanks for sharing

[u/Korvar]

I think the initial idea that there's something wrong with a "Gordon Freeman" character really put me off. If Gordon Freeman was so terrible he wouldn't be appearing on so many "best of" lists. So he's clearly missing something here.

[u/GoodlooksMcGee]

i was wondering if he was going to mention The Last of Us.. I think it is interesting how he views times when you are playing something that you are actively against but the character wants badly. He almost doesn't account for that case in his talk, but it is a big part of it.

[u/katastrophic88]

This is awesome. Thank you for sharing!