Slashdot Mirror
What Defines Successful Game Characters?
Thanks to TotalGames.net for their feature discussing what makes a videogame character popular. They point out that "almost every character-led game will see a significant chunk of development time spent honing, adjusting and, in some cases, scrapping characters", and discuss Link's famous make-over for Zelda: The Wind Waker, saying "...the outcry that greeted this graphical overhaul underlines just how important game characters are to players." However, the piece concludes: "But for every ignored genius, there are hundreds of mediocre and downright irritating game icons lurking on the shelves", citing Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and the Poochy-like Bitmap Kid as examples of the bad in character design.
You can take a potentially successful character (say Sonic) and if you stick it in a sub par game, it's going to suck.
I think the success of the character is more a result of the quality of the game.
Spiky hair = big bucks!
"...the outcry that greeted this graphical overhaul underlines just how important game characters are to players."
Is it just me, or did most of the outry about that game die down shortly after it was released? I guess everybody was surprised that the game still turned out quite good.
"Derp de derp."
You can't have a successful character without either a successful story or an aesthetic quality of some sort that overrides the lack of interest-holding narrative. Just like fictional characters.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
"...the outcry that greeted this graphical overhaul underlines just how important game characters are to players."
In that particular case, I don't think it was because Link's character had changed. Most of the outcry there was a knee-jerk reaction caused by people feeling mislead. First they were shown a video where Link looked startlingly realistic, then they were presented with a still of Link that looked like something out of South Park. Besides feeling mislead, it probably looked to people like Nintendo was cheapining out the franchise. They wanted to see Link taken into a more adult direction.
I really don't feel that the outcry had to do with changing Link himself. If you think about it, it isn't much of a change at all from the previous games.
Interesting note: Though this isn't a scientific observation, I did notice that the people complaining about the game were the ones who only saw a still of it. The ones that were saying 'wow' were the ones that saw the video.
If a characters got attitude and humor, (s)he'll go far. Take Duke Nukem for instance. How often is he quoted? Best character ever...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
We all know that the best characters were the disposable one. Just think! Doom without monsters? Lemmings without... well, lemmings?
Most of the remarkable game characters of don't say a thing: Lara Croft, Gordon Freeman, Doom guy. The other ones didn't develop a personality until the gaming audience felt comfortable with them. Mario didn't have much of a personality until much later on and Sonic didn't seem like too much of a badass (because he is SOOOOO badass) when you actually played that game.
Look it's a joke about my sig IN MY SIG! LOL!
The ball from Pong, that guy was badass, he didnt take crap from no one... Did you see the way he was always beating on those lines whenever he could? sure he missed a few times but he always came back for more...
The use of focus groups is now widespread and developers are more than happy to use them. "We want I Ninja to be successful and the focus groups gave us a chance to try and find out what people liked and did not like," explains Wayne Binningham, lead artist on I Ninja. Midgley agrees: "Together with Microsoft we used focus groups when developing Kung Fu Chaos as we didn't want to end up creating characters that no-one wanted to play."
I think this article lost most of its credibility with this section. One of the main complaints in several of the reviews for Kung Fu Chaos was that all of the characters were boring, generic characters that no one in the review staff wanted to play. The same complaints have been voiced for I Ninja, who looks like nothing more inspired or interesting than a generic cartoon ninja. Take an '80s action movie ninja, super-deform him, and there you go, you've got I Ninja. How they think that that is an inspired design or that it is somehow anywhere near as unique as a lightning fast blue hedgehog or an Italian plumber that fights evil mushrooms, turtles, and dinosaurs by stomping on them is beyond me.
And I think that what makes a successful character is, quite simply, gameplay. Look at that list on the left there. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Mario, Chun-Li, Sonic, Bomberman, Pikachu... just go through the whole damn thing and try to spot the popular character that was in a game that sucked. Or that was just mediocre. You won't find one, because not only were Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Street Fighter 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, and all of the others great games, but even the first Tomb Raider wasn't that bad.
People will buy a game that does not suck. They will even buy games that don't suck, but have characters that definitely DO suck, like Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter. They will even buy games that look "kiddie", regardless of what your ridiculous focus group says. If the original I Ninja was "too kiddie" for the focus groups, then what do you think they said about Wind Waker, one of the best selling platformers of the year?
I like characters that are so different you dont forget them. I mean take Ganondorf, you can never forget the chill that goes down your spine when he thrusts out his hand with the triforce and then that purple light... still gives me nightmares, and no navi to help:'( and Cloud! Way cool hair, awsome sword, awsome final limit, un-forgetable...
DUKEY!
Any guesses to what game I'm currently playing?
In any case, Viewtiful Joe, has some of the best new characters I've seen in a long time. Not too much of a story, but the game itself screams personality.
It doesn't hurt that the game itself is the most kick-ass game to come out in a long time...
Midgley reckons the best clue as to whether a character has any chance of success is in its outline. "If you are able to identify the character from its silhouette you are probably onto a winner as it means they look distinctive," he says.
Actually, that would be Matt Groening who said that. Give credit where credit is due Guy.
If someone came up to you and offered you a game between these two descriptions, which would you chose?
A) You're a spiky haired guy with little known about your past. You left your hometown to join an ultra elite fighting force and left to become a mercenary
Or...
B) You're a paperboy. You ride your bike around town delievering newspapers while dodging obsticles. You have no name, no past, and you simply fall off your bike if you get hit by a car.
Which game would you pick? (A being Final Fantasy 7, B being any of the Paperboy games)