Better game characters by design:

A psychological approach

Katherine Isbister, Ph.D.

Rensselaer (RPI)

Better game characters by design

Overview

• Motivations• Approach• Findings• On measuring effectiveness• Some concluding thoughts• Q/A

Motivations

Primary motive: despair

Better game characters by design

lemons and oranges…

What makes game characters so much better?!

Approach…

Better game characters by design

Approach

• 2002-ongoing… • Analyzing characters in a wide range of game

genres, looking for design patterns grounded in social psychological* principles.

• Student research team and course projects magnified efforts and evolved pattern descriptions.

• Presentations at GDC 2004-2006 elicited input from industry experts.

Better game characters by design

Approach

*Why social psychology?– Applying human-human responses to human-

character dynamics makes sense and is experimentally justified (The Media Equation)

– Game industry had relied heavily prior to this on linear media (film, writing) for guidelines, but games are inherently interactive.

Better game characters by design

Approach

• End result: book!

• Meant for game developers, game design students, and the HCI/believable character community

Findings

Better game characters by design

Example Patterns

• Astute use of first impression cues

• Clever automation of nonverbal cues

• Emotional expectation management through social roles

Better game characters by design

Example Patterns

• Astute use of first impression cues– Baby faces– Stereotypes– Dom/sub and friend/foe

Better game characters by design

Baby faces

Better game characters by design

Baby faces

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Better game characters by design

Stereotypes

Better game characters by design

Stereotypes

Better game characters by design

Dominance and Friendliness

Better game characters by design

Example Patterns

• Clever automation of nonverbal cues– Gaze – Social body language

Better game characters by design

Gaze

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Better game characters by design

Social body language

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Better game characters by design

Example Patterns

• Emotional expectation management through social roles – Minions– Arch enemy

Better game characters by design

Minions

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Better game characters by design

Arch-enemy

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On Measuring Effectiveness

Better game characters by design

How do you know if it worked?

• Game industry folks do not typically make use of benchmarks/advanced usability testing.

• They rely on some combination of– Design vision– Astute developer management and Q/A– Market (evolutionary selection)– Informal user feedback/folklore

Better game characters by design

How do you know if it worked?

• They can benefit from shared terminology, well-grounded in research.

• My book focuses on giving them a common language to help calibrate their informal (but rigorous) process of evaluation.

Better game characters by design

How does this help believable character researchers?

• Researchers can learn from best practices of industry--the structural framework based upon psychology provides scaffolding.

• Sub-areas usually have accompanying measures that can be leveraged to test particular effects in isolation (e.g. baby face, dom/sub and friend/foe).

Some concluding thoughts

Better game characters by design

Some concluding thoughts

• Perhaps oranges come from orange trees, not lemon trees…

Better game characters by design

Some concluding thoughts

• Perhaps oranges come from orange trees, not lemon trees…(process and contextual pressures profoundly shape outcomes)

Better game characters by design

Some concluding thoughts

• Perhaps oranges come from orange trees, not lemon trees…(process and contextual pressures profoundly shape outcomes)– Emphasis on biggest impact on user experience– Extreme time pressure + rich resources– No need for theoretical rigor or implementation

elegance

Better game characters by design

Some concluding thoughts

• Can we make lemonade?

Better game characters by design

Some concluding thoughts

• Can we make lemonade?(setting valuable and meaningful research agendas)

Better game characters by design

Some concluding thoughts

• Can we make lemonade?(setting valuable and meaningful research agendas)– Addressing industry issues with respect

and seriousness– Finding ways to translate and re-translate

other areas of theory between domains

Better game characters by design

Thank you

• http://www.friendlymedia.org

• Isbisk@rpi.edu