End of an MA journey

It's been fun, it's been stressful. It's certainly been a roller coaster ride what with all the personal afflictions that have been throwing them in the direction of me and my family. However I have become far more intimately familiar with characters with depth how to create cohesive characters beyond just the 'coolness' of a physical design. 

I've done regular feedback throughout this final project, so I hope that it now reflects what I've been exploring throughout the past year. I would like to continue on with some of these aspects as I feel that there are still other things to explore regarding them. For example, there is potentially a lot more to the subject of ergodicity. How else can we encourage non-trivial cognition towards characters in games?

While this door may close, another will certainly open. My MA closes with the legacy of a Sage who sought knowledge and discovered a whole host of strong personalities more valuable than a few minerals and energies.

Final Project: The Experiential Whole

From this project I have managed to incorporate many aspects of character design that I have explored throughout the year.
There are a number of things that I would like point out and summarize.
For each character, I tried to keep in mind each of the key words I mentioned at the beginning of the project. And upon completion of each character design I gave these key words to my participants to review whether my characters fulfilled these categories I established for creating cohesive and engaging characters. I managed to engage over thirty people to take part in this review.
Firstly, was I successful in creating strong silhouettes? 75% of people said yes over all. Garrett and Aaron had the weakest silhouettes, apparently, although Aaron was still interesting enough due to his build and Garrett, as the plumper of the group was noticeable for his rounder stature.
The strongest silhouettes was Isolde, for her dynamic body language. On the whole, however, all of my characters provided an interesting silhouette. The next key word was Essence.

Did I achieve this?
By essence I mean what is it about the character that makes them who they are, gives them a particular uniqueness. Immediately, the most obvious choice for a lot of people was Weiss for his albino appearance. The Saoirse (Caleb, Logan and Riina) were noted for having a strong
essence for the colour of their eyes in particular and their clothing and its 'wrapping'
like style.

As for Significance, this was the hardest key word to achieve.
Perhaps I designed too large a group of characters that would be able to play a significant enough role in a potential game, however the structure of the Maroon Panthers was appreciated, since as a group of allies all with unique skills that could all be a boon to the Aura Sage's journey, especially those with strong connections toAura. 67% of my participants were satisfied that most of these characters would be prominent in the proposed game space.

Coherence and Intrigue.
When each of my characters were given to my participants I was looking for this in particular: did the characters and their backgrounds/backstories suit the nature of the space I created? Did their alliance as the Panthers make sense? Could my participants view this scenario as believable?
The bottom line was yes. Fortunately. While some were skeptical about where a couple of characters might not be as intriguing as they could have been, most characters had something that made them individual enough and strong enough to exist within the given space.
It was largely when I provided the characters' backgrounds that the majority of
participants immediately said that the characters were coherent and intriguing,
leading me to draw a conclusion that it is not simply the visual design of the character that matters. That should be obvious anyway, but here it is re-iterated.
All of these aspects, coupled with the visual environment designs and the explanation of Aura to ground believability in some of the characters in particular, helped to create an experience as a whole. From looking at how people reacted to characters alone, versus characters with grounding and personalities, I could say fervently that characters are an integral part of an experience.
This was true as far as my feedback suggested, for 3rd person character with whom the player is intended to build a relationship. However my approach of creating a journal was to demonstrate my exploration into what makes people 'role-play'. The prompt for designing the Aura Sage had been this,
and the notes I had made from that point of exploration was that characters should have balance. They shouldn't be overconvoluted, nor should they be completely bland that the player isn't bothered about filling their shoes.
As such I had designed and developed the Aura Sage. The feedback I received for her was quite positive on the whole. Participants agreed that she was an ideal player character (well, about 85%) strongly agreed and so I can say with some certainty that my theory towards player characters has good ground.

I can safely conclude, from consistent feedback, designing and discussions, that an game experience is best served as a whole. Character designs can't reach their full potential approached as an isolated form of design. They are integral. The player must become integral with the game space as well, and by creating a character that offers intrigue and enough openness for the player to want to take their role, we can potentially do this. My characters were successful because they were intriguing and blurred the archetype, and strong in their visual design as well. My participants felt like they could become a part of those characters' world through having an appealing avatar, and I enhanced this engagement to this fictitious space by offering details about the world through the eyes of this particular 'player-character'

Final Project: Environments

There was one main thing I intended to establish throughout this project: experience.
What I have already looked at - archetypes and the notion of role- playing – is paramount to enhancing this. However without a visual world within all of this to exist, how can there truly be an experience?
When it came to designing and concepting environments, I tried to focus on what would be some of the more major places in the world. These would include the main hideout of the group of vigilantes, caverns of Aura deposits and the hidden location of Caleb's people. The paintings are only rough, since in a journal a great deal of time wouldn't exactly be taken to make them look especially pretty and pristine. That aside, it was the idea of what the world might feel like that was important. I did this before beginning to develop the characters, since I could then provide my earlier volunteers with these
environments and ‘play-test’ them, to investigate whether the visual space I envisioned was ideal for the characters I had created.
As part of the cohesiveness of a world, I wanted a strong reason for the existence of magic. While magic isn’t always intended to be understood – since in fantasy terms it is seen as an extraordinary and/or supernatural force – I felt that finding believable grounding in the existence of magic in this world would help to solidify this intended coherence.
At any rate, this gave birth to the concept of Eubellius, a continent with an illusion of peace between its seven nations. 

What is Aura?
In spiritual terms, an aura a luminous radiation that surrounds people, and that you can tell things about a person from that aura.
It was this which progressed to the idea that, in a fantasy world, who is to say that it is not the Aura that is the 'magic' in the first place? What if people had the ability to manipulate this aura, and what if aura is the child of another source, a much, much larger one.

And so, the concept of Aura was born.

Similarly to how some of my characters were designed specifically with the Aura in mind, so were a number of my environment concepts.

I think it goes without saying that I then put my environment designs through the same process I had my characters, and the above are the most suitable results, it seems. I further analyse them in my art book. I was happy with the turnout of this since it didn't take a great deal of redesigning and/or reconsiderations to create some environments which felt cohesive with the cast of characters. The whole package was pulled together through these designs. 

The Aura Sage would spend most of her journey moving between these prominent locations.

Final Project: Character line-up

Not all of my characters were actually successful designs, however I put the following to the test, and they were considered to fulfill my key points.

Final Project: Design Processes 2

I went through this same processes for the new characters I designed as well.

Final Project: Design Processes 1

I decided to post all of the designs and sketch-work here as one blog entry. The rationale behind all of these designs/changes/developments is discussed in my art book. 

I just want to reflect upon what them all as a whole.
While some of them underwent little changes in their physical design, they would undergo changes in other areas such as their characteristics or backstories. This came as a result of 'play-testing' these designs amongst a variety of people. 

For the original 8 characters I designed, which I showcased a couple of blogs ago, I was mostly on the mark with having created intriguing characters which challenged their archetype. As I said, some underwent bigger changes than others. 

I just want to provide an example of a smaller change and a bigger redesign and why. 

Firstly, Trystan was redesigned fairly heavily, having received feedback that he came across as military to a number of participants. I didn't want this. Not only that, but his silhouette was found as lacking, and his visual design didn't quite oppose his story as much as I had hoped it would. This prompted me to rethink his design. The eye-patch remained however, since he still intentionally tries to hide the fact he has different coloured eyes; this characteristic remained. I just wanted him to look more common, more roguish or mercenary-like - in other words the opposite of what he actually is. 

Caleb is an example of a character that went underwent subtle but noticeable changes. The largest redesign aspect was his colour palette. This was due to the feedback I received suggesting that viewers assumed he was from a hot desert country. To better reflect the kind of terrain he comes from (a very foresty island nation) his palette became primarily green. 

It would be far too long winded for me to go through this for each character I designed. It was the same process for each of them. Did they fulfill each of the key words I had established?
I redesigned and reconsidered characters depending on the feedback I received, until the answer to almost all of them was 'yes'. 

Final Project: Peripherals

The notion of using physical artefacts was to help with visual articulation. It's all well and good being told about something or seeing an image about something, but when it comes to non-trivial cognition, you want to be able to work things out yourself. It's the whole 'show, don't tell' scenario, really.

 

The Sage's collecting of these various stones leaves suggestions that she is a bit of a collector or hoarder, and is conscientious about the studying to find the answers she seeks. Also, the fact that she carries minerals over currency is an indication towards her disposition towards wealth. At least, these are some of the factors which were brought up in reviewing this with some volunteers.

The letters had a positive effect towards being able to make assumptions about why the Aura Sage is on her journey. They don't tell outright, but they leave strong hints.

These all accompany the journal to add substance.

Final Project: Redesigning and Redeveloping

I might note now, actually, that the original keywords I had determined a little while back changed slightly as I realized that I needed to be able to summarize this in better words.

Perhaps this is an easier way to consider it:

•Silhouette - This is fundamental, and a reminder that we must always consider the basics. Without them, the rest can lack continuity.

•Essence - What about the character makes them, well, 'them'? What appeal do they have and are they unified with the space in which they live?

•Significance - Do they play a role that is significant in any way, even if subtly? Why are they a prominent character? A character that has a strong role can offer indirect control if the player engages with them well.

•Coherence - Do they make sense in the world in which they live? This also helps me to consider whether the previous three points are unified. Unification comes under this umbrella, in terms of visual design and otherwise.

•Intrigue - Is the character appealing enough to strike curiosity? Is there something about them, their essence, that encourages the player to want to learn more about them?

•Experience - All of these points culminate in creating an experience for the player. Strong characters aren't made in isolation. The above keywords can all connect a character to their space. They should be considered as one whole. The basics help to lay down the foundations of this, while the rest enhances it. 

With all of this in mind, I was able to being developing and redesigning both the original 'Red Panthers' I had designed and a newer cast that would potentially bring more substance to it. It could create a richer world for the Aura Sage to describe in her journal.

I just had to be careful not to make it overly-saturated and convoluted. 

This is a shorthand preview of the redesigns they went through: 

Of course, there is rhyme and reason to how they were redesigned following various feedback.
It goes without saying that one of the most obvious changes was art style. While this is an attribute applying to a whole space as opposed to singular characters, it is still important to consider in terms of cohesiveness. A more serious-looking art style is more appropriate for a serious setting.

Final Project: The Travelling Sage

As I reflect upon this now, it's kind of easy to see the mistakes I made with the first design. When designing this character, I wanted to create a character that was both interesting and plain at the same time. I know this sounds contradictory, however there needs to be a balance between the two and I aimed to try and achieve this. 

My first design was to create character that was interchangeable between genders, to be able to allow players of either to be able to slip into a role. Then again, the players' gender shouldn't matter, and neither should the main character's, all things considered. 

Anyway, this was the original design and I wasn't happy with it. Naturally I called for feedback, and the general consensus was that this design didn't fit the bill of a traveling scholar, which was essentially what I was trying to go for. And it was considered too boring. There was nothing interesting enough to make them want to know more.

 

The only thing really noticeable about these designs was the face scarf, but it took away from the less combat-oriented nature that I was trying to get across. 

As a result, I revisited how to get across a strong character that would provide enough interest. I didn't want an overly eccentric physical design. 

 

 This design was met with a much better reception when I asked for feedback. Although there was some debate about the use of colour, it helped me come to the conclusion that the most appropriate would be blues. This is, in real life terms, often associated with prestige or with wealth (take royal blue for example) and given that this character was intended to be one on a journey towards knowledge, I determined this appropriate. Another factor in favour of this is the fact that she, as a character, has no permanent home. She has traversed numerous terrains and blue is a colour that suits almost no terrain (unless she can live and breathe underwater or something!). In other words, it hints at the fact she doesn't really have a suited environment and doesn't really belong anywhere.

The way I decided to provide details about her, who is deliberately unnamed (she is known as the Aura Sage and has the initials F.M) , was through a journal written from her point of view. This way viewers would be able to learn about her piece by piece, with subtle suggestions being made from her personally, and at the same time uncover different things about the other characters and environments of the world in which she (and they) exists.

Where My Final Project Began

Given the success in creating characters that intriguing and contradictory to archetypes, I decided that this same group of characters would be the starting point of my final project. In a way, exploring Archetypes has been a precursor to the whole thing. 

At any rate, I originally considered how and why I would develop these characters, and that's what led to my brainstorming of a bigger picture. How would they fit in? And how exactly would I present these characters, which would not be intended as player characters within a game? 

I've mentioned ergodicity several times throughout my research, and here is where it has come in handy. It is essentially non-trivial cognition, in that the viewer/player/reader (whatever medium) cannot passively just take in what they are given. They must interact in some way and think consciously about the literature with which they are engaged. In games this would apply mostly to narrative-focused ones. (I can't remember If i explained this in an earlier blog post, so I did it again!)

This prompted me to consider that these characters I would develop could be portrayed through the eyes of a fictional character, a 'blank slate' character that would allow my viewers to be able to step into the shoes of someone of that world. Firstly, to explore the nature of depth of character players seem to prefer in a player-avatar, I conducted an experiment with an interactive powerpoint. (It only needed to be simple, and was similar to that of an animatic, albeit an interactive one with choices for the participants to make). 

 

This interactive event had several difficult avenues of choice and ultimately four possible outcomes. These would be minor, something that would drastically affect the endgame but would affect the journey. This tested whether people would make decisions as themselves or as the character. If they made choices in the role of the character, I wanted to know what made them role-play. If they did, I also wanted to know why not. 

By questioning these things, I was able to establish that people felt that it was harder to become the character the less information there was about them. I had deliberately left the 'player-character' ambiguous, even leaving them as a silhouette. As a result I found out that people liked to have some sort of an idea about the character, however too much would make them too convoluted for people to be able to take their role. The solution I came to was to create a character that appears blank, with enough substance to entice players, and has elements surrounding him/her which are suggestive to their personality/character.

This was the prompt for creating the Aura Sage.

Too Busy Working; Forgot to Update!

My bad!

This is starting to sound old, right? Apparently I've been so preoccupied doing the work that I forgot about updating the blog with reflections on the feedback I received and summaries, etc etc. The stuff I usually forget to do, only on a much smaller scale. Eight weeks is a long time not to update on my progress, especially since when I last updated it was somewhere near the beginning of this final project. 

It doesn't really help that I lost another relative this summer. Stress levels have been rather peaked lately. So I suppose the way I've dealt with it is just sinking into my work and getting it done, and forgetting to review it on my blog. Don't get me wrong... I've gathered feedback and information.... just drew my results and carried neatly on without taking a pit stop to showcase my progress and analyses. Woops. 

Brace yourselves, these next 24 hours and several posts  (several? not exactly sure just how many) are going to be one large reflective dump of information.  

Final Project: Brainstorming

Whilst reading Exploring Character Design, I came across some tips in the chapter about research, inspiration and ideas, and some of the best ways to come up with ideas include brainstorming. Obviously that's a given. Brainstorming is a very efficient way to leak all your thoughts onto paper and to link them together in different ways. Anything and everything you think of can be jotted down onto these diagrams. 

However it was pointed out, and I took note, that sometimes things like that are easy to forget, if you're simply just scribbling things down on paper. Some suggestions were made, like writing on different pieces of paper and treating them like a jigsaw, or maybe pinning ideas to a wall. Basically, something visual that sticks in your mind since a lot of people have good graphic memory.

I know I do. So I took this advice and have been brainstorming across my wardrobe... O_o I can just go back to it, stand it front of it and jog my memory of all my brainchildren, good, bad or otherwise. 

 

This has been hanging on my wardrobe for the best part of 6 weeks now, since I came home for the summer, and I have to say it works really well. I look at it almost every morning I wake, and it's so easy to add other random ideas that might get sparked by something. Sometimes I'll be downstairs and have a sudden revelation. All it takes is to jog up to my room, grab a sticky note and add it to the web of ideas. It means that everything is at hand, regardless of whether all of it makes the cut or not.

The only irritating thing is that I'm heading back to Preston in less than a month, so I'll have to try and move the entire thing. In the meantime, however, it's helping my project to come together nicely.

I'm brainstorming everything, from characters - what kinds of characters would exist, where and why etc - to environments, the physical structure of the world they live in, the kinds of things which co-exist and are coherent with each other... etc etc. Even as I've started designing and gesture drawing, I still get ideas and I still pop them up on my wardrobe web. 

Might be some of the best advice I've taken to do with generating ideas. It's certainly working. 

As for the journal, I even considered the style of it, since I'm trying to go for authenticity in terms of it looking like it has come straight from the world I'm designing. Basically the world I am creating is going to be largely inspired by the High Middle Ages, albeit a fictitious one in the fantasy genre. At this time anyway. It is subject to change of course, should development dictate, as is everything.

Final Project: Breakdown

Right. Before I get too far into things, I need to breakdown what exactly is and has been happening throughout this project. This is for both the reader's convenience and for something for me to refer back to later and to reflect upon. Obviously, throughout development it's likely things will change but thus far the following is what I've established as my brief. 

The Brief

I intend (or am currently doing so) to create a journal, drawn and written from the point of view of an original character, containing documentation of an entire world including a large variety of characters, creatures, environments and other aspects which make up a believable game space. Naturally, everything I design will be a culmination of my research, and to make this easier I established a number of key words. 

• Coherence
• Unification
• Appeal
• Curiosity
• Indirect Control
• Experience

From my research, this is what I have concluded is necessary to create relatable and cohesive characters, and by extension to engage the player in a game world. These key words will be vital to my designs. 

 
For this project I will :

• Create a journal that will be traditional drawn and written.
• Document a cast of characters and more through the eyes of a given character
• Provide clues about this character, deliberately leaving him/her open for the viewer to interpret and create their own experience of this world
• Physically make props - peripherals - that help to establish authenticity
• Design a cast of characters based on conclusions from my research, each of which will intimately feel like they belong to the world
• Create a pitch for a game within which this game space and its characters are both necessary and cohesive

I'm hoping that this will help to demonstrate what I have learned throughout my research, to bring it all together and also to showcase different skills. If I am successful, the journal will contain a believable and engaging, potential game space with characters that are relatable and intrinsic to this space. 

  

Consequences

Consequences are a vital part of role-playing. Without them, the choices we make don't carry a great deal of weight. There are so many games wherein the player is given choices, and neither one has any effect on what then happens. A lot of players feel cheated by this, and don't see why the choice is given in the first place if you can't stop something from happening.

It's a difficult subject. In The Art of Games Design, the concept of multiple endings is discussed, and argued to be particularly fallible because of the unecessary time and effort for features that may not even be seen, and the confusion it can cause. However I don't believe that 'choices' or 'consequences' are obsolute in games. In fact, it's of paramount importance to discover how this idea can work truly successful in games. The player needs to feel like they are in control, and giving them choices aids this.

Of course, it comes down to the discussion of 'indirect control. Perhaps a different approach is needed regarding the consequences in a game. If the consequences are large enough to affect the entire ending of a game, for example, this can cause players to replay the game not for the engagement value, but just to find out what happens. This breaks the illusion that they are within the world they are playing and they cease to role-play anymore. On the other hand, giving them choices which make no difference to the gameworld at all makes players feel cheated.

So how could we possibly go about this?

My theory is that choices and consequences can and should affect the journey, and not the destination. In other words, a decision someone makes might have certain effects on the way someone might interact with you as a character. E.g. Imagine that you had the choice to go and seek out a rare weapon, or to help someone in need. You choose to find that weapon instead of help, and that person resents you for it. That person could have been a boon in your quest, and your task is made more difficult by the fact they refuse to ally with you.

That's just a hypothetical example. It's something that would be caused by your decision, and would force the player into the shoes of their character to decide which is more beneficial, as the character they are playing, therefore encouraging role-playing. If there is no consequence, the player wouldn't feel the need to role-play and would just likely go for the weapon for statistical reasons.

Well, that's my theory at the moment, which I am exploring as I create my final project. I want viewers to be able to form their own interpretation of the character whose point of view my project will revolve, and to make their own minds up about becoming that character or not.

If this doesn't make much sense yet, I'll be explaining it shortly as I summarize the process of my final project.

Summary of Archetype Exploration

This conclusion has been a long time coming, really.

The project itself was actually really fun and quite interesting to see how people percieved my characters. The idea, obviously, was to see how many could be fooled by simply looking at the appearances of these characters, and to identify whether archetypes are necessarily a good thing.

Just as a reminder, these were my characters. Some or all possessed characteristics which were deliberately unexpected for the character's physicalities, to challenge the idea of 'archetyping'. 

I provided participants with a number of statements that could apply to one or some of the characters. The participants were then required to decide who they thought each statement belonged to. 

It provided some interesting results, actually. I'm going to note only some of the more significant ones here.

Only 50% of particpants selected Aaron as a competent craftsman.

Absolutely none of them would have thought that he was an ex-assassin, due to his sheer bulk. This was an intentional design choice and yielded the expected results. Upon feedback, however, this was seen as a good thing given that he wasn't what people were expecting. The surprise led to curiosity - an important aspect of players engaging with characters, as research indicated.

53% recognised Isolde as a dancer, a surprisingly low percentage, personally speaking. I believe that some participants tried to outsmart the concept by choosing the least likely looking dancer since they were aware of what the experiment was looking for.

Not many people considered that more than one of the characters could be blueblood, so most people only thought that Daniel was of any noble background. While this is true, two of the other characters are also of a noble descent. Of course, the physical design of the characters affected this. Trystan looks less than regal, despite his actual background, and events in the character's life are responsible for this. Again, this twist struck a chord with people's curiosity and ultimately they wanted to know more about this character. 

Again, another relation to his size, 40% participants thought that Aaron would be claustrophobic, when in fact it was Amber. 

What I found interesting was some of the comments made about Caleb in particular. Several noted how they would have believed his fighting style to be, which was in fact almost spot on from a handful of them. He was seen as a graceful, fluid combatant. Although a very tall character, he is lean and not the lumbering kind of character, which was spotted by these several. The large majority of participants would have seen him as the leader of this group, however, which was incorrect. Those who did get this correct - Lilith - did so based on colour palette (although that did lead some to think of Aaron as the leader). 

The conclusion that could be drawn from this short exploration is that archetypes are a good foundation for creating recognisable characters, but there needs to be a balance between what the audience can work out and what they can't. If the whole character is transparent enough to work out without needing or wanting to learn anything about that character, then it lacks depth and is in danger of being a 2-dimensional stereotype. While characters shouldn't be too complex that it becomes too convoluted for the audience, the best outcome is to find that balance which engages the player through the unexpected but does not frighten them off. 

In short, the archetype is not gospel, but can indeed provide a good diving board for an intriguing design, as long as you use it to your advantage.

Though an interesting note: I must have designed something right about this particular group of characters, since a number of participants informed me that they definitely wanted to know more about these characters and would follow their story should I choose to develop it further.

Overdue Update

Well, I neglected my reflective journal a bit, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I haven't been ploughing on with my final project.
The decision to carry on rather than sort out extenuating circumstances was wise at the time I felt, since I was very motivated - and still am - and enjoying the progress I am making with my final project. I've got several things in development at the moment, including a book with the written research I have done, an art book showcasing the exploratory projects and artwork I have done throughout the year to justify that research, and obviously my current design work.

It's been a pretty rocky ride, yet again. A while back I updated with all the crap life had been dropping on me, and apparently it wasn't done yet. My poor old little sister took another trip to hospital last wee due to her gastro oesophageal reflux disease, and not long before that my dad's brother passed away unexpectedly, leading to a trip down south for his funeral. Family reunions are nice, but once it a while it would be a damn sight better to gather under more celebratory circumstances ...

Anyway, with things calming down again I've been cracking on with planning and designing for my project. 

I'll break it down properly in a later post, but to summarize, my final project will manifest in the form of a journal, from the point of view of an adventurer that the viewers themselves can interpret according to their own imagination/experience of what they see and read. Within this journal will be documentation of an entire world of encountered characters, environments and more - all a culmination of what I have been exploring throughout the year. In terms of cohesiveness, believability and authenticity, I intend to include physical objects that will enhance the experience of reading this adventurer's journal, to try and put the player in this person's shoes, (figuratively speaking).

I will elaborate on this properly shortly. A side note to myself, however, is that people showed a great deal of interest in the characters I designed for my exploratory archetype project. With that in mind, and whilst brainstorming ideas, I have considered developing these characters further around my final project and/or vice versa. This is due to the solid background work I had already done with them, which left avenues open for developing an entire game around them.

That said, I mentioned in an earlier post that I would update with the actual character profiles of those characters, and I even forgot to summarize the conclusion drawn from that project. My bad! At this point, showing those characters' real profiles is for the enlightment and entertainment of all the people who took part in that experiment.

As of this moment, I'm both working on a short stint of an experiment regarding choices and consequences, to do with the world that my final project will revolve around, but also in the middle of a commission for a client who approached me not too long ago. So I'm currently juggling a number of things. At least it's keeping me busy. No time to really think too heavily on the past few weeks.

In short, that's you up to speed with where I'm at right now. The next few posts will be showcases of my progress with my final project, from brainstorming, to things I've been playing with physically making and to my early sketchwork and design work up until what I'm now doing.

I've even got a handy friend with a 3D printer who could help me out with some things if I ask really, really nicely - if he gets it working properly, apparently, since it's been having a few issues.

Thus far, it feels like it's coming together nicely. 

Project #5 - Character Designs

So, this was a fairly fun project to do, since I could try to utilize what I already knew through my previous projects, and deliberately negate some things for the purpose of this particular investigation.

I think I may have had a bit too much fun with it though. Instead of designing just three characters as I'd intended, I ended up creating eight fairly well-developed characters. So i figured there was no harm in including them all in the study.

The entire process began with making character profiles for them, before even thinking about their physical appearances, profile templates based off those given as examples in the book The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten. These characters needed to be fairly well developed so that I could provide potentially misleading visual information to the participants. In other words, the intention was always to purposefully try to make them assume the wrong things about these characters' true personalities, traits and behaviours.

Although I did keep in mind the conclusion I'd drawn regarding consistency and cohesiveness, and the main aspects which make the essence of a character, not forgetting visual family and the basic fundamentals of course.

So, minding all of this, I created a basis for the whole group: a group of misfit, mismatched individuals who grouped together as vigilantes as a way to protect their own hides from the trouble they all seem to have got themselves into.

They go by the name of the Red Panthers, indicated by the small garments of red that each of them wear. (Visual family, woo!). Anyway, these are the character designs I came up with:

Isolde, Trystan, Caleb and Aaron

Amber, Lilith, Meric and Daniel

I won't upload their full profiles yet, since I'm still waiting on participants to return the worksheet I provided them regarding these characters. Been waiting over a week for some of them -_-. The worksheet I distributed contained a number of random facts and statements about the backgrounds, traits and characteristics of some, all or none of these characters, and the intention is to see how how people interpret each character.

While I can't draw a full conclusion as of yet, it seems to be that I successfully managed to mislead a number of participants through pure physicality, and that they didn't feel cheated by it (those that I asked about it afterwards, at any rate).

I may compile an entry with the results thus far, perhaps, and later update it with the full conclusion based on participants.

Project #5 - Case Study 4 - Samus Aran

Case Study 4 - Samus Aran - Metroid. 

The last example of a misleading character which I looked at, was of course Samus Aran, a short and sweet case study.

In fact, this character is infamous for fooling pretty much everyone in the demographic when it was revealed that the 6 foot 3 inches tall, 198 lb bounty hair clad in full space armour was actually a woman and not a man, as everyone had believed.  

On Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft even writes that he was 'floored by the game's big reveal' -

http://kotaku.com/5634616/how-did-metroids-samus-aran-become-a-female-character

- and includes a quote stating that during development a staff member had suggested that she be female as a surprise for the player.

This is a perfect example of physicality misleading a player. This big, heavily armoured character was assumed by pretty much everyone to be male.

Project #5 - Case Study 3 - Gentle Giants

Case Study 3 - Gentle Giant


By Gentle Giant, I mean a character which is large in stature and looks intimidating, but is in contrast very gentle at heart in some way, even if it takes them a while to show that side of them.

It's pretty self explanatory, so I was brief with my example of this. In fact, this whole image is almost an archetype in itself, ironically, since so many people have used it as a way of breaking stereotype.


Mordecai  - Fire Emblem

In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Mordecai is a member of the Laguz race, a race of shape-shifting people (including Tigers, Cats, Hawks, Ravens and Dragons), with a fairly large prejudice towards humans.

Even in the illustration above, you can see that as fearsome and formidable he looks in his Tiger form, even being a particularly large Tiger, he is an incredibly gentle soul. Perhaps another Tiger would eat that squirrel in his hand - you generally don't know much about the generic characters other than that they are fierce warriors. Don't get me wrong, Mordecai is a very strong warrior, but ultimately he dislikes combat and hates even more to bring suffering or displeasure to those he considers friends. 

He is a perfect example of a gentle giant who would rather avoid conflict than engage in it, unlike his almost polar-opposite superior officer, Lethe:

 

She is a smaller member of the Beast Tribe and far quicker to judge and to anger, whereas Mordecai is much more mellow, not at all what his physicality seems to suggest upon first impressions. 

Project #5 - Case Study 2 - Dishonoured

Case Study 2 -Corvo Attano - Dishonoured

So I was too busy with doing the project, that I totally forgot about updating what I'd done in researching for it, etc. Silly me. I've finished the project anyway, so I'll shortly be writing an entry reflecting upon that.

In the case of Corvo Attano in Dishonoured the 'misleading' here isn't quite so dramatic as with Mirajane Strauss (Fairy Tail), which is why I chose to use it as an example. When I use the word 'misleading', I don't mean in a bad way - I just mean that the player is misdirected to believe that the character is one thing through the way they look and then proven wrong in uncovering information about the character. This seemed to work in Mira's case, and I'm going to analyze this example as well.

Again, there will be some spoilers in this analysis.

Anyway; Corvo is an assassin. There he is:

That information, in itself, springs certain images to mind. Assassin's are expected to be pretty cold and calculated, and remorseless killers. That's what Corvo is, right? Not exactly. He's not an assassin by choice, and that, here is paramount.

The general archetype of assassin's is that they tend to be hardened killers who prefer not to hold ties with anyone, however Corvo wasn't brought up as one and he certainly seems to care about Emily, with whom he seems to share an affectionate bond, whether she is or isn't related to him by blood.

Long story short, he was originally Lord Protector to the Empress, having surprisingly grown up in a lower class family, fighting on the streets as a teen. These turns of events would make one assume that Corvo is a less compassionate man than he is. Even based on physicality i.e. his body language, expressions, dark colour palette, you'd assume that this man isn't all that approachable.

 

So to learn of his affections with Emily is almost a surprising turn, and a misleading characteristic in a way. While it might not be an enormously outrageous break of archetype, it is still what I like to call a 'quirk' - in that it's a trait you wouldn't expect of a character; in this case one which goes around inciting jailbreaks.

But it is also potentially pivotal. Perhaps this is one reason I focused on Corvo as an example. His compassion towards Emily can influence the choice the player could end up making, based on how they interpret Corvo as a man through this. There are two choices that the player can make after [spoiler] Corvo rescues Emily. Funnily enough, this choice ties in with what I'd been looking at regarding consequences and role-playing.

So yeah, this was the second one I'd looked into. It might arguably not be considered misleading in any way, since it's fairly ambiguous, although the general archetype of assassins is that they are emotionally hardened and don't tend to keep strong ties.

Project #5 - Case Study 1 - Fairy Tail

Case Study 1 - Fairy Tail

Not a game, obviously, but I always find it useful to delve into examples from other media too.

Fairy Tail is an anime about a guild of wizards of various magic types, who take on different jobs and tasks to earn money.
Fairy Tail is one of my favourite anime, largely because of the huge cast of unique characters which appear in the show. Of course, some are somewhat stereotypical and others are just plain wacky. However this is one of the reasons I find this to be a good example, because there are characters who, by plain sight, make you think one thing about them, whereas various story arcs reveal characteristics you may or may not expect from some of the characters.

In fact, there are several characters I can call upon from Fairy Tail, however I want to discuss Mirajane Strauss, the 'poster girl' of the Fairy Tail guild:

 

She is a very feminine, attractive character, and her clothes, body language and voice all seem to back that up. Immediately one would think of Mira as a typical girl. She is even a model for the Sorcerer Magazine, and she appears to fit that 'girly' stereotype.

*SPOILER*

And yet, as the anime goes on , you learn that she is one of the guild's five S-Class wizards (S-Class being the most powerfully classed wizards in the guild, of which there obviously only five). That, for me personally, was surprising and struck me with curiosity since it wasn't what I was expecting of her. 

Then, even more surprisingly, you learn that she is known as the 'She-Devil'. What could constitute that name for a girl like Mira? Well, this:

 

 

Mira uses a type of magic called 'Take-over Magic', using which she can physically take over the form of a demon, earning her the nickname 'She-devil'. In fact, she's regarded as the most fearsome of the wizards of Fairy Tail, something that you would definitely not automatically assume from her ordinary demeanor.

From her appearance, you also wouldn't expect to learn that she was particularly rebellious, almost bully-like, child and rather horrible to some of the others since she comes across as one of the nicest of the lot. This comes as part of character development, and interesting development at that since you are surprised by what is revealed about her as a character and the reason for her to become the airy woman she is when she is first introduced: family, a very familiar circumstance to almost anyone. 

I think, because of her misleading physicality, that this offers more substance to Mirajane. She's a surprisingly 3D dimensional character in a medium that's prone to having little or poor character development. In this case, surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal works in her favour.

Project #5 - The Brief

So, following the interviews and discussions I had with practitioners with regards to my report, the point Chris Phillips made about misleading players through the physicality of a character got me thinking.
This approach to designing characters could potentially work fairly well. However I wanted to explore this a little bit, to investigate people's reactions to a character when they don't turn out to be that which they would have expected. Obviously there's the risk of this kind of thing becoming satire, a mockery of archetypes in a way.

A quick experiment, I want to simply gauge how people perceive characters from their appearances alone i.e. their physicality, clothes, body language etc. 

THE BRIEF

My intention for this small project is to: 

• Create three characters with rather different and unlikely stories/personalities/characteristics
• Design them with notably different physicality 
• I will then survey a group of volunteers to investigate the kind of character they percieve each one to be, based on visual appearance alone.
• To provide them with the character information and let them see which characters they think each background info belongs to.

If they are successfully mislead, I then want to know whether these candidates were pleasantly surprised by this or not, whether it aids good character development or is a hindrance. 

And of course, a few case studies is where I begin.

Race in Games

Yet another topic that Extra Credits discussed which caught my interest regarding culture was 'race in games'. Obviously, when you think of 'race' when it comes to games, plenty of things come to mind, particularly in the fantasy genre where you have highly distinct, fictitious races and by extension cultures by which they live. I don't really need to go into the obvious there, however what Extra Credits discussed was a game that addresses REAL cultures; L.A. Noir.

 

They discuss the fact that race ISN'T used to define a character. Instead, Floyd suggests that L.A Noir expressed various racial issues that we all universally face, and gives us a perspective of the main, non-minority character through his encounters with other, minority characters within the game. I found it interesting what they pointed out, that the main character's actions later on in the game are contextualized by his reactions to a racial killing. In other words, the presence of other races and the events that happen throughout reveal aspects of his character that might not otherwise be shown.

They claim that just trying to design a minority main character can lead to stereotypes, whereas if you consider the role of having different races in a game you can provide more depth to any character through the interactions between those different races as opposed to assuming because of what they look like, or what race they belong to.

For me, this was a really interesting point regarding avoiding stereotypes and how to use 'race' non-offensively, since race is correlated with culture, obviously. As such, perhaps this approach is a good way to implement culture without it shouting in your face and being there for the sake of it. Culture and race can be used to help provide deeper characters with whom players could relate. This also ties back to some research I did back in Semester 1 where, in Better Game Characters By Design, it is stated that familiar plot points/issues/character morals can help a player to relate to that character, even one wildly unrealistic in appearance for example.

And, on a side note, I can see the connection between this and cohesive characters. Having a random character of a different race without any context cold potentially break that cohesiveness. Or rather, this is a hypothesis that I could potentially explore.

Stereotypes - Is Punch-out Racist?

I don't know a great deal about Gaijin Goombah, only that he is a Game Analyst on Youtube, and I haven't really seen much of their channel, so in terms of credibility I'm not sure how much standing this has. However a friend pointed out this video as a point of discussion regarding stereotypes - which I didn't wholly go into explore back when. However, I couldn't honestly give you a better example of a game with such glaring stereotypes as Punch-out!!, to the point that it has been called out for being racist. 

Interestingly, Gaijin Goombah challenges this and raises some very good questions about the extent Punch-out!! goes to in creating stereotypes. 

Gaijin does rightly point out the negativity in the stereotypes reflected in the original versions of the game, such as the Russian character known as 'Vodka Drunkenski', which was changed to 'Soda Popinski'. And the other mentioned is Pizza Pasta - an Italian character who was actually removed altogether. Basically the stereotypes in the original games were entirely negative, which obviously points somewhere in the region of being racist. 

However what I honed in on was his analysis of the Wii remake of Punch-Out!!. The discussion here actually makes you stop and think that perhaps it was racism, but more ignorance and insensitivity, because in the remake things were a lot different. The stereotypes of the characters were used to add personality, but in a good way. Gaijin demonstrates this in the reactions various characters of the remake incited in the Let's Players, Game Grumps. This essentially constitutes positive reinforcement of stereotypes, as long as the stereotype helps to promote the character as something or someone enjoyable to see rather than portraying them as inferior. 

In the Wii version, these characters are almost parodies of their own cultures, which is not a racist move in any way. In fact, this approach can make stereotypes fun and, ultimately, acceptable. Bottom line: stereotype and racism ARE NOT the same thing whatsoever.


So, how else can stereotypes positively add to a game experience? Especially in scenarios like Punch-out, wherein the opposing characters are actually the most characterized and most focused upon (note that little Mac is far more generic comparatively and is also translucent to allow the player to concentrated on the opponent before them).