Better Game Characters by Design A Psychological Approach

This work gives game design professionals and other interactive media designers a framework for understanding how social roles and perceptions affect players reactions to characters. Includes extensive illustrations, game examples, interviews with game designers, and clips from popular games on the DVD to illustrate concepts and best practices.

Games are poised for a major evolution, driven by growth in technical sophistication and audience reach. Characters that create powerful social and emotional connections with players throughout the game-play itself (not just in cut scenes) will be essential to next-generation games. However, the principles of sophisticated character design and interaction are not widely understood within the game development community. Further complicating the situation are powerful gender and cultural issues that can influence perception of characters. Katherine Isbister has spent the last 10 years examining what makes interactions with computer characters useful and engaging to different audiences. This work has revealed that the key to good design is leveraging player psychology: understanding what's memorable, exciting, and useful to a person about real-life social interactions, and applying those insights to character design. Game designers who create great characters often make use of these psychological principles without realizing it. Better Game Characters by Design gives game design professionals and other interactive media designers a framework for understanding how social roles and perceptions affect players' reactions to characters, helping produce stronger designs and better results.

About the AuthorForeword by Tim SchaferPrefaceAbout the DVDI First ImpressionsWhat Is Covered and WhyWho Will Find Part I Most UsefulOverview of Key ConceptsTake-Aways from Part I1 Social Surface1.1 What Is Covered and Why1.2 The Psychological Principles1.3 Design Pointers1.4 Interview: Gonzalo Frasca1.5 Summary and What Is Next1.6 Exercises1.7 Further Reading2 Practical Questions - Dominance, Friendliness, and Personality2.1 What Is Covered and Why2.2 The Psychological Principles2.3 Design Pointers2.4 Summary and What Is Next2.5 Exercises2.6 Further ReadingII Focus on the PlayerWhat Is Covered and WhyWho Will Find Part II Most UsefulOverview of Key ConceptsTake-Aways from Part II3 Culture3.1 What Is Covered and Why3.2 The Psychological Principles3.3 Design Pointers3.4 Interview: Ryoichi Hasegawa and Roppyaku Tsurumi of Sony3.5 Interview: Lewis Johnson3.6 Summary and What Is Next3.7 Exercises3.8 Further Reading4 Gender4.1 What Is Covered and Why4.2 The Psychological Principles4.3 Design Pointers4.4 Interviews with Gamers - Personal Perspectives4.5 Summary and What Is Next4.6 Exercises4.7 Further ReadingIII Using a Character's Social EquipmentWhat Is Covered and WhyWho Will Find Part III Most UsefulOverview of Key ConceptsTake-Aways from Part III5 The Face5.1 What Is Covered and Why5.2 The Psychological Principles5.3 Design Pointers5.4 Summary and What Is Next5.5 Exercises5.6 Further Reading6 The Body6.1 What Is Covered and Why6.2 The Psychological Principles6.3 Design Pointers6.4 Interview: Chuck Clanton6.5 Summary and What Is Next6.6 Exercise6.7 Further Reading7 The Voice7.1 What Is Covered and Why7.2 The Psychological Principles7.3 Design Pointers7.4 Further Directions - Emotion Detection7.5 Interview: MIT Media Lab's Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel7.6 Summary and What Is Next7.7 Exercise7.8 Further Reading7.9 Answers to ExercisesIV Characters in ActionWhat Is Covered and WhyWho Will Find Part IV Most UsefulOverview of Key ConceptsTake-Aways from Part IV8 Player-Characters8.1 What Is Covered and Why8.2 The Psychological Principles8.3 Design Pointers8.4 Interview: Marc Laidlaw8.5 Summary and What Is Next8.6 Exercises8.7 Further Reading8.8 Acknowledgments9 Nonplayer-Characters9.1 What Is Covered and Why9.2 The Psychological Principles9.3 Dimensions of Social Roles and NPCs9.4 Common Social Roles in Games9.5 Design Guidelines9.6 Summary and What Is Next9.7 Exercises9.8 Further ReadingV Putting It All TogetherWhat Is Covered and WhyWho Will Find Part V Most UsefulOverview of Key ConceptsTake-Aways from Part V10 Process10.1 What Is Covered and Why10.2 Arguments for Bringing a Social-Psychological Approach to Game Development10.3 The Development Time Line10.4 Building in the Social-Psychological Approach10.5 Interview: Tim Schafer10.6 Summary and What Is Next10.7 Further Reading11 Evaluation11.1 What Is Covered and Why11.2 The Psychological Principles11.3 Current Evaluation Practice in Game Design: Market Research and Play Testing11.4 Taking Design to the Next Level with Preproduction Evaluation11.5 A Note on Postproduction Evaluation11.6 Evaluation Checklist11.7 Games Usability Perspectives11.8 Interview: Randy Pagulayan11.9 Interview: Nicole Lazzaro11.10 Affective Sensing: An Evaluation Method for the Future?11.11 Summary11.12 Exercises11.13 Further Reading AppendixIndex

Associate Professor, Department of Language, Literature and Communication, RPI; Director of the Games Research Lab, RPI; Chair of the MS in HCI Program, RPI. Katherine is Director of the Games Research Lab at Rensselaer (RPI), where she has worked to build an undergraduate major in game design, as well as a robust program of games-related research. She is also the Chair of the MS in HCI at RPI, which she helped to redesign to address current challenges facing HCI practitioners, such as the design of games and other social and leisure applications. Katherine is a former MK Game author, having written: Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach, which was nominated for a Game Developer Magazine Front Line award in 2006. She has published work in a wide variety of venues, and has given invited talks at research and academic venues including Sony research labs in Japan, Banff Centre in Canada, IBM, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and others. The Games Research Lab at RPI has cutting-edge facilities for user studies, and Isbister has used the lab to research innovative methods in user testing (e.g. the Sensual Evaluation Instrument - a project nominated for Best Paper award at the CHI conference in 2006). Isbister has worked in both research and commercial settings on HCI and usability aspects of games and other products. This background, combined with strong connections to game industry practitioners, makes her well suited to put together an edited volume on games usability that is both rigorous and useful to developers in their everyday work.