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Better Game Characters by Design

A Psychological Approach

  • 1st Edition - June 14, 2006
  • Latest edition
  • Authors: Tim Schafer, Katherine Isbister
  • Language: English

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 pl… Read more

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Description

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.

Key features

  • Uses a non-technical approach appropriate for artists and designers as well as developers
  • Introduces and explains key concepts from psychology and social science, including cultural and gender specific roles and perceptions, and includes design exercises to explore ideas further

Readership

Game designers, programmers, art directors, and sound designers, and HCI professionals. Students will learn how to design effective interactive characters and gain an understanding of social roles and perceptions that can apply.

Table of contents

  • About the Author
  • Foreword by Tim Schafer
  • Preface
  • About the DVD
  • I First Impressions
    • What Is Covered and Why
    • Who Will Find Part I Most Useful
    • Overview of Key Concepts
    • Take-Aways from Part I
    • 1 Social Surface
      • 1.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 1.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 1.3 Design Pointers
      • 1.4 Interview: Gonzalo Frasca
      • 1.5 Summary and What Is Next
      • 1.6 Exercises
      • 1.7 Further Reading
    • 2 Practical Questions - Dominance, Friendliness, and Personality
      • 2.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 2.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 2.3 Design Pointers
      • 2.4 Summary and What Is Next
      • 2.5 Exercises
      • 2.6 Further Reading
  • II Focus on the Player
    • What Is Covered and Why
    • Who Will Find Part II Most Useful
    • Overview of Key Concepts
    • Take-Aways from Part II
    • 3 Culture
      • 3.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 3.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 3.3 Design Pointers
      • 3.4 Interview: Ryoichi Hasegawa and Roppyaku Tsurumi of Sony
      • 3.5 Interview: Lewis Johnson
      • 3.6 Summary and What Is Next
      • 3.7 Exercises
      • 3.8 Further Reading
    • 4 Gender
      • 4.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 4.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 4.3 Design Pointers
      • 4.4 Interviews with Gamers - Personal Perspectives
      • 4.5 Summary and What Is Next
      • 4.6 Exercises
      • 4.7 Further Reading
  • III Using a Character's Social Equipment
    • What Is Covered and Why
    • Who Will Find Part III Most Useful
    • Overview of Key Concepts
    • Take-Aways from Part III
    • 5 The Face
      • 5.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 5.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 5.3 Design Pointers
      • 5.4 Summary and What Is Next
      • 5.5 Exercises
      • 5.6 Further Reading
    • 6 The Body
      • 6.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 6.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 6.3 Design Pointers
      • 6.4 Interview: Chuck Clanton
      • 6.5 Summary and What Is Next
      • 6.6 Exercise
      • 6.7 Further Reading
    • 7 The Voice
      • 7.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 7.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 7.3 Design Pointers
      • 7.4 Further Directions - Emotion Detection
      • 7.5 Interview: MIT Media Lab's Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel
      • 7.6 Summary and What Is Next
      • 7.7 Exercise
      • 7.8 Further Reading
      • 7.9 Answers to Exercises
  • IV Characters in Action
    • What Is Covered and Why
    • Who Will Find Part IV Most Useful
    • Overview of Key Concepts
    • Take-Aways from Part IV
    • 8 Player-Characters
      • 8.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 8.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 8.3 Design Pointers
      • 8.4 Interview: Marc Laidlaw
      • 8.5 Summary and What Is Next
      • 8.6 Exercises
      • 8.7 Further Reading
      • 8.8 Acknowledgments
    • 9 Nonplayer-Characters
      • 9.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 9.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 9.3 Dimensions of Social Roles and NPCs
      • 9.4 Common Social Roles in Games
      • 9.5 Design Guidelines
      • 9.6 Summary and What Is Next
      • 9.7 Exercises
      • 9.8 Further Reading
  • V Putting It All Together
    • What Is Covered and Why
    • Who Will Find Part V Most Useful
    • Overview of Key Concepts
    • Take-Aways from Part V
    • 10 Process
      • 10.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 10.2 Arguments for Bringing a Social-Psychological Approach to Game Development
      • 10.3 The Development Time Line
      • 10.4 Building in the Social-Psychological Approach
      • 10.5 Interview: Tim Schafer
      • 10.6 Summary and What Is Next
      • 10.7 Further Reading
    • 11 Evaluation
      • 11.1 What Is Covered and Why
      • 11.2 The Psychological Principles
      • 11.3 Current Evaluation Practice in Game Design: Market Research and Play Testing
      • 11.4 Taking Design to the Next Level with Preproduction Evaluation
      • 11.5 A Note on Postproduction Evaluation
      • 11.6 Evaluation Checklist
      • 11.7 Games Usability Perspectives
      • 11.8 Interview: Randy Pagulayan
      • 11.9 Interview: Nicole Lazzaro
      • 11.10 Affective Sensing: An Evaluation Method for the Future?
      • 11.11 Summary
      • 11.12 Exercises
      • 11.13 Further Reading
  • Appendix
  • Index

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: June 14, 2006
  • Language: English

About the authors

TS

Tim Schafer

Affiliations and expertise
Double Fine Productions, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

KI

Katherine Isbister

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.

Affiliations and expertise
Associate Professor, Department of Language, Literature and Communication, RPI; Director of the Games Research Lab, RPI; Chair of the MS in HCI Program, RPI

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