game design, october 8th, 2013

TODAY

1. Character: what makes a good one?

2. Some discussion/examples

3. And now– WoW.

4. Group time

5. Homework

For today

I had you do a couple of readings on plotting and character. I know some, but not all of you, will need to work carefully with these concepts as you work on your games.

I wanted to start today by talking about what makes a good character, with another exciting ten trait list from Dr. Phill! Each trait will have an example, but they aren’t all game characters. We can draw character inspiration from everywhere.

Pro tip 1: The audience can see itself in the character.

Pro tip 2: but the character is pretty

much a BAMF.

Pro tip 3: characters surprise and empower

us.

Pro tip 4: characters immerse us by sucking us into their world. They make us care.

Pro tip 5: Sometimes… a good character just

LOOKS cool.

Pro tip 6: bad guys are friggin’ jerks.

Pro tip 6: Or sometimes, bad guys are A LOT like the

good guys (either in look, in motivation,

in style…)

Pro tip 7: a great character is versatile and can be customized to fit your needs.

Pro tip 8: a good character can raise moral questions.

Pro tip 9: a great character captures our fancy. He or she has that “it” factor.

Pro tip 10: the very best characters shatter genre

boundaries and become fixtures in our cultural memory.

So…

Hopefully you see how those all sort of mesh together. Let’s now look at a list of characters and talk about how they utilize these– and other– traits we read about and discussed.

To the website! Click that link from Empire magazine that is up with the PPT. We obviously can’t talk about all 50, but let’s take a swing.

World of Warcraft

For this week, I want you to play World of Warcraft, in a party, with your teammates.

You can get a week free– let’s alt-tab over and look.

For Thursday…

I want you to spend next class working on your analog/paper prototypes. I will come around and talk with your groups as you work.

No reading for next time.