Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflict, and Gameplay

Petri Lankoski
Staffan Björk

In GDTW2008 Proceedings, Liverpool John Moores University, UK (12th – 13th Nov).

ABSTRACT

Contemporary computer and video games utilize characters in large extent. However, game research literature says only little about how to design gameplay so that it reflects characters’ personality; mainly focusing on the narration and graphical presentation of the characters.  This paper presents a character-driven game design method, which uses ideas from dramatic character design to include gameplay into the design process. Based upon previous work on NPC design and a new analysis, several design choices regarding gameplay are identified. These choices are described as gameplay design patterns and related to how specific features in a character design can support gameplay. In conjunction with the patterns, the concepts of recognition, alliance, and alignment are used to introduce the method and provide examples. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the method can affect the overall gameplay in games.

Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General – Games.

General Terms: Design, Human Factors.

Keywords:Gameplay design, game design, player character, non-player character.

Continue reading “Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflict, and Gameplay”

Meaningfull Play Conference Proceedings

Available on the Internet.

Need to check at least following papers:

  • SimDialog: A Visual Game Dialog Editor (Charles Owen, Frank Biocca, Corey Bohil and Jason Conley)
  • Rules of Engagement: Influence of Co-Player Presence on Player Involvement in Digital Games (Brian Gajadhar, Yvonne de Kort and Wijnand IJsselsteijn)
  • Game Design and the Challenge-Avoiding Impression Manager Player Type (Carrie Heeter, Brian Magerko, Ben Medler and Joe Fitzgerald)
  • A Transmedia Comparison of Digital and Tabletop Board Games (Brian Magerko)

Papers Accepted

I have a short paper / demonstration accepted in Interactive Storytelling 08 conference titled Lies and Seductions (with Tommi Horttana). Then I have a long paper accepted to GDTW2008 conference titled Character-Driven Game Design: Characters, Conflict, and Gameplay (with Staffan Björk).

With these two I have four papers accepted, and two in the process. I am getting closer.. Unfortunately, my university messed up with the money pretty badly, and that means cuts everywhere. Lets see what that means to my dissertation projects.

Reading TODO

From quick reading, the paper A Preliminary Study Of Shy Males Interacting With A Virtual Female seems useful. I Need to reread it with time and think if I can use it in my dissertation. From Abstract of the paper:

This paper describes a preliminary experiment that studied the reactions of male participants to an approach by an attractive and friendly virtual woman in a Cave-like system. […] Our results show that the participants tended to respond to the situation at the subjective, behavioural and physiological level as if it were real. (Pan & Slater, 2007)

Pan, X. & Slater, M. (2007). A Preliminary Study Of Shy Males Interacting With A Virtual Female. In Presence 2007: The 10th Annual International Workshop on Presence, Pp. 101-108, Barcelona, Spain. URL: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/S.Pan/PanandSlater.pdf.