Chapter Four

The essence of an Interactive fiction

Characters

This might be the key to the success any game might reach. As we said earlier, the reason computer games became so poplar was because they enabled users to be a part of a novel in an unreal world, where they will be the heroes.

Spectators identify with movie characters; they feel for them and love them (or might as well hate them). Movie characters resemble what a normal person would like to have, or even to be. This could explain the popularity of action movies, in spite of the lack of originality and art, they fulfill spectators' needs to see violence, or to fantasize about themselves getting into endless battles with villains, and defeating them all.

Funnily enough, if computer games could be considered the natural development of the theatre-cinema family, then computer games characters following the same lifeline of their cinematic origins is understandable. Advances in graphical technologies helped in bringing those characters to life, by adding photo-realistic gestures, facial expressions, and of course, perfect bodies. This gave them the popularity to star in TV ads and coomercials (like Lara Croft's Lucozade's series)

Those characters are created carefully to gain this attraction that helps the player to identify with it. Playing in story-based games, especially those which depend on special properties of the character, requires higher degree of identification. Being a successful game player you should love their friends and hate their enemies. You will become protective and defend them, nevertheless, be brave enough to lead them into dangerous mazes and dungeons. Treating the game character has two approaches, one described by Russ Bryan as:

"The original - and still common-way of handling player character identity is to ignore it. The PC is Everyman - sometimes with a heavy emphasis on the "man"-and you are free to project whatever motives and emotions you like onto your character" ⁽¹⁾

While the other type, which is completely the opposite (and quite new) is when you play with a human-like character with special characteristics. This might be a little easier because you are playing within a known frame, so you previously know who to love and who to hate. It might become harder to adapt the general attitude in complex games without referring to the instruction manual once or twice when you first play the game to know to now how to react.

It might be easier to play Tomb Raider knowing that Lara is an adventurous little lady with strong self-motivation, enough to make her cross the continent searching for adventure, knowing the she is the only character that you would need to know about. Nocturne is not very hard to handle as well, Stranger is a weird individual, doesn't speak much, straight forward with known hatred to beasts and vampires (perfect man for the perfect job), his team is made of Svietlana Lupitscu: a brave fighter who is half human half vampire, but still, a faithful agent.

And Moloch: a demon working against his fellow beasts. Knowing these information is an advantage because you can trust them to fight better than you, but you should always be aware of them taking the way back to the dark side. Stranger never trusted them, and always preferred to work alone.

The complexity gets really noticeable in Final Fantasy. I will quote some of the characters description here:

"Squall leonheart: The taciturn hero of the adventure likes to think of himself as a loner. Pushed into a position of responsibility, however, he displays surprising leadership qualities, inspiring fierce loyalty in those around him, yet he displays a marked absence of pride in his achievements and tries to suppress joy or any feelings that would bind him to others
Quistis Trepe: Barely older than her most promising cadet, squall leonheart, SeeD instructor trepe is nonetheless a quietly authoritative figure. She is an excellent fighter and a reliable ally. If she might secretly wish to be more that this to squall, he certainly makes no effort to understand. " (2)

Some of the descriptions listed above might be irrelevant to the game, but they give a personal/human dimension to the each character. You will know about the one-sided love story between the instructor and her silent student who shows no emotions. And you will know that each mission including those two will be better because as a teacher and her student, they have common battle techniques and make a perfect team. This will bring those characters out from the pixilated screen to life, you will feel for them, and slowly Identify with them (especially that they are very well-drawn, you can even say that they are very attractive). It might be interesting to mention that I didn't mention the character in "It came from the desert".. That is simply because you never see it/yourself. Which might lead to another point that might be taken from the cinema as well.. Which is designing the point of view.

[Time location] - [Time] - [The Genre] - [The plot] - [The quest] - [Characters] - [Point of view]

(1) Wood, John: Player Character identity in Interactive fiction, XYZZY news, Issue No. 9

(2)Final Fantasy VIII, The official strategy guide, Squaresoft. Piggyback interactive Limited. 1999