Character Representation in Computer Games: The Case for Ditching the Back Story

Contents

Mechanical vs. Fictional Character Attributes Self Expression vs. Role Playing

This article explores the concept of character in computer games, and whether a detailed back-story is necessarily always a good idea in game design. The focus here is not on characters driven by AI or scripts (i.e. non-player characters), but on characters that directly represent the player, and so we are looking at things from a game-centric (rather than a dramatic) standpoint.

Character, as I am using it here, is a summation of the attributes that make one person different from another. This encompasses not only the traits included in a person's identity, but also those that are excluded. A character is a fictional identity, a mock entity, but a game character is something more - a vehicle for playing the game, the means through which the game-player interacts with the game world.

Mechanical Character Attributes

In a role-playing game (RPG), player-characters are often composed of elements external to the game and its systems. For instance, my character may hail from the snowy mountain villages of Kerbash, while yours might have journeyed up from the depths of the sub-terraneous caves of Gnil. Often, such characteristics are not expressed mechanically within the game, and exist only as back-story, or fictional detail designed to add to the experience from within the player's imagination. Elements like these are useful in that they help the player suspend his disbelief and immerse himself within the game, and they can further advance the design goals of a given game. Such details are certainly more relevant for specific types of games, but in most cases, having some sort of fictional context for what the player represents within a game world - specifically in terms of what he is ultimately trying to accomplish - will help him merge his own identity with that of his character. This process is often crucial in getting a player through the learning curve of a game, giving the player an abstract reason to "play on." Without back-story and character motivation, game-play becomes nothing more than a humdrum exercise.

The game Lunar Lander, for example, was more or less about firing thrusters for just the right length of time, adjusting for drift and gravity, and trying to land a spacecraft. Except that it wasn't really about any of this at all - it was actually about pushing a couple of buttons and watching a glowing spot on the screen. But the latter sounds more like a data entry job than a form of entertainment, and pushing buttons just doesn't hold the appeal of being an invincible spaceman. As such, the gaming context turns two-fingered button pushing into something far more romantic, and makes the game far more personal and subjective.

The back-story in Doom was extremely simply and designed only to provide some context for the action.

Other games are weighted more toward mechanics-related character traits. For instance, a character may have a speed of "fifteen," or a dexterity of "nine." In many cases, of course, a game allows the player to set such traits himself, allowing the player not only to take on another identity, but to take on a measure of responsibility for that identity. (This approach is not limited to RPGs; player-influenced character design can be found in sports games and action games as well.) This form of characterization, in the context of computer games, is in some ways even stronger than traditional fiction. The idea here is that, for certain kinds of games, establishing that a character has 2,000 hit points has more of an impact on game-play than revealing that she is an orphan - although making a character an orphan may turn out to have a greater impact on the player's overall experience, depending upon how compelling the story is.

In Doom, the game had only the skeleton of a back-story, essentially meant to accomplish two things: to enhance the horror of the game (thus making the game more gripping), and to give the player some context for his starting location and his identity. But the fact that the player was a space marine and that someone had opened a portal to Hell was in many not very relevant to game-play. The speed at which a player could move was directly tied to how much time he had to note an imp's incoming fireball and dodge it - not to the nature of his close friendships back at marine corps camp. The relevant character traits were entirely game related - a player could take a specific amount of damage before being kicked from the game, his weapons are fired at a particular rate, and certain game power-up objects altered caused certain alterations in character stats. The character's back-story was ultimately irrelevant.

Fictional Character Attributes

In Myst, there is no fictional player-character at all.

This is not to say that mechanics are always more relevant than fictional context. In Myst, the opposite is true; the puzzles that a player has to solve as he cruises through the Ages are in no way related to the player's fictional character. In fact, in Myst, the player-character was hardly developed at all!

In practice, most games develop character both for purposes of fictional context and for enhancing game-play. These create the two tool sets of interactivity and story - the underlying ingredients for any good computer game. In the best games, the seam between the two is almost invisible.

Take the game Bureau 13, in which a player had to choose two agents, from a set of eight or so. Each of these had different "game powers." One character, a vampire, could assume an ethereal form and thus enter otherwise inaccessible game areas and elude enemies. In this case, back story and game-play are intimately related; the character's mechanical abilities were explained by his fictional background, and thus a player's choice of character the way the game was played. The line between game-play and immersion becomes thin here - that is, the mechanics seem to have been implied by the fictional context - but the character could just as easily have been a genie with ethereal powers, or an alien, or whatever. The ethereal game power is directly tied to game-play, while the vampiric history is a decision tied to fiction context.

But there are pitfalls to be looked out for in the integration of story and interactivity. Using the vampire identity might explain the character's powers , but it also tends to activate dozens of player schemas that might set up false expectations. If, for instance, the player thinks vampires should take triple damage from silver, yet the game's silver weapons do not take this into account, the game suddenly seems less well-developed than if the seam had never been hidden in the first place.

Self Expression vs, Role Playing