Week 28, Meeting 1:
Date: 15/12/2010
Time: 10:00pm until 10:25pm
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

As all of our group presentations have been performed, .pdf versions of each powerpoint slideshow have been included in the teams work index. Alongside this, all research performed in the testing and analysis phase has been added.

To view the teams work index page, either select 'work index' from the navigation bar at the top of this page or click here.

Week 27, Meeting 1:
Date: 08/12/2010

Week 25, Meeting 1:
Date: 24/11/2010
Time: 09:20pm until 09:40pm
Staff present: Amanda Dewhurst, Andrew Williams
Location: C2 – 08

Week 24, Meeting 1:
Date: 17/11/2010

To allow for more time between the lecturers and the current Final Team Project starters, this weeks meeting with Andrew and Amanda was cancelled. The Wednesday meetings will resume at 9am next week with the team receiving feedback on one pages worth of written documentation.

Week 23, Meeting 1:
Date: 10/11/2010
Time: 10:00am until 10:25am
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

Week 22, Meeting 1:
Date: 03/11/2010
Time: 09:00am until 09:30am
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

In our first meeting this week, the team spent time performing a 'dry run' presentation to both Andrew and Amanda. Both lecturers seemed pleased with our performance and offered useful feedback with advice on what to tweak and improve ready for the assessed run on the 4th.

Week 21, Meeting 1:
Date: 27/10/2010
Time: 09:30am until 09:55am
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

In the first team meeting this week, Andrew and Amanda looked over our draft table of contents for the final report, providing feedback where appropriate. Both lecturers seemed generally pleased with the current table of contents and mentioned altering a couple of topics (such as the Test Theory and Critical Assessment sections) positions on the hierarchy. We also confirmed our next Milestone presentation with Andrew and Amanda, requesting a dry run presentation on the 3rd of November.

Week 20, Meeting 1:
Date: 20/10/2010

To allow for more time between the lecturers and the current Final Team Project starters, this weeks meeting with Andrew and Amanda was cancelled. The Wednesday meetings will resume at 9am next week with the team presenting the contents page of our final report to peers.

Week 19, Meeting 1:
Date: 13/10/2010
Time: 09:00am until 09:20am
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

Hey guys,

Seeing as though we've just completed our Milestone II presentation, I thought I'd bring up a discussion post regarding the current Milestone III work. Currently, we're working on getting our test level to final state ready for the 3rd of November (which will be the date of our next dry run presentation.)

Week 18, Meeting 1:
Date: 06/10/2010
Time: 11:00am until 11:20am
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

Week 17, Meeting 1:
Date: 29/09/2010
Time: 11:15am until 11:40am
Staff present: Andrew Williams, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 08

Week 16, Meeting 1:
Date: 25/05/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:20pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley
Location: C2 – 03

Tomorrow (Friday) we've got the verbal report where we tell Brian, Phil and Claire what we're doing over Summer. The report contains basic information on everyone's primary roles over the Summer break, and which milestones take place over the period (Lewis until 28th June, then Adam until we're back), so this'll be a good reminder about who to go to for information during these periods. The link to the report follows.

Summer Plan: Verbal Report Edition

Hello guys,

As it's the summer coming up and I know we're all willing to get things done during the break, I thought I'd create this post to aid in discussing who wants to be getting on with what. I know we have a rough plan on knowing what everyone is doing, but it can't hurt to share any more ideas you have in the comments below.

Week 14, Meeting 1:
Date: 11/05/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:10pm
Staff present: Andrew Williams
Location: C2 – 04a

As Claire and Amanda are absent for both week fourteen and fifteen, the team met up with Andrew Williams to discuss work completed on the project so far. This first meeting saw team members giving Andrew a quick synopsis on the project, with further discussion on what are planning on testing, how and all of the work completed thus far. A very positive response was given with encouragement to continue working over the summer period.

Week 13, Meeting 1:
Date: 04/05/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:30pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley
Location: C2 – 04a

This week's meeting with Claire had the team talking about Milestone II and our meeting plans for the upcoming weeks. We also discussed summer work and the verbal report at the end of May.

Here is a template for creating the documentation, for individual parts of the artefact creation.

This will be useful when it comes to later iterations of the build. Plus, if our build ever breaks on us, it will be possible to know which iteration we need to go to, in order to fix it.

Also, if you don't have any specific tasks for the build, you can always be designing gameplay elements and features. Once there's some documentation up, it will be very easy to design things around what's already there.

You can find the template here.

As I meant to when writing the Source Analysis of The Silent Language, here is the accompanying breakdown of how the distances between characters are percieved, and how we can implement this into our test. I've also included a comparitive scale in Hammer units to help with both analysis and design. To download the document, click here.

Week 12, Meeting 1:
Date: 27/04/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:20pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley
Location: C2 – 04a

This week's meeting with Claire had the team talking through our Milestone I presentation and discussing the work completed over Easter. We received feedback from Claire on the subject of Milestone I, and also discussed what we were to prepare for next weeks meeting.

Items addressed:
i. Easter Work.
ii. Milestone I Presentation.
iii. Feedback.
iv. Work Preparation.

Week 12, Meeting 2:
Date: 30/04/2010
Time: 01:00pm until 01:30pm
Staff present: Brian Morris, Phil Carlisle
Location: C2 – 04a

Considering the nature and intention of our test I thought it may be useful to examine examples of betrayal done well in video games. To this end I decided to do an analysis of betrayal through looking at the Legacy of Kain series, which can be found here.

Considering that we want our betrayal to work out, having a realistic one to draw from may be useful.
If this one turns out to be useful there are plenty more examples in the series that can be analyzed later.

Just a few quick heads up!

I recently completed a source analysis of a study Kyle found during the Easter Break. You can find it included in the post underneath this one along with the original source, and I advise you all to take a good look through it. In my opinion, it's the most important source found yet, as not only does it relate to our test, provide lots of useful information to keep in mind and cross reference to other research papers we've done, it also proves part of our hypothesis correct!

As part of the teams ongoing research, I've completed a short two page document analysing Katherine Isbister and Clifford Nass' study, 'Consistency of Personality in Interactive Characters.'

Week 11, Meeting 1:
Cancelled due to lecturer absence.

Week 11, Meeting 2:
Date: 23/04/2010
Time: 01:00pm until 01:30pm
Staff present: Brian Morris, Phil Carlisle
Location: C2 – 04a

During the three week Easter break, team members were set several tasks to complete for the week commencing the 19th of April. The tasks mainly consisted of writing up ideas for what we should include in our test and to have researched existing investigations of a similar nature to ours. Outstanding work was also and posted on the blog either before or during the weekend meeting post the meet up with Claire and Amanda on the 20th of April.

"Elements Of Consideration"
being the most marvellous notes
of the renowned scholar Kyle Cherry


1.1 Refinement of our test.
-One of our current problems with the test is that we have not chosen a ‘victory condition’. This problem is easily remedied:
Our test has been successful if the player found the NPC too plausible as a friend to believe they could ever turn upon them. Essentially, that the ‘Nice’ level variant would be ‘canon’ in their eyes. One of the most important questions to include in the questionnaires is which level the player found most believable, because if our NPC is too friendly to be a threat players will tell us that the level where the two leave happily was the most believable. Our test will have been a success.

1.2 Defining sympathy, empathy and chivalry – Emotional Factors of our test.
“The Nature Of Sympathy”
(Max Scheler, 2008 / ISBN-10: 1412806879)
“The Role of Sympathy And Altruistic Personality Traits In Helping: A Reexamination”
(Nancy Eisenberg et al. / http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119431381/abstract)
“The Distinction Between Sympathy And Empathy”
(Lauren Wispé, 1986 / Journal of Personality And Social Psychology)
"The Sacred Rights Of The Weak"
(Elizabeth B. Clark, 1995 / http://www.jstor.org/pss/2082183)

2.1 Refinement of personality modelling chart to better suit our NPC.
-Reduce the variables -2/+2, representing the strongest realistic responses.
-Increase list of variables:
Hateful / Loving
Discontent / Content
Disillusioned / Hopeful
Cautious / Trusting
Cowardly / Courageous
Arrogant / Modest
Selfish / Selfless
Indifferent / Caring
Immature / Mature
Dishonorable /Honorable
-Addition of ‘Inert/Driven’ axis which charts the character’s ambition or lack thereof.
-Addition of ‘Independent/Dependent’ axis which charts the character’s need or lack of need for other characters.
-Addition of ‘Introvert/Extrovert’ axis which charts how the character presents themselves to social situations.
-Addition of ‘Chaotic/Ordered’ which charts the character’s attitudes to their clothing, possessions and situation.
We can use these personality modelling charts in our data-collection, asking players to mark the NPC. This is interesting, because with two NPCs to describe, the player will invariably pick the one they found most believable.

3.1 Design of our NPC – Career & Background.
-NPC must be sympathetic; unfulfilling day job? Money issues? NPC must be thoroughly sympathetic; Under-valued?
-Possible careers; IT Consultant, office drone.
When considering the chosen career of our NPC, we must pay attention to whether the setting places any additional restrictions on our character, for example ‘Job Strain’ and other traits.
“Does it matter where you work?"
(E. Jeffrey Hill, 2003 / Journal Of Vocational Behavior)
“A longitudinal test of Karasek's Job Strain model among office workers.”
(Pascale Carayon, 1993 / Work And Stress)
“A Brief Introduction to Job Strain”
(Peter Schnall M.D., 1998 / http://workhealth.org/strain/briefintro.html)
“The World Of The Office Worker”
(Michel Crozier, 1971 / Journal Of Contemporary Ethnography)

3.2 Design of our NPC – Appearance.
“A Measure Of Emotional Empathy”
(Albert Mehrabian, 2006 / http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/lit/Articles/MehrabianA1972a.pdf)
-Our NPC must be ‘average’ to best fit plausibility;
“Why are average faces attractive?”
(Tim Valentine, 2004 / http://www.valentinemoore.co.uk/trv/Attractive.pdf)
“Eyeglasses and gender stereotypes.”
(Roger Terry, 1989 / http://journals.lww.com/optvissci/Abstract/1989/10000/Eyeglasses_and_Gender_Stereotypes.6.aspx)
-This study suggests that women with glasses are considered to be more intelligent, feminine and introverted than otherwise.
"What is the female image projected by smoking?"
(John Beech, 2001 / http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/jrb/PDF2000/Beech&Whittaker01.pdf)
-This study shows how smoking is considered to make a female seem more sexually interested, and glasses more intelligent. Variables such as these can easily be added to our character to make them seem more realistic, and the effects are clear for us to see.

4.1 Design of our Level - Situation.
-An everyday setting plays well to the strengths of the Hammer editor. IE; streets, shops.
-Setting must be fairly normalised so that the player is less concerned with that than with the NPC herself. IE; an alien invasion would have the players looking for aliens instead of interacting with our NPC, and would render our test useless.
“Fear of Crime and Handgun Ownership”
(James DeFronzo, 2006 / http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119597174/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)
“Determinants of fear of crime: The effect of cultural setting”
(Richard Bennet, 1994 / http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a718869555&db=all)
-The two above are important to consider if we plan to use many firearms upon our level- how did they get there?
The link below is an interesting proposition to consider if we stick with horror elements in a civilised setting.
“Setting in Horror Fiction"
(Teresa Hopper, 2002 / http://www.fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue9/horror.htm)
Above all, the rule of a normalised setting must be upheld, otherwise we risk spoiling the test with nonsense.

4.2 Design of our Level - Layout.
-The level must incorporate spaces for the player to directly interact with the NPC (through triggers, essentially ‘helpful’ and ‘unhelpful’) so we can better directly monitor the two. This can also play to the idea of using Bioware-esque conversational trees.
“Sick Building Syndrome: A Study Of 4373 Office Workers"
(Sherwood Burge, 1987 / http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/4A/493)
“Non-Specific Symptoms In Office Workers”
(Mark Mendell, 2004 / http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119306861/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

5.1 Further Reading.
“Consistency of personality in interactive characters”
(Katherine Isbister, 2000 / http://www.fineminddesign.com/site/media/Readings/Week%208/Isbister_nass_2000_consistency_of_personality_in_interactive_characters.pdf )
“Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema”
(Murray Smith, 1995 / ISBN-10: 019818347X)
Research on tabletop games- how do they encourage creating and playing believable characters?

As part of our Level 3 Team Project Easter work, I've completed a short two page document discussing several ideas we could consider when producing our test artefact.

The document breaks down three mechanics; Interactive Dialogue, Weapon Exclusivity and an In-game Feedback system- providing an explanation of each, all stating how the mechanic would be used, why and what outcomes it would create.

To test player and NPC interactions, we are obviously going to need an NPC.

However, simply using one of the Half Life 2 NPC characters for our own will not be sufficient for our needs, as our testers may have preconceptions of that NPC if they have played HL2 before. The solution is obvious: we must make our own NPC.

Building an NPC from the ground up will be extremely time consuming, and making it fit into the visual style of HL2 would be difficult, so the best way to go is to take an existing NPC and modify it to match our NPC design.

The first step is to choose which NPC is best suited for this modification, and the method of choosing the NPC is discussed here.

Week 7, Meeting 1:
Date: 23/03/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:45pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 04a

Since Easter is a three-week break with no chance for formal meetings and probably quite infrequent team communication, we should all focus our research towards things to add to the level, NPC and testing*, as well as uploading any outstanding work. Following are the guidlines to refer to:

i. All notes & research work must contain appropriate citations (or inferences as a last resort).
For example: If adding zombies will make our level scarier, why? Who has proven this previously?
ii. All notes & research work is to be delivered in a team meeting once the break is over.
iii. Any pieces completed during the break (ie. Source Analyses, Character Studies) can be uploaded to the blog as they are finished as usual.
iv. Tag all Easter work with the 'Easter' tag in place of a week number.
v. Outstanding pieces such as the Zevran Character Study and the Half-Life Models report are also to be posted during this break, so that everyone is up to date upon our return.
vi. Have fun and be productive! Big brother is watching you!

*things such as 'Why are military uniforms intimidating?', 'Why are office clothes conformist?' and 'What is the effect of teleporting an alien squid into New York City?'

Week 6, Meeting 1:
Date: 16/03/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:45pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 04a

Week 5, Meeting 1:
Date: 09/03/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:40pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley
Location: C2 – 04a

As part of our project research and initial planning, the team was asked to complete a 3000 word design document ready for hand-in on the 9th of March. We split the document up into three 'phases', the Design, Pitch and Plan. Each member of the team made a contribution to at least one of the three sections.

Week 4, Meeting 1:
Date: 02/03/2010
Time: 12:00pm until 12:45pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 04a

This piece of research involves the background and characters of the popular tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. The research document can be downloaded here.

Hey guys,
You may have noticed the new 'Index' button at the start of the navigation bar up above. Clicking this button will now direct users to a post containing links to all the work completed so far! The links included as of now head straight to our Box.net accounts, allowing tutors and assessors easy access to all our documentation and design work.

What this means is, it will have to be updated! Anyone is able to edit the post by entering the 'Posting', then 'Edit Posts' section on the Blogger Dashboard. When in the Edit Posts section, click the 'Work Index' tab located at the bottom of the 'Labels' bar on the left and then select 'Edit.'

The post doesn't necessarily have to be updated as soon as you've completed a piece of work- but it'd be nice team members add links to all their work that has been uploaded on Box.net at least once or twice before every milestone.

Can't go wrong with having a button on our home page leading to a massive list of all work completed so far, can we? =P

If you have any thoughts on the new Work Index page or any changes / problems that should be addressed, let me know in the comments below!

From the start of our project I wanted to hit the ground running with a quick survey to ask what traits were especially pronounced among characters of the recently-released Dragon Age: Origins. I decided the quickest way to do this was to produce a survey asking respondents to rank the game’s eight characters in order of how much the characters appealed to them. I distributed the completed survey to two groups of people; a group of predominantly-female Bioware fans on a Bioware fansite, and a predominantly-male group of games students. The information provided by the characters Morrigan, Alistair, Loghain and Oghren will be the most important, for reasons I will explain upon analysing the data (should my theories hold true.) The survey I performed and its analysis can be found here.

Defining important characteristics of NPCs can be difficult, Alistair from dragon age could be characterised as a snarky wimp or a reluctant hero. Patrick O’Luanaigh opens his character design section of his book Games Design Complete, with the statement that characters need to be unique to be interesting. While seemingly an obvious point to make, it is hard to make a truly unique character. His main point in the section seems to be to just not make a bald hard man marine/space marine nowadays, which sadly is probably true.

Elaborating on this comes a section detailing how a hero or characters imperfections make them; the mistakes they make, as well as personal quirks that make them interesting. Although he doesn’t give any examples of what these flaws might be, the questions raised are no less relevant. For example Alistair’s flaws are that he is weak wiled and easily led, these are believable flaws for a realistically human character to make. It is important to note that characters traits and flaws need to be believable in the context of the character. An anthropomorphic rabbit jumping 20 foot is believable, Alistair jumping 20 foot is not.

Next the author moves on to describing some of the character designs he considers great, and why he things so. The character for me that stood out from the list is Solid Snake from the Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid series’. Snake is by all definition a nameless soldier, completely clichéd at a superficial level. But snake is also a person with flaws, a character, and an entirely believable and heroic personality.

“He smokes, he’s rude to people, and he’s a ruthless killer. Yet as a player, you want him to win, and he makes a great lead character.”

The characters graphical design is also important, in order to define a players first impression of a character, how they look is going to be every bit as important as the first thing they say. O’Luanaigh describes a few of his favourite characters 2 of them, the lemmings and sonic the hedgehog, initially had very little personality outside of their appearance. It is the unusual, strange characteristics that are picked up on the most, such as the lemmings green hair or Sonics athletic appearance. For our project the importance of character design will be looked into, remodelling the characters where necessary to fit our purpose.

Moving on to the next section the author starts to discuss the different types of characters that can be used, categorised as animal, object, weak human, superheroes. Animals and objects don’t help us much, for our purposes though there is a lot of good theory in the weak humans section. One of the examples used was the secondary character, Yorda, in the game Ico. Yorda is a weak , pale girl the main character Ico has to protect constantly. One of the primary mechanics in combat in Ico is to save Yorda from the shadow monsters that are dragging her away. Subtle touches such as the ability to hold her hand to make her speed up, while doing this changing direction will cause her to stumble and try to catch up to Ico. As a result the player takes on the role of her protector, without meaning too. While the fact that she is largely useless may annoy at times, because the player feels they are her protector, they are automatically endeared to her.

Next is what I consider the most section of the creating characters chapter, Incorporating Unusual Emotions or Goals. This chapter details how to give characters a three dimensional character, using unusual emotions or goals. Fear is an interesting one, initially remarking that fear is rarely accurately portrayed in video games. The example he uses is a character firing a gun, instead of shooting two guns at once, shooting enemies in the head etc. Actually game examples he uses is Yorda from Ico again, while I can kind of see it I believe a far better example would be the protagonist of Silent Hill, Harry Mason. For one thing Harry is the character the player is controlling, Harry is a bad shot with guns by design, most of the time the best way to deal with enemies is to flee from them, as a result the player is also dreading every interaction with enemies as a result. From a characterisation point of view the animation of nervousness and inability to shoot accurately in Silent Hill makes it clear that Harry himself is terrified.
The example used for revenge is far more appropriate, Fable. The story of the first Fable game revolves around the main characters quest to get revenge on the bandits that destroyed his village and killed his family. Although past the first 15 minutes of game play there isn’t a lot of story that reinforces this, it does serve its purpose early on, it gives the player the motivation to get past the tutorial areas and find the person responsible for the families’ death.

Important Questions to Ask in Designing a Character, is the title of the next section. For us this is a very interesting section, as this is exactly the kind of question to ask. Although it doesn’t really move into any areas we haven’t looked into before, it does give a decent description of some of the things that should be looked into, such as how a player reacts to being chased or moves. There are only a few brief points that actually help our project in a meaningful way. Most specifically Non Controllable Teammates, the author describes the importance of having the NCT not annoy the player by being mechanically useless, or have pathing errors etc. This is all stuff we have already said for the project but having a source corroborating it is always helpful.

While this book is largely on things we already know, it is a good source of new information, because it covers all aspects of games design I may do a source analysis of the level design chapters.

During my analysis of C.Crawford’s ‘Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling’ I discovered the concept of ‘personality mapping’- creating an image of a character through a series of traits that make them up. Comparing this with what I learnt from M. Krawczyk regarding a list of traits to look out for in characters, I had the idea of mapping the positive and negative traits suggested by Krawczyk to a -5 to +5 axis representing the strength. I theorised that with a list of characteristics scored either positive or negative, we would be able to make a character that was plausible for a realistic setting, and could then modify that to easily fit new characters. The test I performed and its analysis can be found here.

In the second part of NPCs and Visual Information, I use the methods described in Part 1 to create four NPC characters for a post-apocalypse setting. Due to the number of images this article has and the image per post limit, it can be downloaded here.

Week 3, Meeting 1:
Date: 23/02/2010
Time: 02:00pm until 02:30pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley, Amanda Dewhurst
Location: C2 – 04a

After analysing David Freeman’s book “Creating Emotions In Games”, we were told that an outlook from outside the industry would benefit our project in terms of research. One book that came recommended was K. Oatley's “Understanding Emotions”, to have a general outlook on human behaviour and things that could be possibly be added to NPCs to increase their appeal. The entire book won’t provide solid, beneficial research towards our project but some chapters could give us valuable factors to take into consideration when it comes to creation.

The full document is available in .pdf here.

I've begun the 'Source Bible' of all of the sources used by research in Project Skills and in this unit. As this will be completely iterative, could I please request team members take a little more care with their referencing? Simple things such as giving the title of a paper without a URL for easy viewing, or citing a book without its ISBN. Other than that, I'm very happy to see several sources cited across multiple pieces of work (even one source across FOUR seperate pieces), let's keep that up, too!

Also, a minor update with regards to my Research Survey. The Mass Effect survey is being cancelled due to lack of replies, and I've still to recieve completed Dragon Age surveys from the team and from our second testing group. I'd be particularly grateful if this situation could be wrapped up by Sunday. For those who missed the link last time, they're here.

As part of the team's research, I examined methods of visual character design using the book The Art of Game Characters by Leo Hartas, which features many interviews with industry developers and character designers, and wrote a short essay on why I think it will be useful when we come to design our own NPCs for the testing product. You can read it here.

For the purpose of our project I will be looking at a standard party members, done well, in the game Dragon Age Origins. In the interests of staying relevant to the subject matter of interesting and believable characterisation, I will be looking at his character through the lens of how his character design and choices effect me as a player.

Alistair is the former Templar in training, recruited into the Grey Wardens. His character is initially portrayed, as somebody who is happy with the lack of control he has over his life, to the point that he will follow the players character with almost any choice he makes, despite being technically his senior in the organisation they are both a part of. His reaction to most awkward situations and in fact most situations, is to make a sarky joke about it, this implies to me that he is the sort of person who just goes with the flow and would rather make a joke than deal with what’s happening. This contrasts with his obvious determination to see his mission through to the end. This may be a contributing factor for him to be interesting to the character

Aside from his personality, Alistair has a mechanical reason for players to like him, unless the player starts as a warrior class and aims to have him be the party tank (the character aimed at taking damage and keeping enemies attention on him) Alistair can fulfil this roll from the outset quite aptly. For our project the question this creates is, does having a mechanically beneficial character in the party effect how a player perceives that character. While it is defiantly possible to have a character who is interesting, by simply being interesting, in the scope of a video game, players are just as likely to take a player along because they are useful, as they are because they like then.

As with all characters in Dragon Age, Alistair has a myriad of flaws and quirks that characterise him, it is one of the strengths of the game, and Bioware games in general, that they give their characters such depth of personality beyond the usual tropes. Alistair’s purpose in dragon age is to be friend and confidant for the players character, he is the hardest character to make abandon your cause, to the point that you can get away with almost anything except one choice at one specific juncture over the course of the game.

Physically the characters in Dragon Age are far from perfect, while their designs are top notch, giving implications about the characters personality traits. There are certain graphical glitches that can be extremely jarring during the game, such as characters eyelids warping through their eyes. While purely a technical complaint it is an example of the uncanny valley, we accept the character to look as it should then when the graphics cause the character to break that expectation it looks strange.

A lot of the faults and traits that Alistair possesses are characterised through back story, this enhances the perceptions of these traits, and allows the developers the ability to alter and control how these perceptions work. For example Alistair’s unwillingness to become king, initially all the player has to go on is his initial reactions, through random events, and the natural evolution of the story the reasons for Alistair not wanting to become the king become clearer.

Throughout the game all of the characters evolve their personalities, or at least have ways of imposing their personality more on the player, as the story progresses. Most of the time, this takes the form of a personal task done at the behest of the character. Talking to Alistair enough will grant you insight into his relationship with his adoptive father and the regrets of his past, at one section of the game it is possible to discover the item he smashed in an act he mentions regretting, rebuilt by his foster father. It is interesting to note that this act of resolving past issues for a character usually endears the player to them to a greater degree than most other factors. Is it because they are having an effect on the characters personality and being involved in their life, or is it a side effect of helping a character that makes the player want to keep them around.

Throughout the story of Dragon Age: Origins, there is only one point where Alistair completely disagrees with the player’s choice with no chance of convincing him otherwise (only the possibility to make him forgive you for it later). This event comes when it is time to choose the fate of the games main antagonist, in practice forcing you to pick between taking the antagonist in your party and loosing Alistair or vice versa. For me this choice rang hollow, because Alistair had effectively gone along with my every whim for the entire game, making him leave if I took this character felt like a way of avoiding having 2 mechanically similar party members. There didn’t seem to be any real reason why both couldn’t be a part of the party at the same time, some of their interactions from my point of view would have been very interesting. But it does work as an example of how a character, acting in a way that does not seem completely believable compared to their previous actions, can be detrimental to their character, in this case on a very small scale though.

Relationships between characters adds depth to their personalities, it is an opportunity to show the player what a character is like without their interaction. Alistair’s most interesting, or perhaps most volatile, relationship is with the witch Morrigan. Both outwardly hostile towards each other, having both in the party can create quite entertaining. In the way these characters argue and the nature of how petty and childish some of their arguments are players gain insight into how these characters view each other, as an outside observer we are given a greater idea of what these characters are actually like. In this case Morrigan comes across as quite unfeeling and mean, where Alistair seems a bit slow witted and easily led to an argument he isn’t capable of winning. While they may not necessarily seem more interesting as a result the depth of character this lends to them does allow players to emphasise more with their decisions along the way, this is not something unique to Alistair and Morrigan, all of the characters have some degree of interaction with each other on this level. How it effects a players reaction to these characters is difficult to gauge but undeniably profound.

It is possible later on in the story to have quite a dramatic effect on Alistair’s personality by treating him roughly and showing him the harsh truths about people it is possible to make him stop being such a follower and actually take control of matters, culminating in his becoming king of Ferelden without complaint. Not having done this myself, I have no way of knowing the effect it has on a players perception of Alistair. I would assume that having the ability to illicit such a drastic change on a character, gives players an immense sense of power over them, more so than the usual ability to control their every action. Does having this effect on the personality make the character seem less real or does the player feel more a part of their existence as a result?

If there is anything to learn from Alistair in terms of character creation, it is that flaws are as important as traits. How we portray these flaws is also important, do we do it simply through the characters actions, or will it be more appropriate to give a character back story. If we give the character back story how will we present that, will it be through a short play section or the character explaining it himself.

This week, I researched the methods developers use to make NPC characters stand out and memorable, going into detail about use of colour, shape and distinguishing features, with examples from many different videogames. Due to the number of images this article has and the image per post limit, it can be downloaded here.

As part of the team's ongoing research, I've looked into testing methodology using the book "Game Usability: Advice from the experts for advancing the players experience" written by Katherine Isbister and Noah Schaffer as my source. I've created a two page document discussing the relevant information found in Chapters VII, IX and XV and given an insight as to how we can use the information gathered in testing of our own.

Week 2, Meeting 1:
Date: 16/02/2010
Time: 01:55pm until 02:20pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley
Location: C2 – 04a

A meeting took place at 01:55pm on the 16th of February with project supervisor, Claire Brierley. All five members of the team attended and several items regarding the project were discussed. We spoke about the research we had performed so far, the online blog and how the team had been working up until now.

Items addressed:
i. Existing Research.
ii. Further Research.
iii. Blog.
iv. Team structure.

POSSIBLE TEST 1 - "THE MERCY TEST"

OVERVIEW:

Player and NPC (Villain) are seperated by an unbreakable glass wall at all times. As the player pursues the Villain the Villain releases AI enemies to harrass and defeat the player. Upon reaching the final room, however, the level diverges. The villain finds himself in a dead-end, and buttons in front of the player determine his fate. His reactions are as follows (numbers represent test configures):

1. Repentant - The Villain begs for the player's mercy and surrenders.
2. Arrogant - The Villain taunts the player.

The player then has the choice between the two buttons- Kill or Save.

Kill button - The Villain is killed by the room. A set time after the villain dies, the game ends automatically.
Save button - The Villain thanks the player for his kindness, and the game ends.


TESTING CONSIDERATIONS:

AIMS:
Players will either kill or spare our villain based on the characterisation we give them. This is a quick method of demonstrating whether or not players found our character believable, and will be backed up by the survey data they provide us.

PROS:
Players make a decision based on a judgement of an NPC they've had some manner of interaction with.
A life-and-death decision like this offers the player plenty of room for consideration.

CONS:
Would certain players be morally stronger? Thus, would they be less likely to even consider killing the villain?
Possibility of players for example sparing the Villain in the 2nd scenario, then killing him in the first simply to see the scene.

OTHER:
Playing the level more than once, the player knows what to expect- but they are then surprised by a different outcome. This test uses player choices as a barometer for testing the believability of our NPC and how engaging he is. This test also gathers certain ‘player choice’ data which can be an interesting field to consider in addition to how well our NPC worked.

MODIFICATIONS:
This test could be easily modified due to its simplistic nature. For example, a third option for the level could be to have the ‘Villain’ instead be a heroic character, who causes enemy-related problems for the player purely by accident. Would players make a snap decision regarding the value of the character’s life if they knew their troubles were simply accidental?

POSSIBLE TESTS:
POSSIBLE TEST 1 - "THE MERCY TEST" [PDF]
POSSIBLE TEST 2 - "THE FRIENDSHIP TEST" [PDF]
POSSIBLE TEST 3 -" THE SINISTER TWIN TEST" [PDF]
POSSIBLE TEST 4 -" THE MIRANDA PRINCIPLE" [PDF]
POSSIBLE TEST 5 -" THE FEMME FATALE TEST" [PDF]

As we build up a list of sources, I think we'd be best to find some way of organising them.

Should we list by quality/how useful the source is? Or by the field of the source?

Like Lewis said, we'll have quite a few by week ten (or even week three at this rate) so we should figure this out beforehand. Character and Game case studies break easily enough into their own sections, so they shouldn't be a problem.

While it is good to have this much written this soon it is a fact that most of these case studies are for our benefit more than the lecturers'.

What we are looking for in these character studies is not details on the character but what traits make them interesting to players. If it gets to week 10 and we have to trawl through 12k words for a few useful lines about what makes interesting/believable character we're going to regret it.

It's really good work thats been done so far though, it's just a little bit too much good work.

Any thoughts?

PS. This is being posted here because I will be far too tired to say this in any meaningful capacity tomorrow and it will be nice to show us using the blog for meaningful discussion.

As a part of the team's study into NPC characters, this week I researched the enigmatic Gman, from the Half Life series. The full case study can be found here.

The Title:
Creating interesting non-playable characters.
(Being a study into the contributing factors required to create interesting and believable characters within videogames.)

The Question:
What methods can we use to create realistic and engaging NPCs?

The Hypothesis:
If certain characteristics are considered more 'believable', then NPCs who have them will be more engaging to players.

Project Goals:
The ultimate goal of this project is to create some form of rule set for creating interesting Non Playable Characters (NPCs), and a clear explanation of the context these rules apply in. Through testing pre-defined characteristics that we theorise have positive or negative effects upon players, we should be able to create NPCs players consider 'realistic'. In order to reach this goal we will need to examine current thinking on the subject, case study games with interesting NPCs to look for common devices that we think make them interesting, and possibly distribute questionnaires/surveys to establish what type of person feels these characters are interesting, and how much they are in majority. Obviously it would be impossible to actually cover every possible device for making a character interesting and believable, so eventually it will be a requirement that we define the genre and subjects that will be tested (male 18-24).

The Test:
Our test will run a group of 'traditional videogamers' (males, 18-24) through a basic level and record their reaction to our NPC characters. We will gather qualitative and quantative data on their reactions through entry and exit questionnaires. To avoid an excessive number of personality variables, we must narrow down certain major traits. If we make characters too realistic (ie. totally multi-faceted) we will have far too many perspectives to test from. Our test framework must be such that variables can be changed without affecting the overall structure of the test. For example, making the character kind or callous- does the framework support this? By testing certain personality variables but leaving scope to modify them for repeat tests, we allow for the possibility of similar-conditions repeat testing.

Week 1, Meeting 1:
Date: 09/02/2010
Time: 01:45pm until 02:10pm
Staff present: Claire Brierley
Location: C2 – 04a

A meeting took place at 01:45pm on the 9th of February with project supervisor, Claire Brierley. All five members of the team attended and several items regarding the unit and project were discussed. We spoke about each of the group members individual roles, if they were happy with those roles and about any initial ideas we had for our project question and how we could solve it.

Items addressed:
i. Group Members.
ii. Project Proposal.
iii. Initial ideas.
iv. Team structure.
v. Goals for following week.

Below is a list of all work completed for the Level 3 Team Project unit:

Team Fable Source Bible
Assessments:
Design Document, Pitch and Plan  
Test Planning Documentation
Pitch and Plan Presentation
Milestone I Presentation - Research
Milestone II Presentation - Level Design
Milestone III Presentation - Test Planning
Milestone IV Presentation - Final Artefact
Milestone V Presentation - Analysis and Conclusion 
Case Studies: 
01. Human Emotion - Empathy and Sympathy
02. Human Emotion - Empathy, Chivalry and Sympathy 
Character Studies:
Character Study - Elika (Prince of Persia)
Character Study - Frank Fontaine (Bioshock)
Character Study - Miranda Lawson (Mass Effect 2)
Character Study - Loghain Mac Tir (Dragon Age)
Character Study - The Gman (Half Life 2)
Other Characterisation:
Analysis Of Characters Within Fable II
Analysis Of Characters Within Warhammer 40,000
Comic-Book Characterisation & Personality Theory
NPCs And Visual Information [Part 1]
NPCs And Visual Information [Part 2]
Source Analysis:
Better Games Characters By Design (K. Isbister)
Consistency  of Personality in Interactive Characters (K. Isbister, C. Nass)
Creating Emotions in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering (D. Freeman)
Game Usability: Advice From The Experts For Advancing The Player Experience (K. Isbister & N. Schaffer)
Gender-Inclusive Games Design (S. Graner Ray)
Game Story And Character Development (M. Krawczyk & J. Novak)
Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling (C. Crawford)
The Art of Game Characters (L. Hartas)
Understanding Emotions (K. Oatley, D. Kelt, J.M. Jenkins)
The Silent Language (E. Hall)
Games Design Complete (P. O'Luanaigh)
Environment Studies:
Environment Study - GoldenEye's Janus Syndicate Base
Environment Study - Left 4 Dead's 'Dead Air' Office Complex
Other Research:
Kyle Cherry - Project Skills Assignment 2
Adam Parker - Project Skills Assignment 2
Adam Parker - Project Skills Poster
Project Methodology Report
Research Exercise - Dragon Age Survey
Research Exercise - Personality Modelling