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(We have had these threads before, but it seems fitting there is one for this section, and this one is more about the impact on a story it will have.)

What is your favored way to deal with a protagonist?

Does the player have direct influence over the character, crafting everything about them, with the protagonist merely being a visualization of their influence?

Is the protagonist a unique character, one who has his own past and look, but the main character hops into his shoes and controls him for the duration of the story?

Or is the main character entirely independent story-wise, able to have his own personality and make his own decisions, with you only taking over for game-play?

There's also the Ageless Faceless Gender-Netural Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person, as used by Zork. The protagonist has little-to-no characterisation, the plot just happens around him.

I'm often fond of the silent/non-personality protagonist in games.  The personality of the character forms through the interactions between the player and the game. 

I don't think this is a hard-and-fast rule, however.  With Captain McCallery, I gave him a backstory, and he has some dialogue, as well as the journal entries, which give him some personality.  But hopefully it's a soft enough force that the each player feels a different personality, which is a cross between the pre-written personality and their own projection.  I guess, ideally, they are playing a role of this character, but putting themselves into that character.  They are playing themselves if they were someone else.

for games (that I [want to] make), I like to have the protagonists be hollow shells onto which I can project my own actions and personality, but not so hollow that they are devoid entirely of existing relationships and connections to the story. A vague history is what I like most, nothing specific like "when he and she were twelve they promised to marry each other and he gave her a locket and she gave him a ring and..." but more like "they were friends as kids", Then leave it up to the player to decide what kind of friends they were.

as Alec S said though, silent and easily-projectable-uponable characters don't necessarily have to be devoid of personality and character, just that the nature might need to be more generalized and not specific enough to lend them to a specific "type" of individual. Like there are certain situations in which most anyone would be, say, scared, so it would be silly to avoid making the character look scared just to give the player an opportunity to project their own thoughts onto the character, when their thoughts would likely be fear anyway. Or also you can use the actions of the protagonist to incite certain feelings in the player, so like if your character on-screen seems scared, it might make the player feel more fearful as well, thus making them feel even closer to the protagonist anyway.

In pure terms of story, there is no such thing as a silent protagonist. Even if you make the protagonist as blank of a slate as possible that is still a character trait. Giving someone no preset characteristic is itself a characteristic and has an effect on the plot. By writing a vague, blank-slate protagonist the story surrounding the protagonist must be equally vague.

If you want to write vague stories, that's fine I guess, but the greatest stories told through human history have all been very specific, focused stories. Do we feel dissociated from Hamlet because he is royalty and we will never be? No! Of course not! We relate to him because we see him going through very real emotions, something all of us experience, triggered by very specific scenarios.

I don't buy that making the protagonist silent and faceless is the only way to let the player enter the game. It does, however, have the effect of making your story vague and limpid.

All this falls apart when the player does something a specific protagonist would never have done, and I guess I don't have any real answer for that yet. However, I think normally when the player is acting up and being stupid the actions are equally ridiculous coming from a specific protagonist as they would be from a blank-slate protagonist.


I do wonder though if the traditional idea of the protagonist is really the best fit for stories in games. If a game restricts itself to only being playable through a single character's eyes, you'll lose a lot of scenes and other view points which can make a really great story. The question arises if it would be better to have a sort of multi-protagonist approach to avoid this stifling of player perspective, but I imagine such an approach would lend itself to an emphasis on forced linearity.

Dreaming and visualizing a formless intuition

Findind his story function (guide, protagonist, counselor, etc...)

Defining:
Motivation
mean of evaluation
Methodology of action
Purpose

Then fill a predefine character profile to cover all aspect.


I had once create a character profile template that seem to have spread into the renai scene:
http://www.mangatutorials.com/tut/profiling.php

What Captain 404 said.

I think that "silent protagonist" in terms of just being silent and whose actions are not fully narrated can work quite well as long as his personality is not absent. Silent protagonist in Digital a Love Story can be interpreted like that.

So, yeah, I prefer full blown characters. (:

I think a silent protagonist works in a game sense without weakening the story, as long as you think of story in game-like terms.  Look at the Mass Effect games, for example.  Although he's not a silent protagonist, Shepard is a pretty blank slate, allowing him to be a stand-in for the player.  He's simultaneously the main character and a non-character.  His personality is a projection of the player's personality into a general nondescript bad-ass type character.  His personality doesn't really effect the plot in the way, say, Hamlet's personality effects the plot.  The real characters are the supporting cast, who do effect the plot and whose personalities you experience through the interactions experienced from the point of view of the player stand-in Shepard.

That's the key - extra effort has to be made to ensure that the player's motivations (at least to the degree of the mechanics of the game if not further) match the in-game character under her control, lest the illusion fail. Half-Life 2 is fantastic at this. So are some JRPGs (the Mother series comes to mind).

This thread should be retitled to, 'How to write a player supporting protagonist.'

My first two games had strongly developed main characters. The player was given choices external to their character(s)' personality. This allowed the characters to act consistently, and maintain the continuity of the story.

My upcoming game let's the player decide a character's personality. In all of the games, a strong framework wraps the story. In the first two, the player explores a rich story and its potential paths. In the new one, players create a story within the framework. Each age of civilization is defined by the events it presents during gameplay.

How the main character (the family head of each generation) acts and reacts is decided by the player. This allows players to try out different personalities in the same game. Unfortunately, the player doesn't have to choose consistently for the same main character. This can break the continuity of the game, but I would rather allow the player to choose freely, instead of arbitrarily constraining him or her to consistent choices.

So my approach is to have a strong story framework that allows the player to explore personality options for 'their' character. The Bioware games have been doing this forever. My new game is entirely unlike those, but the concept still works.

It's not necessarily about that, since I did intend to cover topics like "how do you write a protagonist as a separate character", but a good point nonetheless!

The blank slate protagonist is nothing exclusive to games, though.

They were used decades ago in CYOA's as they pretty much only work with second-person narration and branching storylines.

And I'm generally not fond of that type of storytelling. I can see how it's exciting for programmers and gamers, though.

I think... I prefer to write a situation than a protagonist. I'm mostly thinking about visual novels though. So it's easier to write a bunch of options for the player, and grow the protagonist around that. :3 At least with a visual novel, you can try offer a range of options without any chance of the player doing uncharacteristic actions (like walking into a wall for half an hour XD )

Throwing in with 404, I like characters with character.  There are ways to do 'blank slate man' right too, though.  Mass Effect, from what I hear, did a pretty good job.


The game project I've done the most storyline thinking on, my beloved vaporware "Lapratan", has a protagonist with a distinct personality and a backstory which is revealed slowly over the course of the game, so as to depict meaningful events after the player's gotten immersed in the (environment-heavy) game to some extent.  With hope, they would grow somewhat attached to her.

The player's meaningful choices would mostly be within the possible courses the character could take--generally between recklessness and caution, or wrathfulness and conservation.  She starts the story in a very emotionally unstable state (though the player doesn't learn until later) but finds something new to live for in her travels during the game.  What sorts of choices would exist and what effects they would have weren't really worked out.  In addition, we considered giving the player enough freedom to derail the story, if they responded to a warning the game would show--"Did that really just happen?"


I think the problems that usually arise with strongly predefined characters involve a lack of attachment on the player's part, which is hard to deal with.  My whole scheme is derived from games where I've managed to become attached to the character enough to act in context.  (Whether it works, I won't know until I try it.)

Lack of attachment can also plague side-characters.  It's hard, and a little annoying, to feel attachment to an NPC from the get-go just because that NPC is your "wife" or some such.  It works much better with things like animals (Agro from SOTC?) or a baby on your character's back because they don't talk.  It also works better if the character has been around for a while before the expected attachment occurs, or if the game breeds the attachment without ever demanding it of the player.  (Cave Story pulled the last case off wonderfully with Toroko and Curly.)


I think it's important to have at least *some* characters present throughout a game with personality.  Good games with silent protagonists make someone else (likeable) do the talking.  Good games without them give players a role they can fill without an acting degree or a great commitment to role-playing.

(I hate to say it, but whoever came up with the "quiet fellow with a talking squirrel on his shoulder" trope seems to have given this matter a fair amount of thought.  It's not a perfect solution, but it addresses the matter at hand.)

-


@GILBERT Timmy  I'm not sure exactly what you said there, but I'll agree that dreams and visualizing in that place between awake and asleep are the best places to snatch excellent writing ideas.  Sounds like you might do more of that than I do!

@bento_smile I love your work, so you're doing something right.  :)

In some part, I think this is mostly bad writing. It's using a vague cultural symbol and substituting it for real character development. I mean, in other narrative forms when the author just slaps in some random character and calls it 'wife,' it's just as bad.


Definitely this! The characters are no longer blatant symbolism, and a specific relationship is cultivated. The phrasing should never go, "This is your character's wife, that's why you love her," but instead, "You love her, that's why she's your character's wife."

Maybe the issue of a protagonist could be approached in a similar manner. Saying that certain character acts in a certain way and so you, player, must act in that way as well can feel cheap and forceful. I feel that a well realized protagonist should almost always have the player doing exactly what that protagonist would do because it's what the player would actually do if they were in this character's place. It then becomes more of a question of how to immerse the player so much inside this character's mindset that they begin to act as the character without realizing it.

There's also the adventure game model, where you have a fleshed-out protagonist with a unique personality, and much of the draw of the game is that character's personality, independent of the player. There's this great Tim Schafer interview (http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/pearce/) where he describes the logic behind it:


I'm following this model (or something like it) in my big game project. It's easier for me the way I'm doing it because you have control of 4 characters. So you feel less need to "become" the characters because you're more like this omniscient personality floating around above them, assume control now and again. It's a tightrope act keeping that design from getting frustrating.

That's the theory, anyway, I'm still in pre-production!

Oh yes. And the "blank protagonist" thing never really works for me. I mean, if people go whole hog with it like in Myst or most text adventures, where you're just playing yourself, it can work. And I suppose it's common enough in old RPGs that I can generally accept it without trouble (I don't think I needed Crono to talk in Chrono Trigger).

But I think Yahtzee explained it best when dissecting Half-Life 2:

I'm not too keen on the blank protagonist thing usually - it took me a long time to get used to when I first encountered it. But sometimes it really works. I'm thinking of games like Persona 4, which has a lot of socialising/doing stuff for npcs. It works because it feels like I am being nice to the npcs because I want to be, rather than because the main character is some obnoxious do-gooder hero type. :3

(Although maybe games like that are semi-blank... The character doesn't have any dialogue aside from the occasional bit that you can choose, and they're not that frequent, especially within the main storyline.)


Thanks! <3

If your protagonist has "fears and personal issues", don't make them whine about it constantly. That is all.

On that note, I like how psychonauts made "hydrophobia" into "fucking hands come out of water and drown you".

Maybe a good place to draw the "blank slate / full character" line is a defined personality or the lack thereof.  Gordon Freeman has a backstory and relationships, but some players might color him as a badass where others might see him as a desperate hero.  The same applies to Shepard from Mass Effect.  On the other hand, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil also has a backstory and relationships, but is more well-defined, with a compassionate and subversive attitude that's shown in her words and actions throughout the story.

...Jade Guevara...

I think Mass Effect did well story wise because the player is not the protagonist (main character of the story) but just a character.

The protagonist and antagonist in Mass Effect are detailed, they drive the story and the player can side with them. That way Mass Effect gets both: a strong story with detailed characters and a blank slate player character, filled by his actions.

I at least see this in casual RPGs like GTA, Oblivion - you usually side with the really bad / really good guy but are yourself a blank slate story wise.

I enjoy playing as a character with a bit of flavor. Specifically, I love it when I'm playing as a Snark Knight
( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSnarkKnight )

The blank slate shtick doesn't really do much for me.

(wow, we made it a whole two pages before someone linked tvtropes)

Also, the main character in ME actually talks 'n' stuff. I'd say he's very similar to JC Denton from Deus Ex. Not quite "blank slate" but not quite a "well-defined" character either.

The problem with having a scripted character is that it creates an immediate divide between the player and their character: since I am not Kratos, I cannot empathise with his position, motives, goals, etc. So what incentive do I have to play as him?

The goal of the writer in this case is to find some common link between the player and the character, and you can do this by making the protagonist character one with whom the player can symnpathise. You have to make the player WANT the character to see his quest through until the end. In that sense, a scripted character in a game works in the same way as any character in a film or a book.

I know telling game designers/writers to copy films is an indie faux pas, and perhaps not the best stance to take on a first post here, but there's not much I can do about that. :concerned:

Why would that create a divide? We're able to identify with characters in every non-interactive story who are scripted.

Myself, I don't like it when any story expects me to feel a certain way at a certain time. Like when the emotional music swells and the camera dollies in on Kate Winslet crying or something. Sure, I'm going to feel emotional, but it wasn't earned, it's just a crying actress and an effective score.

What I appreciate about games is you can give the main character motivations and you can give the player different motivations, and try to make them line up. The player can decide how much they do or don't care about the character's wants and desires.

For instance, in Aquaria I might care about Naija's reasons for wanting to go to the Sun Temple, and I might not. She has old memories hidden there, she is discovering the surface for the first time, fine. But I know if I complete the Sun Temple I'm going to get a new ability. So her desire and mine match up, but I'm free to care or not care about her reasons. But the fact that we both want the same thing can make me identify with her in spite of myself. I'm free to decide my own level of investment.

...And having your own goals "match up" with the character's like that can give you time to get immersed in the role of that character.  To develop attachments and such.

I'm a bit fixated on this whole "attachments" thing but I guess a story isn't worth telling without breeding them, right?



Since when?  I think it's perfectly fine.  There are lots of good lessons to be learned, and being game developers we can't "copy" film per se without creative input.

Telling people to 'copy' directly is telling them not to be creative, which is an insult; telling game designers to copy film is telling them to adapt the techniques of another medium to their own, which is not.

not every. There have been films, books, games, where I absolutely could not relate to or sympathize with the protagonists, for one reason or another (mostly due to chronic illogical stupidity - doing things I or no reasonable individual I know of would ever do). Did not enjoy as a result. Having strictly scripted characters extends the threat of this happening to games as well, when I think one of the advantages of games is, as you sort of mentioned, letting players care about what they want to care about, instead of trying to get them to care about what you want them to care about, as with other non-interactive mediums.

Yeah, I phrased that poorly. I meant "in every non-interactive medium," not in every single story.

I feel it's smart to try to engender indentification between the character and the player, I just dislike it when the game basically breaks whenever I don't identify with a character. It's a chronic problem in poorly-designed adventure games. A character has some goal that they decided on in a cutscene and the designers assume I'll  be just as invested in it as the character. If I'm not, well, the only payoff achieving that goal is the character's happiness. I say give me something tactile as well.

Ah. In that case, I agree.

I mean, I also agreed before, but I wasn't really sure what you were saying. But now I do so it's all gravy.

Persona 4 is an egregious example of this.  There are quite a few times in the game where it says something like "you decide to go home" or "you decide to visit so-and-so" and I think to myself "I do? ...Okay, I guess..."

I'd argue that conflicting player/protagonist goals and motives are just an example of poor writing. If the character really is acting senselessly, that's a narrative problem, if the character has a reason for his/her actions that the player just doesn't understand, that's an example of the writer not communicating motives well enough.

If a characters "decides to go home" without the appropriate context, the action will seem unexpected or unwarranted regardless of the medium. When the writer properly communicates this context however (and communicates it well!) the action should not seem at all unexpected.


Ah, but isn't that the very definition of empathy! To quote dictionary.com

Good point, well made. My semantics were off.


While this is all true, the dissonance between a player and a character in the game is more pronounced because we control the actions of the character. We aren't just witness to the story, we drive it. To take your example of Aquaria, there is dissonance between yourself and Naija because your reasons for wanting to complete the Sun Temple are completely different. The narrative says you are in there for one reason, but the mechanics tell you you're in there for another.

You were right to call me out for suggesting there in NO incentive to play as a scripted character (It was late, and I was tired! :P), but there is still that divide. This means that when you eventually complete the sun level and the plot develops, it does not engage you to nearly such an extent because you have decided that you aren't interested in it and all you want is the mechanical reward.

There are two ways around this:

1) Use good writing to make the player want to explore the Sun Temple for the same reasons as Naija, with the further option of eschewing the mechanical reward, hiding it or making it seem less important to the player than plot progression.

2) Make Naija want the upgrade as much as the player, which is easy to write, but can impact the quality of the story in many cases.

...Or something like that.

Something important to consider is the player's personality in a story game. Does the player want to express her own personality, or does he want to be someone different?

Gameplay is good at encouraging players to express their personality.

Story is good at encouraging players to be someone different.

How you balance that will greatly influence who will enjoy your game. Maybe you just want to make the game you want, and don't need to worry about which players will like or dislike it. That's fine, but maybe keep this in mind, if you're trying to appeal to any specific audience.

Well, I tend to think of it as Naija has her own feelings and I've got mine. The fact is that no one, no matter what the medium, can control how the viewer is going to react. I don't think "good" writing is synonymous with "persuasive" writing. For instance, if a movie deals with the topic of violence, I might have a different opinion of violence from that of the filmmakers. If the movie is incoherent or offensive if I disagree, it falls apart. But if it simply presents a compelling point of view, I can have any number of reactions to it. If a film says "the violence of American soldiers against the Viet Cong was unjustified," I can agree or disagree, and still find the film successful if it got me thinking more deeply about the subject.

The same goes for Aquaria (to stick with the example). I don't have to identify with Naija to enjoy the game. In reality, I do identify with Naija, and the game is richer experience because I identify with her. Identifying definitely improves the experience. But if the game took pains to try and endear Naija to me I'd probably identify less. I'd probably find it grating. I've always felt that good writing is interesting without telling the viewer what they should be thinking. If a story doesn't work unless the viewer is thinking a certain way at a certain time, I'd call that bad writing.

Hm. So do you feel that good writing always means the audience is invested in the character? Perhaps. My take is that a story can be well-written but I can still hate it. I often criticize the a movie or game story or book or whatever, and people respond "but they were trying to do that!" Most of the time, yes, I get that the writer was trying to do something, and I get that they succeeded, and I still don't like it.

If someone played Aquaria and hated it, hated the story, hated the characters, does that mean it was badly written? I loved it, story and characters, does that mean it was well-written? I think the game succeeds in telling the story it tried to tell. If someone hates it, then it's not the story for them. I'd say good and bad writing is writing that succeeds or fails in what it's attempting to achieve.

Games are a weird medium because you have to simultaneously try to achieve something with the story and something with the gameplay. Should you even worry about selling someone on the gameplay if they don't like your story? I think what I don't like about games that try to influence how I feel is that it's trying to ignore that maybe I just don't like the game.

Dog, it's ok if I don't like your game! I'll just go play something else.

(though even that gets tricky; so many people seem to think that if they personally don't like a game than the something is a failure, and the internet is full of people happy to explain how and why your game is a failure for not satisfying them personally)

I agree with peevish.

Posted a blog post, didn't think it needed it's own thread but thought this would be relevant as it's essentially a look into Camouflaj's example of when not to claim you have a strong female protagonist:

The Strong Female Caricature ; Republique
http://minsktown.com/2012/05/11/the-strong-female-caricature-republiq/

I have some designs like this. Some of my first ever, like when I was given the blank slate, focused on this idea.

I think in any game the player is an omniscient being. You can never actually be the character because there's always going to be some dissonance. Anyone who thinks their game gives the player complete freedom is seriously confused.

Tightrope? I found the approach to be liberating. What problems have you come across because of it?

A lot of my current designs have some element of the character's "natural tendencies." The feeling I try to invoke is that all the characters that you can control have their own wishes. If you back off they will do things on their own, literally. When you turn the system off, then return, things have happened in your absence. And so on. When you play, it's like you're "influencing" the character instead of controlling him. Sometimes your control is so precise it's exact, and other times it's suggestive. Sometimes you control one character through another character, adopting even "fuzzier" control, and so on.

I'm curious what issues you're having.

(Think about the behaviour of the horse in Shadow of the Collosus - it pulls on its own - or for that matter, Ico pulling Yorda around).

i think writing a good protagonist is similar to writing a good character in general. the only difference is that with the protagonist, you want someone who has a strong "drive" to accomplish their goals. this drive can be extrinsic (saving their kidnapped daughter) or intrinsic (wants to make the world a better place) but their drive has to be strong, otherwise the plot will lag and feel as if the protagonist is being pulled through it rather than is the motivating force behind it

i feel that the weakness of a lot of game stories is that the hero feels like they are just along for the ride, being pushed around by circumstances. that's something we should try to avoid. the protagonist should be the ones making the decisions and providing the motivation, not the circumstances around the protagonist. an example of a "just along for the ride" hero was tidus from final fantasy 10 or vahn from final fantasy 12. why did everyone hate those two, because they were whiny? no, i think it's more because they were pushed along by circumstances, which made them feel weak; they nominally "led" the party, but they never made any important decisions at all, they were just sort of told what to do by the other more experienced party members (auron in ff10, that air pilot guy whose name i forget in ff12)

It's also important that the main form of pursuing his/her goals is an action that can be performed by the player. God of War: he's really fucking pissed, wants to smash; you can smash.

Vaan and Tidus were extremely weak. Cloud was great for the first-half, then he just kind of, "did the right thing," because it was the "right thing." Literally, the motivation was, "to save the planet." Midgar was human. "Planet"? "Rock"? "Paper-weight"? They all have the same meaning to me.

As a rule of thumb: if your character takes up space in the player's mind and isn't in pursuit of a clear goal that's woven into his character, he shouldn't take up space.

One of the best ways to start is to figure out what sort of conflict the protagonist is up against since we (and fictional characters) are often defined by our struggles (and lack thereof).

Is he (or she) up against another character (man vs. man), trying to survive the elements (man vs. nature), dealing with an internal struggle (man vs. himself), or some combination of the three? Think about what sort of attributes the protagonist will need in the end to overcome his conflicts.

Any good protagonist will grow over time, if not physically then at least mentally or often both (even characters who are insanely powerful to begin with, like Superman, grow throughout their stories). Think about the state your protagonist is in when the story starts and how he'll grow from that state to the state he'll be in when he has the attributes necessary to overcome his conflicts. Often in games, the "just along for the ride" hero Paul is speaking of is one with very little character growth. They pretty much plateau throughout the whole game.



When your protagonist is up against a villain he shouldn't be the polar opposite of the villain, he should share some of the villain's traits (and vice versa). The villain should be his dark mirror who illustrates the evil that the protagonist could potentially succumb to. Examples: Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader, Cloud vs. Sephiroth, Batman vs. The Joker, Cecil vs. Golbez, Squall vs. Seifer, Ryu vs. Akuma, etc.

They will often seem to be two different branches grown from the same tree. Batman and The Joker both grew from tragedy but where Batman tries to protect the innocent The Joker imperils them. Cloud and Sephiroth are both very cold and detached when the story begins, but Cloud becomes warmer and more friendly as the story progresses while Sephiroth grows colder and even more detached and ruthless. This branching allows you to explore two perspectives of an issue and can help avoid the bland one-dimensional "this guy is just evil" or "this guy is just good" stereotyping.



Ultimately the protagonist should have something (or some things) he stands for that drive his being. Most successful people are driven by some desire or need that pushes them out of their comfort zone and spurs them into action. Cloud, for example, is driven by a mixture of revenge, rivalry, and the need to protect the people he cares for (all the things Sephiroth is inciting or endangering). Having sincere convictions is what will allow a protagonist to find strength even in their weakest moments and keep them growing throughout the story.



One of the most overlooked, but often very beneficial, things you can do when creating a character (protagonist or antagonist) is draw out (or write out) some of their most basic, mundane behaviors. How does the character eat and drink (what kind of manners do they have)? How do they sit (slouched and relaxed, tense and readied, upright with good posture, etc.)? Do they have any dialog quirks ("I often end my sentences like this, ya know?") or body language habits (for example, they clench and unclench their fists repeatedly when speaking in a frustrated manner)? Sometimes it is the most minor of details that really stick in the mind and really round out the character for the player (or reader, viewer, whatever).



As for the looks, here's a few things to think about from the character designs (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22991.0) thread:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21009942/raynie.png)