Character development in games.

Jurgen

Hi.

Quoting www.gamasutra.com:

Character development in and of itself isn't going to make your gameplay any better, but it will create a more satisfying experience because you're furnishing a more well-developed context, a more immersive world for the player to explore.

What type of game would not rely on character development?

Pixel_Reaper

Obvious genres like puzzle, roguelike, strategy, tactics, and multiplayer games often don't rely on character development. Some would have heavy stat based development. But the mechanic or competitive element becomes more Important that the character.
That's not to say that these types of games will never have character development though.

That is a pretty basic answer, but your question seems straight forward. Am I missing some deeper complexity to your question? :)

Jurgen

@Pixel_Reaper, not at all, that's what I was looking for :)
Any game for that matter may have character development, as long as their is a character to develop.

What is the game-character you find most memorable in terms of character development?

The reason I ask is that if I study the background of such a memorable character, I have a very good idea of what is popular :)

For me that would be Rockman from RockmanX4 because personally, he was involved in an interesting story , Rockman gains the powers of defeated bosses and he gets to collect various pieces of super-armour hidden across certain stages.

Pixel_Reaper

Mmm, That's a tough one :P I'm not all that good at noticing character growth over time.
Most memorable in terms of character development for me is probably Alistair from Dragon age origins.
spoiler: He starts out pretty light-hearted but later becomes bitter. He is also forced to become king :P

rustybroomhandle

The main character in our game is an AFGNCAAP so it would seem like there's zero character development. But since that essentially means the main character is you, it'd be awfully presumptuous of us to have any character development for the main character. By itself that'd be quite dull, so instead what we're doing is slowly revealing facets of the world you are in to the player, hopefully causing him/her to consider these as they go along and then SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER it eventually culminates into a choice the the player has to make. A choice of which the consequence is not shown in-game, since it's irrelevant. The story is about you, and at the end, that choice reveals something about you as a person. That's the idea, anyway. This might all still burn up in execution. :P

Tuism

Character development...

Final Fantasy VI had epic character development because it intertwined between so many different ones, and was done so well. Though i'm not sure that character development is tied so hardcore into the gameplay... Every character grows in power and history, some of them are tied to each other, some not. It was a great dance of characters :)

Then Nier was great... Hmmmm can't think of much else.

Are we specifically talking about when a character's story and gameplay grows intertwinedly?

Jurgen

Are we specifically talking about when a character's story and gameplay grows intertwinedly?

@Tuism, that is a great angle to view it from, that would make the gameplay experience more immersive when done correctly and coherently.

Do you have an example to base your question on? :)

Jurgen

@rustybroomhandle, I played "The maker's eden" demo and what I found interesting was in terms of the character, I started out not knowing who I was. Only by interacting with the environment, I realized I probably have arms, legs, a consciousness etc.

It reminds me of The Matrix, how I live in the "real world" and the game is the "simulated world" or "dream world".
The more I spend time in the simulated world as my "digital self" the more I have the feeling of "two lives".

That brings up the question, which of these lives do I enjoy more?

iceblademush

Planescape Torment by far....The Nameless one. That ending surely counts as character development? :P
It plays with you having amnesia, and learning about yourself as you go on in the game, but it also lets you make new choices based on what you found out. So you were evil before you could start being good. Your alignment would shift accordingly.
The ending was incredible....

But im biased, its my favorite game ever :)

Jurgen

@iceblademush, I see that empireonline.com ranks "The Nameless one" as number 4 according to their "The 50 greatest video game characters" feature.

Here is the link:
http://www.empireonline.com/features/50-greatest-video-game-characters/default.asp?film=4
:)