| Buy the book | Free PDF |

Updated 14.5.2010: Added download link.

Back cover says:

In the Character-Driven Game Design, Petri Lankoski presents a theory that illuminates how game characters contribute to shaping the playing experience. Based on this theory he provides design tools for character-based games which utilize methods and theories derived from dramatic writing and game research.

“The use of Lajos Egri’s bone structure for a three dimensional-character and of Murray Smith’s three levels of imaginative engagement with characters allows the candidate to expose the full complexity of the imaginary persons represented and controlled in a single-player game. What makes his design-center approach even more interesting is that gameplay is an integral part of it.”
Bernard Perron, Associate Professor, Université de Montréal

“Lankoski does a great job laying out the theory of primary interest to him, and making the case for the need to tether character design to game design more tightly than has been the case in the past. Certainly, too, putting attention to social networks of characters and finding useful design patterns to guide this level of game design is also of great value, and underexplored in the field.”
Katherine Isbister, Associate Professor, Polytechnic Institute of New York University

CONTENTS

Read the rest of this entry »

My paper Player Character Engagement in Computer Games was accepted to Games and Culture. Here is the abstract:

This article argues how players can control a player character influence interpretation and facilitate engagement within a game. Engagement with player characters can be goal-related or empathic, where goal-related engagement depends on affects elicited by goal-status evaluations whereas characters facilitate empathic engagement. The concepts of recognition, alignment, and allegiance are used to describe how engagement is structured in games. Recognition describes aspects of character interpretation. Alignment describes what kind of access players have to a character’s actions, knowledge, and affects. Allegiance describes how characters elicit sympathy or antipathy through positive or negative evaluation of the character.

Spoiler alert…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tommi Horttana writes about Lies and Seductions and his experiences on developing the game his portfolio blog.

We published new teaser. Watch it at http://www.liesandseductions.com/ or download it http://www.liesandseductions.com/lies_teaser.m4v (quicktime).

We did also redesign to Lies and Seduction web site. We still need to make edit and proof texts. I hope to find time for that soonish ().

Version 1.0.1 published. The version contains corrections as follows:

• dialogue logic fixes;
• dance mini-game score calculation error fix;
• heart indicators are posted after dialogue ends, so it is possible to see the indicator.

Known issues: The windows version have rendering artifacts. The correction is waiting for Unity 2.6 version which should contain the fix for this problem.

The game can be downloaded for free at www.liesandseductions.com. OSX and Windows versions available. Works also in Linux via Wine.

Lies and Seductions is a single player game about seduction, lies, and betrayal.

Are you able to guide Abby to seduce a rock star, Chris, promised to stay virgin untill marriage? In order to success you need to gather dirty little secrets, use those secrets in your advantage, and make an impression on Chris.

Features:

• four seduceable characters
• flirt, mislied, eavesdrop, and pump information
• persuade characters to help you to reach the goal
• play Texas hold’em poker
• dance to impress
• non-player characters forms opionnions based on your choices they perceive
• three different endings

Lies and Seduction earned Special Recognition: Adventure Game Development at Unity Awards 2008. We submitted a very early version to the contest. Hopefully the current version is even better.

Unity people got the videos out from the Unity 2008 conference yesterday, and I went to see what they say about the game. Sam Kalman introduced the game roughly as follows:

Lies and Seductions… Very much an adult  game. Not for kids at all. Um and umm. I mean, you try to get the right person to sack.

This is an old paper published in 2003 containing an early version of character recognition framework developed further for my thesis. This version contains some edits compared to version available in Digra Digital Library due to quick html conversion (no foot notes, tables are lists, etc.).

Presented at Level Up Conference Proceedings, Utrech: University of Utrech, November, 2003. A presented version is downloadable at digra digital library http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05087.10012.pdf, © Authors & DiGRA, 2003. Free for educational and research use; commercial use restricted and only by permission.

Petri Lankoski, Satu Heliö, Inger Ekman
Hypermedia Laboratory
University of Tampere

ABSTRACT
Interpretation of characters is a fundamental feature of human behavior. Even with
limited information available, people will assign personality – even to inanimate objects.
Characters in computer games will be attributed personality based on their appearance
and behavior. The interpretation of these characters affects the whole game experience.
Designing the protagonist character in computer games is different from the design of
static characters (e.g. film or literature), because the player’s actions will affect the
nature of the character. There are, however, many ways to control and guide the actions
of the protagonist and thus the character’s nature. By setting goals, scripting pre-
defined actions and choosing what kind of actions to implement, the game designer can
restrict the player’s freedom. This, together with the characterization of the character,
will affect the interpretation of the character.
Keywords
Characters, Design, Interpretation

Read the rest of this entry »