A Researcher Explains Why Players Mourn Procedural Crew Characters
Jonas Pastoors of Breda University of Applied Sciences spoke at the Game Industry Conference in Poznan, Poland, on designing characters the player commands but does not embody.
1 source 2d ago
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Why it matters
The talk gives a working vocabulary for the middle ground between NPC and player character, which is where long-running strategy and tactics games get their emotional weight from units the player never authored.
Key Facts
- Jonas Pastoors of Breda University of Applied Sciences gave the talk at the Game Industry Conference in Poznan, Poland.
- The talk was titled "To care or not: Designing characters for the right emotion."
- Pastoors calls player-commanded, non-player beings crew characters.
- He divides crew characters into authored types and procedural types generated by systems.
- His examples include XCOM 2 soldiers, RimWorld settlers, Darkest Dungeon heroes, and Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3.
He calls them crew characters and splits them into authored types, handcrafted by writers, and procedural types generated by systems. His examples include XCOM 2 soldiers, RimWorld settlers, Darkest Dungeon heroes, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3.
Pastoors said the classification came out of an argument with a friend. When he called the Baldur's Gate 3 companions wonderful NPCs, the friend asked whether a character the player can command and even control is really an NPC at all. That question shaped the categories he presented: bots, whose faces are hidden and who are replaced when defeated; NPCs the player cannot control; player characters with a story and inner life; and avatars with no personality.
Crew characters sit outside all four. The time spent with them is gameplay, not a cutscene aside, and Pastoors said that makes them the strongest candidate for a relationship with the player. Authored ones cost design resources and are limited in number. Procedural ones come from a system that assembles story parts into people.
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