A Person of Character

EDIT: I'm not sure why this didn't publish properly the first time, so here it is (again)!

The word "character" used to be used to describe somebody with moral or ethical qualities. Today it is more used to describe the personality, history, and story that combine to make a "person" in a fictional narrative.

Characters in films need to be well developed before they can be shown to an audience, otherwise the narrative tends to be boring or unbelievable. These characters are discrete, concrete individuals. Obviously, varying narratives can allow for a character's motives and actions to be ambiguous, however it is clear that there is indeed a character there, causing those things to happen.

In the case of video games, the definition of character is a lot more ambiguous. First there is the issue of PC's versus NPC's - characters that the player controls versus characters that the player interacts with. NPC's tend to be very similar to the types of characters that we encounter in films and books. They need to be, as they are driving forces to the overall narrative of the game.

But what about PC's? There are so many types of games that is difficult to come up with a definition of the term character that can be used across the genres. So I'm going to briefly look at two genres - RPG's and Shoot 'em Up games. Specifically, Fable 2 and Team Fortress 2.

In Team Fortress 2 the player is proved with a range of prebuilt characters that s/he can slip into. These are Pyro, Engineer, Sniper, Spy, Heavy, Demonman, Medic, Scout, and Soldier.



In this "Meet the Spy" promotional trailer released by Valve, we can see that each character has a collection of distinct traits that, added together, make a semblance of a complete character. However, these characteristics are unnecessary to the overall gameplay of Team Fortress 2, instead they are just fun quirks that add to the overall originality of the game. The names of each of these characters reveals just how superfluous "character" is - merely reflecting the function that each role plays in a match.

In Fable 2, character is the driving point behind the whole game. Focus is placed on the actions that a player chooses to make, which are able to change the entire game plot. Gender is flexible. Actions are broken down into "good" and "bad", "corrupt" and "pure", and when a player does enough bad actions to become evil, his or her appearance will change to reflect this, growing horns and leaving burning footprints in his or her wake. Likewise if the player chooses only good actions - their appearance becomes angelic, and they develop a halo. Eating a lot of pie causes fatness, while munching on celery leads to fitness.


The player can wander around a simulated world, taking on quests as s/he pleases, buying houses, doing jobs, getting married or sleeping around, murder or save whomever s/he likes. While the game does not offer infinite choice - after all, our technology is not quite that advanced yet - it does offer choice within the boundaries of the game. If one likes, one can completely avoid the main storyline of the game and spend time making money and buying houses instead.

In this form of game, the character is a shell that the player steps into and then defines, much more interactive than the static characters in movies. Certainly, characters in games like Team Fortress 2 are interactive, too, however their actions are limited to a specific range of possibilities, while RPG games like Fable 2 give the player an illusion of infinite possible combinations of actions.

And just for fun, here's the "Meet the Sniper" video, which only shows the Sniper character so isn't really a good example of all the characters available in Team Fortress 2. Also, he's Australian.