character design and other thoughts

Bit of a serious post this one

Found some research that's quite interesting and made me think about my own design in a different way. Cartoonist and visual theorist Scott McCloud wrote about the abstract nature of cartoon characters and how the "lack of details in characters allow viewers to identify with them (more than they would with more detailed, photo-realistic characters) because it encourages the viewer to see or position "himself" in or as the character."

This makes sense to me because i've also looked at Chris Crawford's word where he states that "graphic realism stimulates the imagination, but it must leave room for the imagination to run free." I took this to mean that the imagination is stilted when films, tv, games etc are presented as ultra realistic, where as if the elements or characters lack detail and realism the viewer and user has to piece things together and use their imagination more and this could also relate to ellipses in Manovich's "Myth of Interactivity"

"ellipses in literary narration, missing details of objects in visual art and other representational "shortcuts" require the user to fill in missing information"

The argument is from a guy called Steve Poole who believes that "players are more attracted to recent, almost lifelike characters such as 'Lara Croft' ... over the abstractions of Pac-Man, but because these characters aren't "too real" either, the player comes to care for them and feel badly if they die"

I can't agree with the above statement as i found an online game called Interactive Buddy, which although it has little to no detail I think it still produces an emotive response from the player due to the character being anthropomorphised by cowering or shaking when hurt or showing a smiley face when happy.


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SLightly more intense online games usually involve the player maintaining that characters and advancing them causing a greater deal of identification (Gary Fine). He also found that players would cheat to prevent the deeath of a favourite character or refuse to play with other gamers that would not help protect the group, World of Warcraft springs to mind.

This has given me a lot to think about, especially the thoughts on realism vs less detail, when designing my game. I personally agree more with the identification and ellipse process of less realistic and detailed design as it seems more plausible, i think that imagination is more powerful than merely taking something that someone else has created and immersing yourself in it, with little thought on your own part, as well that also links back to the navigational systems and mistaking someone elses thought process for your own, as i mentioned in a previous post.

I think that's all for now, need to just carry on with what i'm doing which is adding colour and neatening up my sketches in photoshop then animating it to show how the game would work.

Also need to do that rationale thing or before I do, note down the specifics of the game, how it works and what i want it to acheive, and then post it here.