should it be designed?
Rebecca Phillips
BA (Hons) Interior Architecture & Design Final Year
Research Project
This page documents the key findings of both the primary and secondary research as well as a spreadsheet containing all survey results.
From studying secondary sources of information I was able to gather arguments for and against designing the player character, I found the arguments could be subdivided into topics, listed below are short descriptions of each section that are analysed and discussed in the following pages of this research project.
Against – The Player
The player is the main character; they have many of the same traits as the protagonists in linear works but unlike films and books the player is part of the story rather than just observing it, all they need is to be shown the world then they can immerse themselves in it.
The player can feel disconnected to the character; if you design a character that the player can see you are reminding them that they are not in the game world themselves, if the character does not react the same way the player does it can create a feeling of disconnect.
The player may dislike the character; if the player does not like the character they will not play the game and designing a character that every player will like is extremely difficult.
The gender of the character; creating a game that offers the player a choice in gender can double the budget and the workload therefore many companies do not do it but this can leave the female gaming population feeling neglected.
Many popular games have no characters; if characters are so important why are some of the most popular video games characterless.
For – The Character
Many players like to take on a role; creating a character that a player can inhabit allows them the freedom to behave in a way they ordinarily would not, also it can add purpose to the game by giving them the responsibility of this character and their fate.
The player’s can form an emotional attachment to the character; characters are what bring a story to life and great stories get us emotionally involved, characters in any story become our friends or our enemies and we genuinely care about what happens to them.
Recognisable characters; a video game character can be as if not more well known than say a film character. Mario vs. Luke Skywalker. A recognisable name has the ability to turn a game into a franchise and persuade people to purchase a video game.
Below are the graphs showing the overall results of the survey, additionally I have highlighted key statistics related to the corresponding graph that links the respondent’s answers to other questions that may provide evidence to support or contradict secondary information. All percentages have been rounded down to the nearest whole number.
33% of female respondents prefer to be given a character they cannot change opposed to 8% of male respondents.
33% of female respondents and 32% of male respondents prefer to create their character from scratch.
52% of male respondents prefer to be given a character they can personalise compared to 16% of female respondents.
100% of respondents aged 13-19 prefer to be given a character they can personalise.
100% of respondents aged 30-39 and 75% of respondents aged 13-19 would buy a game based on its character.
41% of female respondents play video games less often than once a month opposed to 4% of male respondents.
0% of respondents who play less often than once a month chose Action or RPG as their preferred genres.
64% of respondents who play video games every day make their decisions based on how they think it will affect their progress in the game.
64% of respondents who play video games everyday prefer to personalise their character.
55% of respondents who named the top 5 most popular characters in the survey stated that they would not buy a video game based on its character.
58% of female respondents chose Simulation as one of their three favourite genres as opposed to 16% of male respondents.
0% of female respondents chose Strategy & Tactics, Fighting or MMORPG’s.
43% of respondents chose FPS as one of their three favourite genres. 37% of those respondents chose 3rd person as their preferred point of view.
One respondent chose 1st person as their preferred perspective. They are male, aged 20-29, play on average once a fortnight, chose Adventure, RPG and Simulation as their favourite genres. They make decisions based on how the consequences will affect their progress in the game and prefer to create a character from scratch; they pay close attention to dialogue, would be put off by a character and would also buy a game based on its character.
45% of respondents chose 3rd person as their preferred perspective. Of those, 35% stated that they make decisions based on how they would act in real life and 17% make decisions based on how they think the character would act.
57% of respondents who stated that they make decisions based on how they would act in real life pay close attention to cut scenes and dialogue, and the remaining 43% pay some attention, compared to the respondents who stated they make decisions based on how they think the character would act, with 55% paying close or some attention, and the remaining 45% paying little or no attention.
Of the respondents who prefer to create their own character from scratch, 66% stated that they have been put off playing a video game because they didn’t like the player character.
16% of the respondents who prefer to be given a character they cannot change have been put off playing a video game because they didn’t like the player character.
71% of the respondents who stated they pay close attention to the dialogue and cut scenes play on average everyday or every few days, compared to the 37% of respondents who pay little or no attention that play every day or every few days.
100% of the respondents who stated they pay close attention to the dialogue and cut scenes chose Action, Adventure and/or RPG as one of their favourite genres, opposed to players that pay little or no attention to dialogue and cut scenes, where only 12% chose Action, and 0% chose Adventure and/or RPG.
47% of the respondents who state they have not been put off playing a video game because they didn’t like the character were female, out of the respondents who state they have been put off playing a video game because they didn’t like the character, 7% were female.
31% of the respondents who would not buy a game based on its character prefer to be given a character or a choice of characters that they cannot change, compared to the 16% of the respondents who would buy a game based on its character.
8% of female respondents and 4% of male respondents would prefer a female character.
16% of male respondents would prefer a male character.
42% of respondents who would like to go to a studio to create their own character prefer to create their character in a video game from scratch, compared to the 18% of players who would not like to go to a studio that prefer to create their character from scratch.
Comments on the survey
As a whole I am happy with how the survey went, by carrying out secondary research to inform me of key topics I was able to tailor my questions to gain more relevant results. I also found the results quite surprising, which made analyzing them more interesting. As mentioned, I would have preferred to have gathered responses from a wider demographic of player so if I were to do it again I would allocate more time to collect results which would allow me time to iron out any issues that arise also. In terms of the questions I feel it would have been useful to have provided examples for the respondent to guarantee they understand what I am asking, as there is a large variety of video games that all offer different experiences.
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