Better Game Characters by Design

Associate Professor, Department of Language, Literature and Communication, RPI; Director of the Games Research Lab, RPI; Chair of the MS in HCI Program, RPI. Katherine is Director of the Games Research Lab at Rensselaer (RPI), where she has worked to build an undergraduate major in game design, as well as a robust program of games-related research. She is also the Chair of the MS in HCI at RPI, which she helped to redesign to address current challenges facing HCI practitioners, such as the design of games and other social and leisure applications. Katherine is a former MK Game author, having written: Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach, which was nominated for a Game Developer Magazine Front Line award in 2006. She has published work in a wide variety of venues, and has given invited talks at research and academic venues including Sony research labs in Japan, Banff Centre in Canada, IBM, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and others. The Games Research Lab at RPI has cutting-edge facilities for user studies, and Isbister has used the lab to research innovative methods in user testing (e.g. the Sensual Evaluation Instrument - a project nominated for Best Paper award at the CHI conference in 2006). Isbister has worked in both research and commercial settings on HCI and usability aspects of games and other products. This background, combined with strong connections to game industry practitioners, makes her well suited to put together an edited volume on games usability that is both rigorous and useful to developers in their everyday work.

About the Author
Foreword by Tim Schafer
Preface
About the DVD
I First Impressions

What Is Covered and Why
Who Will Find Part I Most Useful
Overview of Key Concepts
Take-Aways from Part I
1 Social Surface

1.1 What Is Covered and Why
1.2 The Psychological Principles
1.3 Design Pointers
1.4 Interview: Gonzalo Frasca
1.5 Summary and What Is Next
1.6 Exercises
1.7 Further Reading


2 Practical Questions - Dominance, Friendliness, and Personality

2.1 What Is Covered and Why
2.2 The Psychological Principles
2.3 Design Pointers
2.4 Summary and What Is Next
2.5 Exercises
2.6 Further Reading




II Focus on the Player

What Is Covered and Why
Who Will Find Part II Most Useful
Overview of Key Concepts
Take-Aways from Part II
3 Culture

3.1 What Is Covered and Why
3.2 The Psychological Principles
3.3 Design Pointers
3.4 Interview: Ryoichi Hasegawa and Roppyaku Tsurumi of Sony
3.5 Interview: Lewis Johnson
3.6 Summary and What Is Next
3.7 Exercises
3.8 Further Reading


4 Gender

4.1 What Is Covered and Why
4.2 The Psychological Principles
4.3 Design Pointers
4.4 Interviews with Gamers - Personal Perspectives
4.5 Summary and What Is Next
4.6 Exercises
4.7 Further Reading




III Using a Character's Social Equipment

What Is Covered and Why
Who Will Find Part III Most Useful
Overview of Key Concepts
Take-Aways from Part III
5 The Face

5.1 What Is Covered and Why
5.2 The Psychological Principles
5.3 Design Pointers
5.4 Summary and What Is Next
5.5 Exercises
5.6 Further Reading


6 The Body

6.1 What Is Covered and Why
6.2 The Psychological Principles
6.3 Design Pointers
6.4 Interview: Chuck Clanton
6.5 Summary and What Is Next
6.6 Exercise
6.7 Further Reading


7 The Voice

7.1 What Is Covered and Why
7.2 The Psychological Principles
7.3 Design Pointers
7.4 Further Directions - Emotion Detection
7.5 Interview: MIT Media Lab's Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel
7.6 Summary and What Is Next
7.7 Exercise
7.8 Further Reading
7.9 Answers to Exercises




IV Characters in Action

What Is Covered and Why
Who Will Find Part IV Most Useful
Overview of Key Concepts
Take-Aways from Part IV
8 Player-Characters

8.1 What Is Covered and Why
8.2 The Psychological Principles
8.3 Design Pointers
8.4 Interview: Marc Laidlaw
8.5 Summary and What Is Next
8.6 Exercises
8.7 Further Reading
8.8 Acknowledgments


9 Nonplayer-Characters

9.1 What Is Covered and Why
9.2 The Psychological Principles
9.3 Dimensions of Social Roles and NPCs
9.4 Common Social Roles in Games
9.5 Design Guidelines
9.6 Summary and What Is Next
9.7 Exercises
9.8 Further Reading




V Putting It All Together

What Is Covered and Why
Who Will Find Part V Most Useful
Overview of Key Concepts
Take-Aways from Part V
10 Process

10.1 What Is Covered and Why
10.2 Arguments for Bringing a Social-Psychological Approach to Game Development
10.3 The Development Time Line
10.4 Building in the Social-Psychological Approach
10.5 Interview: Tim Schafer
10.6 Summary and What Is Next
10.7 Further Reading


11 Evaluation

11.1 What Is Covered and Why
11.2 The Psychological Principles
11.3 Current Evaluation Practice in Game Design: Market Research and Play Testing
11.4 Taking Design to the Next Level with Preproduction Evaluation
11.5 A Note on Postproduction Evaluation
11.6 Evaluation Checklist
11.7 Games Usability Perspectives
11.8 Interview: Randy Pagulayan
11.9 Interview: Nicole Lazzaro
11.10 Affective Sensing: An Evaluation Method for the Future?
11.11 Summary
11.12 Exercises
11.13 Further Reading




Appendix
Index