As Animal Crossing shows us very convincingly, making the player like the autonomous characters, already gets you halfway towards making the player believe them. This seems related to what Richard Evans once said about the creature in Black and White: one of the three design goals for the A.I. was to make the creature loveable.
It appears that the “willingness” aspect of the proverbial “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” that is required for the audience to enjoy fiction, is often underrated. Surely a lot can be done in the design of both the appearance and the behaviour of the characters in a game, to increase this willingness in the player. One powerful means towards this, is to make the characters loveable, cute, attractive, charming.
Perhaps this is where The Sims fail most of the time: the characters seem to be too selfish, greedy and nasty to develop any feelings for.
Posted on May 17, 2006 at 9:18 pm
[…] The goal of our work that Drama Princess needs to serve is to help give the spectator emotionally satisfying experiences. Such experiences often come from immersion in a virtual reality (a book, a movie, a game). To allow for such an emotional immersion, the spectator needs to willingly suspend his or her disbelief. As stated before, I think there is a lot that can be done to increase this willingness, rather than focussing all ones attention on increasing the credibility. A comfortable interface and a pleasant environment will create a mood that will allow the willingness of the spectator to grow. The sympathy that the spectator feels for the characters in the game will do the rest. Allowing this sympathy to happen becomes as important as making sure that the character is believable. And for artists like ourselves, the former seems a lot less daunting (and a lot more gratifying) a task than the latter. […]