Do you remember the story of Pygmalion? Pygmalion was a character of Roman myth, written about by Latin poet Ovid, who carved statues of women from ivory. Though disinterested in women of Cyprus where he lived, he eventually fell in love with one of his carvings, believing his ivory woman to be realistic and beautiful.
Pygmalion's infatuation with his creation is exaggerated and 'round the twist, but I often feel like I relate to him when it comes to creating videogame characters. Whether it's sculpting a playable character from the ground-up or simply deciding on its names, I obsess about the details in order to make my avatar perfectly tuned to my likings. No wonder the guy developed an emotional bond with his handiwork—you put enough attention into something, and you're bound to feel an attachment to it.
Creating a character in a videogame is a lofty experience for me, and it all starts with intent—what kind of character am I going to build? Will I make a digital surrogate, recreating myself for an extra vicarious thrill? What about a character for storytelling purposes, to put myself and its place and wonder what decisions he or she would do, given the fiction? Am I creating my won digital offspring, whose progress I guide like a parent?
See? I'm already making game-defining decisions, and I haven't even hit the character-editor!
Myself, I like to create a character that looks like me, making it easier to project myself into. After all, most games are power fantasies, and watching myself taking a group of bandits to town or nailing a spectacularly difficult trick combo gives me an extra thrill. For certain games, I duplicate the exact outfit I'm wearing when I create the character—my created character's wardrobe in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 had an exact match in my closet, right down to my T-shirt pattern and my yellow Casio wristwatch.
Occasionally, though, I build someone I "wish" I was—someone who "feels" like me, even though they may not look like me at all. My hair is too long to stand in for Shepard in Mass Effect, for instance, so instead I built a Shepard whose looks I identified with; and then gave her Jennifer Hale's voice, whose performance more closely matched the intensity and passion I felt I would act with when the galaxy is on the line. One of my friends did this the last time we created characters on Rock Band—she created what she wanted to look like, enhancing the transporting effect already brought on by virtual rock stardom vis-a-vis plastic instruments.
Naming often presents a greater challenge than creating a character model. At least when I'm building a character, I have two directives: looks like me, or looks awesome. Names, though, require much more effort and creativity to get "right." Do I name this character after myself? What about my friends? Maybe I pick the name of a favorite public figure, or one from a classmate that I've always though sounded cool. This is a name I have to live with for the entire duration of my experience, that I'll have to see every time my character chats with an NPC.
Similar to character creation, I often name game characters after myself, even when it comes to well-known characters like Link in the Legend of Zelda series or the protagonist in the Pokémon games. Silent protagonists make for the best opportunity to project myself into my creation, and I get a small thrill when the village elder is beseeching me—me!—to save their sorry hides, rather than some guy I'm controlling.
The trick comes with naming multiple characters, like new recruits in XCOM: Enemy Unknown or fresh party members in JRPGs like Final Fantasy VI. This is where the whole naming-after-friends stratagem pays off, placing your buddies a gambit to save the world. I usually keep character names as default for story purposes, but occasionally I branch out—during my first playthrough of Chrono Trigger, I named everyone after Dragon Ball Z characters, because that's what you do when you're eleven.
Finally, I can't finish creating my character without first deciding how I will use it. Will I use it to make decisions in the game that would match my own? Maybe I want to tell a story, and will choose actions based on how I think my character would respond. Hell, I may not give two shakes about why the character does anything, and play as flippantly as possible. Intent matters, and creating a serious stand-in vs. a conduit for faffing about results in two different approaches for me.
So much time and effort spent on getting the particulars right. So much sweat and furrowing of brows before players even hit the first challenge. I do it out of love for the game, though. More often than not, I care about a game's story enough to try to take it seriously, and that means getting serious with creating the most ideal partner with whom to share the game experience. Pygmalion's story ended happily, with the goddess Venus turning his unrequited statue lover into a "real" woman, and watching my newly-created character strut across the screen, one whom I am not just content but overjoyed to play as—well, if I don't feel quite as pleased as Pygmalion I can certainly understand where he's coming from.
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