In order to pursue the creation of this feature, it is necessary to examine both Unity and Unreal as viable options for a potential workflow. Even in the event of a reworking of the narrative which no longer allows for specific character customisation (wherein the player might take on the role of a premade protagonist, such as in The Witcher 2), it will be a valuable skill to have learnt, in addition to further practice within Unity. “I think that a character creator adds to the immersion, and adds this extra layer of roleplaying on top of a story,” (Gray in Designing Dream Daddy’s character creator to deepen engagement, 2017).Īlthough character creation and customization might not be viable for certain game types, having a CC both aligns with my project vision and the typical features of role-playing games. Furthermore, competitive games typically resulted in characters will little resemblance to the player, whilst non-competitive games resulted in avatars that resembled the player themselves. Trepte & Reinecke (2010) compounded this evidence their study noting the relationship between identifying the player character and overall gratification. 39 – 40)įurthermore, the study conducted by the aforementioned authors support the notion that the link between level of enjoyment and the gamer is influenced positively by interactivity and identification elements (2007). “Identification could be described as ‘feeling like’ or as creating the illusion to ‘become’ a key person within a computer game’s universe it is argued to be an essential element of game enjoyment,” (pg.
Authors Hefner, Klimmt and Vorderer (2007) employ the following logic: Sillicur (2014) notes the significance of character creation, in their words, “Character creation and customisation is therefore important…because it gives the world around players additional flavour.” By having an avatar that a player is comfortable being represented as, the connection between player and the in-game world increases tenfold: the individualism between each customised avatar cannot be understated. “This character creator would grant players a sense of ownership over the story, but also would tie into the themes of inclusivity and support that the developers wished to push forward with their work…” (Couture, J., 2017). In addition to helping further familiarise myself with the game engine’s basics (interface, preliminary coding, etc.) I wanted to draft a feature that might be present within my final project.īut why am I looking into character customisation, of all things, when my final project is a visual novel? Aside from a recent twitter poll that showed heavy interest in a character customizer, my initial research revealed a relationship between overall enjoyment and identification with the player character. For the following specialisation project, I wanted to create and present a 2D character customisation system either within Unity or Unreal.