Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design

Chapter 5. THE THREE CS, PART 1—CHARACTER

While much of your game design is always changing, there are three fundamentals that need to be established early in your preproduction. I call them the "Three Cs":

1. Character

2. Camera

3. Control.

If you change any of the Three Cs during the course of your production, you risk massive problems with your gameplay, which may require extra reworking, and you risk endangering your game. Don't give me that look. I know this sounds dramatic, but so many game elements hinge upon the Three Cs that changing one thing will have a ripple effect through your entire game. I have seen teams catastrophically screw up and cancel their game because of their failure to stick to the plans of their Three Cs.

While we talked about writing a character in Level 3, I am now using the term in a different context. I will be talking about how the character is presented to the player and the activities the player does with that character. The very important rule about character design is:

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

Let this rule be your motto when designing anything. It will come into play more importantly later on in the book, but should be your guide especially when designing your game character. There are several great books on how to design a character visually^[59], so I won't go into great detail about this, but let me pass on some of the high level things to keep in mind.

As you are creating your character, you want to think about his or ...