Practical Game Design

Playable characters, NPCs, and enemies

There are three different types of characters in a video game:

• Playable characters: These are the characters the player directly controls. In some games there is just one (the main protagonist), while in some other games, there are multiple protagonists. Sometimes the player can temporarily take control of an NPC. In other games, there might not be protagonists at all. In a strategy game such as Starcraft, for example, the player controls units. Some of those units might be unique heroes or commanders, some might be vehicles: tanks or even spaceships. The rules for creating a protagonist such as Joel in The Last of Us or a Battlecruiser unit in Starcraft might be very different, but in the end, the ...