Role and Identity in Games

Gregory Weir (of The Majesty of Colors fame) wrote a great post on Game Set Watch about personality in Team Fortress 2. Go read it. I think Greg isn't just exploring a great topic for commercial games, but is saying something pretty important about educational games as well. If Greg is right (and I think he is), it seems to me that there are at least two critical components of creating a full, embodied identity in a game.

Role
Role is defined by a character's abilities and constraints. On the simplest level, you can think of Role as the map of verbs available to you as you play. Log into TF2 and play as an engineer and you'll quickly understand that your Role is something like:

Build (sentries, dispensers, teleporters)
Repair (your and others' machines)
Support (your teammates with clever placement of your machines)
Kill (your main rivals who would harm your machines, such as spies and demos)

Identity
Identity is defined by motivation, personality, and personal connection. Essentially, it is a set of beliefs and goals that inform why a player would do the things that their Role lays out. To continue with the engineer:

Brilliant (capable of rapidly creating machinery; incredibly technical and eloquent in his intro movie)
Relaxed (let's his machines do the work for him)
Friendly (happy to help out by supporting other players; affectionate to slaughtered enemies: "I told you not to touch that darned thing!")
Tough (ready to pull out the wrench when necessary..."take it like a man, shorty!")

Drawing on the cross-section of these two areas, a player can inhabit the Engineer based on a richer, more meaningful web of personal connections. Generally, educational games (and role-based serious games) focus deeply on the Role component, but neglect the Identity component. Why does this happen? My hunch is that Identity is considered "icing", or perhaps nothing more than some vestigial trace of narrative that can be purged in a system-heavy simulation environment.

I'm not saying that every single game that uses Role has to layer in Identity, but I do think that more educational game designers and developers should seriously consider Identity as a tool to get players familiar with their Role in a richer and more meaningful way.


	Sun 26 Apr 2009 - 02:25PM — Dan Norton Gregory Weir (of The Majesty of Colors fame) wrote a great post on Game Set Watch about personality in Team Fortress 2. Go read it. I think Greg isn't just exploring a great topic for commercial games, but is saying something pretty important about educational games as well. If Greg is right (and I think he is), it seems to me that there are at least two critical components of creating a full, embodied identity in a game. Role Role is defined by a character's abilities and constraints. On the simplest level, you can think of Role as the map of verbs available to you as you play. Log into TF2 and play as an engineer and you'll quickly understand that your Role is something like: Build (sentries, dispensers, teleporters) Repair (your and others' machines) Support (your teammates with clever placement of your machines) Kill (your main rivals who would harm your machines, such as spies and demos) Identity Identity is defined by motivation, personality, and personal connection. Essentially, it is a set of beliefs and goals that inform why a player would do the things that their Role lays out. To continue with the engineer: Brilliant (capable of rapidly creating machinery; incredibly technical and eloquent in his intro movie) Relaxed (let's his machines do the work for him) Friendly (happy to help out by supporting other players; affectionate to slaughtered enemies: "I told you not to touch that darned thing!") Tough (ready to pull out the wrench when necessary..."take it like a man, shorty!") Drawing on the cross-section of these two areas, a player can inhabit the Engineer based on a richer, more meaningful web of personal connections. Generally, educational games (and role-based serious games) focus deeply on the Role component, but neglect the Identity component. Why does this happen? My hunch is that Identity is considered "icing", or perhaps nothing more than some vestigial trace of narrative that can be purged in a system-heavy simulation environment. I'm not saying that every single game that uses Role has to layer in Identity, but I do think that more educational game designers and developers should seriously consider Identity as a tool to get players familiar with their Role in a richer and more meaningful way.