Roger Hector

VP Development, Namco Bandai

Designing Videogame Characters. 

How are characterse made?  In the beginning… there was graph paper.  In the 70s, everything was simpler.  A videogame team was 1 person, the lead artist, designer and programmer.  Resolution at the time was so bad that anyone could be an artist.  Characters such as “Airplane” and “Tank” and “Cowboy”.

First superstar: Pac-Man.  Toru Iwatami.  Most games then were barbarous games of fighting aliens, only for men, not for couples or women.  Pac man was created for the female market.  Ordered a whole pizza for lunch and with one slice taken out, there he saw the first Pac-man and was inspired around the concept of eating.

Abstract Reality: The Jump to 3D.  Working at Atari, programmer excited about the creation of a game using vector graphic hardware.  Real time 3d computer graphic image!  Battlezone was born.  Predated any graphics design software.  Figured out a way to lay out the tank and enemies in multiple views in graph paper and transfer that into 3d dimensional objects.

Photorealistic Reality:  Ace Combat 6.    Quite a contrast.

Equity Management: Disney Style.  Disney is the champion in the world at character design and management.  Evolution of Mickey from the 1920s.  Still popular because he’s been specifically managed in regards to his equity.  Association with high quality entertainment = more popular = building equity.  Building equity vs spending equity.  Spending through licensing, when you reach a level of popularity you can spend that equity to capitalize on the investments that you have made.

What about Mickey Mouse in a videogame?  That’s building equity – high quality entertainment.  Pitfalls in licensing – sleeper set that looks like Mickey is eating a baby. 

Sega: challenge to the company to make a mascot to represent the company.  Creation of Sonic the Hedgehog, sold over 10 million copies and became a hugely popular character.  Mickey has 4 generations of quality brand equity. In 5 years from Sonic’s creation he established an equal level of popularity in Europe, NA, and Japan. 

Cultural Cross Pollination.  New characters today from manga, anime and animated TV.  Conversion of Naruto into a next-gen 3d game with cel-shaded graphics style.  New character influences, telling stories with powerful CG cinema.  Cinematic for Hellgate.  Franchise blends:  Marvel vs Capcom, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics.  Soul Calibur IV with Yoda & Vader.

Future:  Afro Samurai = Japanese + Hip hop.  Based on Spike TV show based on manga.  Mature stories, with imaginary characters that represent Afro’s repressed personality.  Kuma: combined image of father’s murderer and a teddy bear.  Exaggerated ethnicity and expression of attitude.  “Fine art” rendering style with dynamic line pencil shaders. 

Long way from Pac-man but the end goal is the same: new ideas that are engaging.