Customizable protagonist or not?

[Karja]

My game is having a little identity crisis at the moment, and I have a serious lack of game developers to discuss these issues with. So I thought I'd fire off a question here - there might be some kind soul with a nice suggestion.

Game concept
A superhero action puzzle adventure in which you level up and gain more powers and use these powers against villains in different game types. Simple enough.

What I wanted
I envisioned a game in which you can define your own hero, compose your own set of powers, and make your hero very personalized. (I.e., a "base hero" graphic on which you can add different capes, masks, and so on.) That would require way too much art, however, and would drive me bankrupt. So I've slowly cut down on this to the very minimum:

What I intended to do instead
You select a hero out of six pre-defined ones (male/female, physical strength, mental abilities, or elemental powers), and add lots of personalized things text-wise. Superhero name, secret identity, favourite food, blood type, and so on. These will be used in-game in a madlib manner. ("Give it up, Countess Conundrum! Your evil plot is foiled." "Oh no it isn't! If you so much as touch a lock of my lucious hair I shall reveal to the world that you really are $SECRET_IDENTITY$!" etc.)

The problem
While this might work and might provide a relatively re-playable game, I'm slowly starting to consider a single hero instead. There are several reasons:

1) Less graphics to spend my hard-earned bandoolas on.
2) Re-playability might be a non-issue since I suspect that most people want a game they can play once.
3) Having the protagonist of the game undefined means that I can't focus on exactly this character's story. The player-identification that the customization brings might result in a less involving story.
4) It's dang hard to come up with a name for the game, and this might be because it's a "generic superhero adventure" - it lacks the focus that a single protagonist might bring.

...But I really don't know. I would still love to do a fully customizable (is that a word?) game; but I need to consider the point of diminishing returns. It's a lot of extra effort, and I doubt that players will enjoy the game proportionally more.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter!

[Infinite Element]

I think that you should have one hero and be able to change his name and such. That way, you can still make an in-depth story that doesn't rely on the character's name. And you could name the game based on the area/town it is set in.

[bvanevery]

Study screenwriting. Whenever I think about trying to communicate something interesting, I end up drifting back to Characterization as an important approach I may not be able to ignore. Lotsa different customizable superheroes is the simulationist enginerd mentality. I believe the future of game development is more about what you are communicating to your audience.

[cliffski]

the more customisation the better. My games have been a bit poor at this, but I know from experience (and downloads of add-ons) that people love as much choice as you can possibly give them. It's something you should not skimp on unless you really have to.
I love the idea of customisable superheroes.

[ChrisP]

If you want to avoid lots of different bits of artwork, one thing you might consider is setting up the art so that each piece can be coloured dynamically. (So the source art is greyscale, and you just multiply it by an RGB value or whatever.) That gives you a fair amount of choice without much extra work.

It's definitely the "poor man's" method, but it works OK and it's better than nothing. :)

Combine that with some additional options for adding a few pieces of extra clothing and/or decals (capes, masks, logos across the hero's chest - maybe 3-4 extra art pieces total if you want to skimp), which can themselves be coloured, and you're set.

[bvanevery]

the more customisation the better. My games have been a bit poor at this, but I know from experience (and downloads of add-ons) that people love as much choice as you can possibly give them. It's something you should not skimp on unless you really have to.
I love the idea of customisable superheroes.

Neil Sorens did a good article on Gamasutra entitled Rethinking the MMO (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_01.shtml). He advances the concept of a Persistent Entity Game (PEG) as a reason people keep playing MMORPG with really tedious and boring mechanics. Basically, people want to keep accumulating stuff for their character. PEG can be applied to other genres as well. I think traditional literary Characterization is important to game design, whether used in a traditional or unorthodox way, but Persistence is also important to the players.

[Karja]

Wow, you all have some very good points! Hmm.. Okay, as much as I like simulation games, I think characterization and storytelling is more important for me. However, I can probably make a decent storyline despite having some customizable elements.

Combining cliffski's and Dingo's comment made me think of a middle road that just might work.. I need to focus on the story, but I should also allow a lot of customization. Sooo, instead of creating your hero using different capes and whatnot I'll try to incorporate some PEG by providing an outfit store in-game. The player gets customization as well as an incentive to collect cash. And if I can pull off Dingo's suggestion it won't mean toooo much extra art. I'll just have to find an artist who can give me everything in separate layers for different colours within a single accessory.

While I put "read up on screenwriting" and "read through some of the more interesting Gamasutra articles" on my todo list, what do you think about this approach:

* Select male or female, along with lots of text customization. (I really don't want the game to be male chauvinistic - thus the choice.)
* In-game you can purchase additional accessories and items for your character (as long as I can get art for it).
* All superpowers will be available for purchase in-game (through cash or skill points; not sure). I.e., you don't select a generic "class" in the beginning.
* The story will be character-driven but not specific enough to discuss deep character issues. I.e., it will be applicable to any hero.

[bvanevery]

Combining cliffski's and Dingo's comment made me think of a middle road that just might work.. I need to focus on the story, but I should also allow a lot of customization. Sooo, instead of creating your hero using different capes and whatnot I'll try to incorporate some PEG by providing an outfit store in-game. The player gets customization as well as an incentive to collect cash. And if I can pull off Dingo's suggestion it won't mean toooo much extra art. I'll just have to find an artist who can give me everything in separate layers for different colours within a single accessory.

Note that in The Incredibles (http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/incredibles/), the costumes actually build the characters. They have one set of costumes from "back in the day," and a different set for where they are now. This is about the major story arc of them being "all that" a long time ago, being shunned by society, and driven to do new heroic things now. The family's costumes all look the same, but there's an extensive sequence where each costume is shown to be physically different. One can stretch, one can turn invisible, etc.

The Lord Of The Rings (http://www.lordoftherings.net/film/production/pr_wardr.html) did enormous amounts of work to define the main characters and races through their costumes. There's a ton of information on the extended DVDs about this stuff.

My point is that cinematically, there's a huge medium of expression here, which all ties into the literary aspect. If you're making a game about heroes, where will the heroics come from? I suppose "from superpowers" is one obvious answer, but don't forget about the costumes. Do you remember Green Lantern for his ring or because the icon on his chest is cool?

[jefferytitan]

As far as buying stuff goes, I would suggest that you need experience points to buy new costume bits/powers, and that you can spend money to buy the opportunity to go on quests than can get you a lot of XP. I've played games where people can spend money to buy power directly, and it just really annoys the other players. But I figure as long as you still have to do SOMETHING to get your XP it's okay.

It would be nice if it was easier to get powers that match your style of playing, e.g. sneaky people find it easier to use invisiblility, aggressive people tend to get fire etc. But that would be a pain to code. :)