Katherine Isbister is an Associate Professor of Communication at RPI. Her presentation, “Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach,” was an introduction to material from her book of the same name and her GDC presentations. Her talk offered strategies for creating more engaging game characters by employing psychological techniques in game designs

Katherine explained how developers can take advantages of characters’ faces, body language, and voices to create more believable inhabitants of virtual worlds. She also discussed how characters’ relationship to players should give a sense of their social roles, demonstrating individual characters’ friendliness and dominance relative to the player character. Finally, she spoke on the importance of creating characters with the target audience in mind, testing character concepts with potential players early in development. You can view her slides here.

The talk was follow by a brief Q&A session. Afterwards, Ian polled the audience for their thoughts about potential locations for future meetings and suggestions for meeting topics. Following that discussion, the meeting adjourned. Attendees chatted amongst themselves and later made their way downtown for drinks and dining at Brown’s Brewing Co.

Thanks go out to Katherine for her excellent presentation, James Watt for reserving the conference room at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory, and to 1st Playable Productions for the pizza and drinks.

Also, thanks to Jonathan Mintz for writing up this meeting report.