Character introductions

Will Emigh — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:28:00 -0800

As a new medium, there’s a lot of experimentation surrounding MPNs, and rightly so. However, there are still a lot of lessons to be learned from more established media. After all, they were young once too.

With that in mind, check out this excellent article on character introduction in film. I’ll wait.

A lot of the examples aren’t directly applicable. Unless you’re actually shooting video, you can’t use Hitchcock’s Lifeboat as a guide. The concepts are still valid, though, even if you’re just using static webpages.

On the Internet, no-one can hear you sing

So you can’t have your protagonist singing about the villain. No problem. The most straightforward way to introduce a villain is to have your protagonist just post a blog entry complaining about them. Or, give your players a series of news articles about how the villain has gotten off scot-free for dumping toxic waste under an orphanage. To be a little subtler, create a variety of websites talking about how terrible your villain is. Introduce your villain’s (unique) name and let your players Google away.

The blog makes the man

Content may be king, but presentation is the clothing that makes the man. You can get a lot across without much effort by just designing your site appropriately. The biggest problem with using an existing service like Blogger is that they all look mostly the same. Make your character stand out with some custom pages, even if they’re static!

My favorite examples is Chuck Lehner’s page from our first MPN. Take a look and see how long it takes you to figure out what kind of person he is, even without reading the content.

There are a million other ways to introduce a character effectively too. What are you favorites?

Studio Cypher: Character introductions

Character introductions

On the Internet, no-one can hear you sing

The blog makes the man