Making Games Your Own
Leaving a mark through personalisation
Video games have become increasingly about both personalization and customization. What began as simple texture changes has morphed into a major component of many games, enabling players to completely define their characters.
What is personalization?
It’s important to start by defining the difference between two key terms: personalization and customization. Customization refers to any options that impact gameplay, while personalization is primarily about aesthetic choices that simply impact your in-game avatar.
There’s an enormous range in terms of the kinds of personalization options offered in games. In a title like Stardew Valley, for example, the player chooses a few basic features to define their character. But on the other side of the spectrum you’ll find games like Dark Souls, where players can define the precise curvature of a character’s face and bone structure.
What’s interesting about personalization is that it offers no in-game benefit or gameplay-related impact. Given this, you might be wondering why so many gamers take personalization so seriously.
Why personalize?
Although personalization doesn’t impact gameplay, it definitely impacts the experience. It’s a way for fans to bring themselves into the world more completely, or at least to put their own mark on the world itself.
XCOM is one example I like to cite, because it’s not just about taking random squaddies into combat, but actually developing a crew of people that you come to know. XCOM 2 further expanded the concept with a greatly improved character editor along with the ability to save created characters to be used in future playthroughts.
One way of fully immersing yourself into a game world is to role-play; the MMO genre in particular lends itself to this approach, where a big part of the experience isn’t simply the gameplay alone, but also the act of being “in character” and interacting with other people who are also developing their own characters in the world. Some players extend the experience even further by creating their own character designs and writing personal stories (the emergence of after action reports — AARs — is evidence of this).
What to personalize?
No matter how many personalization options you have in a game, they’ll never be enough for fans. This is where modders step in — many games have been given new life thanks to the modding community. Titles like XCOM 2 and the Elder Scrolls series have extensive libraries of mods covering everything from new clothing, body types, hair colors, and a whole lot more.
A good basis to begin thinking about personalization is to first consider the ways we define ourselves in reality, and then extend outward from there. Not every game needs to have an editor that allows you to adjust the exact measurements of your character’s skeletal system — but there are some key elements that game designers should think about including in any game that allows players to create or define their own characters, including:
- Hairstyle and color
- Gender
- Various clothing options (including colors)
- Skin color
- Eye color
These categories are just for starters; developers can go so much further. Increasingly, for example, developers are incorporating more diverse gender options beyond just male and female, and we are increasingly seeing developers adding LGBT choices too.
As I mentioned earlier in the article, the quest for personalization can become a never-ending one where more and more options are added to the game. However many options for personalization a developer includes in their game, there are a few other important elements to consider.
Clear in-game representation
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what choices developers make available in the game if they aren’t actually represented within the game world. Players don’t want to spend an hour creating a personalized character model only to have them completely covered up by non-personalized gear.
Every personalization option included in a game needs to be represented in the gamespace. The whole point of said personalization, after all, is for the player to better connect with that gamespace.
There are numerous considerations surrounding the various aspects of representation in the gamespace: for example, if a game allows for romance options, then ideally, all romance options should be available for every gender in the game.
And — to go back to the above video for a moment — one of the best aspects of XCOM 2 was that every piece of detail you could personalize on a character would be right there at the tactical layer. The most recent expansion, War of the Chosen, even allowed players to create and personalize war posters that would start appearing in-game. Very cool.
Getting personal
Being able to inject something of yourself into a video game has become a popular pastime; it’s become a major attraction for certain franchises (like The Sims or Minecraft). Being able to sit down and create something that is uniquely you goes a long way in terms of being drawn into the world and keeping players invested in the longer term, perhaps well after they’ve finished the game itself.
Aside from the examples mentioned here, can you think of any other games that did a great job offering personalization options?
