Relationship to the Character Diamond

The Character Diamond enables you to create colorful and fresh characters. Season them with a few quirks and the characters develop even more uniqueness. They may become so unique and so unlike us, however, that we can't identify with them. If we don't identify with them, we've lost a major opportunity for creating emotional immersion in the game.^[1]

^[1] This assumes, of course, that it's a game in which at least one or more NPCs play an important role. If it isn't, there are still scores of techniques in this book that can be used to make the game more emotionally engaging.

It's worth reiterating that NPC Rooting Interest Techniques are just an other Emotioneering tool and not necessarily one that benefits every game. For instance, if you were creating an urban game where you were alone in a hostile city, fighting and killing everyone you encounter, then you probably wouldn't want any of the NPCs to have Rooting Interest.

Even in this situation, however, it might be worth asking the question if it wouldn't be worth changing the design of the game and using Emotioneering to create greater emotional engagement by the player. In this example, I might ask the developer if the game wouldn't be improved by having a few NPCs in the game who are more than cannon fodder.^[2]

^[2] The discussion is by no means academic. Just as this book was being completed, I was hired to help design and write a game in which there wasn't a single character with Rooting Interest. I persuaded the developer and lead designer to allow me to introduce one major and several minor NPCs with whom we'd identify, precisely to make the game more emotionally engaging.

But how do you create Rooting Interest for an NPC?