Final Thoughts

Games traditionally have NPCs feel one way or another toward the player (or the player's character). They react to the player as a friend or foe. In your own life, however, there are, no doubt, people whose feelings toward you are complex.

NPCs with complex emotions are more life-like. So, why not have one of the major NPCs in your game feel different layers of emotion toward the player?

Why All This Matters: A Brief Philosophical Diversion

It might seem odd to treat NPCs with this much attention. I discuss them as if they're alive or at least, as if they should act that way.

But shouldn't they?

Granting life is exactly what artists do. A song is just modulations of sound waves, and yet it can move us, inspire us, and maybe trigger in us a desire to dance. It can depress us or wrap us in feelings of exhilaration. The singer, the songwriter, and the musicians have joined together to actually put life into something inanimate: sound waves.

Screenwriters have long treated their characters with the idea that they have life, and all of us have, at one time or another, participated in discussions about various film and television characters and talked about them as if they were alive.

NPCs only await deft Emotioneering to also assume life.