Cast a Wide Net: Varying your Characters

League of Legends, Super Smash Bros., and Pokemon are some of the best selling games in their respective genres. I'd like to take a look at one similarity between these games and make the case that this trait has had a reasonable impact on their success. Let's dive into character diversity.

Diversity

When I say diversity, I don't necessarily mean characters of different races, genders, etc. While this is part of it, these aspects aren't always relevant. Pokemon, for example, are almost exclusively non-humanoid. When I say diversity, I mean any of the varied reasons why a character might resonate with a player. Our typical descriptors of diversity apply here, of course, but because we're talking about games, it goes deeper.

There are any number of reasons why I might be drawn to a character: it's badass, it's cute, it's weird, it represents what you want to be, it plays strategically, it has great lore. What the aforementioned games do very well is provide a large, eclectic cast so many types of players can find a character they can bond with and enjoy.

Segmenting your Audience

Obviously every character added to a game comes at a cost of development resources, especially time. How do you decide whether a character is worth this cost and won't be so unlikable by everyone that it becomes a waste of time? Knowing and defining your target audience is key. One of the best examples is Magic the Gathering's player profiles. They define what their players want from Magic cards, and can design directly to those sensibilities.

Actual cards showing off the main Magic player archetypes

Magic's profiles mostly cover mechanical desires, and avoid the aesthetics, though their Vorthos and Mel spectrum touches on this (Honestly I could link 30 different posts from Mark Rosewater's blog, just go devour his stuff, it's all fantastic). The importance of aesthetics in characters should not be understated. It's likely the first judgement a player will make about them, and will often be the driving force behind their initial decision of who to play with/as.

Mascots and Black Sheep

Pikachu is one of the most widely recognized and relatable characters in gaming. Pikachu is cute and pet-like, and destined to be organically popular. There is certainly a temptation to make your game's roster comprised entirely of Pikachus: widely loved mascot characters. This is a mistake, and will minimize the size of your potential audience. You need your Urgots, too.

For a long time, Urgot was the clear black sheep in League of Legends. He's misshapen, barely humanoid, and has a very bizarre playstyle. Despite all of this, there are still players that love him, probably because he is so different. It offers something they can't get from the other characters, and for some players it can be deeply satisfying to win with an off-beat strategy. That's not to say that you need deformed monster-people to bring in those players, but something unusual wouldn't go amiss.

The Case for Wii Fit Trainer

This post was inspired by a discussion about the roster of Smash Bros. A colleague argued that Wii Fit Trainer was too...odd (the real word used was "lame"), and wasn't worth a slot in the game instead of someone more popular or interesting, especially in a fighting game with a mostly "core" gamer audience.

My argument against this line of thinking is two-fold. One, as mentioned above, it is useful to have odd characters to expand your audience. Smash is frequently billed as more of a brawler or party game, and less as a hardcore fighting title, even though its constant appearance in tournaments shows it can be that, too. When appealing to more than a core audience, it's especially important to have a wide array of character types. Second, this particular game was made to celebrate all things Nintendo. As one of their top selling titles,  moving over 20 million copies, it makes sense to include some cross-promotion.

Mechanics Meet Aesthetics

My final piece of advice on putting many characters in your game: match their mechanics to their visuals. If you have a more generic human character, consider making their gameplay more straightforward. If the visual design is much more unusual, give them a narrow niche or odd strategy so players might have a chance to show off their creativity with characters few others are using. This helps to establish expectations. A character with wide appeal is much more likely to be a new player's first choice, so it helps to keep their gameplay understandable and clear.

Conclusion

If your game demands or allows a wide cast of characters, spread them out. You'll expand your potential audience and have more chances to give each player a character that they not only enjoy, but deeply connect with on any number of levels: mechanically, strategically, visually, through story, or some other metric. The wider the roster, the greater service you can bring to your players by keeping them varied and unique.