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Available at a very early stage such "diamonds" can easily help map the UX or estimate needed assets and mechanics.
The diamonds can then be used by designers and artists to make character boards that give a quick, focused overview on the character's final in-game attributes.
A robust tool for gameplay and character design
A Character Diamond is a relationship diagram of the different core features of a character. It can serve as a guide line for character's
behavior, abilities, actions or appearance.
When combined with a timeline of the progressing game it can become a powerful design tool, useful for all team members.
In Thin Lines I created two diamonds for each character and put them on a time line. It shows what the character is in two different points of the game - The Begining Mission and The Final Mission. However a "diamond based arch" can be even more granular - one diamond per mission for example.(Click the Image for FULL MAP)
By establishing the different Traits and Quirks the character has at these points designers and artists can start getting a clear picture about various aspects of the characters very early in the development.
Character Diamonds can help answer questions about the final UX before a prototype is even ready:
-What would they look(art) and act(interaction design) like ?
-What events would need to have transpired(writing, level design) ?
-How do we get the player to experience the character transformation(UX) ?
-What abilities can such a character have? At which points ?( Gameplay and level design)
-How would such a character behave(animations) ?
Character Diamonds are not only useful for art and design, but programmers can look at these to get insight to which are the more central aspects of the characters - and what should be prototyped and made clear first.
References
Arsenault, D. [2008] "In the Frame of the Magic Cycle: The Circle(s) of Gameplay" in "Video Game Theory Reader 2" , Routledge [2008]
Freeman, D. [2004] "Creating Emotion in Games:The Craft and Art of Emotioneering" , New Raiders Publishing
Character Diamonds
The various game mechanics and activities are grouped into larger categories. The possible combinations of these game-play affinities serve as the base profiles.
Player types are then expanded into persona's using Mayers-Briggs psychological profiling. Individual "mood cards" for each persona are made and their affinity towards colors,sounds,shapes and is explored.
Once an game environment is build, various aspects of it - resources,goal positioning, view angles,etc. are balanced to appeal to the different personas.
Player profiling for balancing level content and gameplay
Play Personas are used for designing gameplay experiences that cover a broad range of potential players and behaviours, even before prototyping.
The "personas" combine psychological profiling of possible player types in relation to the activities or interactions in the game.
The profiling uses Mayers-Brigs personality tests and can be done either with actual testers during closed alpha, or with focus groups from the target audience before production has even begun.
To estalish the player types the development team must have settled down on the core mechanics of the game. These are then listed and grouped into "activity groups" - exploration, combat, roleplay, socializing, etc.
The possible combinations of these activities form the potential
player types which are profiled. Afterwards a Mayers-Briggs test is filled for each type to identify what profile they posses.
The resulting personas are then expanded by exploring the specific prefferences and affinities towards things such as colours, shapes or psycho-acoustic predespositions, attention retention, gameplay behaviour and others.
The above findings can be directly applied to balance and "player proof" the gameplay possiilities of an area , balance a peticular mechanic or ensure the appeal of a certain enviroment to a wide variety of players.
The Personas can then be combined with other player-centric design techniques like "A-B testing" or "7 Sins desigin" to ensure a strong engagmenet loop for as many players as possile.
Refferences
Canossa,A. [2009] "Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games" DDS
Drachen,A. and Canossa,A.[2009] "Patterns of Play: Play-Personas in User-Centred Game Development " in "Proceedings of DiGRA 2009"
Play Personas