Pain, whether expressed or held in, gives an NPC depth.

Please take a look at the art. In this hypothetical game, you're a captain on a distant planet—a space outpost—accompanied by your Lieutenant. In this moment of the game, just before you arrived, an alien ship landed. The Lieutenant panicked and blasted the ship, killing the two innocent and peaceful aliens on board who were merely trying to escape. There's one survivor, a female alien.

You and your Lieutenant didn't expect to encounter an alien ship on this outpost. He's still freaked out and is about to kill the woman. So now find yourself in a potential firefight with your own partner.

The female alien is devastated. Those closest to her have just been murdered by your right-hand man.

Her pain gives her depth.

Because a number of other Emotioneering techniques are used, this scene is also a good example of Technique Stacking.

For instance, here you find yourself siding with an alien you don't know and fighting someone you considered a friend. Defending a being you know nothing about, and turning on someone you know and care about, is an Emotionally Complex Situation (see Chapter 2.15).

It's also a big plot twist: A friend becomes an enemy, and a stranger becomes a friend. Plot twists can be valuable tools in eliciting a player's emotional involvement in a game (see Chapter 2.16).

If your lieutenant insists he's going to shoot the female alien, you've got to make tough a choice: Let him do it, or kill him. The two of you bonded due to earlier use of Player Toward NPC Chemistry Techniques (see Chapter 2.11). Because you care about him, the decision is even more difficult. Tough choices cause a player to reach inside himself or herself. This choice is a First-Person Deepening Technique (see Chapter 2.21).

Although there are many ways to create emotional immersion in games, if you want to begin to emulate the immersive qualities of life itself, one way is to carefully start layering Emotioneering techniques. In artful Emotioneering, techniques and layers of emotion are stacked like the crossing instrumental melodies and harmonies of a symphony.

In a hypothetical game, you're a commander of a platoon in WWII. War is a gritty business, and you've seen too much blood and lost too many men.

Of the men in your platoon, one, Riggs, is the most mysterious. His speech and behavior reveals an intriguing “Character Diamond.” (Remember that we stressed in Chapter 2.1 that major NPCs without “Diamonds” are likely to be uninteresting.) Riggs' “Diamond” has five corners. He is:

If the person writing Riggs' dialogue is a wordsmith with a hotline to the muses, and if the actor doing the voice over is gifted, and if the animation is expressive enough, then, as we play the game, we'll sense that something doesn't make sense about this character. His “Diamond” is too weird. Why is he so distant, so suicidally brave, and so preoccupied with each new death of a fellow warrior?

He's hiding a secret. No one has to say it; the player will deduce this because his “Diamond” is like a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't quite come together. It seems to contain inherent inconsistencies. Why would he be distant on one hand, yet be so distressed when one of the men in the squad is killed? How could he be so caring about others, yet be almost suicidal in his own behavior?

Finally, about three-quarters through the game, we learn the secret he's been hiding: He used to be a commander with a platoon of his own. In fact, he once even outranked you. But he caused a friendly fire accident and killed some of his own men. He was demoted to his current rank—a punishment that, obviously, he doesn't feel was harsh enough because he's full of guilt and self-loathing. This is why he has a taste for suicidal missions.

And so, all the corners of his “Diamond” now make sense. We see why he's such a good warrior: He has tons of battle experience. We see why he's emotionally distant. We see why he's suicidal. And we see why he obsesses over each man's death.

In this example of Riggs, we see two NPC Character Deepening techniques at work: Hiding a Secret and Shame or Regret.

Appreciation for a friend, for nature, for a group…all these give an NPC depth as well.

Let's see an example of this in connection with another technique, Wisdom.

Here's the game scenario: You've been fighting slimy beasts on an alien outpost. The last one almost did you in. Your “health points” are just about down to zero.

You reenter the base. The Medic (male) looks you over, sizes up your beat-up condition, and digs a key out of a drawer. He hands it to you and says sincerely, “Want some privacy for a while? Here's the key to my quarters. Whatever you were doing out there, thanks.”^[2]

In a small way, the Medic has exhibited insight (he's noticed your condition and deduced you were doing something heroic for the benefit of the group, which includes him). Insight is one of many forms of wisdom. It gives him depth. His statement also includes appreciation, another NPC Deepening Technique.

In more than one game, I've seen wisdom is dispensed by a “wise old man,” usually a Gandalf type.

But having a “wise old man” who gives advice to the player can be a cliché. Thus, hopefully, if you do have someone old and wise, and they're a major and recurring NPC, you'll construct an original Diamond for them.

A perfect example was done a number of years ago in the first installment of The Matrix. The wise Oracle was spellbinding, because she had a great Diamond. In the movie, she is:

We see that she actually has four NPC Deepening Techniques placed among her five Traits:

Had she just been “deep” without having an interesting Diamond, she would have been a clichè and a bore. As mentioned before, “deep” is an option; “interesting” rarely is.

Although this book doesn't nearly have room for all the ways to give depth to an NPC, let's look at a few more.

In the previous chapter, I alluded to the fact that there were many types of Masks—false fronts that can cover up an NPC's deep fear, shame, emotional wound, or problem.

Sometimes, however, a person puts up a false front for just a minute or two—a temporary false front. Consider an example: The hypothetical game is staged in a modern-day war located in a third-world country. You fight your way to the base, encountering one enemy after another. When you arrive, the Base Commander is there, waiting.

He seems cheerful that reinforcements are coming, and says thank God the worst is over.

You go to check in with whomever is going to give you your next mission. But on the way out, using Eavesdrop Mode,^[4] you overhear the Base Commander telling another officer how worried he is about the situation. Even with reinforcements, he thinks the group is doomed.

The reason he hasn't told you or the other soldiers is that he didn't want to lessen morale. He presented you with a false emotion, covering a darker one. This gives him depth.

In the last chapter, I mentioned that it's very hard to give a major NPC more than five Traits without that character becoming vague.

There is virtually no limit, however, as to how many Deepening Techniques can be used with a character, a plot, or in a “emotionally complex moment.” (Deepening Techniques for each of these will be discussed a bit later in this book.)

Let's reconsider the female alien whose crew was killed by your partner (the one in the picture), and see how she could be given even greater depth than merely by using the “emotional pain” we've given her. We'll do this by combining NPC Deepening Techniques.

And so, this one NPC has four NPC Deepening Techniques. Trust me, she'll be an emotionally deep character.

This example shows why “Emotioneering” is a more useful word than “writing.” We haven't even begun to write any of her dialogue, but we've already given her numerous NPC Deepening Techniques. How would you even know what dialogue to write for her if you haven't done this kind of Emotioneering first?

I believe that simply creating emotional experiences in a game is its own reward, in the sense that it makes the game more engaging and rich.

It's even better, however, if the emotion can be used to influence the player's actions and decisions within a game.

Take the previous example. If you find that the female alien is actually terrified of you—and you need her help on an important quest but are afraid she might desert you out of fear—then you might need to take some kind of action in the game (go off on some mission) against an evil and dangerous enemy of hers to prove she need not fear you.

Perhaps, for instance, the technology in her ship is of great interest to your military superiors. They want to do a raid on her planet to capture some of this technology. Only by stopping them do you regain the woman's trust. She, in turn, is now willing to help you, which forwards the game.

The point is that the emotions you feel for her trigger action. They triggered your defending her from your partner, and they can trigger other actions as well. Emotion thus feeds into plot and gameplay.

This chapter has discussed ways of making NPCs seem more alive by giving them emotional depth—which the player only feels because his or her own emotions are triggered in turn.

Making any element of storytelling, including characters, interesting is different than adding emotional depth to that element. You can have deep characters who are still uninteresting, either because they lack enough corners in their Diamond or because the corners of their Diamond form a cliché combination.

There are a vast number of ways to give depth to characters. I encourage all of you to embark on the same Emotioneering training mission: When you see a scene in a movie or TV show where one of the character comes off as emotionally “deep,” try to figure out what's going on to create that emotional effect. Then ask yourself, “Would it work in a game?”

Up until now we've been examining major NPCs. In the next two chapters, we'll see what can be done with minor NPCs, who may have only one or two lines of dialogue in the entire game. How do you make them interesting? How do you make them emotionally deep?