Today’s successful games are designed to entertain both players and viewers. It does not happen by accident. You need to design your title so that YouTubers want to create videos for their fans, and fans enjoy watching them.
Character creation is one way to make that happen. It lets YouTubers create characters that look like themselves. It lets viewers watch familiar faces move around within a game, which is especially entertaining when they feel emotionally attached to the YouTuber.
One example is KONAMI’s Powerful Pro Baseball series. Every summer, a virtual YouTuber group called Nijisanji holds a baseball tournament. Using the success mode, VTubers lead teams made up of characters modeled after themselves and other VTubers in the group. The video below starts with Japanese dialogues, but if you skip to around 18:00, you can see the gameplay with custom characters.
You can see familiar faces pitching, hitting, and making errors. Beloved personalities win and lose, creating a story to remember. This is much more engaging than watching a game with default characters. Fans become even more attached to the YouTubers. They might start playing the game themselves.
But character creation is not for everyone. Titles with first-person cameras don’t benefit much from character creation since players rarely see their own avatar. Titles that monetize through cosmetic items may need to limit how players customize their characters. Titles with tightly written characters and strong personalities may not work well with customizable appearances. But if your game has a casual tone and some flexibility in how characters appear on screen, you may want to consider offering character customization.
Character creation at the beginning of the game may seem overwhelming for players. Developing character creation is a work of art in itself. But if you offer it as a way for players to express themselves to others, it will become a tool for user-generated content. What’s more, YouTubers can benefit from customizing their appearances, offering memorable experiences to viewers. And at the end, publishers will have their titles played and viewed by broader audiences, leading to a longer lifespan and increased revenue.
Character creation isn’t just a feature, it is a mechanism for building communities and sustaining long-term engagement.
