Many online games feature virtual avatars, simple but effective way to get the player feel immersed in their environment. This is evident by the countless makeover games, virtual worlds and MMO is available on the Internet today. This is a design feature of many independent game developers can learn from and form an integral part of their game.
Large companies like Nintendo have accepted the creation of a virtual avatar with Nintendo Wii Miis. Others are taking notice of the importance of having a 3D virtual representation of them selves with the creation of Sony Home service and Microsoft is rumored to soon replace their static 2D Xbox Live profile with fully animated 3D avatars, as well. Other companies, such as IMVU focused exclusively on just having a virtual avatar with thousands of choices to change your look. It stands to reason, if many large companies with millions of dollars in the budget for advertising and research leaning toward trendy, its a small game development company should too.
What exactly is the attraction of a virtual avatar? This is a summary of the issue as it differs from one user to another. For some it is pure escapism, for others it is the unlimited freedom to experiment with styles, layout and colors they would otherwise never try the real world. Virtual avatars appeal to our ego at the fundamental level and for some people it becomes an extension of yourself as a person. Tends to be varying degrees of severity are taken as some people tend to their avatar look "cool" or "sexy", while others deliberately make your avatar look like strange and silly as possible.
When you are planning to develop game titles, no matter if it is an action game or a puzzle game I think it's important to leverage the fact that the games audience eager appetite for the customizable avatar. For example, if you were in the development of small racing game, you should take a two pronged approach to this. First, you should let the person create their virtual identity with a name tag and easy customization choices, hair color, clothing color, etc. If it is time to invest, it would be useful to create more enhancements and variations. Second, you keep the player the ability to customize cars as deep as the character of the post. With this additional development work will only increase the chances that your players feel like they have something invested in the game which is almost the opposite of what many casual game developers do. Casual games do not have to mean limited user investment.
The key elements of any virtual avatar game fail to include a large variety of choices for clothing, hairstyles, accessories and colors. It is also extremely important for players to have their avatar to see other people over there in the game, if multi-player support, or through the Site, the user profile. The introduction of rare cases is a very important element as well. Many MMORPG's provide this only as a quest to get a case depends on playing a more and more. GAIA Online shows an example of its users avatars to the forums your message, and gives them the ability to change their appearance with different clothes, but also shows the public want the list in the hope that foreigners are buying things for them.
Regardless of the game theme or style of play has room to add the player avatars in the game, if planned properly. After the game with customizable avatars virtual greatly increases the chances of your games popularity, user investment and overall enjoyability.
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