Players Should Be Allowed to Customize their Characters
Guiding players through the principles of character development can be a great learning tool that also adds to
gameplay. A design brief for different characters specifying personality traits and attributes such as voice,
accent, catchphrase, appearance, motivation habits, and other elements will help build believability, bringing
the game to life. Customization features that let players create their own content and even their own
characters can be leveraged for educational purposes. This strategy has clear links to literacy development in
terms of written description; it is also firmly embedded within the concept of personalization as it is described
in Leadbetter (2004), where the users of an educational system are not just the receivers of learning, but
active participants and coproducers in the educational system. Structured content creation, in the form of
character customization or other kinds of customization, can satisfy both sides of the games-education
equation, as it both mirrors the functionality of games and the way players engage with them and supports
overarching pedagogical objectives.