Inserting a character's name

I'm curious as to what the community thinks of the above question; is being able to name your characters a good or bad thing?

In public I've normally seen people naming their characters joke names if given the chance in order for a good laugh. It makes me wonder, first of all, what drives someone to call themselves Douche with a straight face, and secondly how would the creator (in this case, you) feel watching a run-through with said name attached to a character they most likely care about.

Personally I am thinking of allowing the player to name every playable character in my game, and would be more amused by name choices than offended. Would they make a mockery of an otherwise serious game, name everyone after characters they've made, or name everyone after friends and family and sees if anyone fits the character they chose for their names?

Good question.

I kinda like the opportunity to be able to do it, but I end up keeping the same name anyway.

It's like "Sure I can call Link for Fairy, but he`ll still be Link."

When I play pokemon I usually name them after the version I'm playing or one of my battleing names. Playing an rpg if it's not the first final fantasy I usually leave them with their defaulted names they have. But for RPG Makers...I usually just rename them all.

I'm usually too lazy to rename characters, unless the protagonist has no name to begin with (such as in most WRPGs).

In making games I'll include it if the protagonist is silent, but otherwise I'll just give them set names. I like to pretend that one day I'll have voiced dialog so it helps if they already have chosen names, plus it's easier to make dialog since I don't have to remember to stick in /N[#] all the time.

For me, it depends largely on the default name. Most of the time, I end up keeping the default. But if it's a name I dislike or it just looks like it doesn't fit the character, I change it.

But, really, I don't mind at all not having that choice. More times than not, the developer would end up picking a name that would fit their world better than the random name I come up with.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick to the option of naming your party, having the option never hurt anyone.

Since I'm adding it in my game you'd assume that I would vote to name everyone in a game I was playing, but really I normally only rename the main character in games like early FF (which let you rename all of your party and more) and keep the default names for everyone else. I stay on the name input screen longer than I should when I have no default name to choose from for other characters.

I don't care about either. When I am given the option to change the name, I normally leave it as it is anyway.

I change the main characters name usually to mine :3

I too usually keep the default name because I just can't be arsed to come up with a new one. If you can rename just your main character you do run into the problem that you name the character after someone else in the game. I remember my husband said he was playing an rpg and the first pc to join him was the name he chose for the main character and he had to reset and start over. The only case that I do name the main character is when I'm playing an rpg that forces me to do it or when it's more or less a self-insertion rpg where you design the main characters such as Fallout or Dragon Age.

I like having the option, especially for the rare case where I really don't like the default name. Usually I do keep the original name though.

If the option is given, I will name the hero something like "buttface" or "poopnose", every single time.

I always wanted to do a runthrough of FFVII with every character named Sephiroth. Just for the confusion value.

LOL! *NOTE TO SELF - do not allow player to name characters if I ever want Emmych to play my game*

I've not played any RPGs where I get to name the characters, but if I did, I'd leave them as the default.

In my current game, I'm letting the player name one character who comes in around half way through. She can't communicate with you, so you get to give her a name. If not for that reason, I'd name her too.

Wow Raven; at least it was the first party member and not someone later down the line. It's happened to me once as well, but I forget the game's name and it was also very close to the beginning of the game.

And someone like Emmych is one of the reasons why I want someone who plays my game to screen-cap their most serious character moments :p

@Shaz: I actually got into an awkward moment when a screenshot in a review I did of a game on RMN revealed I'd named the character "Dickbro".

The creator was not pleased. OTL

@emmych: LOL. I bet they weren't, though I wouldn't mind if you did it to any of my games.

I usually keep the default names, if there is one, because I tend to hate any names I give characters because they end up not fitting. >.<

I usually end up leaving them as default names, simply because the names I would like to name them tend to be too long. eg. I wanted to rename Edgar in ff6 to Sebastion, but the letter limit was too small. If there was a decent sized letter limit for the names I would likely rename all the characters in games. For this reason I would try to leave the insert name limit as at least 10 letters because usually even long names aren't over 10, My name is pretty long at 9 letters, I don't think there are many names longer than that. (though I could be wrong).

But usually when I'm making games I veiw them as a story, so the names are pretty much picked and I don't want to change them.

I'm rather conflicted. I like the option to change the names of my party members, but I find I stick with the defaults the vast majority of the time. I did like the way it was done with Garnet in FFIX, where you could decide on her nickname. It was a realistic way of being able to dictate the name of a party member. That, and I hate seeing a character who I know is going to join the party have dialogue that's horribly written to avoid having their name mentioned (or have a moniker like 'Mysterious Stranger') before the inevitable "Oh, and my name is..."

I like having the option, and also having a default to go from if I can't decide. The "Don't Care" options in Earthbound were pretty nice, since there were like seven defaults to choose from on top of the choice of entering it yourself.

I don't think it really impacts the story in a negative way, since if someone's naming their characters things like Dickbro they probably don't mind if things sound silly.

When it comes to naming characters in the party, it has to be all or none to me. Otherwise I just feel kinda silly, running around with my custom named main character, looking dumb in front of all the cool kids.