Moving Pixels Podcast: Stereotypes Vs. Archetypes in Video Games

Stoic lone gunmen? Check.

Delicate and sensitive female healer? Check.

Rogue with a heart of gold? Check.

Video games, like most media, draw on some fairly stock types to build their characters. However, since so much of games’ plots and characterization just feel tacked on in spots, sometimes these stock types remain just that — never given the opportunity to grow as characters that we can relate to or representing ideas that we might, likewise, relate to.

Archetypal characters and stereotypical ones populate games, and it may be a fine line that developers walk between characters that personify an idea and characters that are merely simplistic placeholders for more legitimately developed ideas.

This podcast is also available via iTunes.

Our podcast contributors:

G. Christopher Williams is the Multimedia Editor at PopMatters.com. You can find his weekly updates featured at the Neuromance blog.

Nick Dinicola is also a regular contributor to the Moving Pixels blog.

Mattie Brice is a blogger here at PopMatters and also a contributor at The Border House.

You can follow the Moving Pixels blog on Twitter.