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For those that don´t know, character blogs are a form of promotional material that purports to be written by a character from a game/book/film/whatever, in-universe and from their perspective, altough there may be a quite a bit of fourth-wall breaking as well. It used to be a quite popular marketing tactic with the rise of the internet and social media. For a writer the practice provides several benefits. It gives fans a way to write and explore character interactions in a new setting, as well as provide a fun way for fans to interact with the characters of a beloved franchise.

I used to do it a lot when I was younger as a form of amusement and to train myself as a writer.

Both Nintendo and Valve has used this method, The Warioware crew has a shared blog (although only in japanese) and the Administrator, Ms Pauling, Saxton Hale, Soldier, Heavy and even the Pyro used to regularly post on the official Team Fortress blog.

Here I want to discuss the potential use of character blogs to promote a new ip and if it is still a worthwhile practice to pursue. The most immediately obvious problem is that nobody will know who these characters are, so why care? It is funny when Soldier rants on the TF blog because we know the Soldier from the game and it is neat to see him in a new situation seperate from the game world.

Psychonauts was a new ip that used character blogs in their promotion extensively in their marketing, but even then they kind of had a built-in audience since Tim Shafer was behind the game. A completely new indie-game from a small scale developer may not bring in the audience needed for character blogs to work as a concept, and may even end up alienating the audience if they do not understand or have no context for the character interactions. An additional problem I foresee is that character blogs feels a bit outdated as a concept. It may have been cool when social media was a new thing but right now seeing a videogame character actually interact with ”the real world” seems more gimmicky. There is also the added problem that nowadays fans often create twitter and tumblr accounts for their favorite characters and any ”official” attempts to do the same just gets lost in the noise.

That said the at-least-it-would-be-beneficial-for-the-writer aspect remains not to mention that it would be very fun to do! I just think the whole core concept needs some sort of refreshing twist in order to stay relevant. I would love to hear everyones thoughts about this, expecially if anyone has ever dabbled in something similiar or been in a similiar situation from a developer standpoint.


So, to sum up what a character blog is:

-A fictional character uses a blog/twitter to communicate with ”the real world” in some capacity

The pros of the practice:

-Great way for a writer to explore a character

-Fun for fans to see a character in a new light

The cons:

-Not suitable for new ips

-Somewhat outdated concept