Eidos' Livingstone presumes we need more iconic characters
Eidos' Product Acquisition Director Ian Livingstone, speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, said that game developers need to create more iconic characters. Not just for games, but so they can be used in various other products as well. He showed the audience a series of iconic characters and mixed in there were game heroes ... some people in the audience couldn't put names to the characters. Livingstone said, "If we all work in the games industry, what does that say?"
Eidos has definitely had a focus on iconic characters. From Lara Croft to Agent 47, to the upcoming Kane & Lynch. From what we saw of the game at E3, the characters exude bad-boy personality, which can also be seen in the trailer. Livingstone says that Kane originally looked much younger -- "a bit of a ladies' man." He says the decision was made to age him up and scar him to keep in line with the story. He also says that Lara Croft was originally going to be Lara Cruz, but then the decision was made to make her a posh British lady, so the team went through the phone book until they found the right name.
