The early days of video games featured Pong: a square ball bouncing back & forth between to rectangles. Anyone could easily master the concept of Pong within seconds of seeing it.With Pong, there was no characters to root for, no villains to cheer against and no plot or story to conclude either. While Pong was a nice recreational distraction and diversion from the boredom of everyday life - and back then, Pong was a big deal - there was no real vested interest in the game once the video game system was shut off. That is to say, Pong was just a game. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now, today's video games, like the Microsoft Xbox 360 are more than just toys or things to play. Video games today are events, stories and lives to take interest in and be a part of too. Like the games themselves, the characters which inhabit these games have grown over the years. While the erstwhile plumber was cute, he wasn't really endearing. He didn't say much, his emotions were limited and his experiences were fairly mundane. Heck, in his original solo adventure, he couldn't even go too far backwards! He was just the thing that you used to finish the game.

Now, video game characters, like the ones featured in the Sony PSP are people, with expressions and emotions. They have a history and a purpose. They have a back story, and they are vengeful. They have facial expressions that video game players can relate to. They aren't just video game characters: they're tragic heroes and misunderstood villains. They live and work in worlds that are at once foreign to us but recognizable too. Today's video game characters speak to us, and for us. We want to hear what they say, and see how they act and react. They aren't just computer generated characters by designers, they are actors, with a script to follow and a mystery to unravel.

Since video game systems and technology have evolved, it makes sense that the characters grow and develop too. Older video games took place in simple worlds with a defined beginning, a defined end and a defined purpose. That made it easy to distinguish the character's role. Today's video games, like the ones featured on the Microsoft Xbox 360 or the Playstation Portable, take place in immense worlds where a lot of random possibilities can occur. That requires the character in the video game to act and react in ways that we can't really predict.

Today's video game characters that live in the Sony PSP can be incredibly likeable and endearing too.With personalities, emotions and phrasing that can really make people laugh and take interest in the character. And, with cross-media branding being at the forefront of just about everything these days, you can bet that a popular video game with an exceptionally popular main character will be made into a movie, a comic-book or a TV show.While it helps a company's bottom line, it can really give the video game character more meaning and definition too. Because even though video games and their worlds are impressive, they are still limited by their programming & design scope. But a movie or a TV program can really give new emotions to a character whom in some ways, already seems to be more than human.