Player Character

A player character or playable character (PC) is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters are often also metonymically called players. Some video games only have one player character, others, especially two player games have two, or another small number of player characters to choose from, one for each player. Where more than one player character is available, the characters may have slightly or completely different abilities, strengths and weaknesses to make the game play style different. Games such as fighting games typically have a larger amount of player characters to choose from, with some basic moves available to all or most characters and some unique moves only available to one or a few characters. Fighting games often have no unique levels to travel through only combat, so having many different characters to play with and against, that possess different moves and abilities is necessary to create a larger gameplay variety that other games may get with different levels.