That is why I verbosely clarified why computer games’ characters are basically non-player.
It is the program algorithms that ultimately control them.
Out of those NPCs some characters are unique and not produced in numbers.
Therefore, rather than soldier_1 and soldier_2 we may have Warhammer and Skythunder.
Still NPCs even though they have unique names until it is the player who has control over them.
Each character you control is a character that you decide its actions in a strategic manner rather than a tactical manner, which the computer’s game program implements by algorithms.
In that sense the player is playing the role of that character and literally “thinking” for it.
The criterion here is making the decision of movement directions and/ or destinations.
You decide to make the character pick an object or manipulate another such as opening a door.
This is the meaning of role playing.
That is why it is not necessary that you can only play one role through out the game but it is absolutely true that you may not play more than one role at a given absolute time. The absolute role being played is that of the currently selected unique character.
So why does this differ from strategy games in which you control several identical units!
They are all NPCs in the absolute sense, but when you identify a character or more, you are able to follow up on its development later on in the game and get identified with it too. Thus you become role playing of one role or more.
It is a chance for me to introduce yet another concept of multi-role-playing.
You do not need several characters to control in a linear path for each and adding up those roles for multi-roles.
You may play multiple roles for a single character such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide.
You may play a warrior in battle who is a lover at home and a ruler at court, etcetera.
The concept of playing multiple roles is not restricted in one way or the other; nevertheless, even in real life it is impossible to play multiple roles simultaneously.
