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Is it important to choose a right name for a character or is it important to make the character beautiful?

Character.

That's a bit simplified, but the most important part is not names or looks. It's their personalities, their mannerisms, their feelings and thoughts. The things that make them real people.

The first thing is somewhat important, but not massively so. The second is totally dependent on the type of game and the character.

The MOST important thing, of course, is their character development and personality. If you want to know how to write a good character then Google search for articles about how to give characters depth.

Well, from a renpy point of view : it's important all the characters have a name that starts with a different letter (so you can refer to them in code by that single letter).

Also, make sure all the names are very different for the reader's convenience. For example : Rebecca, Vanessa, Victoria are not good names to have, they all kinda sound alike. Allison, Jill and Yoko are better.

As SundownKid says, the character's personality is important. The character needs to appeal to the audience and be believeable. Unless, of course, you want the audience to hate them and you'll kill them off in the story for their satisfaction. In that case a one-dimensional stock character is the right choice. The 80s slasher movies are replete with characters the audience can't wait to see being killed off

Personality and development.
People are growing up, so the characters should do that too.

Names aren't that important... i think.

I read that every character should have "Grit, Wit, and It":

Grit: Motivation. The character should have a goal that they are actively striving for.

Wit: The character should have a degree of humour. An ability to laugh at themselves.

It: The X-factor. Something that makes the character charismatic to the audience. Often hard to define.

Fuseblower wrote:Well, from a renpy point of view : it's important all the characters have a name that starts with a different letter (so you can refer to them in code by that single letter).

This is commonly issued writing advice in general, actually. Different-sounding names help the reader keep characters straight.

To answer the question, not every character needs to be deep or well rounded depending on their role in the story, but complex characters have several main elements: goal (what they want), motivation (why they want it), conflict (what's preventing them from getting it, both internally and externally), and development (how they change and learn in the pursuit of their goal, or what the point of all of this was). Compelling characters want something very badly that the audience can relate to and proactively drive the narrative forward to get it.

Name and personality. Everything else will naturally fall into place.

Actually I was thinking of a character but I was not getting the idea from where should I start. As far as character is concerned I had a little bit of idea what do I want but I was totally puzzled about the names. I was wandering between these two. When I opted to go for names first I could not choose even from google and best name site http://www.babynology.com, when I opted to write about the character I wanted to keep a name of character in my mind. I think this is what people do while writing about the character, the very first thing that comes to your mind is character’s name you are writing about. So I thought to take a general idea.

I like to include the following information when I create characters:

Name
Ambition
Storygoal
Conflict
Epiphany
Sentence Summary
Paragraph Summary

I stole this from the snowflake method of writing. I recommend you give it a spin.

Both names and looks can be an important part of the story too, depending on your story. ^^;

But for the most part, it's exploring the character's growth and/or lesson that I typically focus on.

I definitely agree with sundown kid, and everyone who mentioned personality and development.

A cool name is nice to see and hear though, every little bit to get you into the game. I remember playing games back in the day and delighting in seeing a name of a character that sounded cool, but yeah, not incredibly important.

Actually on rare occasions, there are some really terrible names out there! Mostly its about the personality but names...for example; Jupiter Jones! That was a Sci-Fi character in a movie in which I forgot about, but that name sounds like she should be Jessie's partner in crime or something, from Toy Story, not a serious Sci-Fi movie. I say it's both name and personality. Find something that clicks.

Fuseblower wrote:Well, from a renpy point of view : it's important all the characters have a name that starts with a different letter (so you can refer to them in code by that single letter).

Also, make sure all the names are very different for the reader's convenience. For example : Rebecca, Vanessa, Victoria are not good names to have, they all kinda sound alike. Allison, Jill and Yoko are better.

Very true, I tend to call my characters B, C, D... etc. in order of appearance (skipping A, O and I because those are also words) until I run out of letters. When that happens... Actually that has yet to happen so I have no idea what I'd do. Anyway, I find that not having to remember or type out the entire name every time actually helps with my writing flow; no unneccesary breaks when I'm making progress to come up with some arbitary name and no writing out 15 symbols three times in a paragraph.

This is actually a good tip to try yourself if you have the tendecy to use 'placeholder names' you intend to replace later, only to end up using those names in the eventual game after all. And as long as you add a space before and after the 'name' every time even at the beginning or end of sentences, you can easily replace the letter with a real name using ctrl+H.

About the name being unique, that's indeed very important yet difficult to do. I know from experience playing games that the names can all start to jumble together for the reader if this isn't done. I found that giving each name a color corresponding with the character helps a lot, and trying to use different names from various different languages can aid for remembering smaller roles that get mentioned later. (F.e.: In a game with a main cast with english or japanese names, you'll recognise even the most background character's name if it's something outlandish like !Xendu.)