Zynga, Playdom/Disney, Playfish/EA, Wooga, Crowdstar - together these companies' entertaining social games have reached over half a billion people and have come to define the mass market for interactive play, but can you name a single well-known mass market character from these games? In other gaming categories, characters like Sonic, Mario, Carmen Sandiego, Flo and Angry Birds have emerged as popular cultural icons. This talk will look in particular at characters within the sphere of narrative design for social games and especially try to answer the question: what makes it so hard to create a compelling and beloved character in a social game?