The phrase "as virtual characters" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when referring to entities or representations that exist in a digital or simulated environment, often in the context of video games, animations, or virtual reality.
Example: "In the game, players can interact with various non-playable characters as virtual characters that enhance the storytelling experience."
Alternatives: "as digital avatars" or "as online personas".
In keeping with this digital theme, Wenlock and Mandeville will exist as virtual characters on Facebook and Twitter pages.
At the click of a mouse, his newly ferocious digital officer now yells with conviction, "Squad leaders, listen up!" The technical staff can complicate their scenarios by tweaking the emotional state of the "synthespians," as virtual characters are called.
Avatars can be defined as "virtual characters that can be used as company representatives" in online stores [8].
Importantly, participants cannot delay their help to observe the progression of the game (i.e., whether they need their keys themselves) as the virtual characters become inactive before the next gate falls and thus cannot reach the treasure anymore.
Embodied conversational agents (ECAs)—virtual characters as well as anthropoid robots—should be able to talk with their human interlocutors.
Rather than trying to take virtual characters (and as great as even the new PS4 graphics look, game characters are still virtual) and turn them into live action actors, Wreck-It Ralph keeps these game characters within their computer-generated world.
The object is to control virtual characters as they go about their everyday lives.
In the Vita commercial, a young man has similar encounters with virtual characters as he makes his way around a city.
The original game, which Electronic Arts debuted over a decade ago, lets people simulate the lives of virtual characters as they navigate through big milestones in life — nurturing a career, moving into a home, meeting a significant other, marriage, and having children.
In an experiment into the 'bystander effect', Slater and his colleagues found that people would intervene to stop a fight between two virtual characters as though they were real.
But while literature, film and music are not subject to this sort of heavy-handed curation, the message is clear: certain topics are off-limits for games (although not, for example, killing and maiming other virtual characters as in so many games on App Store).
