Great point!

And the creators of the game eventually agreed with you, since (as I have just learned) they stopped tweeting as the characters sometime last year.

Okay, but only people who know the game “get it.” Writers have to do social media to recruit NEW fans who won’t know these characters from a hole in the wall. If writers want to do this, enjoy, but don’t come complaining to me that social media takes too much writing time. Who cares about the characters out of an unpublished first-time novelist’s book? Better ways to spend time is all I am saying :D.

This has been done masterfully at least once, for the narrative-based web game Fallen London. However, the characters mostly talk with each other, and they are obviously cartoon characters (example: a menacing version of santa).