What is an NPC in a Game?
NPC stands for Non-Playable Character. Literally speaking, it's any character in a game that isn't the player character. In multi-player games such as MMORPG's, it would be any character that isn't a player character. In single-player RPG's, the term usually refers to neutral characters such as villagers and shop-keepers that you can talk to in order to receive or complete quests or learn about lore; it isn't used to refer to enemies which are also non-playable but that you can fight against. In other words, on any game there would be 3 classes of characters: the human-controlled players, their enemies, and the NPC's.