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Putting On Your Game Face
Thanks to GameSpot for their editorial discussing the ability to alter in-game characters to look like yourself in videogames, specifically citing EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. The author admits to having "a definite penchant for games that allow me to play as a character resembling myself", and muses: "I've already spent an unhealthy amount of time putting myself into Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 - imagine how cool it would be if that same character could be transported to FIFA Soccer 2004, Madden NFL 2004, or even SSX 3." With other forthcoming titles such as Tony Hawk's Underground highlighting this type of feature, is playing as yourself a much-desired extra for everyone, or would you prefer controlling someone more... handsome?
This is just the next step into what will eventually become a 'Holodeck' like gaming experience.
I for one, cannot wait......
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
A kid who I played hockey with in school bought the game, and took pictures of all of us players, and made his own 'team'. He even made us all the correct height/weight.
Talk about having too much time on your hands...
Penny Arcade already covered this one... Or I guess you'd have to read the news post. But that's also been made fun of recently.
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
Standard Avatars - cool, not always practical.
Sports games (football, hockey, skating, golf, etc) are about people doing stuff - they can be anybody without affecting the gameplay.
Games like platformers or Japanese RPGs benefit from very detailed characters fitting the plot and gameplay. You wouldn't want your ugly mug instead of, say, Crash Bandicoot, now would you? It may be fun in a multiplayer environment (where you actually know the other guys) but that's about it.
I'm sure FPS players would get a kick out of fragging a face they know.
Games like racers, puzzles, and shooters don't really have or need avatars for the most part, so the question is moot.
I'd be more interested in games that let me customize other aspects - like Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio let you import graffiti. Or how about a racer that lets you customize your car so much I can create a virtual replica of the candle truck?
I dont know about the rest of you, but I enjoy playing as really attractive female characters. Especially when they bounce. Alot.
I've only used one character-altering engine so far, but I've been very impressed what just a few sliders and other choices can do. The character I have made looks quite a bit like me, and it took under five minutes.
Combine this with the engine for HL2 or Doom3, and suddenly you can create a movie with a custom cast... put Dustin Hoffman in a movie with Humphry Bogart and Angelina Jolie... creating their characters takes under 15 minutes. To do it the old fashioned way took weeks.
Machinama is going to really benefit from such options. I give it another 10 years or so, and creating a hollywood quality CGI sequence will be as easy to do as photoshopping yourself next to Bill Clinton on Mars.
The next question is where does Hollywood go then? What if I could make Toy Story at home in an afternoon? How are they going to "wow" us then?
Nice of writer to only mention non-violent games. I always had a kick out of putting myself into GTA3.
Latest news headline "Boy Plans serial killing through Video Game".
It's a nice feature, but I think some of the more instable people in this world are going to use it as an excuse as to why they did things.
misundstood by most, hated by some, loved by few.
...is playing as yourself a much-desired extra for everyone, or would you prefer controlling someone more... handsome?
Speak for yourself, buddy.
Are all geeks really hideously ugly? Longing to be spending all our time with large groups of "regular" people drinking beer and talking about sports and TV... if only we had more social skills and fewer hair-sprouting warts?
Hey, maybe some of them. But there are plenty who are perfectly capable of mingling with masses... they just don't want to most of the time (interesting book on this subject: Party of One, by Anneli Rufus).
Anyway, even the visual trolls out there should be able to "fix" their faces with a few minor Photoshop edits. So yes, seeing some version of our own faces in games can be fun (as long as it's well-integrated).
Moving on... can you put a face on the opposing players (or soldiers, etc.) in any of these games?
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
The first time I saw the advert for this, I assumed it was an expansion pack, or integration with the sims.
A lot of EA's [now] in-house titles are starting to look awfully similar
In an attempt to hijack this topic with sexist piffle, I just remembered that the not-good Jurassic Park:Trespasser had a particularly amusing body-image 'angle' if you looked down while playing - see this Games First review and scroll down for the screenshot in question. Uhoh.
If the sucess of Lara Croft is any indication, most geeks don't want to see themselves in their video games. Isn't that what fantasy and role playing is all about? If I wanted something more realistic, I'd go take a walk out there in the big blue room.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If playing dress up with virtual golfers is what you're looking for in a game then Tiger Woods is for you. If what you want is the best golf game ever, then check out Links 2004.
- 09 -29
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2003
This is fine, so long as one condition is met:
That for any multiplayer online game, the user SHALL BE ABLE TO PREVENT REMOTE USERS FROM DEFINING THEIR OWN FACES.
Why?
One word:
Goatse
www.eFax.com are spammers
hell yeah! Racing games NEED more customization. Sure, building these exotic cars and modding them out in Gran Tourisimo is fun, but imagine if you had your choice of family sedans, vans, etc, and could paint them any way you like, add accessories, etc... it'd be a ricer's dream, give your car a HUGE spoiler and watch your little car flip over on the straight-away... or for those of us with larger tastes, you could build a supercharged 91 thunderbird with woodland camoflauge paint.. i imagine someone out there will want to race a monster truck just for the heck of it...
btw, i think it's worth noting that people dont just make their characters like themselves - they often build their characters the way they want to see themselves. That 300lb 7' muscle-bound lumberjack with his plaid shirt, jeans, and thick bushy moustache? yeah. that's me. all 5' 11" 150lbs of me. heheh. That's really the point of games, to live out a fantasy. and it's way more fun when you get to create your own ideal self in that fantasy.
In Soviet Redmond, software programs you!
3Q are probably the pioneers of this concept and it's impossible not to like a contraption named QloneratorPRO which is used to digitally capture the 3-D human form.
Massive by Design
or would you prefer controlling someone more... handsome? :p
More handsome? Come on, in the dictionnary, at the word handsome, they give my name in example and there's a picture of me. I don't need some modeler at EA do a less handsome character. I want me!
I don't know about anyone else, but I get really fed up with these programs when they have a tiny range of shapes and sizes, I mean how hard is it to include deforms to make the model a bit bigger? Especially when they let the limit go a lot higher on the male models. Specifically of course I am talking about the fact that the female models they use are restricted so that you cannot possibly make a full figured woman, everything you create must stay within the supposedly "healthy" weight range. I don't mean to troll or flame, as I do believe this is an important misfeature. If anyone knows of games that do not have this restriction, please let me know, as they will get special consideration when my (meager) budget allows me another game purchase.
Then we'd have an overweight character panting for breath in FIFA, a 99lb. quarterback being crushed by a 300lb. linebacker in Madden and a snowboarder who's skin is whiter than the surrounding snow in SSX. In some games it works, but not in all cases. I'd rather create my own fantasy person than a recreation of myself.
If this were to come about and someone stole say a celebrity's image and used it on all games of this type, would that be considered identity theft? Would they have to also claim to BE that person as well? What about an ordinary guy who's got nothing to lose but his reputation... should someone be allowed to go around the gaming systems committing crimes or just stupidity WEARING YOUR FACE?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I have to say, this is one of the cooler features I have seen in a game even though I think it is more appropriate to golf than any other game. Unlike other sports, many of us do play golf (although not with the skill that I do on TW2004 unfortunately) and it is nice to be able to play as someone who looks like... well me. Double the fun when you can get your buddies together to play a round at Pebble Beach anytime you want and actually see the group there.The best so far though has been responding to my inquiring wife that I am just playing a few rounds of golf with her- and having her walk in to see her on-screen doppleganger sink a 50 foot chip shot."Nice shot honey!"
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. -Plato
Use online play to let you upload your face, and to have others randomly grab your face. (Though this would lead to problems, I'm sure) Or just smartly randomly generate faces in these games for the rest of the soldiers.
Yes
What is the appeal of that tripe? Eveyone keeps liking to it and claiming it is the funnist "comic" ever.
I can only understand these claims if they are talking about how badly drawn it is, how retarded the jokes are, and the compleat lack of humor.
sounds cool, but the second its used in an online game every 12 year old will paste up a picture of their butt, or a picture of goat_cx's butt or a picture of something butt related. and unless quake IV is titled: the butts of butty butt, I don't want to play a game about butts.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
Tried, but failed in implementing this feature. It worked fine until you had a cutscene, and then it was Mr Vercetti all over again.
:(
Still, the GTA3 version worked a treat. For two weeks after I got the game, I walked around uni dressed *exactly* like my in-game self, down to the stars on the Converse boots. However, I looked all over my uni and I couldn't find the molotovs or the police bribe
because i love watching the create-a-skater that looks like me get pounded into the pavement. is that unhealthy?
The character creation is flexible enough to duplicate my
50 year old balding fatass body.
--The 99%-guy.
Oh no little johhny it's perferctly natural (sp?). aND when you see that blood isn't that exciting (sp?)? I would guess so too. YoU see there's things in life which are truly enjoyable and that is to see you get ppounded (sp?) into tha pavement.
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