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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?
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...
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?
...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.
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
No, 3Q are NOT the pioneers of this idea.
Actually, this idea was first introduced by Bally/Midway in the early 80's. Ralph Baer, the father of videogames, first came up with the idea of incorporating a camera into a video game. He sold the idea to Bally/Midway, who built a prototype arcade game which was placed on a test location in Chicago. Players would look up at the marque when the game was about to begin, and the camera would take their picture, which would then be used in the game. Of course it wasn't long before a player decided to moon the camera instead, and the idea was yanked. (The arcade game they designed later became "Journey" which featured digitized photos of the band members instead.)
The idea was resurrected again a few years back when Rare planned to use the Gameboy Camera with the N64 to put players faces into Perfect Dark. Nintendo nixed the idea when Columbine began to make the game companies paranoid - they were worried mentally unstable kids would put the pictures of classmates and teachers into the game.