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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...
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?
...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.
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
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
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