Avataritis — On the Abundance of Customizable Game Characters

Martyn Zachary writes "The Slowdown has posted a new critique, 'Avataritis,' that attempts to portray the utilization of character customization as a pandemic, emotional response on behalf of publishers and developers to finding the easiest, most efficient solution to the very unique dilemma presented by the enlarging, widening player base of video games. 'No mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.' The article discusses the emergence and role of gender criticism and research in relation to the recent proliferation of the customizable avatar. The story also dissects the very act of character creation, subsequently aiming to clarify several semantic distortions related to the terminology utilized in character creation, and in turn breaking apart the concepts of relatability and understandability, wholly differentiating the two. The overarching analysis is finally related to examples from the gaming marketplace, where many continue to corroborate apparent falsehoods and misunderstandings in relation to the utilization of the avatar. Ultimately, the writer hopes to dissuade readers, developers and players from believing that written narratives are going away as customization and emergent content are entering video games with full force."

Comments

I've read physics papers by business majors...

[topham]

that made more sense.

1. You make a character look like you, so you can feel like 'YOU' are part of the story.
2. You make a character like you wish you were, to make 'YOU' feel like some sort of hero (or anti-hero)
3. You make a character unlike yourself and not like you wish you were to give yourself a different perspective and to act out a roll.

If the characters look (color, shape, accent, etc) has no direct bearing on the story then it's just window dressing.

Re:I've read physics papers by business majors...

[rujholla]

4. You make a hot character so spending an hour day looking at her run around the screen is at least more visually stimulating than #1.

Re:I've read physics papers by business majors...

[Chemisor]

4. You make a naked hot girl to wander the wasteland and fight supermutants with her bare hands. Because it's no fun to spend hours upon hours staring at some guys ugly butt.

What language is this?

[NoOneInParticular]

Can someone please translate the summary into English?

Re:What language is this?

[debrisslider]

Basically:

Remember how Time's 2006 Person of the Year was YOU? And everyone hated it and thought it was a terrible choice, because user-generated content is often idiotic, base, lowest common denominator, whatever (not trying to be biased, that's just how I remember this place reacting)? That no one cares about your stupid band, your podcast, your profile, or your feed? That the average web user's narcissism might not be the best method of content generation, that social networking concepts were being shoehorned into places for sake of bandwagon jumping, at the expense of added noise and reduced quality content?

In other words: do you really need to put your face on Mario's body? Does that truly enhance your game playing experience? Should game storylines be written around a shallow method of providing a surface-level customization for added 'personalization'? The article takes issue with inappropriate uses of character customization, a trend that has begun to spread from its traditional place in choice-and-consequence RPGs (Fallout, not Final Fantasy) to pretty much any kind of game (often, seemingly randomly), a move that has begun to change the manner of storytelling in video games. The author thinks that this customization, in attempting to bring players further into the narrative, is actually alienating them by presenting them with meaningless choices, confusing identification with understandability, distancing the player from whatever intent the storyline has by introducing surface-level similarity at the cost of a more coherent characterization of the game's hero. Think of the Time cover writ large; a mirror over the face of a video game's protagonist. If there were a technology to easily switch your face with that of an actor's in a movie, would that help you understand the film or extract any additional meaning from it? Does every story need to be turned into a choose-your-own-adventure with branching paths, at the cost of a greater unifying vision? And what purpose does customization serve in the cases where there are no branching paths, when it is thrown in because of market trends?

Assuming you care about video game narratives at all, let alone as any sort of art, of course. I don't think slashdotters are the right crowd for this kind of article. You need a few years of undergraduate literature and film classes to write like this, I don't think this place has the background in narrative theory necessary to be interested in the points this guy is making. Frankly, you guys should consider yourselves lucky not to understand this guy's writing, it probably means you are gainfully employed.

Standardize Avatars?

[RyoShin]

Reading his writing (but ignoring his conclusion), I got wondering why we don't have some sort of standardization for avatars. All three major consoles now have some sort of system avatar, customizable to various degrees. These don't always make it into the games you play on them, but even when they do they tend to be very basic avatars, whereas many games have a huge number of options (and combinations thereof.) Considering how many games are giving us customizable avatars, and the rate with which they are coming to represent us online and in-game, it would seem the next logical step to create a method whereby someone can import a custom set into a game, and then tweak it from that base template, ensuring a mostly heterogeneous style over all the games they play.

This doesn't mean that developers would be limited by options, nor that they can't do micro-customization. For instance, a game that offers your character a Fu Man Chu would mark such a beard style as part of the "Small Beard" class/group. If a game does not offer that style, it chooses the default "Small Beard" style. Along with this standard, which would incorporate as many customizations as possible (and likely keep updating its database), there could be a set of open-source models based on the standards, which developers could then import into their game, customizing as desired. This would increase the potential of having a similar character from game to game.

There are some sequels that read on older games, and thus would likely incorporate customization, but I'm surprised this doesn't seem to be on even on a developer/publisher level--standardizing such a thing would seem, at least to me, to save a lot of time developing, as well as be supportive of return business.

Is it me or was the summary a pain to read?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I got the feeling this guy is in marketing. There was something being said, but it was lost in all the frills.

The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more.

Re:Skinning

[Blakey Rat]

JWZ is a software engineer writing about usability. He's not writing about video game characters.

Do you seriously think those two things are equivalent?

As far as I'm concerned, any time spent customizing a character and not playing the game is wasted.

And I think crafting in MMOs is boring, and thus wasted effort on the part of the developer. But guess what? I'm not the *only* person who plays the game. Ditto with the alchemy system in Oblivion, but I'm sure there are thousands of gamers who really appreciated it.

This is going to blow your brain, but Champions Online released their character creator as a demo, and I spent ages doing nothing but customizing characters, and enjoying it.

So in short, you're wrong and also an ass.