Background
A topic that
interested me when entering the course, as when I was growing up, I always
related to, and liked male characters more. This mentality showed me there was
a problem with women in games when it came to diverse personalities and
interests. If I could relate to male characters and be okay with it, how does
gender matter when it comes down to making engaging and relatable characters in
games?
Key areas of research
I
had investigated whether sexualised female characters made a game popular. As it
is said that sex sells games.
‘’Indeed, over recent years the demand
has increased and many players have satisfied their desire by modifying the
games for themselves’’ [1]
Sexualised
women seem to be a default for games when adding women, which may why I could
not relate to them, more attention was given to the way they look rather than
how they act. ’’Women are alluring,
human’s lust, and the media takes advantage of both. It’s the circle of life,
so to speak.’’ [2]
Although, there are a lot of
games that do well without the aid of scantily clad women, some having female
characters that are not designed for sex appeal in their marketing.
I looked into multiple types
of games that had a mixture of female characters, creating diversity, an even
ratio of male, games that had nothing but female characters, and games with
nothing but male.
‘’Brand
licensing, marketing budgets, development budgets, and ‘a thousand other
factors’ play a more important role in determining overall sales.’’ [3]
What I discovered was that gender
didn’t really matter when it came to creating characters for profit, or in
general. Creating memorable characters that become quotable are the ones who
stand the test of time when a game franchise ends, as we already have examples
of characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Harry potter, Batman, Darth Vader, all
have been so memorable and popular that they’ve even managed to appear in
games.
As there are games that
focus on the world more, but there have always been games which try to invoke
emotion in the player, by supplying character based stories.
‘’ When we feel a character is real,
the plot events matter more. ‘’ [4]
Creating memorable
characters involves more than just visual design. Writing seems to be a big
part of creating a character. And there are many bullet points to creating a
‘good’ character. Including habit, hobbies, quirks, likes/dislikes, fears,
goals, temperament just to name a few.
‘’ Actually, readers
have a high tolerance for imperfection. As I said earlier, it’s humanity we
connect with.’’ [4]
Talking to people in the
game industry, talking to character designers. Also attending lectures from
people in fields other than games design, which became very useful. A lecture
on textiles from a man named Michael Brennand, who mentioned being
judged for having a textiles degree because of his gender, which is still
considered a feminine subject to be interested in. This piece of information
from his history with textiles would be my inspiration for a male character I
would soon create.
Another lecturer was from a
woman who was an animator, Candy Guard. Who created stories with a lot of
personality in them, but the visual style was very simple. And yet people
enjoyed watching them because they were written well. She had said her simply
style has actually made story telling easier, because her characters had no
colour or a lot of shape to them, she said could ‘’write stories with strong
message, and came off harmless, compared to it being shown in a more real life
setting. It also makes your story more relatable worldwide.’’ This quality
seemed very desirable to me, as I just wanted to make a fun story that showed
characters of multiple gender’s being as interesting as the others.
Outcome
After these lectures, I looked
into what would be the best traits to create universal characters. I found that
anthropomorphic characters would work well, it creates a neutral playing field
when it comes to race. As visually it is not aimed at any particular race to
relate to. “The
so-called mirror-neuron-system is thought to be an important building block for
empathy by allowing people to ‘mirror’ other people’s actions and emotions; our
research indicates that this basic building block is less reactive to people
who belong to a different race than you,” [5]
I also wanted to avoid
‘uncanny valley’ which is a phrase given to things that seem like they are
trying to be human, or have human features, but are not quite there leading to people
find them to be more creepy than appealing. [Fig 4]
‘’ The name captures the idea that an
almost human-looking robot will seem overly "strange" to some human
beings, will produce a feeling of uncanniness, and will thus fail to evoke the empathic response required
for productive human-robotinteraction’’ [6]
So when creating the
characters, I wanted to have a male character that was passionate about fashion
after seeing Michael
Brennand’s lecture.
Also using animals this character is based on a deer, delicate limbs and
skittish nature.
I wanted to create a
character that had feminine traits, I wanted a male character that was not
ridiculed or made fun of for enjoying atypical things for the majority of men. Majority
of male protagonists are aggressive, giving across a message that these are the
traits desired to be of worth.
I also wanted a female
character that I would personally relate to. As highly feminine characters, the
type I don’t relate to very well, are considered the norm by game standards.
Which ends up giving women
in real life, who are not like that, issues about their own worth and
self-esteem.. And much like Candy Guards, her female characters didn’t look
attractive, as they weren’t made to, but the characters were still enjoyable
because of their personality. The animal I decided to base her on was a lemur,
as apes are generally playful and athletic. And with lemur’s longer noses then
other apes, it allows her to have that area be large, as I imagine her to be
louder and more confident than the other character, Weathercoats.
And a second male, who
fitted into majority of typical masculine traits, somewhat aggressive and
wasn’t comfortable with showing his emotions, but he is young and cares a lot
about his image, he is also homosexual so feels the need to be more aggressive and
repress his own emotions, as I feel there is a need for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi,
Transgender) characters in gaming, as there are very few. He was loosely based
on a rat, but his features became more rounded, round face with a button nose,
as I did not want him to look like a messy pointed nosed villain.
After creating these, I
finally had a method to show a story.
I was given the chance to
use the motion capture studio on campus, as drama students were looking for 3D
models to learn how to use a motion capture studio and work with the models.
Motion capture is a growing
part the animation industry, as it’s a method that delivers fluid human
animation. It is basically the best way to quickly get animation done in
industry. A lesson based on motion capture would be extremely useful for drama
students, wanting to become actors. There is as much movement and expression
needed from a motion capture actor as any other, now that technology is
becoming more sophisticated in capturing more detailed movement’s.
.
This opened up a whole new
part of my MA. Collaborating with another area of study, being able to work
with them and give each other something in the end. As they have experience in
wearing motion capture suits and working in that sort of environment, and also
having something for their portfolio of work once my project has been done.
I am happy with the story I
created for this project, it has enough dialog to get across how the characters
talk, and enough action to show the differences in how they move, how they run,
how athletic they are etc. This gave the actors a lot to work with in the
motion capture studio, so it worked for both of us.
A month was spent creating
an animatic and a story board to show the story easily to people, while also helping
me estimate how long the animation in general would be. The story board was for
the drama students, as it helped them study what they were going to be asked to
do.
I also had to study a new
piece of soft wear named ‘Motionbuilder’, having to learn how to import my
models into it, and make the program know where there body parts were, when
compared to the actor’s body parts.
I then had working models in
Motionbuilder and a story, so it was time to record some animation data. Which went
swiftly, we had planned on using 2 days to capture it all, but because of the
planning and story board, we managed to do it in a single day.
Conclusion
It
turned out gender didn’t seem to matter when it came to game characters. But I
have now come to realise how important characters can be to games and stories,
and learning how to create stories that don’t rely on gender stereotypes. You
can give any gender’s character any kind of personality, whether it’s a male
who’s action are more feminine, or a female who acts more masculine. Actions do
not create a characters gender.
I
now know my final project is going to be an animation to display characters who
are more than a stereotype. It may be easier to display this if it was a longer
animation, or multiple animations, as to show more personality traits of the
characters, but it is the first step to creating characters that would fit into
a narrative style game.
Bibliography
· * Seaberg, B. (Unknown). Sex sells: An analysis of how sex really sells in video
games. Available: http://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/honors/documents/journals/sexinstone/Seaberg.pdf
Last accessed 23rd June 2014
· * Morris, R . (2012 ). Why characters are the heart of your novel- & how you
can write them effectively.
Available: https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/410/a-writers-toolkit/story-and-plot/
Last accessed 23rd June 2014
· * Inzlicht,
M. (2010) Human
brain recognizes and reacts to race, UTSC researchers discover. Available: https://ose.utsc.utoronto.ca/ose/story.php?id=2135
· * Mori,
M, (1970/2012). The
uncanny valley. Available: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/the-uncanny-valley
* Prahl, K. (2012). Sex sells,
but women and videogames deserve better. Available:
http://www.psu.com/a015848/Sex-sells-but-women-and-videogames-deserve-better.
Last accessed 23rd June 2014.
* Sharkey, M.(2010). Study: Playable Character Gender Does Not Impact Sales. Available: http://uk.gamespy.com/articles/111/1116228p1.html Last accessed 23rd June 2014.
Final poster design
