Poster essay

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