"Why Are There So Many Ugly Characters?"

Hi everyone, it's me Tim. Today I want

to talk about

why are there so many ugly characters in

games.

Now

I say that I put that in quotes because

I don't necessarily believe it, but I

get asked this a lot. And let me just

put this in context. me, a colorblind

non-art

who probably has ideas of who is pretty

that's not the same as many of you

is being asked that question. I'm going

to try to answer it. The the most recent

question was from Gabbor 6502 who asked,

"I've been wondering for a long time why

do American and many European companies

deliberately make player and NPC

characters ugly these days? Is there

some market segmentation or economic

logic behind this?" Disclaimer, I'm not

interested in political things that some

players say on the subject. I'm

interested in the real logic. I'm going

to hold you to that because it seems to

not work due to many flops. Also, do

European and Asian companies seem more

successful who don't do it or is this an

effect of AI? There's no time to fix the

generated characters. Um, I say right

off the bat has nothing to do with AI

because apparently this has been going

on for a long time. And you know, I've

worked on games that don't have any AI

in it and most characters aren't

generated with AI. And you say it's done

in every in many games or you imply it's

in everything or a lot of things. But

I'm going to take this question at face

value because

OP said they wanted logic on this. So

here goes. Also, many of you complain I

take too long to get to my point. So

here's my point. I like variety. There

you go. There's the answer. Fishbulb.

Many people like variety in their games.

And it's weird that a huge complaint

people are having recently is there are

too many sy games, but I'll get to that.

So,

so many games use what I would call

idealized characters. Some of you call

them beautiful, and I'll get to that,

but let's call them idealized. You know,

it's the the buff man and the hourglass

shaped woman with big attributes.

But let me remind you that for two

decades, for over 20 years now, there

has been a running joke that the

protagonist in first person shooters all

look the same. People post uh this

picture or one a lot like it multiple

times because guess what? There's been

there's been white male brunette

protagonists for decades. You have

literally tens of thousands of games to

pick from with that guy or some

variation of that guy in it.

And it's weird because

you you might want to flip the question

around and say, "Why are you finding

yourself so triggered by a character

who's not the idealized or or um

mathematically

center or however you want to

objectively talk about it?" Because he

said he wanted to talk about logic.

Why does it bother you to see characters

who aren't this? Because in an era where

people are complaining, hey Tim, and I

get this a lot, games out there are too

there's too many games that are the

same. They seem like the same game just

skinned differently with slightly

different mechanics and slightly

different settings. And you know, it can

be for a lot of reasons. Caution in the

among the people have the money to spend

on these games or the fact that most

games are made on just a tiny handful of

the same engines. Those engines do

certain things well. So those games all

do those things because that's what the

engine does well.

So, it's weird to live in a world to be

in a world now where people are

complaining about siness and then

without any hint of hypocrisy. Oh, but I

get really mad when I see characters

that I don't think are pretty. It just

seems like

do you want various games or not? And by

the way, it's not just beauty. People

complained and they've done this in my

games that there were too many women in

roles of authority which is weird

because I remember I can click on people

and see all their comments. They don't

complain about games that the opposite

was true where it was men in every

single role of authority. Somehow that's

okay even though to me that's just as

extreme. So it's not always just about

beauty. It's about anything that rocks

the boat or makes them think this is not

standardized anymore.

There are so many thousands, probably

tens of thousands, I'm guessing maybe

approaching hundreds of thousands of

games that have particularly looking

protagonists.

You've got them. You've already got all

that.

But then, I mean, we're going to have to

ask a question like, what do you mean by

beauty anyway? That's why I was trying

to say idealized because it's different

for different people. Um, I have a whole

game called bad games where I try to

point out to people that what they think

is bad in a game is very subjective.

That some people will play games with

low frame rates or with cartoony

characters and other people go that's

stupid. I won't play that. And yes, just

like people said, well, there are some

metrics like I won't play a game that

crashes all the time or runs at one

frame a second. There are some metrics

of beauty like symmetry and proportion

but even those aren't universal to

especially not universal to everyone.

Forget universal to every culture

universal to every person. But um you

know what sorry OP asked for logic. So

let's go back to logic.

Although I will say that many people ask

this question they're coming from a

place of emotion while pretending it's

not. So let me go back to logic for a

second. Let me remind everyone watching

that I made a game, an RPG that had

beauty as an attribute. That's right.

Beauty was one of the eight attributes

in Arcanum.

This means in the Arcanum game world,

beauty was considered completely

objective and measurable.

And this was the same for every race,

every gender, because you just had

beauty. And it didn't and if you if you

had adjustments made for those, that was

for every race and every gender. So,

some people complained about that and I

said, "Well, it is a fantasy game and

there's magic and ghosts for this game.

We made beauty an objectively measurable

thing."

But more importantly, the point I'm

trying to make now is that means that

attribute went in and the designers

intended for beauty to matter and

intended for some players to take a low

beauty and some players to make take a

high beauty and have that affect the

game.

So,

in the GA game world of Arcanum, beauty

was objective. But guess what? To

players, we knew it was still

subjective. And I'll give you a hint on

how we showed you that. We included a

ton of portraits that you could pick to

be your player character portrait. But

they were not ranked as whether they

were beautiful or not. You could pick

any of them you wanted.

We just threw them in there. It was up

to you to decide whether this particular

portrait represented a beautiful player

character or not. That was entirely up

to you. Now, of course, despite what

portrait you picked, it was your beauty

attribute that determined whether NPCs

thought you were beautiful or not. The

game was very clear about that.

And now, because it's Tim Kane story

time, I want to tell you a story. It's

called my I like variety story. Back at

Troa, a friend of mine, one of one of my