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Putting On Your Game Face 57

Posted by simoniker from the but-it's-hideous dept.
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?
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Putting On Your Game Face More

Putting On Your Game Face

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  • 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...

  • Yeah, but everyone always plays as Tiger Woods (Score:3, Informative)

    by wrexsoul ( 48981 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:48PM (#7147146) Homepage
    Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] already covered this one [penny-arcade.com]... Or I guess you'd have to read the news post [penny-arcade.com]. But that's also been made fun of [penny-arcade.com] recently.

  • Depends on the game, really (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:50PM (#7147170) Homepage
    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?
    • You forgot strategy games. Operation Silent Storm [nival.ru] (screens [nival.ru]) includes a licenced LifeMode [lifemi.com] engine to dynamically model faces based on a number of tweakable parameters. See a few examples [www.lut.fi]. The best thing about this is that the faces fit the game and do not look like ugly photos plastered over in-game models. The bad thing is that Nival somewhat limited the customisation in order to simplify the interface.

      CyberExtruder [cyberextruder.com] has another interesting technology - generating a model based on a quality face photo.

  • Playing as Ourselves (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gr33nNight ( 679837 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:53PM (#7147203)
    I dont know about the rest of you, but I enjoy playing as really attractive female characters. Especially when they bounce. Alot.
    • It depends on the perspective of the game.

      No One Lives Forever II had one of the hottest characters- but since you played as her, you hardly ever got to SEE her. Except for cut-scenes...bummer. Damn first person.

      So in that case, it would be better to play AGAINST Kate Archer- which I think you will be doing in the next game.

      Volleyball games though...that is a good jiggly scene.

  • Machinama (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {dnalih}> on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:53PM (#7147211)
    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?
    • Maybe you could animate Toy Story in an afternoon, but could you write the script and do the voice acting in that timeframe? Could you make a Matrix, LOTR, or Monty Python film? No, you couldn't. There's a lot more to a good movie than the computer graphics.
    • That's assuming Hollywood is all about the special effects (sadly, it almost is anymore). You could probably make Star Wars in an afternoon at home now. Even I, who am not a tech wizard by any means, know how to make a light saber with a little photoshop skill. It's just a matter of using the technology to imagine and render something completely amazing and full of talent. The special effects should just be icing on the cake. Hollywood still has to have the talent in acting and screenplay writing. Plu

  • GTA3 (Score:1)

    by m2h ( 530494 )
    Nice of writer to only mention non-violent games. I always had a kick out of putting myself into GTA3.

    Latest news headline "Boy Plans serial killing through Video Game".

    It's a nice feature, but I think some of the more instable people in this world are going to use it as an excuse as to why they did things.
    • I did the same thing, putting my face on the main character in the first Grand Theft Auto 3.

      It was a blast because it would use the same skin in the cut scenes, so it looked like I was playing a part in the story.

      This face-replacement took longer to accomplish in the sequal, GTA:Vice City, since whenever your main avatar has to change clothes the game uses an entire "skin" for the clothing, which includes the original face skin.

      So you would have to place your face on over a dozen different skins. I didn

  • Handsome is as handsome... ah, whatever (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jtheory ( 626492 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @05:04PM (#7147325) Homepage Journal
    ...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?
    • <geek level="high">

      A few years back when I was in the middle of one of those "electives only" semesters in uni, I actually created an entire team of people I knew - I even asked them which numbers they wanted and took a few pictures to put into the game

      If that wasn't geeky enough, I actually had another friend make some custom jerseys, which I quickly imported.

      If that wasn't geeky enough, I played through an entire season with 20 minute periods, following the actual NHL schedule and emailed out a

    • I am a gamer, and I am unbelievably handsome. I am so handsome, in fact, that women cannot resist the overpowering urge to fellate me. Sometimes this becomes burdensome, such as when I am standing at the counter at Burger King and I can't reach the ketchup because of the woman fellating me.
      Sometimes my foreskin becomes waterlogged and I have to stay home and lock my doors until I fully dry.
      The problem is that as soon as I open the door, one of these nineteen year old college girls comes swooping onto my
  • The first time I saw the advert for this, I assumed it was an expansion pack, or integration with the sims.

    A lot of EA's [now] in-house titles are starting to look awfully similar

  • trespasser and body image (Score:3, Informative)

    by simoniker ( 40 ) * <simoniker@sl[ ]dot.org ['ash' in gap]> on Monday October 06, 2003 @05:20PM (#7147470) Homepage Journal
    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 [gamesfirst.com] and scroll down for the screenshot in question. Uhoh.

  • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @05:26PM (#7147526)
    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.

  • Fine, so long as one condition is met.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @05:38PM (#7147637) Homepage Journal
    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

  • 3Q [3q.com] are probably the pioneers of this concept and it's impossible not to like a contraption named QloneratorPRO which is used to digitally capture the 3-D human form.

    • Re:QloneratorPRO (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, 3Q are NOT the pioneers of this idea.

      Actually, this idea was first introduced by Bally/Midway in the early 80's. Ralph Baer, the father of videogames, first came up with the idea of incorporating a camera into a video game. He sold the idea to Bally/Midway, who built a prototype arcade game which was placed on a test location in Chicago. Players would look up at the marque when the game was about to begin, and the camera would take their picture, which would then be used in the game. Of course it wasn'
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I don't know about anyone else, but I get really fed up with these programs when they have a tiny range of shapes and sizes, I mean how hard is it to include deforms to make the model a bit bigger? Especially when they let the limit go a lot higher on the male models. Specifically of course I am talking about the fact that the female models they use are restricted so that you cannot possibly make a full figured woman, everything you create must stay within the supposedly "healthy" weight range. I don't
  • ...imagine how cool it would be if that same character could be transported to FIFA Soccer 2004, Madden NFL 2004, or even SSX 3.

    Then we'd have an overweight character panting for breath in FIFA, a 99lb. quarterback being crushed by a 300lb. linebacker in Madden and a snowboarder who's skin is whiter than the surrounding snow in SSX. In some games it works, but not in all cases. I'd rather create my own fantasy person than a recreation of myself.

  • If this were to come about and someone stole say a celebrity's image and used it on all games of this type, would that be considered identity theft? Would they have to also claim to BE that person as well? What about an ordinary guy who's got nothing to lose but his reputation... should someone be allowed to go around the gaming systems committing crimes or just stupidity WEARING YOUR FACE?

  • I have to say, this is one of the cooler features I have seen in a game even though I think it is more appropriate to golf than any other game. Unlike other sports, many of us do play golf (although not with the skill that I do on TW2004 unfortunately) and it is nice to be able to play as someone who looks like... well me. Double the fun when you can get your buddies together to play a round at Pebble Beach anytime you want and actually see the group there.The best so far though has been responding to my in

  • bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by OwlofCreamCheese ( 645015 )
    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.
    • I need a Quake skin and model of goatse.cx made so that the railgun fires out of the anus. At least nobody will sneak up and grenade me in the ass from behind. They'll have to be in front of me to do that.

  • GTA Vice City (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 :(

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