Create your Character

Being the amateur video gaming connoisseur that I am, I was a little stumped when this project was assigned. I knew I could bring it to my low level of video game knowledge somehow, but I wanted it to still be able to appeal to those professional gamers. I thought about what video games mean to me, what I focus on the most when playing a video game. I used to be hooked on The Sims and currently I’m hooked to Wii. I absolutely love picking or making my character for a game. The character you choose is everything. It’s what will represent you throughout your gaming experience, in the game and to your fellow teammates or friends.

 A person’s choice of avatar could definitely say a lot about their personality. There are probably a couple different breakdowns that could be made on this topic. I decided to try and break down my categories of video game character personalities.

1. The vicariously living player. Someone who makes their character with features or abilities that they wish they had. I think this is an interesting concept for online games, where you can’t see the person you are playing with, just their character.
2. Someone who wants to make their character as funny as possible, adding as many crazy attributes purely for humor purposes.
3. Someone who makes his or her character super raunchy (ex. Sims), letting the dirty part of their mind let loose through this digital play world.
4. The look alike, someone who wants their character to look just like them, represent them as almost identically as possible. Haven’t we all done this on the Wii? It was the very first thing I did when I got my Wii, I didn’t go straight to playing the games, I created my Mii.
5. Someone who constantly will use the same character, usually if the character is already provided for you. This could be because of superstition, or just preference.

 I decided to create a choose-your-character flipbook. Spiral bound so you could mix and match different eyes, with noses, with mouths. You can create your very own character from real people’s faces. You could take characteristics from each person’s face. Pairing Donna’s evil eyes, with Phillip’s big flared nostrils, with Sam’s rabid teeth. In the past I had actually thought about creating a video project on this same premise of matching different peoples facial attributes, but not in reference to video games. So, this idea had more reason than ever to be put in play in a different medium.

 I think the physical interaction is the most important part of my piece. The act of flipping through a booklet to choose your character is an interesting spin on the medium in which we are used to choosing a character. We are used to using a keyboard, mouse or controller as our means to connect to the digital interface we are viewing. By creating a booklet I’m taking out the different levels of the connection between a persons hands and the visual actions on screen. With my flipbook you can choose your matched character hold it, put it up to your face, and change it around. I made the choosing of your character the game.

 Another aspect of my project that comes into play is race. I’ve taken photos of different ethnicities, giving the “player” the option to mix and match his or her race. I find the references to race in the game world intriguing, mainly when there are made up races in games.

 I started looking around on the internet for comments on characters and race in video games and came across this really interesting blog http://nwn.blogs.com/ and specifically http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/01/iris-most-talked-about-posts-of-2011.html#more . Iris Ophelia has countless posts about Second Life and virtual fashion. I had no idea this existed, I am amazed in a kind of disturbed way. I had heard of the game Second Life but I didn’t know the concept or anything at all about it. WOW. Talk about living vicariously through an avatar in a game world…. Gaming character personality one encompassed in a whole concept of a game.

 After reading the articles above I went to the Second Life website and found where you could “Become your avatar”. Want an image of yourself transformed into a sleek sexy digital character?.... There ya go.  “A digital persona… that resembles your real life or create an alternate identity.” Almost everything avatar on this website just looks sexy. I mean it’s awesome to look at but unbelievably unrealistic. I will repeat that I have not played Second Life, but I am beyond intrigued. Taking The Sims to a whole new level.

 In comparison of the game Second Life to my project, there is a concept that exists along the same premise but they are pretty much opposites. I took real people, with wrinkles and flaws and am forcing the “player” to create their avatar from pre existing humans. Second Life avatars appear to be flawless in appearance. They can take a picture of you, with your wrinkles and flaws and turn you into a tight, bronzed, beautiful virtual being.

 I thought about somehow creating a story or meaning to what options you choose from my book. By attempting to actually diagnose your personality type. Maybe by writing a few words or phrase on the back of each third then the combination of what was on the backs of the images would diagnose your gamer personality. I like this idea, but it was too difficult to pin point and assign a “gamer personality” to a real person’s facial features… especially considering I used many people I already knew. Perhaps if I didn’t know the people I took photos of I could have added meaning to their facial features without a biased knowledge of the individuals.

 Overall my project turned out pretty humorous, I’ve flipped through the book countless times to find the funniest combinations I could. I think my project turned out basically pushing the player into being characterized into gamer personality type #2 as I had mentioned before.