Where's my Olmos option?
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”
In most countries, that would be a tacky mating call of the dork, and most likely not fully true. We are not all good looking, at least according to the absurdly high standard of “beauty” that we buy into. Some of us are hairier, shorter, plumper, more elbowy, less graceful, more pimply, less in shape. When it comes to video games, however, the above question is simply stating fact. Most everyone in MMOs are nothing short of Greek gods come to life, sculpted perfectly and without an open pore in sight. The girls are buxom and curvy (yet athletic); the guys have double-six packs and more guns than a Kentucky gun show.
So I gotta ask: why can’t we make ugly people?
Sure, sure, many MMOs make a token pass at providing at least one or two options for deviating from stellar shades of beauty, but mostly those visual options are to add a couple of slight wrinkle lines under the eyes as to suggest age (the horror!). Us horde of heroes are almost always a parade of perfection, warriors who most likely grace the runways of Paris on the weekend — we are never gutter-trash that mothers shield children from when we pass their way, shrieking “What is that THING?”
The answer to why most all avatar options tend to fall within the “oh so gorgeous” range of attractiveness is fairly obvious — devs rightfully surmise that most players would rather project themselves into the game as a supermodel who never, ever had to worry about getting a date to the prom or felt so ostracized in high school that they grew up to write a series of sparkly vampire romance novels in which they Mary Sue’d themselves in as a highly desirable object of affection. But that’s not all of us, bub. No matter what the game, there’s always voices that cry out for the less-than-attractive options: to be fat, to be scarred, to be ugly.
Some games deliver on that. Warhammer Online actually skews more ugly than pretty, particularly for some races (like dwarfs and chaos). Age of Conan became legendary for giving you the ability to make a mug only a mother could like… and even then, she was just lying. And despite non-rotund options, City of Heroes certainly gave users more than enough tools to create a character that would cause other users to claw out their eyeballs upon gazing. But these games and these options are the exception.
Cute and/or sexy, that’s what most MMOs cling to. I just don’t get it. Some of our most beloved heroes in fiction aren’t either of those words. I’m a big fan of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice & Fire series, of which one of the main characters is an ugly dwarf who becomes horribly disfigured halfway through the series. That’s the guy I want to play! I’m not just talking about soap opera eyepatches in the disfigurement department, I mean the grotesque, the off-putting, the… shall we say, ordinary?
A beautiful character in a MMO is just like all the others, and seems to offer very little for visual personality, if you will. I want a character that makes other players do a double-take, a guy or gal who might not look top notch but fights twice as hard as the others to be recognized and to excell. I want ugly, developers!
I agree completely. I love playing ‘unique’ characters and it’s why character creation options should be as diverse as possible.
I loved being able to create fat, bald old men with bears in Age of Conan for example. It was great for roleplaying a dirty old man! So much fun when everyone else is running around with a beautiful tanned muscular warrior.
I’ve created an ugly character in Aion. Yes, in Aion, and I love playing him. Maybe someday I’ll write an article about it…
The simplistic answer is that ugly people don’t fit in the typical power fantasy you see in MMOs. Players want to be strong, heroic, and yes, beautiful. Lots of people get experience being ugly enough offline.
Some people have said that the Horde races in WoW were pretty “ugly” and therefore less popular. Not sure I buy into that exactly, but I will admit I surprised myself how many times I assumed a blood elf was an alliance race just from body shape alone.
Ultimately, it comes down to a business decision. Are people going too be happier, play longer, and refer their friends to the game if they can make “ugly” characters? Probably not. But, there is the chance that an ugly character screenshot might turn someone off a game. So, most developers aren’t going to put ugly characters in the game just to satisfy a minority; it just makes very little business sense.
This is highly due to personal views, when I take WoW for example, there’s no way to do anything “very off” (apart from Undead with missing jaws etc) but boy do I find several Orc and Human faces ugly.
Probably not the ugly you think, but I’d rather reroll from a high level than stand a bright green orc with a horrible hairstyle and one of those “oh no” faces.
To put this in perspective, my main wow char for over 3 years is a male orc, but some of those choices.. AAAAAAAHHH
I do agree that in Warhammer you could very well make a character that suits your definition of ugly (I don’t want to say disfigured) and still doesn’t look “not well done by designers”.
Overall, yes I agree – but especially WoW is a bit “friendly, cheerful elves and no real victims of war with scars” – which is a bit sad
Some aspects of what we consider attractive are hard-wired in us as an indication of health and strength. This helps us choose a mate that gives us our best chance to pass our genes/name on to the next generation.
So I think that’s part of it. We are playing heroes in these games (or anti-heroes), not ordinary people. Each of our characters is abnormally powerful in some respect (strength, magical talent, sneaking) and so finely proportioned avatars are the easiest way to visually represent that strength.
Granted, particularly when it comes to strengths beyond physical prowess, this idea isn’t very realistic. In the real world great minds and great bodies are totally disassociated from each other.
And as Brian Green says, the other aspect is financial. In those games were you can make really ugly avatars, not many people do. So does it makes sense for the devs to devote time and money to coding options that only a tiny percentage of players can use?
Full agreement. I don’t want “pretty”. That is such an empty word anyway. I don’t want “sexy”, especially for non-humans, because making everything under the sun “sexy” just reinforces the humans-in-funny-suits syndrome.
In WoW, my main is an older night elf druid. I picture her as very muscular and athletic, with sharp angular features, no “assets” worth mentioning and a haircut of the “if it grows beyong chin-length, saw it off with a knife” style. She’s a predator and nature’s protector, probably has an assortment of non-decorative scars to show for it. She’s no-nonsense and has no time for frills. She would not be remotely attractive by the general human standards, and probably not even handsome by the standards of her own people.
Sadly, most of the actual female night elf faces are what I call “babyfaces” — cute and round and soft and pouty and underage. Totally unsuitable for the race IMO, but it goes hand in hand with Blizzard turning the savage, spiritual, ancient Kaldorei into pinups with inane babyteen groupie animations. A few faces look more stylish for the race, but still too young. There is only one more severe and older face. I’m actually quite satisfied with it, but I wish there were more choices for “average”, “older” or “harsher” looking characters.
When such options exist they tend to look as over-the-top as the super-pretty ones, only in a constipated, perma-angry way.
WoW could really do with more customization, including height and body type, so it’d actually possible to play a physically powerful female and a slim, non-steroid-powered male.
I played an ugly character for years on WoW because I was tired of being a pretty-boy Night Elf Druid.
I made a Dwarf priest with the worst facial expression I could find, who was bald on top with a back-length pony tail. He ended becoming known as the “trailer park dwarf” by my group of friends he was so ugly.
I love ugly characters.
It’s about affecting other peoples’ game experience.
The more you are allowed / empowered to make your toon as hideous as you want, the more you are able to do so solely for the purpose of irritating or disturbing other players. So I guess i’m kind of a fascist on this one, as I am on naming policies. The gameplay experience for all is improved by limiting the options people have to irritate others.
You can make some abominations in Aion, which is funny given the overall aesthetic that goes into character design in that game.
I have seen some horrors during the last beta weekend and openly guffawed at some of them to the alarm and eventual awkwardness of the missus.
@Ninetytwo:
Isn’t Syp sort of making the same argument, just reversing it? I think he’s getting annoyed by all the “picture perfect” avatars out there, just as you may be annoyed if you came across a hideous-looking avatar.
Anyways, that wasn’t the comment I was really looking to make, but it might support it. I think both beautiful and hideous avatars are one and the same – they’re both just extreme exaggerations. And that’s what most of us want to play, probably because most of us are very “plain” or “vanilla” looking kind of people (i.e. not fat but not skinny, not hot but not ugly, not scarred but not blemish free, etc.).
That’s what I personally think is missing from a lot of character creation tools in the games (MMOs or not) that I’ve played – the ability to make an avatar that just “blends in” like a normal person. Maybe if they ever make a World of Darkness MMO I’ll have that option…
I’d like to add a vote for this, if I may
What really bothers me is that no game that I know of lets you make fat characters, this is really weird.
I mean what kind of fantasy world is it when you cant make a rolly polly jolly fat guy?
Even Aion which is well known for its high level of character customization allows ugly toons but not actually fat ones
How sad, my brother always tries to make a character exactly like himself and hes overweight so its usually not possible.
Are game developers biased against the overweight people?
Many actual game players are overweight, why can we not make our digital representation accurate?
Give us the option to roleplay a heavy toon.