Resartus

Interesting theory. It would also go pretty well with my theory that they take their cues from Hollywood actresses. Basically, if you're not confident you can conjure up a real looking human head model out of thin air you start by modeling it after some actress you like and give it your own touch by changing details. That could very well lead to the similar developments in movies and games.

None of the stuff you quoted was a joke. None of it is also neccessarily true. In order of likelyhood I'd say the positive correlation between character traits beneficial to a Hollywood career and a square jawline with higher than average testosterone levels is most likely true but probably not all that strong. Gays being overrepresented in jobs like Hollywood agents also strikes me as very likely. I don't have the slightest idea though if they would on average prefer a more square jawline in women. If I had to say "yes" or "no" I'd say "yes", but it's very possible I'd be wrong. The HGH thing is pure bullshit speculation on my part in the sense that I have no idea if it's all that common to use that stuff for actresses. But given that their career is almost perfectly linked to looking young if their name isn't Meryl Streep I'd be kinda surprised if there wasn't pretty strong pressure to use stuff like that. And the side effects of using anabolic agents are pretty apparent if you look at other groups like bodybuilders that have used them since the dawn of time. That would by the way also explain how Angelina Jolie can change the bones in her face over the course of her career.

I understand the relevance of the way porn stars look for the question of what is considered a "normal" feminine face. You're saying my reference point for the average female facial range is off because the average female face I look at is not the average female face in the real world. It's a good point with regard to the way I put the question in the OP, but it does not seem pertinent for the way I rephrased it afterwards to sidestep the whole "what is a feminine face" question which unfortunately seems to needlessly charge the topic for many. Basically, let's disregard whether or not a square jawline is masculine or feminine, let's focus on whether or not jawlines in video game characters are getting more square. That's how I probably should have put it from the very beginning to keep the question disentangled from the definition of words many people have strong emotional attachments to. That all said, If I had to bet money on it I'd surely bet on porn stars having more, not less, square jawlines on average than the population at large simply because promiscuity is linked to exactly these kind of facial features. Link

Basically all of you claim to not see what I'm seeing. Now one possibility is that we truly see different things. In that case I should probably question my eyesight or at least my intepretation of what my eyes tell me. But there's another possibility that I hadn't really considered before: We see the same/similar things, it's just that you disagree with the terms I'm using to describe them. i.e. you also see that the geometrical shape of Miranda's and Nilin's face is pretty much a square, whereas the shape of Lara's face is oval. But you don't associate a square facial shape with the word "masculine". Is that it?

Mmh, I thought the "™" was a clear sign I was joking, but since both of you referenced the "gay conspiracy" and I can't tell if you think I was serious: It was a joke. No conspiracy of course. Just people hiring at least in part according to their own preference, which is both normal and inevitable. Happens everywhere. There was this interesting study for example that attractive men had an advantage over unattractive men if they applied for a job, for women it was the other way around. The theory was that the mostly female employees in HR departments were probably not much interested in female competition at the workplace, but they probably enjoyed having more attractive men around. I don't recall how strong the finding was and as most things in social sciences there's no real proof, but it at least sounds like a plausible theory. Also, no conspiracy.

Given that we can all instantly tell in almost every case if a person is male or female there are clearly patterns that our brain recognizes as feminine or masculine. I'm therefore positive you know what a feminine face is. It's also obviously a continuum and not two either/or categories. What's striking is that usually fictional characters seem to be designed to resemble the more extreme tail of the spectrum. Your male hero, probably very big and muscular, is one example. It's not that men in real life are all big and muscular, it's just that they are on average more big and muscular then women and thus the more extreme fictional representation makes the character instantly readable which usually seems to be desired in order to focus on whatever you wanna focus on in your fiction. With Morrigan in particular my brain tells me it's a male character even though I know fully well she's not. Edit: Lara Croft would be a current example of a more feminine face btw.

I've noticed something a bit curious lately and would like to talk about it. Thing is, it has to do with gender and unfortunately that does not seem to play well with internet discussions. In fact, maybe this has even been talked about already and I just missed it because I usually try to stay away from threads that are politically charged in any way. My best hope for keeping this civil is to ask you all to keep any value judgement to yourself, i.e., let's talk about whether or not the thing I've noticed is real or not and what drives it, but not whether or not you and I approve of it. What I'm talking about is the way female characters seem to be designed with increasingly masculine facial features. Miranda from Mass Effect is a good example from a while back. Remember Me's Nilin is very recent and Morrigan from the new Dragon Age 3 trailer is another example. I think it's mostly the very square jawline and to a lesser degree the somewhat prominent chin. Maybe something else, don't know. I think we kinda process faces in their entirety which makes it hard to pinpoint exactly what I mean. There seems to be a somewhat similar trend in other industries with actresses like, say, Angelina Jolie or Olivia Wilde: But with real people I can come up with several possibilities that might lead to this phenomenon. Successful actresses are probably very competitive and both their facial features and their personality might be positively correlated with above average testosterone levels. Or maybe it's a side effect of HGH plenty of actresses are bound to use. Gays are almost certainly overrepresented among Hollywood agents which might have selection effects similar to the fashion industry. Most likely a combination of all of them. None of those reasons really work for Video game characters though. Well, maybe gays being overrepresented among designers? Or is it simple emulation of movie characters? That is probably my best guess. So, what do you think? Is this even a real thing or is it just my imagination? Any wild theory what could drive this other than the Great Gay Conspiracy™ or the shameless copying of Hollywood?

The first: CPU is better and only needed for overclocking. That in turn is not possible with the very old and feature starved mainboard included. Makes this a very odd combination. The second: Same very powerful CPU, again mainboard not really suitable for the CPU but at least from this generation. The GPU is a good deal less powerful than the GTX 660. Better power supply at least. The third: Same CPU and board combination as second. GPU is alright, but a bit weaker and cheaper than the 660. To be honest, I would not buy any of these systems. They all cut corners somewhere and you're still paying a premium. Thing is, if you are sure you don't want to pick your own parts and build it yourself that's probably unavoidable and at the end of the day, all those 3 + the one from dell will certainly do the job.

Well, that one will certainly work. But they again neither list mainboard, nor power supply and even if they are on par with the rest it's very much too expensive. I'm not familiar with US prices, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't get it at least 150 dollars cheaper.

Yes, it sometimes seems as if the manufacturers want to confuse people with their weird numbering schemes and all that. Oh, and when you write GTX 600, you mean GTX 660 right? Wanna share the link to the offer you found?

Usually you call the dedicated graphics unit a GPU. That's what these GeForce cards are. And yes, the GTX 660 would be perfect. Edit: I see you edited you post.

He can still pick the parts himself. Around here you pay about 20 Euro if you then want to have it build for you.

Nope, it's also a very low-end budget card. Generally, GPU gives you most bang-for-buck for gaming, so that should not be the part where you save money. With a 700 dollar budget, your split should probably be something like this: CPU: 150 Mainboard: 75 GPU: 200 RAM: 50 HDD: 50 PSU: 50 Case: 50 OS: 75

Re the Dell thing: - i7 is burned money for gaming - GPU is really important for gaming, and the one included is not something you want to have - Optical drive is probably unnecessary - I don't see a mainboard so I assume they are ashamed of it - Not much info on the PSU so it's probably not good

I have build a new gaming PC just a few weeks ago with basically the same goals you have so here's my take: CPU: Intel i5-3470 (if you want to save a bit in power consumption and price the i5-3350 would also be great. i5-3570 is for overclocking which I assume you don't want to do) Mainboard: ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP (the two most commonly used mainboard chipsets are H77 and Z77. the main difference is that Z77 can overclock and multi GPU, hence H77 is more than enough for your need) GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 (Nvidia seems to have less driver issues, but if you want a bit more power, AMD Radeon 7870 would also be great) RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600 (not much to say here really. If you see yourself doing some video editing you could upgrade to 16, but for gaming it makes no difference) HDD: Any 7200rpm SATA drive (SSD is still pretty unreliable and simply not needed for anything gaming related) PSU: 500 Watt, 80+ certified (power supply is pretty crucial so spending a few dollars more on a reliable one makes sense) Rest: Any ATX case you like, Win7 Home Premium 64-Bit, that's it. You could add a cooler for your CPU, but again, if you don't overclock the stock intel cooler that comes with you i5 is really good enough unless you live somewhere very hot. Even including the OS it cost me under 700 Euro. Given the usual weird conversion I guess it's about 700 dollars for you. Oh, and you should just put it together yourself. There is basically nothing you can do wrong, you save money, it's fun to do and if you get stuck there are hundreds of guides and youtube videos to help you out.