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Resartus

On Video game faces

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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.

Miranda-lawson-1-.jpg

 

remember_me_nilin.jpg

 

255894-mor.jpg

 

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:

Angelina-Jolie_510x380.jpg

 

Olivia-Wilde_7.jpg

 

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?

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I don't want to be too quick to dismiss this, but I don't really see it. Looking at it from the other side, what would be a 'feminine' face? Would that incorporate more exaggerated round and soft features, bigger eyes?

 

Regardless of how trends in facial features run (a more startlingly boring example would be the 'male heroes with short hair and youthful angry stares), I highly doubt there's a conspiracy. In this case, I doubt there's even a lot of copying going on.

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I don't want to be too quick to dismiss this, but I don't really see it. Looking at it from the other side, what would be a 'feminine' face? Would that incorporate more exaggerated round and soft features, bigger eyes?

 

Regardless of how trends in facial features run (a more startlingly boring example would be the 'male heroes with short hair and youthful angry stares),, I hughly doubt there's a conspiracy. In this case, I doubt there's even a lot of copying going on.

 

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.

11079942740a12992978291l.jpg

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Thanks for the example.

 

It's interesting, because I interpret that picture of Croft immediately as a more stylized, or rather a less 'straight out of life' face than I would for instance Miranda. Generally speaking though, if this is a trend, it can only in the long run promote diversity. It's a good thing, if it's happening at all, that designers don't feel the need to hyperfemininize (yes!) females. To me, it speaks of them and us becoming more comfortable with all sorts of faces in games on exactly the continuum you describe.

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I don't really know where to start here. I guess I'd have to first accept your assertion that Miranda, Nilin, and Morrigan have traditionally "masculine" faces, which I don't really see. Then I'd have to ignore your weird conspiracy that gay men and Human Growth Hormone run Hollywood. Then I'd have to forget that rendering 3D faces is incredibly hard to get right, and that male or female, most realistic triple-A games have faces that look weird and janky in some way.

 

I dunno dude, I think it's just you? I'd leave you with the advice that you really can't determine if someone is male or female by looking at their face, but turning this into a conversation about trans-awareness would probably become a disaster in it's own right.

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Those faces aren't very masculine at all. And in any case, Miranda is modeled after this lady: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yvonne_strahovski_(cropped).jpg

 

Nilin's voice actor has a stronger jaw than the character, but I wouldn't describe her face as masculine in any way either:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3334143/

 

If there's a problem it's that Bioware and other companies like to design every character with the same predictable body and face types.

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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.

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My bad. I figured you were being a little facetious, but when I couldn't tell where in the continuum of "testosterone, HGH, gay agents" it began, I wondered if maybe you weren't. It being the internet and all.

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I don't really see it. The last two CGI faces especially look very feminine to me. I suspect I might see it differently if I spent a lot of time looking at porn star faces* and developed a corresponding bias.

 

* Safe for work in that it's not pornographic, but does talk about porn.

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The problem with Miranda's face is it just looks weird because Mass Effect shaders 'n' shit.

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I don't see it.  I can tell you Morrigan's mouth animation was terrifying on the DA3 promo yesterday.

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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?

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Pretty sure Nachimir summed it up perfectly. Porn star faces. I see "masculine" faces on a daily basis.

Except Miranda she's still awkward for the reason I stated.

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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?

 

Just to clarify, which bits of this are jokes?

 

We're talking about square jawlines essentially, right? Personally, I don't think the last two of your video game examples really fit.

 

Randomly picking this choice of attractive current actresses doesn't show too many, either: http://latestwebstuff.com/top-10-sexiest-and-beautiful-hollywood-actresses-of-2012/2916.html

 

But if indeed you have noticed a trend we haven't, an interesting point is that, comparing that photo of Jolie to younger photos of her (say, in Hackers), she did not always have that jawline. Perhaps as more actresses feel obliged to approach zero percent body fat, more of them have jawlines resembling that of a skull. And gaming follows accordingly.

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Pretty sure Nachimir summed it up perfectly. Porn star faces. I see "masculine" faces on a daily basis.

Except Miranda she's still awkward for the reason I stated.

 

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

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Just to clarify, which bits of this are jokes?

 

We're talking about square jawlines essentially, right? Personally, I don't think the last two of your video game examples really fit.

 

Randomly picking this choice of attractive current actresses doesn't show too many, either: http://latestwebstuff.com/top-10-sexiest-and-beautiful-hollywood-actresses-of-2012/2916.html

 

But if indeed you have noticed a trend we haven't, an interesting point is that, comparing that photo of Jolie to younger photos of her (say, in Hackers), she did not always have that jawline. Perhaps as more actresses feel obliged to approach zero percent body fat, more of them have jawlines resembling that of a skull. And gaming follows accordingly.

 

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.

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Perhaps as more actresses feel obliged to approach zero percent body fat, more of them have jawlines resembling that of a skull. And gaming follows accordingly.

 

This seems like the most logical conclusion to me.

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Ok, so I guess if none of that was a joke I didn't really misinterpret you, and I genuinely think that HGH, gay agents, and testosterone are all really bizarre theories for something no one is really agreeing on existing in the first place.

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Errr... I don't want to touch on the gay conspiracy stuff at all, but I will say I have noticed 3D models of women in general to be masculine over the years, even beginning in the 90s (and yes, it has greatly improved). Also on your first three examples, I actually only feel Miranda is masculine in her facial features.

 

My theory on why you have so many masculine 3D models is because 3D artists, as in artist who only works in 3D and never have had any drawing abilities on which to base their foundation on (including real life sculpture), tend to be shit. This is from lack of ideas (Just add tons of detail and realistic textures, that's character design) and having a hard time distinguishing anatomy between the two genders and overdoing it. Often it's just "ugliness" that results in faces and bodies feeling more masculine in females as I am not sure why this is, but having a very constructed face or overly defined body denies the idea of femininity which is just the general idea of soft features.

 

Maybe that's just prejudice coming from myself but I have met very little 3D artist who could draw worth their salt or have a good ortho in which to base a character on, so they just tend to fall on the crutch of having a 3D program to define all of their symmetry and tweaks for them, often tweaked to hell. Then when they work professionally and a concept or character artist is creating the ortho for them, they tend to bring their bad habits and kill the essence of the character, which femininity is one.

 

Anyway, I don't mean to hate completely, as some of the most amazing 3D artists I've seen come from a place where they are good at drawing and painting and creating appealing characters all by themselves before getting to the modeling stage.

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Gays are almost certainly overrepresented among Hollywood agents which might have selection effects similar to the fashion industry

 

 

None of the stuff you quoted was a joke.

 

 

actresses who have square jawlines are another part of the SINISTER GAY AGENDA

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Okay now I read the part of the original post I glazed over. Errrr.... Olivia Wilde not representing femininity? But... every feature she has is soft and feminine.

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Errr... I don't want to touch on the gay conspiracy stuff at all, but I will say I have noticed 3D models of women in general to be masculine over the years, even beginning in the 90s (and yes, it has greatly improved). Also on your first three examples, I actually only feel Miranda is masculine in her facial features.

 

My theory on why you have so many masculine 3D models is because 3D artists, as in artist who only works in 3D and never have had any drawing abilities on which to base their foundation on (including real life sculpture), tend to be shit. This is from lack of ideas (Just add tons of detail and realistic textures, that's character design) and having a hard time distinguishing anatomy between the two genders and overdoing it. Often it's just "ugliness" that results in faces and bodies feeling more masculine in females as I am not sure why this is, but having a very constructed face or overly defined body denies the idea of femininity which is just the general idea of soft features.

 

Maybe that's just prejudice coming from myself but I have met very little 3D artist who could draw worth their salt or have a good ortho in which to base a character on, so they just tend to fall on the crutch of having a 3D program to define all of their symmetry and tweaks for them, often tweaked to hell. Then when they work professionally and a concept or character artist is creating the ortho for them, they tend to bring their bad habits and kill the essence of the character, which femininity is one.

 

Anyway, I don't mean to hate completely, as some of the most amazing 3D artists I've seen come from a place where they are good at drawing and painting and creating appealing characters all by themselves before getting to the modeling stage.

 

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.

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I've been playing a lot of old (90's) PC games and I find that the faces look a lot more realistic.  By this I mean that I find something like http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/pc/a/r/arxfpc019.jpg to look a lot more like a real life person than someone in something like Skyrim.  Even looking at next gen E3 stuff, everything is just getting more and more hi-fi yet unrealistic.  This doesn't really have much to do with the main topic in this thread, but the title made me want to post this here.

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