The BRAWL² Tournament Challenge has been announced!
It starts May 12, and ends Sept 12. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
It starts May 12, and ends Sept 12. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
Best Of
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
in the time spent watching youtube videos you could make your own porn game with characters just how you like and sell it. It's not that hard. people will buy it.
polycount is meant to be a community for people who are making things, right? I mean critiquing is helpful to an extent but usually it's focused on productivity as the goal.
also when quoting post, delete out most of the stuff so each post isn't an entire page. Think of the audience, you know. Sheesh.
polycount is meant to be a community for people who are making things, right? I mean critiquing is helpful to an extent but usually it's focused on productivity as the goal.
also when quoting post, delete out most of the stuff so each post isn't an entire page. Think of the audience, you know. Sheesh.
Alex_J
8 ·
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
Well, I accidentally refreshed and Polycount ate my reply, so I'll be brief.
It doesn't speak well to your character that you saw a feature that was definitely added for the sake of trans people, among others, and your first thought was apparently to make a "joke" like "this is for people who work in porn."
And there you go again with the concern trolling over backlash. The "controversy" is simply bigot outrage. It should be ignored. And if they want to not buy the game and self-exclude from its community? Good! We shouldn't be taking their bigotry into account and designing around it.
Stop claiming to be talking in good faith when you keep putting in pointless "jokes" that just so happen to always be at the expense of something right wing talking points love to shit on. Like, what's with that thing about cultural appropriation? Stupid comment.
It's not a threat for that user to point out you could get blacklisted. I wouldn't want to work with someone if they tore down people's work and "fixed" it for a hobby either. It's just a legitimate warning. What's with this sense of persecution?
The people who don't agree it's sexist are the sexists. It's not coincidental that it's always women creators or characters getting this shit. Lara Croft, Abby, Kay Vess, Miranda, the list goes on. The complaints are always the same kind of shit.....That they're not attractive enough, that they have too much of a jaw, or their boobs were made more sensible, or that the camera isn't leering at their arses anymore, or that they don't have a thin waist, big arse and tits, or that they actually look strong instead of being a male fantasy waif, etc. Of course the people whining about that are going to pretend they're not bigots.
Scott Eaton isn't posting his shit for the public and slagging them off. Pointing out objective anatomical errors for the sake of teaching anatomy is not the same as publicly slagging off someone's work and saying you're "fixing" it to ride the social media wave for clout.
Oh look, there you go again linking to a right wing shitsite that genuinely uses the word "woke activist" while simultaneously swearing up and down that you're talking in good faith and totally not a true believer trying to put a respectable face on all that nasty bigotry. And no, that guy wasn't "shit talking white people". It's common sense to say that just passively "not being racist" doesn't do anything against racism when you're passively doing nothing from a position that's actively uplifted by racism.
Once again, the idea that they should be taking into account "all criticism" is fucking stupid. Absolutely insane. The truth is, some criticism isn't worth shit. And the shit these games have been getting? Absolutely worthless.
I'm just going to leave a little edit here because if my guess is right it's going to be funny. I'd bet in a few days NikhilR is going to be complaining either about Ghost of Yotei, or he'll bring up the HZD remaster's face changes as justification for why Kay Vess and/or others' faces can be changed.
Rima
1 ·
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
Lol imagine whingeing about more character customization options in a game where you create your own character. Like scars are bad-ass and easily one of the things anyone will add to any custom character ever, starting from your angsty teenage years onward because it creates a little bit of history. In a game dev context, they are very easy to add. It's not about whether or not it "makes sense" or has a in-game "narrative reason" to exists, it's about you creating your own backstory for the kind of character you want to play. Questions aren't asked whether or not certain face scars make sense. A good litmus test is examining how you feel about all of the customization features, if you're sitting there and are ok with vitiligo, bulge size, hip size, hair colors, tattoos, breast sizes, butt sizes, cauliflower ears, etc etc but chest scars are a step too far? I would ask yourself why that is. I've never seen anyone complain about having more options unless there is clearly some sort of imbalance (which imo is valid), like the number of long hair options vs short hair is a common one.
Concord pandering pandering to the LGBT crowd because it has rainbows in the marketing material? Dear lord that is some brain rot, not to mention a complete lack of art history knowledge of 70s scifi and art in general, which was all about the glitz and glam. The era is absolutely saturated with color and rainbows and Concord was drawing inspiration from them... are the cover for Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon ('73), the poster for Star Trek the Motion Picture ('79), the poster for Logan's Run ('76), pandering as well because they have rainbows? Of course not, and before the thought of "they were a product of their time" comes in the first Pride flags of the original rainbow variant were flown in '78. It seems so limiting an reactionary to just assume that a rainbow instantly means pandering, it's so silly and honestly sad. I don't want to derail the thread with Concord, but the artists have been posting their stuff on Artstation, and it's worthwhile to show them some love, some of the characters come across much better with a more dynamic lighting setup, you can see all of these interesting stitching and designs on their gear that was completely washed out in the game unfortunately. Even if you don't think highly of the game, and there are valid criticisms, the artists absolutely did put in the work to push fidelity and it shows. Marketing material was probably some of the strongest all round stuff, absolutely evoked the 70s vibe, like the promotional image or even the PS5 controller were very good imo.
Little late to reply to this:
Isn't discussing Cup size or band size the natural progression of a discussion on proportions on female character models?
Atleast at work I've never seen the mention of this to be an issue for any developer and if there was an issue nobody has brought it up.
Atleast at work I've never seen the mention of this to be an issue for any developer and if there was an issue nobody has brought it up.
In my 10 years of professional experience, across japanese and western games have never had exact measurements be used in this way. In fact the only absolute measurements that consistently seem to matter is a character's height, and sometimes their width so their overall volume can be known. Those things very much matter from a game design perspective so characters can climb up or fit in things, so the doors are the right height/width or so everything in a scene feels in-scale. Like we don't say "for this guy he needs to have pants that are a 30 waist with 34 inseam" we just say this guy should feel thin and lanky or his overall proportions aren't fitting the concept. Just like how we don't say "oh this person would wear a large shirt" or "have size 12 shoes" It's all general proportions, shapes, silhouette. A lot of the other defined details tend to be heavily fudged and when you do the math on their weight/height/whatever, it doesn't match up. There are some pokemon that are infamous for these sorts of details, or for like Street Fighter 6 they are trying to tell me that Ryu is 187lbs, but M Bison who is a few inches taller and equally as muscular is 247lbs... like no lol, the only thing accurate probably is the height because it does factor into gameplay.
It was completely glossed over how I mentioned that cup/band size is not completely understood even by the people who need bras, like for example did you know that they are proportional? So 2 different band sizes with the same letter are actually different in volume. A lot of people vastly under/overestimate what the sizes actually look like, plus you have to factor in regional differences etc, a bra is a highly specialized piece of clothing that we somehow have managed to mass produce. You can go somewhere like https://www.reddit.com/r/ABraThatFits/wiki/index/ to actually get a deep dive into that stuff if you're interested. However because it can vary so much, and also just things like the cut and type of bra someone is wearing can affect the shape/fit, cup size is not helpful when reviewing a character at all. Plus as you put it:
It isn't the same as saying
"can you make this characters breasts match your cup size?"
(jeez that felt dirty, I'm sorry I had to say it to make my point)
"can you make this characters breasts match your cup size?"
(jeez that felt dirty, I'm sorry I had to say it to make my point)
A conversation around a character's cup/band size can very easily turn out something in that vein, where in order for someone to prove that whatever size is being asked for is either larger or smaller, is to have to reveal that sort of detail about yourself. This can very easily lead to an HR nightmare and be very uncomfortable for everyone. Plus it just reveals ignorance about a topic if someone is like "can the chest be bigger, like a DD?" (because for some reason people think DD is absolutely huge, maybe because it's as high as department stores go?) when a DD might actually be smaller than what the character has... It's why it's better to talk about from a proportion, volume and shape rather than be beholden to exact measurements that may not even be correct for what you're going for.
Anyway, enough about all of that! Wasn't this thread about the new Star Wars game? I'm curious, what exactly is the goal of this thread OP? Especially at this point? What are you hoping to get out of it?
Alemja
1 ·
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
NikhilR said:Its inclusion being presented this way (without context) is polarising players, with many confused as to why a 21st century procedure has been included in a magical fantasy set in medieval times.
The suspension of disbelief in this regard is immersion breaking.
Dragon Age is not set in medieval times. Medieval times are a time period specific to the real world. It's a typical pseudo-medieval fantasy, but that is not the same, and it's absurd to say that scars resembling a 21st century procedure are the breaking point when dragons and magic are apparently fine. It's just the sort of "immersion" I expect those kinds of people to complain about......If it's cisheteronormative, it's fine, but if it's anywhere near LGBT, suddenly muh mersion is broken. Ridiculous. And again, it's fucking trivial to headcanon up a reason why they're like that that doesn't require 21st century level surgery. And all that aside.....It's a fucking product made for those of us in the real world. It serves us. It's not a historical record of another world. It's completely reasonable to expect it to reflect the entire audience, because they exist.
If I had to make a term for that attitude, I'd call it "malicious immersion". The kind of "immersion" that conveniently just so happens to always exclude LGBT people, or non-white people, or people with disabilities. Dragons, magic, healing from mortal wounds in seconds, never having to stop running because it's tiring, never using the loo, giant magic rifts in the sky, those are alllllll fine, but the second it's an LGBT person or a brown person in a setting that's typically considered "white" MY IMMERSION IS BROKEN! Please come off it.
Also, I did an extremely basic search and found that the earliest
reports of breast cancer date to between 3500 and 5000 years ago, and Paré started doing removal of breast tissue in the 1500s. The medieval era is said to be from about 5CE to around 1500 - it's not that far out.
Enchantment?NikhilR said:One could also ask as to why other conditions such as physical and intellectual impairments aren't included
NikhilR said:
no option to remove limbs or facial presets for downs syndromes and breast augmentation isn't an option either.
Removing limbs is necessarily off the table. Because the protagonist is required to be able for the gameplay and plot the game is about, and because it would require doing many times the same amount of animations to ensure a comprehensive range of limb configurations could be supported; that would inflate an already sky high budget exorbitantly. If you want to create a face typical of a person with Down's Syndrome, the sliders are undoubtedly adequate. The same goes for breast augmentation; you can just crank that up to maximum. Honestly, this is kind of pissing me off. You people never ever give a shit about those things, until you can use them as a club to say "adding options for trans people is bad". And don't pretend that's not what you're saying when your entire argument is basically just complaining that they made an option for trans people. That you're not obliged to use, look at, or acknowledge. It's disingenuous as shit. Don't pretend you ever cared about whether or not people with Down's could see themselves in their avatars before you could use it as a talking point against trans inclusive features. If you really cared about maximising the impact of inclusion initiatives like you claim, you'd be supporting that feature instead of concern trolling about it being "immersion breaking" or how that's included but other things aren't.
You know what? It's not polarising players. It's upsetting bigots. That is the truth. Your entire argument throughout this thread is the same, over and over again. "It's polarising players", "we should discuss how it polarised the players and if designers should change their designs accordingly". You're not appealing for anything decent, you're just softly repeating again and again the refrain that cishets and male gaze should be the primary target and anyone else can get under the bus. You might as well come out and say "there are two gender, male and political" because that's been your entire argument throughout this thread. "There's two kinds of female face, normal (stereotypically attractive) and polarising."
It's not polarising players, it's just making the bigots pissed off. And if they want to sit it out because a few additions that are were put in, then fine! Good! Good riddance! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!
That's still bullshit. That's a disingenuous suggestion whose aim is keeping the trans-inclusive features out of the game so that trans people can download them if we want but transphobes don't have to be forced to acknowledge they exist. Why should that be DLC? Why should the option for trans people to be physically represented be relegated to an optional feature? There's no reason to do it that way except to keep it out of the "pure" version of the game so that transphobes don't have to think about it.NikhilR said:Also you've misunderstood my suggestion, a DLC for top surgery scars released in collaboration with the Ali Fourney center or the American cancer society with all proceeds matched and donated to those foundations isn't a horrible suggestion.
The DLC can also be a free download and they can match the number of downloads to a donation amount.
Also cis people get to look like themselves for free is a very broad perspective since not everyone likes to play as themselves in the game, and my focus is maximizing the impact of inclusion initiatives beyond represenation.
At the very least there should alteast be a UI element that can be included, which when clicked provides awareness and links to charities to donate to.
This is a far better look for a studio and doesn't polarise players. I do intend to suggest this internally but it is possible that this is already in the works, or the inclusion is referenced in the plot.
NikhilR said:
Its not right to see all gamers that have a problem with her face is being sexually motivated in their criticism.
I'm looking at it as a dev and maintain that modifying a face is challenging and it is more sensible to go with a scan when it is an option.
I'm not sure what Ubisofts process was when looking for feedback with regards to Kay's face.
I did read that the character model may have been created before they brought on Humberly Gonzalez for voice acting and mocap, and since it was early in development there may have been the option to go with her face scan, I'm not sure why this wasn't considered but the creative director isn't willing to discuss the issue.
It didn't stop them from making her the face of Star Wars Outlaws, they do market the actor as being Kay Vess in promotional images even though she doesn't look like Kay Vess.
In my perspective it just feels like a very detached approach to character design and marketing, then again maybe it became too personal to the team so maybe they ended up in an echo chamber of toxic positivity.
It's not "not right", it's accurate. 90% at least of the criticism against Kay and against other female characters has been that the straight male audience doesn't think they look fuckable enough. Why do you think that every fucking time the complaint is that they look "ugly" or "mannish" or "transgender"? Just stop pretending and be honest. You've been doing the same this entire thread, just trying to put a respectable veneer on their disgusting ideas by pretending that actually it's about ethics in games journalism actually it's about technical faults in her design and implementation when it's obvious that the real complaint is that you think she's unattractive.
As I've already illustrated, they copied the facial features of the actress quite well. She just looks different because even on current gen, we can't get these things quite right, and because she has a markedly different hairstyle as Kay Vess, and a few slight changes to her face. She was marketed as being Kay Vess because she is Kay Vess - she provided both the physical and vocal performance. It's not misleading, it's just fucking honest.
Just give it up. Nobody's buying what you're trying to sell. You can masturbate as much as you like about how it was "polarising" or how they "didn't respond to gamer backlash properly" or whatever you like, but it's never going to make any difference, because they wisely decided not to take character design advice from porn-fried chuds. Stop pretending it was some inevitable result when it's obviously just toxic Gamer backlash because of culture war shit.
NikhilR said:I do feel that any comment I make is going into the extreme right as far as perceptions go regardless of my intention.
I just felt it was a good discourse to have and seeing the situation with Concord its also a great case study in game design and audience reception.
I recommend reading this post for example where concept artists are redesigning Concords designs and how polarised the comment section is, with some insisting on blacklisting the concept artist who made the post and others encouraging criticism.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scott-shepherd-artist_couldnt-resist-but-to-spend-10-minutes-sketching-activity-7242685766718398464-gqBZ/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
And there will always be those that will fixate on the DEI aspect which usually derails the conversation.
No, your comments will be interpreted as far-right because every single comment you've made here has been carrying water for the far-right and trying to legitimise their talking points by pretending they're about artistic and technical issues when everyone knows it's about bigotry and sexism.
As for that thread. yeah, I read it, and you're talking shit. Nobody said that the artist who put out his idea of a correction on the Concord designs should be blacklisted. Alex Chin-Yu simply pointed out it's a good way to get blacklisted. That is, people probably don't want to hire someone who publicly takes potshots at other artists because they can be volatile and bring bad press or reputation on a team. Nobody was calling for that artist to be blacklisted; they just pointed out it could happen.
I don't think you're in any position to suggest anyone else is fixating on the DEI aspect.
Rima
1 ·
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
How did I just know you'd jump on the bloody Dragon Age top surgery scars? Come on, man. You're telling me magic and elves and dragons and dwarves in techno armour with guns is all good, but the idea that someone might've invented top surgery is too much? And that's a horrible suggestion.....Essentially what you just suggested is "cis people get to look like themselves for free, trans people have to pay for it as DLC". Does that honestly seem right to you?
Not to mention, it's trivially easy to explain away. Like, it's part of a spell that gets rid of the breast tissue, and involves making an incision as part of the enchantment, or they were just removed surgically and healed with magic, leaving a scar. The blood mage in DA2 literally runs themselves through with their staff every single fight to draw blood to fuel their spells, and is then running around afterwards with no problems. If that's fine, I'm pretty sure a tiny cosmetic element is fine.
You can say it's superficial, but it's not. It's very meaningful to trans people. So are options for pronouns. I don't really want to hear cis people cissplain about how it's "pandering". You know what pandering actually looks like? Go and load any video game made before, hmm, 2015 if I'm generous and look at the women. Off the top of my head, go open Arkham City, play as Catwoman, and try crawling around. Then do the same as Batman and tell me if you think the way they're animated looks and feels the same. I can wait. And yes, I realise I'm getting a bit arsey here, but that shit hits close to home when you're trans and the mere suggestion that we exist is called "pandering" and mocked.
As for Kay....You're just overthinking the entire thing. It isn't generally - and shouldn't be - the case that you have to consider "Gamers might get upset because this doesn't make their dicks hard" when designing and modeling characters the same you think "It might be worth taking an umbrella" when you see the sky is filled with dark clouds. It wasn't inevitable at all that her face would cause backlash. It's something those people chose to do. And honestly, it's not a coincidence, is it? Gamergate 1.0 was about mobilising angry men to get Trump elected. It's not a bit shock that they've been trying to get 2.0 off the ground with myriad culture war shite when he's running for president again.
Saying it's some Disney mandate is just a ridiculous conspiracy theory. That's wild. You're like two steps removed from just saying "'They' want to take the things you love away and replace it with WOKE."
Nobody could be this dense. There's no way you just so happen to repeat all those alt-right gamergate dudebro talking points all the time, exactly at the same time as Asmongold and his fellow losers are going on about them. You try to make it sound respectable and like something to "debate" but the points you're making are ultimately just exclusionary, conspiratorial, and deeply laced with the idea that anything that isn't cishet, anything that isn't pandering to male gaze or typical beauty standards, is something that has to justify itself and doesn't deserve the same standing as cisheteronormative, male gaze based works. What are you trying to accomplish here? You're either speaking in bad faith the entire time trying to push gamegater shit or you're on the autistic spectrum, and I don't mean that as an insult; it's just the only way I can see you having this much fixation without having ill intent.
Rima
1 ·
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
A lot of people speculating on Concords faliure being about how the game looks, but maybe there's just too many games. At the same time Concord came out Spectre Divided and Deadlock open beta started (both free). These multiplayer games are also starting to look a lot similar gameplaywise, maybe paid reskined Overwatchs and Counter Strike is not what gamers are looking for
Udjani
1 ·
Re: Star Wars Outlaws: Character design was the least of this games problems.
I've watched asmongold ever since he was bitching about WoW during Warlords of Draenor. He isn't alt-right, he's just an asshole, in his own words. One can argue that alt-right people are assholes, but one can also simply exist as a stand-alone asshole. He's a vulture who feasts during famine, it's horrific, just like his room
zetheros
1 ·
Re: The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | July - August (91)
I've completed the cathedral project and uploaded it to ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/a0GKqq. if you have any feedback let me know!
Ewan
2 ·
Re: What Are You Working On? (3D) 2024
My latest prop piece. Found a picture of this unique looking instrument and had to take a crack at it.
Full project can be found on my ArtStation
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3E9wLo
StykaSmith
1 ·