Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and use your eyes and your mind. There are some minor differences, yeah, like the shape of the young Kay's eyebrows, but that's pretty petty. All in all, it's a good match. Her features are similar. They look like they can be the same person years apart. It's good work. I gained an appreciation for the work of the artists who created these models by looking closely at them. Why didn't you? Kay looks like her actress. Just a bit thinner and more tired, and with a marginally longer chin. That's it. It's not a big deal, or a conspiracy.
I don't know why you're still going on, really. And if you want to be taken seriously, why would you pepper your supposedly legitimate constructive criticism with daft jokes about her looking like Palpatine or whatever? And the whole "it's just my humour, it's not my fault if some people are offended" line has worn very thin.
If you find it creepy given the context of the work you are assigned I don't know what to tell you. How exactly do they make child character models in games you've worked on?
I realized I could probably go into a deeper explanation as to why I reacted the way I this way, maybe it would be helpful and a good educational bit.
So yes, I will lay my bias out, I am sensitive to this topic, but not in the way that you might think, in that I'm offended... I'm sensitive in a way that you get when you have decades of lived experience that creates a finally tuned "radar" within yourself and you can instantly grab subtext, it's something I'm sure a lot of women and other femme presenting people can also relate to. My radar got pinged I'll try to explain why.
I have actually created a girl character before, about a decade ago for a horror game, she was about 10-12. I did have to look up child proportions but I did so in a very general way. I did think about what proportions would look appropriate for her, considering her age, and I had a bit of my own lived experience to draw from. I kept a very objective, arms length approach, trying to not pass judgements on what is "cute" or "attractive" but instead what fits her as a character and fits narrative. However at no time did I think specifically about her band or cup size, that is something that feels deeply personal and are facts that a lot of people actually get wrong, even if you need or wear a bra. I also had to look up burn wounds for a creepy burned variant of her and create a pregnant woman for the game as well, so RIP my search history for the time. It being a horror game and some of the subject matter I had to look up to get details right, it was kind of uncomfortable, but sitting with my discomfort and working on this does give me a chance to think about why I do feel uncomfortable and how I can create a bit of distance between myself and my work to stay in a healthy objective mindset.
For what I do now, well in my work history I have worked a TON with modular character sets, and have done refits from one gender to another, and from one playable race to another. I've developed a bit of a passion for it, being a big advocate for making sure the quality looks equally or comparable on all available options. I'm very used to giving feedback on breasts/ chest areas, butts and groins, you kind of have to if you're going to do this job. There is a way to do it with tact though, and I'll give some generic examples of feedback I've given before, scrubbed of specifics:
It looks like the side of the armor have gotten squished, it feels like there isn't adequate room for the chest volume
The straps on the female chest sit in an way that doesn't feel natural compared to the male version, try this paint over idea
Is it possible we could better finesse the chest shape to make this version feel more masculine or feminine?
It looks like the with the re-targeting the groin shape wound up skewed on the male, I think it needs some finesse to feel better
It's stuff like that, using depersonalized language in favor of stuff that is more art centric, like talking about the volume, shape, any skewing really goes a long way for making these conversations feel more professional.
Ok so to get into why this comparatively has a weird vibe for me:
In fact that young version of her doesn't even look like her, so not
sure what puberty did but she had a bigger bust when she was younger. her adult model is very visibly a different band/cup size and the face looks like a different person.
It's already been established that NikhilR doesn't find adult Kay attractive, appealing or well done, this is honestly an ok opinion to have as that sort of thing is also subjective. You're allowed to not like something. It's also ok to think that the younger version of Kay is a better done model that is more attractive an appealing. Both of these things are totally ok and fine opinions to have.
However where it gets sketch and pings my radar is not only is the younger version more attractive, but also her bust is a detail that is worthy of zeroing in on, calling out that her band/cup size is not only different, but bigger... which is a very personal detail and might not even be true because as I mentioned earlier, a lot of people aren't aware of how those work. Why specifically call out her breasts but not other things about her proportions? Especially why call it out first? It gives bad vibes because I know as a preteen/teenage girl, if first thing that someone felt the need to comment on where my breasts, it would be super weird and uncomfortable. Combine the breast comment with the opinion that younger version is more attractive, really sets my radar off and experience has told me that there is a lot of extra subtext being implied that is not being outright said (btw I would hope and like for that subtext to not be true, but you don't get a vigilant radar for no reason)
If I was to talk about comparisons between her younger an adult models and noticed discrepancies, I would be very general about it or find a way to use more depersonalized language. Like idk I would try this (note I have not seen full screenshots of the 2 different versions and how they compare so I'm pulling this completely out of thin air) "Her proportions don't seem like they would belong to the same character from a younger to adult version"
It can be a valid critique, sometimes it's not what you say but how you say it.
Its why I called that bit about Kay being trans or having used puberty
blockers rubbish and I hope it doesnt go there when this bit gets out. Not
sure what regular is in Star Wars, I guess anything is possible, and
they are definitely trying to sell the strong feminist woman stereotype
which isn't a problem as long as the characters backstory and plot
affords to her growth, development and redemption.
Not sure why Kay "being trans" would get out when no sane person on the internet has even suggested that. I'm sure there are some parts of the abyssal sludge of the internet that will try to make that case, don't go eagerly diving headfirst down there, it's not worth it.
A ruffian scoundrel trying to make ends meet seems about as regular as you can get in the Star Wars universe, especially for that period in the canon
So yeah, trying to not derail this thread more than it already has been, but I hope this is helpful insight for some.
If the intent was to replicate the appearance of the actress then I don't think they did a great job
but...
Professional character artists with access to scanners tend not to get that sort of thing wrong so my guess is that they decided a more ripley-esque appearance suited the character than the disney princess appearance of the actress.
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and use your eyes and your mind. There are some minor differences, yeah, like the shape of the young Kay's eyebrows, but that's pretty petty. All in all, it's a good match. Her features are similar. They look like they can be the same person years apart. It's good work. I gained an appreciation for the work of the artists who created these models by looking closely at them. Why didn't you? Kay looks like her actress. Just a bit thinner and more tired, and with a marginally longer chin. That's it. It's not a big deal, or a conspiracy.
I don't know why you're still going on, really. And if you want to be taken seriously, why would you pepper your supposedly legitimate constructive criticism with daft jokes about her looking like Palpatine or whatever? And the whole "it's just my humour, it's not my fault if some people are offended" line has worn very thin.
Thats (among others) another great post and analysis.
And the Nose? easy! The cartilaginous framework and growth changes + depending how she lives + simply aging means a differently shaped nose can easily happen. Like Fighting for example... and healing a broken nose. (okay that one is easy)
Dorsal humps can also happen due to genetics, where the persons genetics code has a tendency to develop the bump thru-out the years + inner working structure of the nose.
I feel like many Books especially meant for Artists have grossly oversimplified Anatomy knowledge in the pursuit to make it easy enough to understand in a sitting while completely missing out on all the beautiful variations which humanity holds.
Not to be too dismissive but ... to be fair, diagrams like the above end up doing the opposite of what was intended IMHO. Such wireframe redline paintovers are fantastic in order to explain changes to be performed on a design or model ("please make the nose follow a plane more like this") ; but they achieve close to nothing when used to demonstrate a likeness match between a photo and a 3D model. It's a bit like how some people pretend that this or that person looks attractive because of some magical golden ratio diagram ... while in reality said magical diagram is just a crude wireframe mask that can be be retrofitted onto anyone.
Of course Nik is borderline trolling here but it is still true that it takes a strong art director with full faith in themselves and their art team in order to dismiss a "hmmm perhaps we shouldn't make this character too attractive" comment that someone from outside the art team and who's never picked up a pencil in their entire life may eventually make during a meeting. In that regard film (with real actors) and games are really quite different.
Also, I personally believe that working with a specific actress/model and "tweaking her face here and there" (if that's actually what happened) is quite disrespectful, and a sign of a lack of humility towards the incredible subtleties of human anatomy. But hey, who knows what actually went down. Some shots looks fantastic, while others do look somewhat odd. Yet had the cutscenes been "storyboard-style" stills or motion graphics, no one would have noticed anything.
Overall and despite the amazing amount of work that goes into it, this high-fidelity look just looks exhausting to me - probably precisely because of the absurd amount of time and ressources these assets take to develop, and because of how easily things can break - like AO glitching out and not filling up nostrils properly, wasting the work of a talented character team just because someone from tech insisted that "shadows shouldn't be painted in" ; or some animation retargeting affecting the shape of a mouth or jawline just a bit too strongly. Increased processing power is playing a dirty trick on us here, since there is no more room left for interpretation or "filling in the blanks".
All that said, the game looks very impressive - characters and environments alike.
Not to be too dismissive but ... to be fair, diagrams like the above end up doing the opposite of what was intended IMHO. Such wireframe redline paintovers are fantastic in order to explain changes to be performed on a design or model ("please make the nose follow a plane more like this") ; but they achieve close to nothing when used to demonstrate a likeness match between a photo and a 3D model. It's a bit like how some people pretend that this or that person looks attractive because of some magical golden ratio diagram ... while in reality said magical diagram is just a crude wireframe mask that can be be retrofitted onto anyone.
Well, it's not designed to show them alone. After all, if you draw over it you're still hiding a bit of the original thing you're trying to make a point about. It's more like "go back and look at these parts in the original image you posted". I thought using lines that way would highlight them a little better than just a load of arrows alone. Ideally, I'd just have it as a layer you can toggle, but I don't think Polycount has anything like that, so highlighting the marching parts is about as much as can be done, I think.
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and use your eyes and your mind. There are some minor differences, yeah, like the shape of the young Kay's eyebrows, but that's pretty petty. All in all, it's a good match. Her features are similar. They look like they can be the same person years apart. It's good work. I gained an appreciation for the work of the artists who created these models by looking closely at them. Why didn't you? Kay looks like her actress. Just a bit thinner and more tired, and with a marginally longer chin. That's it. It's not a big deal, or a conspiracy.
I don't know why you're still going on, really. And if you want to be taken seriously, why would you pepper your supposedly legitimate constructive criticism with daft jokes about her looking like Palpatine or whatever? And the whole "it's just my humour, it's not my fault if some people are offended" line has worn very thin.
Thats (among others) another great post and analysis.
And the Nose? easy! The cartilaginous framework and growth changes + depending how she lives + simply aging means a differently shaped nose can easily happen. Like Fighting for example... and healing a broken nose. (okay that one is easy)
Dorsal humps can also happen due to genetics, where the persons genetics code has a tendency to develop the bump thru-out the years + inner working structure of the nose.
I feel like many Books especially meant for Artists have grossly oversimplified Anatomy knowledge in the pursuit to make it easy enough to understand in a sitting while completely missing out on all the beautiful variations which humanity holds.
Thanks for taking the time for this analysis, your handwriting is a bit difficult to read in places but I did get the gist of what you were meaning to convey.
The reason I made the comparison was more for a overall general look, like if you held the comparison at a distance, where do you see a more ideal progression simply based on this image.
To make a more precise definitive analysis based on paintovers you would need to line the images up, though in this case its not just about whether a round jaw could turn more square ot a cheeks bones can become more pronounced because genetics, is how when the audience looks at the presentation as a first impression are they required to suspend disbelief and more importantly has the game taken care to address a possible oversight/discrepency.
When you point to genetics as a cause and then say that these changes are natural that is still suggesting that she missed out on the genetic lottery. Its like this peculiar incident
This is basically the opposite of what Ubisoft has done, though I don't think that the intent of the studio was to not conform to some disney princess beauty standard but rather they had a backstory that they wanted the character to fit and many in the audience feel that they probably didn't do the best job at it which several thinking its a gamergate conspiracy.
In general it is very difficult to have an audience accept an interpretation on a likeness, the uncanny valley is a very real risk and more so when dealing with facial animation. We see it here on polycount all the time and it does open up a conversation about the artists skill level at being able to do this convincingly.
Of course if the artist is credible because of professional experience and if a studio signs off on their work the criticism is going to veer towards being some kind of conspiracy and more so because of the popularity of the character.
450,000 userse have a problem with Kays face and millions of users had an issue with Sonic's redesign and sure we can say how many of these numbers are genuine people and not bots or right wing trump supporting gamergate trolls?
Maybe this controversy helped market the game, who knows?
“If you engage with bad-faith people, there’s no nuance and no possibility of real dialogue. So all we can do is make the best game possible.” I am hoping that Scott Eaton does a character art study on Kay Vess as part of his Galley Abominate series as a segment on altering likenesses and visual targets. Coming from this statement, it seems unlikely that we will get any details from ubisofts creative team seeing how this whole situation has been highjacked by the broader culture war.
"The amount of licenses we have in this game and doing something like that, even to begin with, to have that many players on a cover, is no easy feat. And the amount of approvals you then need to work through is also highly complex. I don't want to dwell on that, but a big part of it is working through all of those pieces.
"The key thing is, and I think it's really important, is we're doing so much to improve player likeness. Our visuals are going to be amazing. We see the feedback. We also see tremendous positive feedback as well about that cover and what it represents, and also what it means for FC going forward."
The emphasis in both Ubisoft and EA's case is that "make the best game possible" the difference being that ubisoft's seems dismissive of feedback and EA's is more diplomatic. That and EA can afford to be since they release newer iterations of the product every year. I don't know if Ubisoft fully addressed the consequences of their character design not being well received on future sequels.
Like in ubisoft's case, I'm not really sure what Kay will look like in a sequel, or if Ubisoft even cares about genuine feedback about her face to make a change. Will she fix her broken nose? Will she get plastic surgery to infiltrate the crimson dawn? Will palpatine seduce her to the dark side?
The challenge in game dev is that dev's can say precious little about feedback positive or negative because of the risk to their employment, but it is important to address feedback without getting consumed in the broader culture war on beauty standards and stereotypes.
Not to be too dismissive but ... to be fair, diagrams like the above end up doing the opposite of what was intended IMHO. Such wireframe redline paintovers are fantastic in order to explain changes to be performed on a design or model ("please make the nose follow a plane more like this") ; but they achieve close to nothing when used to demonstrate a likeness match between a photo and a 3D model. It's a bit like how some people pretend that this or that person looks attractive because of some magical golden ratio diagram ... while in reality said magical diagram is just a crude wireframe mask that can be be retrofitted onto anyone.
Well, it's not designed to show them alone. After all, if you draw over it you're still hiding a bit of the original thing you're trying to make a point about. It's more like "go back and look at these parts in the original image you posted". I thought using lines that way would highlight them a little better than just a load of arrows alone. Ideally, I'd just have it as a layer you can toggle, but I don't think Polycount has anything like that, so highlighting the marching parts is about as much as can be done, I think.
Going through Kay's backstory, I thought to explain her facial transformation as an adult as a result of a lifestyle. Ubisoft does say that she had a hard life of petty crime and the years were not kind. I though maybe she had an additiction, like gambling alongside dependency on meth or heroin that altered her facial features significantly and also explains her broken nose in street fights. (fighting off drug dealers and debt collecting bounty hunters)
But this perspective doesn't fit because of Nix who she finds as a child and atleast its suggested that they were never apart at any point though if you've seen homeless people with pets, its very evident how well cared for their pets are so maybe that situation applies here (though not all of them has addictions and Kay wasn't homeless, just living in the attic of a seedy bar)
Considering the emphasis on her broken nose, she doesn't take on any visual cosmetic damage in melee fights in the game and is super strong but can't move bodies or carry guns up ladders and Nix is invincible and never targeted by enemies. Maybe all this is just the gameplay design team being out of sync with the character design team, or a conscious design choice that no one on the team can talk about because "they don't want to engage with bad faith gamers and are convinced in their ability to make the best game possible"
Generally when the audience has to fill in these gaps to explain their suspension of disbelief it could indicate a design oversight. Then again Ubisoft isn't Naughty Dog and Star Wars Outlaws isn't Last of Us. And there was considerable controversy on Abby's character design as well and how if backstory, environment and lifestyle provided for a convincing portrayal of her character.
Going through Kay's backstory, I thought to explain her facial transformation as an adult as a result of a lifestyle. Ubisoft does say that she had a hard life of petty crime and the years were not kind. I though maybe she had an additiction, like gambling alongside dependency on meth or heroin that altered her facial features significantly and also explains her broken nose in street fights. (fighting off drug dealers and debt collecting bounty hunters)
But this perspective doesn't fit because of Nix who she finds as a child and atleast its suggested that they were never apart at any point though if you've seen homeless people with pets, its very evident how well cared for their pets are so maybe that situation applies here (though not all of them has addictions and Kay wasn't homeless, just living in the attic of a seedy bar)
Considering the emphasis on her broken nose, she doesn't take on any visual cosmetic damage in melee fights in the game and is super strong but can't move bodies or carry guns up ladders and Nix is invincible and never targeted by enemies. Maybe all this is just the gameplay design team being out of sync with the character design team, or a conscious design choice that no one on the team can talk about because "they don't want to engage with bad faith gamers and are convinced in their ability to make the best game possible"
Generally when the audience has to fill in these gaps to explain their suspension of disbelief it could indicate a design oversight. Then again Ubisoft isn't Naughty Dog and Star Wars Outlaws isn't Last of Us. And there was considerable controversy on Abby's character design as well and how if backstory, environment and lifestyle provided for a convincing portrayal of her character.
It's not a transformation though, is it? She didn't really transform; she just got older and has a broken nose. Most of her facial features are the same as her younger model, just thinner because she's older.
There are multiple good reasons for her not to take cosmetic damage in fights.
It means that's more models and textures you to add. That takes time and money on a game that was already expensive.
For that effort and cost, you get only a small return.
Stuff like visible cuts and bruises isn't all that Star Warsy. The only time you see those in Star Wars films, really, is if it's for a plot reason, like Luke losing his arm, the meta stuff that required him to get beaten up at the start of Empire Strikes Back, etc. You don't really see characters get regular injures like a bloody nose or bruises in regular action in the main films.
It's not comparable to something the TLoU. TLoU, despite its basically-zombie-apocalypse stuff, is basically character drama. They take visible injuries because the setting is more grounded, and showing those gives it weight and a feeling of realism. They need it to matter if the characters mess each other up. Star Wars isn't like that. It's a space fantasy, an action adventure. It's supposed to be heroic and sweeping and cool. Adding lots of injury detail and dragging wounds just wouldn't fit. Isn't this comment just a backdoor to drag in your gripes about Abby again....?
I don't see how your suspension of disbelief should be stretched by "she looks slightly different as an adult to when she was a kid" but the entire setting is fine.
That "she must've been on drugs" thing....Do you watch Mauler or any of his types, by any chance? Gives me the same vibes as those guys insisting Rey's backstory should've been a lot more desperate and rapey because how could a woman possible have been alone and had a rough backstory without being a victim...
Thanks for taking the time for this analysis, your handwriting is a bit difficult to read in places but I did get the gist of what you were meaning to convey.
The reason I made the comparison was more for a overall general look, like if you held the comparison at a distance, where do you see a more ideal progression simply based on this image.
To make a more precise definitive analysis based on paintovers you would need to line the images up, though in this case its not just about whether a round jaw could turn more square ot a cheeks bones can become more pronounced because genetics, is how when the audience looks at the presentation as a first impression are they required to suspend disbelief and more importantly has the game taken care to address a possible oversight/discrepency.
When you point to genetics as a cause and then say that these changes are natural that is still suggesting that she missed out on the genetic lottery.
That sounds more like falling into the Reality is Unrealistic trap. People don't look just like small versions of their adult selves. But people are used to media that basically does make
them look that way, for the sake of being convenient and easier to
recognise. I don't think it's a failing that she looks a bit different
when she's younger. That's just how youth is. Especially with the amount
of fat in the face that disappears as we age. And that aside, the whole
thing is still pretty much a nitpick.
The emphasis in both Ubisoft and EA's case is that "make the best game possible" the difference being that ubisoft's seems dismissive of feedback and EA's is more diplomatic. That and EA can afford to be since they release newer iterations of the product every year. I don't know if Ubisoft fully addressed the consequences of their character design not being well received on future sequels.
Like in ubisoft's case, I'm not really sure what Kay will look like in a sequel, or if Ubisoft even cares about genuine feedback about her face to make a change. Will she fix her broken nose? Will she get plastic surgery to infiltrate the crimson dawn? Will palpatine seduce her to the dark side?
The challenge in game dev is that dev's can say precious little about feedback positive or negative because of the risk to their employment, but it is important to address feedback without getting consumed in the broader culture war on beauty standards and stereotypes.
Why should they engage with that criticism when it's 99% bad faith, gamergate shite? Most of the backlash to Kay Vess' appearance is just from culture war bastards who are using it as a point in their crusade claiming that there's some campaign on behind the scenes to make women in western games "ugly" or "mannish". (Read: realistically rendered and flawed and based on actual women instead of idealised, close-to-sex-doll standards).
There you go again with the troll comments. Do you want to be taken as someone who's commenting in good faith or not?
“If you engage with bad-faith people, there’s no nuance and no
possibility of real dialogue. So all we can do is make the best game
possible.”
So if this is the kind of quote to cause a knee-jerk reaction, pearl-clutching and an instant emotional need to rebuttal, then you're the exact kind of person they are talking about. They are holding up a mirror and showing your reflection, it's not their fault you don't like what you see.
With that, I think it's the perfect quote to sum up this thread. I really do thank people who have been trying to bring in nuanced discussions and points, they are giving a lot to think about and genuinely are insightful. However they seem to be glossed over or ignored by OP, as the same points are being brought up over and over, like a broken record and in bad faith. Even though myself and others have given a ton of explanations as to various possibilities why things could be, but are ultimately unknown without being on the dev team. Attempts to foster positive discussion with them haven't gone anywhere either.
Outlaws delivers old school Star Wars fun that feels more like what we were getting in the eighties than what we’re getting today. You can tell a lot about a game by its subreddit and if you take a look at the one for Outlaws you’ll see it’s overwhelmingly positive. People are taking photos, sharing tips, showing off secrets they found and leaving glowing reviews. If you ask me this is the best single player Star Wars game since KOTOR. I honestly don’t know how it ended up as the latest punching bag for a specific group of “content creators”. These guys are more concerned with traffic to their YouTube videos than they are playing games and it shows. I’ve even seen them claim that any positive reviews of the game are paid for. This is some legitimate tin foil hat bullshit.
We’ve been around almost 30 years at this point. I think everyone knows you cannot pay me to say nice things about your game. I am not here for “likes” and I don’t give a fuck about “views”. I love video games and that’s why I make Penny Arcade and tell you guys my honest thoughts about what I’m playing. I’m telling you, if you are a Star Wars fan you should try Outlaws because it’s great and the people trying to tell you otherwise are full of shit.
This kinda sums up my opinions about "dialogue" around gaming; namely that its (like all social media) mostly manufactured bs to drive traffic. If someone is turned off the game because of Kay's character modelling, that's fine - I'm turned off all sorts of games because of art I don't like. Making it anything more than a personal opinion is where it can get gross. Likewise if someone is turned off a game because of ethical or political reasons, that's fine, but you don't need to make it everyone else's problem (like weird performative stunts where you buy a copy of the game to destroy it on camera). That's a long-winded way of saying that I wish we could all agree to disagree about things that are, at the end of the day, fiction.
“If you engage with bad-faith people, there’s no nuance and no
possibility of real dialogue. So all we can do is make the best game
possible.”
So if this is the kind of quote to cause a knee-jerk reaction, pearl-clutching and an instant emotional need to rebuttal, then you're the exact kind of person they are talking about. They are holding up a mirror and showing your reflection, it's not their fault you don't like what you see.
With that, I think it's the perfect quote to sum up this thread. I really do thank people who have been trying to bring in nuanced discussions and points, they are giving a lot to think about and genuinely are insightful. However they seem to be glossed over or ignored by OP, as the same points are being brought up over and over, like a broken record and in bad faith. Even though myself and others have given a ton of explanations as to various possibilities why things could be, but are ultimately unknown without being on the dev team. Attempts to foster positive discussion with them haven't gone anywhere either.
The reason I mentioned that quote was to illustrate the differences between how Ubisoft approached the situation and how EA approached a similar situation.
Ubisofts creative director immediately highlights bad-faith people and that there is no possibility of real dialog with them. He doesn't list these bad faith people but insists that they will make the best game they want to make. So taking feedback certainly isn't the focus here, just to make the best game possible and hope it sells, and now they aren't as satisfied with the sales.
I do want to understand more about the design decisions around character modeling, mocap and gameplay that are inviting criticism of the game but it does seem that it is impossible to do this without implying that I have some personal interest in bringing down the character Kay is and devaluing her as a woman? I don't get it.
If you find it creepy given the context of the work you are assigned I don't know what to tell you. How exactly do they make child character models in games you've worked on?
For what I do now, well in my work history I have worked a TON with modular character sets, and have done refits from one gender to another, and from one playable race to another. I've developed a bit of a passion for it, being a big advocate for making sure the quality looks equally or comparable on all available options. I'm very used to giving feedback on breasts/ chest areas, butts and groins, you kind of have to if you're going to do this job. There is a way to do it with tact though, and I'll give some generic examples of feedback I've given before, scrubbed of specifics:
It looks like the side of the armor have gotten squished, it feels like there isn't adequate room for the chest volume
The straps on the female chest sit in an way that doesn't feel natural compared to the male version, try this paint over idea
Is it possible we could better finesse the chest shape to make this version feel more masculine or feminine?
It looks like the with the re-targeting the groin shape wound up skewed on the male, I think it needs some finesse to feel better
It's stuff like that, using depersonalized language in favor of stuff that is more art centric, like talking about the volume, shape, any skewing really goes a long way for making these conversations feel more professional.
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.
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)
its seeing cup, band, underbust as measurements and they are all terms used in fashion with associated metrics to design form fitting clothing (and getting accurate simulations) Perhaps that was not a concern for Star Wars Outlaws and any projects you're associated with, but when we work with 100's of female players we want to avoid situations like this,
So yes having more specific values to input into our systems is absolutely essential, these values are even used by other industries like sports wear and player diet and nutrition. Its not like these companies don't care about what a female player felt when she put on her first bra as a child, its that they expect the players to be professional when it comes to discussing these metrics when they have an absolute essential function they have to deliver. And no this information isn't available publicly, but in a professional context it is relevant.
It's already been established that NikhilR doesn't find adult Kay attractive, appealing or well done, this is honestly an ok opinion to have as that sort of thing is also subjective. You're allowed to not like something. It's also ok to think that the younger version of Kay is a better done model that is more attractive an appealing. Both of these things are totally ok and fine opinions to have.
However where it gets sketch and pings my radar is not only is the younger version more attractive, but also her bust is a detail that is worthy of zeroing in on, calling out that her band/cup size is not only different, but bigger... which is a very personal detail and might not even be true because as I mentioned earlier, a lot of people aren't aware of how those work. Why specifically call out her breasts but not other things about her proportions? Especially why call it out first? It gives bad vibes because I know as a preteen/teenage girl, if first thing that someone felt the need to comment on where my breasts, it would be super weird and uncomfortable. Combine the breast comment with the opinion that younger version is more attractive, really sets my radar off and experience has told me that there is a lot of extra subtext being implied that is not being outright said (btw I would hope and like for that subtext to not be true, but you don't get a vigilant radar for no reason)
If I was to talk about comparisons between her younger an adult models and noticed discrepancies, I would be very general about it or find a way to use more depersonalized language. Like idk I would try this (note I have not seen full screenshots of the 2 different versions and how they compare so I'm pulling this completely out of thin air) "Her proportions don't seem like they would belong to the same character from a younger to adult version"
It can be a valid critique, sometimes it's not what you say but how you say it.
This is another situation in which I do feel context matters, and the younger Kay having a bigger bust as opposed to older Kay does draw attention and I pointed this out as a modeling oversight that again requires a suspension of disbelief.
It isn't appropriate to suggest that I have some nefarious intent because of disgusting people who fetishise this, at no point did I say that I found younger Kay more attractive, all I said is that her facial and body profile seemed more accurate to the actor in the comparison I posted and that it really does seem that the character designers felt that making modifications to the actors face and body would fit the personality and backstory of Kay better.
I just felt that it these modifications weren't necessary and they don't add anything meaningful to her portrayal or the story.
In fact if you assume that I find younger kay attractive because the actor is attractive, then you've established that Kay isn't as attractive or atleast not conventionally attractive which seems to support the criticism that ubisoft dev's deliberately did this and disregarded the backlash that was to follow.
To clear any confusion, I do find androgynous faces attractive but there is something off about Kay's facial model that just doesn't sit right with me and seeing what she looked like as a child and how it isn't as relatable to her adult character model face (as opposed to the actors face) puts me off even more.
I'm not suggesting that they add jiggle physics or wider hips to turn Kay into something like 2B from Nier Automata or Eve from stellar blade, but simply going with the actors face without devaluing her as a disney princess would have been sensible, they wouldn't even have had to break her nose to make her appear more of a outlaw. Han Solo didn't have to, neither did Sabine Wren or Hera Syndulla. Even Ahsoka Tano was an outlaw for a good part of her life but didn't need drastic facial modifications to put that point across.
Imagine if they want Kay to feature in a live action series, do they plan to cast Humberly González with a broken nose and facial and body conturing bodysuit for a more authentic portrayal, would that be considered making her less disney princess attractive or is it less acceptable now that it has to do with a real person and not a CG model? If this was challenging to do was any of this really necessary and would not having done it affected the reception of Star Wars Outlaws? We certainly would have had 450,000 people in approval, not sure if those numbers matter and there would be a lot less "Kay Vess is ugly" discourse on social media since the devs have an absolute visual target to work off from that they have to match precisely.
So my issue lies with whether these modifications were done right and did the team have the skill to pull it off? Should we just accept it as such because it is Ubisoft approved, because that poster EA produced certainly was as was Sonics first iteration in that trailer that set off fireworks across the world.
I mean we could just say its a gamergate consipiracy and tell tell Sydney Leroux to mellow out or get a boob job so she looks more like her 3d model, but isn't it simpler just to say that the feedback however polarising is relevant and integral to making the "best game possible" rather than screw these bad-actors and hope the studios share price doesn't go into free fall?
Ohhh my godddddd, why do you think that all criticism is created equal?
If I come up to you and say "your work is fuck ugly" that's not on the same level as actually stating, for example, "the proportions are inaccurate" or "you got this muscle insertion wrong", is it?
I don't know why, but you seem to be under the impression that these people bitching about the game are "just criticising" and that they have something valid to say. Well, they don't.
Its not like these companies don't care about what a female player felt
when she put on her first bra as a child, its that they expect the
players to be professional when it comes to discussing these metrics
when they have an absolute essential function they have to deliver.
No, they don't. 90% of played feedback is complete dogshit because they have no training or experience whatsoever to understand what's actually good and what isn't. Why do you think those "hire fans" losers' versions of female characters they've "fixed" are always just making them look more like sex dolls? Companies don't expect players to be like professionals, and the players don't even understand the metrics if they even know they exist, let alone care.
It's just.....Sorry, but it's dumb. Taking any and all criticism as if it has equal value is dumb. There's no way any professional worth their salt is going to take into account the kinds of whining there's been about Kay Vess' model, because they're just trash. There isn't any value in saying she has an "ugly face" or "creepy" or whatever, which is most of the comments from these people.
Honestly, if we listened to the "criticism" from these people, we wouldn't have escaped the era when women were only damsels in distress and usually dressed like strippers because men found them hot. Fuck that.
Maybe you just don't like her face and that's okay. No reason to insist there must be some huge issue.
Ohhh my godddddd, why do you think that all criticism is created equal?
If I come up to you and say "your work is fuck ugly" that's not on the same level as actually stating, for example, "the proportions are inaccurate" or "you got this muscle insertion wrong", is it?
I don't know why, but you seem to be under the impression that these people bitching about the game are "just criticising" and that they have something valid to say. Well, they don't.
Its not like these companies don't care about what a female player felt
when she put on her first bra as a child, its that they expect the
players to be professional when it comes to discussing these metrics
when they have an absolute essential function they have to deliver.
No, they don't. 90% of played feedback is complete dogshit because they have no training or experience whatsoever to understand what's actually good and what isn't. Why do you think those "hire fans" losers' versions of female characters they've "fixed" are always just making them look more like sex dolls? Companies don't expect players to be like professionals, and the players don't even understand the metrics if they even know they exist, let alone care.
It's just.....Sorry, but it's dumb. Taking any and all criticism as if it has equal value is dumb. There's no way any professional worth their salt is going to take into account the kinds of whining there's been about Kay Vess' model, because they're just trash. There isn't any value in saying she has an "ugly face" or "creepy" or whatever, which is most of the comments from these people.
Honestly, if we listened to the "criticism" from these people, we wouldn't have escaped the era when women were only damsels in distress and usually dressed like strippers because men found them hot. Fuck that.
Maybe you just don't like her face and that's okay. No reason to insist there must be some huge issue.
You misunderstood, I meant soccer players, not players of videogames. What I meant is that when these soccer players have to provide statistics to companies they are expected to be professional about it when there is a genuine need. It isn't always a necessity and usually you can get by with a scan, but there are some systems that work better with these values. In this sense the size of a players bust isn't all that different from their shoe size and yes they do have agency on whether to provide this information.
In Kay's case, I appreciate the attempt to modify the actor but honestly it was best just to go with the actor the way she is rather than polarise the audience. It is the main character after all. And yes ubisoft can use that same logic and say that its necessary to modify the character regardless of the risk, or maybe they accounted for the risk and didn't care.
Where it becomes a problem is when the creative director instead of acknowledging feedback highlight's "bad actors" in a culture war and gives the impression that he is disregarding even genuine constructive feedback and that may indicate a culture issue within the company.
Laura Fryer explains this in the situation around Concord's character design that I do feel applies here in Kay's overall design. https://youtu.be/6IM11RtGLJ8?t=307
talking about step 5,000 while step 0 still wasn't satisfied. Polarized suggest two equal, sharply contrasted sides. but it's more like 10% at best. More likely, less than 1%. So the entire argument is moot if the first foundation isn't solid.
Not much point pulling out the microscope to decide if Kays pores are hot or not if only five weirdos think she is not hot. It's like if I extracted a single word from Nik's post and discussed ad nauseam whether or not the sequence of characters in this particular word is pleasing. Who cares? Nobody sane cares.
So to make a proper argument first have to establish a sane foundation.
No, I understood. I was commenting on your overall argument; that is, the one you've been making over and over again throughout this thread, that we should be listening to the alleged 450,000 pissy Gamer manbabies and their "criticism".
Also.....You do realise "polarising the audience" is not some logical outcome of doing X or Y thing, right? You speak as if it was inevitable that they would get their knickers in a twist; like how jumping off a cliff inevitably means you're going to splat when you hit the bottom. It is not so. The only reason they got as worked up about her design as they did was culture war bullshit because of the current social and political climate.
You're doing it again. Why should the creative director listen to "feedback" that amounts to "she's fugly and I don't find her fuckable enough"? Nobody sane would consider that criticism worth a damn. Certainly not the creative director, of all people!
The fact is, if you look around, most of the criticism of Kay Vess' design is just culture war bullshit and should be thrown away. Barely any of it is worth anything. There is no reason to treat "criticism" that's 90% right wing chud disgust as legitimate.
No, I understood. I was commenting on your overall argument; that is, the one you've been making over and over again throughout this thread, that we should be listening to the alleged 450,000 pissy Gamer manbabies and their "criticism".
Also.....You do realise "polarising the audience" is not some logical outcome of doing X or Y thing, right? You speak as if it was inevitable that they would get their knickers in a twist; like how jumping off a cliff inevitably means you're going to splat when you hit the bottom. It is not so. The only reason they got as worked up about her design as they did was culture war bullshit because of the current social and political climate.
You're doing it again. Why should the creative director listen to "feedback" that amounts to "she's fugly and I don't find her fuckable enough"? Nobody sane would consider that criticism worth a damn. Certainly not the creative director, of all people!
The fact is, if you look around, most of the criticism of Kay Vess' design is just culture war bullshit and should be thrown away. Barely any of it is worth anything. There is no reason to treat "criticism" that's 90% right wing chud disgust as legitimate.
I do feel that this really is the issue. Genuine criticism is drowned out because of it turning into a culture war.
When we go from "this characters face looks off" to "you can't be racist against white people" What really matters is the studio put out a statement that protects its business instead of letting the situation escalate.
I do feel that in this regard EA did a much better job than ubisoft and it is a difficult situation when gaming journalists are circling like vultures for controversy and the anti woke extremists are very eager to put out content demonizing the whole product.
But this situation with Kay's face could have been avoided had they acknowledged the polarization it would inevitably cause unless their testing didn't reveal this or they were okay with it. The creative director simply dismissed the issue so im thinking there was more at work like Disney's control on what Kay was supposed to look like.
And yes I get that as a character artist you would have to follow direction from above and there are situations where it's best to keep the criticism to yourself because of the prevalent culture in the studio. That is rumored to have been the issue at Firewalk studio with regards to Concord.
If the intention of the studio was inclusion and diversity in these situation, my issue is that it feels superficial. Like in the new Dragon Age there is the option to include top surgery scars which besides the discourse around trans rights, is a great option to bring awareness about breast cancer.
But until we know the impact of this option, as a cosmetic it absolutely does feel immersion breaking and a more impactful way to have made a difference was to have provided the option as an addon dlc with the proceeds from the sale matched and donated to an organisation like the Ali Fourney center which works with the LGBTQ community.
Like sure as employees we do our bit, but this is the better way to reach out on promoting inclusion and visibility without it coming across as superficial and pandering.
There needs to be more initiative on making audiences aware of many fundraisers that happen internally.
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.
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
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
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
pricing aside (because I don't believe it's all that important)
Valorant and Apex are proof that you can enter late and thrive in a segment that's dominated by something else.
However..
You do need to know your audience and if you're going up against Overwatch the correct approach is not pastels and nondescript silhouettes
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?
We don't yet know if choosing the option to have top surgery scars influences the plot of the game. Atleast I haven't heard anything about it internally but there is emphasis on inclusion though I do feel it is missing context.
Top surgery isn't just for trans persons, it is also a procedure for breast cancer patients and breast augmentation/reduction. It doesn't need to be integrated into the plot though I am curious if they have considered doing this.
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.
One could also ask as to why other conditions such as physical and intellectual impairments aren't included There's no option to remove limbs or facial presets for downs syndromes and breast augmentation isn't an option either.
Besides the option to remove limbs which obviously would be game breaking, the others are possible with the existing system and the top surgery scars are cosmetic, so maybe this is a step in that direction but it really needs context to have greater impact instead of being limited to representation.
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.
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.
Its the missing context that requires a suspension of disbelief, we don't know what the significance of top surgery scars is or why its there. Its a sensitive subject included as an option but it was an opportunity to bring more awareness to causes which I hope has been looked into, though as employees we certainly do our bit through donation matching and volunteering.
The character creator by its very nature allows any person to be who they want to be, and from my understanding, the prospect of revealing scars is not seen the same way by all demographics that experience it. So it is interesting to include it given the setting and I assume the risk of polarisation wasn't seen as a surprise given the lack of context.
I don't think its a problem to include pronouns, generally anything that is an option within a game that is rated M shouldn't be a problem and the more options in character creators the better. Usually most games of this genre leave it to mods to add these options.
I find it fascinating, and with those mods people have built whole anime adaptions within that universe, but an official inclusion is basically turning Far Cry 3 to Blood Dragon and that can also be good thing too (as in blood dragons case)
This particular inclusion is polarisng players, but who knows where mods might lead to.
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.
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.
I'm not sure how much impact all this would have on the presidential election, I think Trump will likely win because of the vote between Harris and Jill Stein becoming diluted because of the Gen Z vote going against Harris given her stance on palestine.
And usually democrats tend to overfocus on what republicans are doing wrong rather than what they can do right and the situation is very reminiscient of the time Hilary Clinton contested against Trump and lost.
But having Tim Walz as a VP might sway the republican voter base, one can hope. I think that Tim Walz as the presidential nominee and Harris remaining VP would have been a far greater challenge against trump and this isn't to do with the merits of Walz and Harris, rather just how the Republican voter base aligns when it comes to choices they are presented with.
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.
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
pricing aside (because I don't believe it's all that important)
Valorant and Apex are proof that you can enter late and thrive in a segment that's dominated by something else.
However..
You do need to know your audience and if you're going up against Overwatch the correct approach is not pastels and nondescript silhouettes
Concord is targeting DEI/Inclusion very explicitly in its marketing (characters are presented with rainbows, strong emphasis on pronouns and inclusion), and it was anticipated to become the next Star Wars universe under Sony.
I'm not sure how these aspects (niche audience, Marvel Studios budget) are in alignment with each other or if the team fully understood their target audicne (mostly LGBTQ community and fans of guardians of the galaxy) potential to support the release. Its very difficult to pull players who are invested in more established franchises such as Overwathc and Apex Legends and it doesn't seem senisble to compete in that manner. Concord did have some cell shaded anime like shorts, I'm thinking they should have kept this style since it really does make the game feel distinct https://blog.playstation.com/2024/07/25/meet-the-concord-crew-with-new-animated-shorts-and-gameplay-trailers/
Its sales numbers were abysmal (25,000) and it is bizarre to spend 400 million to create it over 8 years to invite this outcome.
Like I wonder if the team/Sony is genuinely surprised by the reception or simply don't care, what was the purpose of this circus?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In universe, these enchantments can do magical things, in fact you could just call them mods seeing how many DLC's you can add for a great many conditions and situations.
Considering its a game being sold to an audience in our century, obviously it would take inspiration and reflect the real world. The point I'm making is that I don't feel that it goes far enough, and that the additions are mostly cosmetic for representation (which I do hope makes a lasting difference)
At the moment we don't really know which demographic this option is meant to be inclusive to or if it has significance to the plot. I just felt it was an opportunity to draw awareness if impactful representation was the intention.
Maybe a DLC could include physical disabilities but it should be done in collaboration with organisations to have maximum impact. We're not yet sure if the sliders can accomodate for downs syndrome and if they are adequate for breast augmentation. I'm also not sure if the top surgery scar option can be kept activated and used with the sliders to simulate breast implants.
Regardless of the intention it is an interesting approach to add to the role of the universe certainly.
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!
I really am not one of those people, I've tried to look at this situation technically and from a business aspect. The only time I used the world attractive was in response to @Alemja to clarify that I was talking about accuracy not attractiveness.
Again we don't know if this is an option for trans people, it might as well be for people in the adult industry, members of whom are from the trans community, the intention is assumed and not established. I appreciate the inclusion more because it is representation for breast cancer survivors. Chest scars are being used as representation because while it can be seen as an reminder of suffering there are people who wear them with pride as a symbol of strenght and resilience.
But the consensus on whether they would want it in a video game, when there is an option to not even acknowledge it does make me wonder if it is worth the controversy before the release of the game.
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.
I can't stop them from using my ideas as dev to support their criticism which I feels limits a thorough understanding of the situation. Again I didn't say attractive, I said accurate, or rather I felt that not considering an accurate capture of a facial scan was a decision that polarised players and courted controversy that a studio should not encourage.
And we can choose to disagree on whether their intent was to capture the facial features of the actress at all. A more reasonable explaination seems to be that the model was created before the actor came on board and they didn't bother considering her scan for a variety of reasons. If they did have a scan and changed it, I feel they could have done a better job, but hey if the art director signed off on it then its great. Concord went with that approach for its entire character art roster and look at the mess it got them into.
It is much simpler to get things right to you follow a proven practice to not diverge from a scan, especially if the actor for the scan is very well received by the audience. Sure you can break her nose too and she would be just as much a smuggler as Kay -whats her face- Vess is.
But seeing Ubisofts stance, they won't bother addressing this at the moment which is sensible since unlike EA's yearly offerings and additive tech, a sequel with Kay Vess will be a few years away. Enough time for more than just her broken nose to be taken care of, which is more important than a new hairstyle, skin care products or a change of fashion style since a broken nose can cause breathing difficulties as you age.
What I think shouldn't matter to them, they have numbers from sales and overall reception to gauge how best to proceed. Disney had to do this with Rey, so why not revist the issue with Kay?
Maybe the sequel will include Will Smith as Agent Jay for a Men In Black crossover where he slaps Darth Vader hard across the helmet for "cultural appropriation" They probably should cast Chris Rock as Vader, kind of like DEI Dark Helmet from Space Balls.
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.
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.
Thats what I meant by derailing the conversation, ultimately what should happen is more dev's coming forward and explaining the situation fully instead of just calling out "bad actors" and going over to the far left of the spectrum.
And not everyone agrees that its about bigotry and sexism, its because many are cautious to speak out because of how reputation in the industry operates. Alex Chin-Yu pointing out casually and using the term blacklisted comes across as a veiled threat, and he assumed that Joan was taking a pot shot when that clearly wasn't the case. If Alex was trying to point out the risk, he certainly didn't stand against it.
Scott Eaton has a "Gallery abominate" full of published video game character models made by top tier professionals that he terms abominations, should he be blacklisted and his course cancelled? Sure he keeps them behind a paywall, but how are his actions better if you have to pay to have him take pot shots at you.
Concord is released to the public, its characters are available for all. Constructive criticism is great and that is what Scott Eaton and Joan Piqué Llorens are doing. And that should have happened on Concord during the 8 years it was in development.
Maybe they did have constructive criticism, and this still was the best they could come up with, sadly we'll never really know since no dev will speak up about technical issues because of NDA's and the risk of being blacklisted, instead directing all their defenses against the "bad actors" trying to get trump re-elected in Gamer Gate 2.0. But 8 years and 400 million is a long time to re-evaluate your approach to character design and understand how well it aligns with your market.
And seriously all studios need to establish very strict guidelines on social media engagement by employees. The "my opinions are my own" really doesn't help their case and only leads to more employees locking their accounts because of harrassment. This does not reflect well on the studios image, all that is needed is a simple disclaimer that acknowledges all feedback, not a mad online street fight against anonymous trolls.
Also Marc Brunet is doing a series re-designing Concords characters which I recommend,
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.
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)
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?
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.
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.
Concord is targeting DEI/Inclusion very explicitly in its marketing (characters are presented with rainbows, strong emphasis on pronouns and inclusion), and it was anticipated to become the next Star Wars universe under Sony. <stuff> Its sales numbers were abysmal (25,000) and it is bizarre to spend 400 million to create it over 8 years to invite this outcome.
Like I wonder if the team/Sony is genuinely surprised by the reception or simply don't care, what was the purpose of this circus?
to your first point.. DEI is about steering the behaviour of institutions - it has fuck all to do with putting rainbow flags in marketing material. The grand conspiracy you're talking about is ESG - which is about steering public opinion through media etc..
To the point I actually have some experience with: first thing: if the total cost was 400million, that means it actually cost 200million in development and 200million in marketing/admin/etc. (25million a year on average is plausible)
In my experience (and tbf several years have passed) Sony are largely hands-off in terms of development/design decisions with even their first party studios, as such I would imagine that if the mark was missed it's down to decisions the studio made rather than had forced upon them.
And .. You have to bear in mind that the publisher has been paying out for development from day 1. If it costs 25million a year to run the studio, they're 50million in before they see anything representative of the game and 100million in before they have what the studio thinks is finished. At that point - if it's not working - they have a few options. 1: throw 100 million away, shutter the studio, and then pay out even more money in severance etc. 2: throw more money at it in the hope that it'll turn around and sell loads 3: release it anyway and hope what sales it does get mitigate the loss
My guess is that they picked 2, it didn't go well and they went to 3 when the spend got too large to digest.
Chest scars as a customization option is always a nice touch to have, it's easy to add and it makes people happy and seen. I also don't believe top surgery scars for breast cancer are comparable to the one resulting from gender affirming surgeries. See, for breast cancer, they do try to salvage most of the breast, and there are a variety of result depending on the case. Some are flat on one side with no nipples, some still have a breast with a scar on top yadda yadda... For gender affirming surgery, you get one of tree results: double incisions, peri-areolar or T-anchor scars. All the breast tissue is removed and the nipples are very often resized and grafted. So really Dragon Age is specifically representing a double incision scar resulting from a top surgery, it's for trans people.
About your concerns about this inclusion being shallow, I think it's a good thing, having characters in-game not pointing out that you're trans. See, for a lot of trans people, passing and not drawing attention on themselves is what they seek. They just want to live life without people pestering them. I know for me that having, for example, a whole sub-plot/quest about my character's scars would be highly irritating.
But character creation is shallow by design, I don't know why it's even a discussion.
if the total cost was 400million, that means it actually cost 200million in development and 200million in marketing/admin/etc. (25million a year on average is plausible)
dont forget rent, taxes, software subscriptions, fees, and UE5 + Steam take their cuts too. Oh, and pizza parties!
I didn't play the game but based on youtube videos I'v seen the main character has nothing especially resembling the actress . I have seen how people do scans and than managed to do something creepy and not looking like original at all except when it's male with some prominent facial features you just couldn't miss.
Yong woman or a child and it's either some cliche or some abstract female.
Another thing is an animation . The character even in cut scenes do
nothing of her counterpart typical female mimic : head tilts , how she bends her
mouth corners , how her eyes close and open wide and brows go up an
down in sync with what she is saying . In general it lacks what we call female mimic and typical body plasticity in terms of expressing emotions and mood.
In this sense I think we are still in a faze of early quattrocento , at least before Michelangelo in comparison to traditional art . In movies they are already went further ahead.
But perhaps I am too critical. Star wars bore me like nothing else . Well except Andor. This one was a sudden surprise.
What I said about her is not something specific for this game. it's what videogames lack in general imo. She runs same way through the game , her body expresses nothing , no mood, no fatigue , no despair, fear or courage. When she stops she doesn't know what to do with her hands , just stays in some pose like it's a pole inside her . Not leaning against a wall, not trying to fix her heirs or make her cloth more comfortable . All those gazillion things we do all the time subconsciously . I am not sure why videogames doesn't try to do all of this . it's pretty typical for all games . Shouldn't be that much hard with a real actor and motion capture. Isn't it a main propose of using actual trained actor who should know how to express all of this?
I recall even Alyx in old Half-Life sometimes showed she gasps , or she tired . Not that much different actually but sometimes I think I saw just a hint of some emotion expression . When she turned to me and said : "oh, Gordon, you are my hero" for example. Or perhaps it were my emotions I remember
"Last of us" was another game where I saw a hint of it too. Just a little bit of fear and fatigue in characters sometimes and it made the game so much more believable IMO. I mean in gameplay. Not just a jerking robot on your screen.
But perhaps I am too critical. Star wars bore me like nothing else . Well except Andor. This one was a sudden surprise.
I don't know if you're too critical tbh.
We're happy to criticise a film actor for a lifeless performance or a director for shit photography so we shouldn't be cutting other entertainment products any slack.
@Joopson Likewise, likewise There's definitely some entertainment value in there thanks to some of the absurdities being thrown around - and not necessarily from the OP ...
On character animations for gameplay sections : I do believe that animations can suffer from tech overload similarly to how current-gen face models can end up being very detailled and techically complex, but quite off-looking at the same time (like with advanced hair tech and fancy anisotropic shaders making every character look like they're wearing a cheap wig).
I've always found the Uncharted games to be a interesting example of character animation tech getting in the way just a bit too much. They have some very advanced systems to drive feet positionning, but the head of the character "teleports" forward instantly when throwing a punch to a point where it looks quite silly ; whereas games from the Metal Gear series manage to focus on tight responsive gameplay, perfectly suspending disbelief *while* allowing their characters to do physically impossible things (like changing stances nearly instantly, as opposed to going through a lengthy realistic transition). Cool stuff.
As far as the Star Wars game is concerned that started this thread, Ubisoft have now announced the following in a letter to investors:
"despite solid ratings (Metacritic 76) and user scores across the First Party and
Epic stores (3.9/5) that reflect an immersive and authentic Star Wars universe, Star Wars
Outlaws initial sales proved softer than expected. In response to player feedback, Ubisoft’s
development teams are currently fully mobilized to swiftly implement a series of updates to
polish and improve the player experience in order to engage a large audience during the
holiday season to position Star Wars Outlaws as a strong long-term performer."
They didn't release numbers, so we don't know exactly how "below expectations" they hit. I also saw that they released on first party platforms and the Epic game store, but not on Steam (coming November). I don't really pay attention to Ubisoft releases, but is that how they normally approach things? I'm sure they could have had a ton more sales if it was on Steam during the initial release.
As far as the Star Wars game is concerned that started this thread, Ubisoft have now announced the following in a letter to investors:
"despite solid ratings (Metacritic 76) and user scores across the First Party and
Epic stores (3.9/5) that reflect an immersive and authentic Star Wars universe, Star Wars
Outlaws initial sales proved softer than expected. In response to player feedback, Ubisoft’s
development teams are currently fully mobilized to swiftly implement a series of updates to
polish and improve the player experience in order to engage a large audience during the
holiday season to position Star Wars Outlaws as a strong long-term performer."
Just saw their boss also came out with a statement of his own as part of the aforementioned letter:
"Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately. I want to
reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest
possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda."
In case that's related to the pushback regarding the player character from the Star Wars game then they must have really felt that one (or do they have more controversy going on?). At least in my opinion: if it were merely considered noise from a minority of gamers it wouldn't find its way in a letter to investors.
Guillemot can read Polycount though his many eyes and ears that whisper back to him, we need to be careful with what we write here, lest we be branded heretical, stripped of our colours, rank, insignia, to be nothing more than a black shield of the Emperor's will.
"A being of preternatural intelligence, cold reason and indomitable will, Guillemot forged his XIIIth Legion into a vast force of conquest and control, a weapon by which he made himself the master of a stellar domain in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, the Realm of Ultramar, which during his lifetime spanned five hundred worlds. "
well, while we have the boss on the line, i'd like to let him know that if Ubisoft put their games on steam like normal people, I would have bought at least a few of them just so I can view the cool environments. I can't be bothered to download yet another storefront and deal with forgetting another password. It's inconvenient
about the letter - it could be that they are attributing significant part of performance to anti-woke backlash, but there are true believers at every level. I mean at highest levels of government in most powerful country in the world you have decision makers getting their opinions from exact same places nikhil has. Therefore, appeasing true believers in those circles may be important even if they don't see that it matters.
It might've helped if they'd had the common sense to release it on the platform everybody uses instead of the one nobody does. It's like streaming services; it's not good for one company to basically have a monopoly on it, but nobody wants to have to have a million of them so if the media's not on the one everyone uses, they probably won't bother. Just look at the problems other streaming services have had trying to go after Netflix's user base.
Perhaps they were banking on the Star Wars branding being powerful enough that the game would pull people to their thing even though it's a pain in the arse to set up yet another account.
Hmm, not sure how it looks like nowadays but at least until a few years back in the previous generation singleplayer games like these would have clocked the vast majority of their sales on console. If that still holds true it would seem only logical to prioritize console where prices also stay high for longer but what do I know.
Replies
It's ok to disagree, but before things get out of hand please do remember to keep things civil.
https://polycount.com/discussion/63361/information-about-polycount-new-member-introductions/p1#respect
How exactly do they make child character models in games you've worked on?
her adult model is very visibly a different band/cup size and the face looks like a different person.
Not sure what regular is in Star Wars, I guess anything is possible, and they are definitely trying to sell the strong feminist woman stereotype which isn't a problem as long as the characters backstory and plot affords to her growth, development and redemption.
Not sure why Kay "being trans" would get out when no sane person on the internet has even suggested that. I'm sure there are some parts of the abyssal sludge of the internet that will try to make that case, don't go eagerly diving headfirst down there, it's not worth it.
A ruffian scoundrel trying to make ends meet seems about as regular as you can get in the Star Wars universe, especially for that period in the canon
So yeah, trying to not derail this thread more than it already has been, but I hope this is helpful insight for some.
my tuppence...
If the intent was to replicate the appearance of the actress then I don't think they did a great job
but...
Professional character artists with access to scanners tend not to get that sort of thing wrong so my guess is that they decided a more ripley-esque appearance suited the character than the disney princess appearance of the actress.
Thats (among others) another great post and analysis.
And the Nose? easy!
The cartilaginous framework and growth changes + depending how she lives + simply aging means a differently shaped nose can easily happen. Like Fighting for example... and healing a broken nose. (okay that one is easy)
Dorsal humps can also happen due to genetics, where the persons genetics code has a tendency to develop the bump thru-out the years + inner working structure of the nose.
I feel like many Books especially meant for Artists have grossly oversimplified Anatomy knowledge in the pursuit to make it easy enough to understand in a sitting while completely missing out on all the beautiful variations which humanity holds.
All that said, the game looks very impressive - characters and environments alike.
The reason I made the comparison was more for a overall general look, like if you held the comparison at a distance, where do you see a more ideal progression simply based on this image.
To make a more precise definitive analysis based on paintovers you would need to line the images up, though in this case its not just about whether a round jaw could turn more square ot a cheeks bones can become more pronounced because genetics,
is how when the audience looks at the presentation as a first impression are they required to suspend disbelief and more importantly has the game taken care to address a possible oversight/discrepency.
When you point to genetics as a cause and then say that these changes are natural that is still suggesting that she missed out on the genetic lottery.
Its like this peculiar incident
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/how-a-meme-ruined-a-models-life/Y7M2GPPEPK47KIH4BUKJVCXPUU/
This is basically the opposite of what Ubisoft has done, though I don't think that the intent of the studio was to not conform to some disney princess beauty standard but rather they had a backstory that they wanted the character to fit and many in the audience feel that they probably didn't do the best job at it which several thinking its a gamergate conspiracy.
In general it is very difficult to have an audience accept an interpretation on a likeness, the uncanny valley is a very real risk and more so when dealing with facial animation. We see it here on polycount all the time and it does open up a conversation about the artists skill level at being able to do this convincingly.
Of course if the artist is credible because of professional experience and if a studio signs off on their work the criticism is going to veer towards being some kind of conspiracy and more so because of the popularity of the character.
450,000 userse have a problem with Kays face and millions of users had an issue with Sonic's redesign and sure we can say how many of these numbers are genuine people and not bots or right wing trump supporting gamergate trolls?
Maybe this controversy helped market the game, who knows?
The important thing is how the studio responds to this criticism and if they feel that its worth responding.
This was ubisoft's creative directors response,
https://www.inverse.com/gaming/star-wars-outlaws-kay-vess-creative-director-trolls-assassins-creed
“If you engage with bad-faith people, there’s no nuance and no possibility of real dialogue. So all we can do is make the best game possible.”
I am hoping that Scott Eaton does a character art study on Kay Vess as part of his Galley Abominate series as a segment on altering likenesses and visual targets.
Coming from this statement, it seems unlikely that we will get any details from ubisofts creative team seeing how this whole situation has been highjacked by the broader culture war.
Here's how EA had responded to a criticism of a poster featuring likenesses of several players,
https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a44554017/ea-sports-fc-24-cover-criticism/
"The amount of licenses we have in this game and doing something like that, even to begin with, to have that many players on a cover, is no easy feat. And the amount of approvals you then need to work through is also highly complex. I don't want to dwell on that, but a big part of it is working through all of those pieces.
The emphasis in both Ubisoft and EA's case is that "make the best game possible" the difference being that ubisoft's seems dismissive of feedback and EA's is more diplomatic.
That and EA can afford to be since they release newer iterations of the product every year. I don't know if Ubisoft fully addressed the consequences of their character design not being well received on future sequels.
Like in ubisoft's case, I'm not really sure what Kay will look like in a sequel, or if Ubisoft even cares about genuine feedback about her face to make a change.
Will she fix her broken nose? Will she get plastic surgery to infiltrate the crimson dawn?
Will palpatine seduce her to the dark side?
The challenge in game dev is that dev's can say precious little about feedback positive or negative because of the risk to their employment, but it is important to address feedback without getting consumed in the broader culture war on beauty standards and stereotypes.
Ubisoft does say that she had a hard life of petty crime and the years were not kind.
I though maybe she had an additiction, like gambling alongside dependency on meth or heroin that altered her facial features significantly and also explains her broken nose in street fights. (fighting off drug dealers and debt collecting bounty hunters)
https://www.gatewayfoundation.org/blog/effects-substance-abuse-appearance/
But this perspective doesn't fit because of Nix who she finds as a child and atleast its suggested that they were never apart at any point though if you've seen homeless people with pets, its very evident how well cared for their pets are so maybe that situation applies here (though not all of them has addictions and Kay wasn't homeless, just living in the attic of a seedy bar)
Considering the emphasis on her broken nose, she doesn't take on any visual cosmetic damage in melee fights in the game and is super strong but can't move bodies or carry guns up ladders and Nix is invincible and never targeted by enemies.
Maybe all this is just the gameplay design team being out of sync with the character design team, or a conscious design choice that no one on the team can talk about because "they don't want to engage with bad faith gamers and are convinced in their ability to make the best game possible"
Generally when the audience has to fill in these gaps to explain their suspension of disbelief it could indicate a design oversight.
Then again Ubisoft isn't Naughty Dog and Star Wars Outlaws isn't Last of Us.
And there was considerable controversy on Abby's character design as well and how if backstory, environment and lifestyle provided for a convincing portrayal of her character.
- It means that's more models and textures you to add. That takes time and money on a game that was already expensive.
- For that effort and cost, you get only a small return.
- Stuff like visible cuts and bruises isn't all that Star Warsy. The only time you see those in Star Wars films, really, is if it's for a plot reason, like Luke losing his arm, the meta stuff that required him to get beaten up at the start of Empire Strikes Back, etc. You don't really see characters get regular injures like a bloody nose or bruises in regular action in the main films.
It's not comparable to something the TLoU. TLoU, despite its basically-zombie-apocalypse stuff, is basically character drama. They take visible injuries because the setting is more grounded, and showing those gives it weight and a feeling of realism. They need it to matter if the characters mess each other up. Star Wars isn't like that. It's a space fantasy, an action adventure. It's supposed to be heroic and sweeping and cool. Adding lots of injury detail and dragging wounds just wouldn't fit. Isn't this comment just a backdoor to drag in your gripes about Abby again....?That sounds more like falling into the Reality is Unrealistic trap. People don't look just like small versions of their adult selves. But people are used to media that basically does make them look that way, for the sake of being convenient and easier to recognise. I don't think it's a failing that she looks a bit different when she's younger. That's just how youth is. Especially with the amount of fat in the face that disappears as we age. And that aside, the whole thing is still pretty much a nitpick.
So if this is the kind of quote to cause a knee-jerk reaction, pearl-clutching and an instant emotional need to rebuttal, then you're the exact kind of person they are talking about. They are holding up a mirror and showing your reflection, it's not their fault you don't like what you see.
With that, I think it's the perfect quote to sum up this thread. I really do thank people who have been trying to bring in nuanced discussions and points, they are giving a lot to think about and genuinely are insightful. However they seem to be glossed over or ignored by OP, as the same points are being brought up over and over, like a broken record and in bad faith. Even though myself and others have given a ton of explanations as to various possibilities why things could be, but are ultimately unknown without being on the dev team. Attempts to foster positive discussion with them haven't gone anywhere either.
Outlaws delivers old school Star Wars fun that feels more like what we were getting in the eighties than what we’re getting today. You can tell a lot about a game by its subreddit and if you take a look at the one for Outlaws you’ll see it’s overwhelmingly positive. People are taking photos, sharing tips, showing off secrets they found and leaving glowing reviews. If you ask me this is the best single player Star Wars game since KOTOR. I honestly don’t know how it ended up as the latest punching bag for a specific group of “content creators”. These guys are more concerned with traffic to their YouTube videos than they are playing games and it shows. I’ve even seen them claim that any positive reviews of the game are paid for. This is some legitimate tin foil hat bullshit.
We’ve been around almost 30 years at this point. I think everyone knows you cannot pay me to say nice things about your game. I am not here for “likes” and I don’t give a fuck about “views”. I love video games and that’s why I make Penny Arcade and tell you guys my honest thoughts about what I’m playing. I’m telling you, if you are a Star Wars fan you should try Outlaws because it’s great and the people trying to tell you otherwise are full of shit.
This kinda sums up my opinions about "dialogue" around gaming; namely that its (like all social media) mostly manufactured bs to drive traffic.If someone is turned off the game because of Kay's character modelling, that's fine - I'm turned off all sorts of games because of art I don't like. Making it anything more than a personal opinion is where it can get gross. Likewise if someone is turned off a game because of ethical or political reasons, that's fine, but you don't need to make it everyone else's problem (like weird performative stunts where you buy a copy of the game to destroy it on camera).
That's a long-winded way of saying that I wish we could all agree to disagree about things that are, at the end of the day, fiction.
Ubisofts creative director immediately highlights bad-faith people and that there is no possibility of real dialog with them. He doesn't list these bad faith people but insists that they will make the best game they want to make.
So taking feedback certainly isn't the focus here, just to make the best game possible and hope it sells, and now they aren't as satisfied with the sales.
I do want to understand more about the design decisions around character modeling, mocap and gameplay that are inviting criticism of the game but it does seem that it is impossible to do this without implying that I have some personal interest in bringing down the character Kay is and devaluing her as a woman?
I don't get it.
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.
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)
its seeing cup, band, underbust as measurements and they are all terms used in fashion with associated metrics to design form fitting clothing (and getting accurate simulations)
Perhaps that was not a concern for Star Wars Outlaws and any projects you're associated with, but when we work with 100's of female players we want to avoid situations like this,
https://www.ladbible.com/sport/footballer-sydney-leroux-fifa-deflate-boobs-615659-20230501
So yes having more specific values to input into our systems is absolutely essential, these values are even used by other industries like sports wear and player diet and nutrition.
Its not like these companies don't care about what a female player felt when she put on her first bra as a child, its that they expect the players to be professional when it comes to discussing these metrics when they have an absolute essential function they have to deliver.
And no this information isn't available publicly, but in a professional context it is relevant.
This is another situation in which I do feel context matters, and the younger Kay having a bigger bust as opposed to older Kay does draw attention and I pointed this out as a modeling oversight that again requires a suspension of disbelief.
It isn't appropriate to suggest that I have some nefarious intent because of disgusting people who fetishise this, at no point did I say that I found younger Kay more attractive, all I said is that her facial and body profile seemed more accurate to the actor in the comparison I posted and that it really does seem that the character designers felt that making modifications to the actors face and body would fit the personality and backstory of Kay better.
I just felt that it these modifications weren't necessary and they don't add anything meaningful to her portrayal or the story.
In fact if you assume that I find younger kay attractive because the actor is attractive, then you've established that Kay isn't as attractive or atleast not conventionally attractive which seems to support the criticism that ubisoft dev's deliberately did this and disregarded the backlash that was to follow.
To clear any confusion, I do find androgynous faces attractive but there is something off about Kay's facial model that just doesn't sit right with me and seeing what she looked like as a child and how it isn't as relatable to her adult character model face (as opposed to the actors face) puts me off even more.
Here's a really interesting article on the subject of atttraction and biases to adnfrogynous faces that might provide more context,
https://www.psypost.org/new-study-reveals-positive-bias-towards-androgynous-faces/
I'm not suggesting that they add jiggle physics or wider hips to turn Kay into something like 2B from Nier Automata or Eve from stellar blade, but simply going with the actors face without devaluing her as a disney princess would have been sensible, they wouldn't even have had to break her nose to make her appear more of a outlaw.
Han Solo didn't have to, neither did Sabine Wren or Hera Syndulla. Even Ahsoka Tano was an outlaw for a good part of her life but didn't need drastic facial modifications to put that point across.
Imagine if they want Kay to feature in a live action series, do they plan to cast Humberly González with a broken nose and facial and body conturing bodysuit for a more authentic portrayal, would that be considered making her less disney princess attractive or is it less acceptable now that it has to do with a real person and not a CG model?
If this was challenging to do was any of this really necessary and would not having done it affected the reception of Star Wars Outlaws?
We certainly would have had 450,000 people in approval, not sure if those numbers matter and there would be a lot less "Kay Vess is ugly" discourse on social media since the devs have an absolute visual target to work off from that they have to match precisely.
So my issue lies with whether these modifications were done right and did the team have the skill to pull it off?
Should we just accept it as such because it is Ubisoft approved, because that poster EA produced certainly was as was Sonics first iteration in that trailer that set off fireworks across the world.
I mean we could just say its a gamergate consipiracy and tell tell Sydney Leroux to mellow out or get a boob job so she looks more like her 3d model, but isn't it simpler just to say that the feedback however polarising is relevant and integral to making the "best game possible" rather than screw these bad-actors and hope the studios share price doesn't go into free fall?
What I meant is that when these soccer players have to provide statistics to companies they are expected to be professional about it when there is a genuine need.
It isn't always a necessity and usually you can get by with a scan, but there are some systems that work better with these values.
In this sense the size of a players bust isn't all that different from their shoe size and yes they do have agency on whether to provide this information.
In Kay's case, I appreciate the attempt to modify the actor but honestly it was best just to go with the actor the way she is rather than polarise the audience.
It is the main character after all.
And yes ubisoft can use that same logic and say that its necessary to modify the character regardless of the risk, or maybe they accounted for the risk and didn't care.
Where it becomes a problem is when the creative director instead of acknowledging feedback highlight's "bad actors" in a culture war and gives the impression that he is disregarding even genuine constructive feedback and that may indicate a culture issue within the company.
Laura Fryer explains this in the situation around Concord's character design that I do feel applies here in Kay's overall design.
Polarized suggest two equal, sharply contrasted sides.
but it's more like 10% at best. More likely, less than 1%. So the entire argument is moot if the first foundation isn't solid.
Not much point pulling out the microscope to decide if Kays pores are hot or not if only five weirdos think she is not hot. It's like if I extracted a single word from Nik's post and discussed ad nauseam whether or not the sequence of characters in this particular word is pleasing. Who cares? Nobody sane cares.
So to make a proper argument first have to establish a sane foundation.
Genuine criticism is drowned out because of it turning into a culture war.
When we go from "this characters face looks off" to "you can't be racist against white people"
What really matters is the studio put out a statement that protects its business instead of letting the situation escalate.
I do feel that in this regard EA did a much better job than ubisoft and it is a difficult situation when gaming journalists are circling like vultures for controversy and the anti woke extremists are very eager to put out content demonizing the whole product.
But this situation with Kay's face could have been avoided had they acknowledged the polarization it would inevitably cause unless their testing didn't reveal this or they were okay with it.
The creative director simply dismissed the issue so im thinking there was more at work like Disney's control on what Kay was supposed to look like.
And yes I get that as a character artist you would have to follow direction from above and there are situations where it's best to keep the criticism to yourself because of the prevalent culture in the studio.
That is rumored to have been the issue at Firewalk studio with regards to Concord.
If the intention of the studio was inclusion and diversity in these situation, my issue is that it feels superficial.
Like in the new Dragon Age there is the option to include top surgery scars which besides the discourse around trans rights, is a great option to bring awareness about breast cancer.
But until we know the impact of this option, as a cosmetic it absolutely does feel immersion breaking and a more impactful way to have made a difference was to have provided the option as an addon dlc with the proceeds from the sale matched and donated to an organisation like the Ali Fourney center which works with the LGBTQ community.
Like sure as employees we do our bit, but this is the better way to reach out on promoting inclusion and visibility without it coming across as superficial and pandering.
There needs to be more initiative on making audiences aware of many fundraisers that happen internally.
Valorant and Apex are proof that you can enter late and thrive in a segment that's dominated by something else.
However..
You do need to know your audience and if you're going up against Overwatch the correct approach is not pastels and nondescript silhouettes
Top surgery isn't just for trans persons, it is also a procedure for breast cancer patients and breast augmentation/reduction.
It doesn't need to be integrated into the plot though I am curious if they have considered doing this.
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.
One could also ask as to why other conditions such as physical and intellectual impairments aren't included
There's no option to remove limbs or facial presets for downs syndromes and breast augmentation isn't an option either.
Besides the option to remove limbs which obviously would be game breaking, the others are possible with the existing system and the top surgery scars are cosmetic, so maybe this is a step in that direction but it really needs context to have greater impact instead of being limited to representation.
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.
Its the missing context that requires a suspension of disbelief, we don't know what the significance of top surgery scars is or why its there.
Its a sensitive subject included as an option but it was an opportunity to bring more awareness to causes which I hope has been looked into, though as employees we certainly do our bit through donation matching and volunteering.
The character creator by its very nature allows any person to be who they want to be, and from my understanding, the prospect of revealing scars is not seen the same way by all demographics that experience it.
So it is interesting to include it given the setting and I assume the risk of polarisation wasn't seen as a surprise given the lack of context.
I don't think its a problem to include pronouns, generally anything that is an option within a game that is rated M shouldn't be a problem and the more options in character creators the better.
Usually most games of this genre leave it to mods to add these options.
Like you can do this in elder scrolls oblivion with mods
I find it fascinating, and with those mods people have built whole anime adaptions within that universe, but an official inclusion is basically turning Far Cry 3 to Blood Dragon and that can also be good thing too (as in blood dragons case)
This particular inclusion is polarisng players, but who knows where mods might lead to.
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.
I'm not sure how much impact all this would have on the presidential election, I think Trump will likely win because of the vote between Harris and Jill Stein becoming diluted because of the Gen Z vote going against Harris given her stance on palestine.
And usually democrats tend to overfocus on what republicans are doing wrong rather than what they can do right and the situation is very reminiscient of the time Hilary Clinton contested against Trump and lost.
But having Tim Walz as a VP might sway the republican voter base, one can hope.
I think that Tim Walz as the presidential nominee and Harris remaining VP would have been a far greater challenge against trump and this isn't to do with the merits of Walz and Harris, rather just how the Republican voter base aligns when it comes to choices they are presented with.
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.
I'm not sure how these aspects (niche audience, Marvel Studios budget) are in alignment with each other or if the team fully understood their target audicne (mostly LGBTQ community and fans of guardians of the galaxy) potential to support the release.
Its very difficult to pull players who are invested in more established franchises such as Overwathc and Apex Legends and it doesn't seem senisble to compete in that manner.
Concord did have some cell shaded anime like shorts, I'm thinking they should have kept this style since it really does make the game feel distinct
https://blog.playstation.com/2024/07/25/meet-the-concord-crew-with-new-animated-shorts-and-gameplay-trailers/
Its sales numbers were abysmal (25,000) and it is bizarre to spend 400 million to create it over 8 years to invite this outcome.
Like I wonder if the team/Sony is genuinely surprised by the reception or simply don't care, what was the purpose of this circus?
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.
Considering its a game being sold to an audience in our century, obviously it would take inspiration and reflect the real world.
The point I'm making is that I don't feel that it goes far enough, and that the additions are mostly cosmetic for representation (which I do hope makes a lasting difference)
At the moment we don't really know which demographic this option is meant to be inclusive to or if it has significance to the plot.
I just felt it was an opportunity to draw awareness if impactful representation was the intention.
Maybe a DLC could include physical disabilities but it should be done in collaboration with organisations to have maximum impact.
We're not yet sure if the sliders can accomodate for downs syndrome and if they are adequate for breast augmentation.
I'm also not sure if the top surgery scar option can be kept activated and used with the sliders to simulate breast implants.
Regardless of the intention it is an interesting approach to add to the role of the universe certainly.
I really am not one of those people, I've tried to look at this situation technically and from a business aspect.
The only time I used the world attractive was in response to @Alemja to clarify that I was talking about accuracy not attractiveness.
Again we don't know if this is an option for trans people, it might as well be for people in the adult industry, members of whom are from the trans community, the intention is assumed and not established.
I appreciate the inclusion more because it is representation for breast cancer survivors.
Chest scars are being used as representation because while it can be seen as an reminder of suffering there are people who wear them with pride as a symbol of strenght and resilience.
But the consensus on whether they would want it in a video game, when there is an option to not even acknowledge it does make me wonder if it is worth the controversy before the release of the game.
I can't stop them from using my ideas as dev to support their criticism which I feels limits a thorough understanding of the situation.
Again I didn't say attractive, I said accurate, or rather I felt that not considering an accurate capture of a facial scan was a decision that polarised players and courted controversy that a studio should not encourage.
And we can choose to disagree on whether their intent was to capture the facial features of the actress at all.
A more reasonable explaination seems to be that the model was created before the actor came on board and they didn't bother considering her scan for a variety of reasons.
If they did have a scan and changed it, I feel they could have done a better job, but hey if the art director signed off on it then its great.
Concord went with that approach for its entire character art roster and look at the mess it got them into.
It is much simpler to get things right to you follow a proven practice to not diverge from a scan, especially if the actor for the scan is very well received by the audience.
Sure you can break her nose too and she would be just as much a smuggler as Kay -whats her face- Vess is.
But seeing Ubisofts stance, they won't bother addressing this at the moment which is sensible since unlike EA's yearly offerings and additive tech, a sequel with Kay Vess will be a few years away.
Enough time for more than just her broken nose to be taken care of, which is more important than a new hairstyle, skin care products or a change of fashion style since a broken nose can cause breathing difficulties as you age.
What I think shouldn't matter to them, they have numbers from sales and overall reception to gauge how best to proceed.
Disney had to do this with Rey, so why not revist the issue with Kay?
Maybe the sequel will include Will Smith as Agent Jay for a Men In Black crossover where he slaps Darth Vader hard across the helmet for "cultural appropriation"
They probably should cast Chris Rock as Vader, kind of like DEI Dark Helmet from Space Balls.
Rima said:Thats what I meant by derailing the conversation, ultimately what should happen is more dev's coming forward and explaining the situation fully instead of just calling out "bad actors" and going over to the far left of the spectrum.
And not everyone agrees that its about bigotry and sexism, its because many are cautious to speak out because of how reputation in the industry operates.
Alex Chin-Yu pointing out casually and using the term blacklisted comes across as a veiled threat, and he assumed that Joan was taking a pot shot when that clearly wasn't the case.
If Alex was trying to point out the risk, he certainly didn't stand against it.
Scott Eaton has a "Gallery abominate" full of published video game character models made by top tier professionals that he terms abominations, should he be blacklisted and his course cancelled?
Sure he keeps them behind a paywall, but how are his actions better if you have to pay to have him take pot shots at you.
Concord is released to the public, its characters are available for all.
Constructive criticism is great and that is what Scott Eaton and Joan Piqué Llorens are doing.
And that should have happened on Concord during the 8 years it was in development.
Maybe they did have constructive criticism, and this still was the best they could come up with, sadly we'll never really know since no dev will speak up about technical issues because of NDA's and the risk of being blacklisted, instead directing all their defenses against the "bad actors" trying to get trump re-elected in Gamer Gate 2.0.
But 8 years and 400 million is a long time to re-evaluate your approach to character design and understand how well it aligns with your market.
it doesn't help if the lead character designer has been using that time speaking trash against white people
https://thatparkplace.com/concord-lead-character-designer-believes-whites-must-acknowledge-their-privileged-position-and-then-actively-work-for-equality-also-claims-the-judicial-system-is-white-supremacy/
And seriously all studios need to establish very strict guidelines on social media engagement by employees.
The "my opinions are my own" really doesn't help their case and only leads to more employees locking their accounts because of harrassment.
This does not reflect well on the studios image, all that is needed is a simple disclaimer that acknowledges all feedback, not a mad online street fight against anonymous trolls.
Also Marc Brunet is doing a series re-designing Concords characters which I recommend,
https://youtube.com/shorts/8sORtqjvClM?si=r2M3wuBPjmBZUe60
https://youtube.com/shorts/UituSM5LlZc?si=dmL-bEp-MfTXDexC
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.
"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)
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.
DEI is about steering the behaviour of institutions - it has fuck all to do with putting rainbow flags in marketing material.
The grand conspiracy you're talking about is ESG - which is about steering public opinion through media etc..
To the point I actually have some experience with:
first thing:
if the total cost was 400million, that means it actually cost 200million in development and 200million in marketing/admin/etc. (25million a year on average is plausible)
In my experience (and tbf several years have passed) Sony are largely hands-off in terms of development/design decisions with even their first party studios, as such I would imagine that if the mark was missed it's down to decisions the studio made rather than had forced upon them.
And ..
You have to bear in mind that the publisher has been paying out for development from day 1. If it costs 25million a year to run the studio, they're 50million in before they see anything representative of the game and 100million in before they have what the studio thinks is finished.
At that point - if it's not working - they have a few options.
1: throw 100 million away, shutter the studio, and then pay out even more money in severance etc.
2: throw more money at it in the hope that it'll turn around and sell loads
3: release it anyway and hope what sales it does get mitigate the loss
My guess is that they picked 2, it didn't go well and they went to 3 when the spend got too large to digest.
store charges come out of revenue and don't count towards development cost
fwiw unreal will be paid for on a fixed fee basis at that sort of scale - it's only plebs that pay the % cut
We're happy to criticise a film actor for a lifeless performance or a director for shit photography so we shouldn't be cutting other entertainment products any slack.
On character animations for gameplay sections : I do believe that animations can suffer from tech overload similarly to how current-gen face models can end up being very detailled and techically complex, but quite off-looking at the same time (like with advanced hair tech and fancy anisotropic shaders making every character look like they're wearing a cheap wig).
I've always found the Uncharted games to be a interesting example of character animation tech getting in the way just a bit too much. They have some very advanced systems to drive feet positionning, but the head of the character "teleports" forward instantly when throwing a punch to a point where it looks quite silly ; whereas games from the Metal Gear series manage to focus on tight responsive gameplay, perfectly suspending disbelief *while* allowing their characters to do physically impossible things (like changing stances nearly instantly, as opposed to going through a lengthy realistic transition). Cool stuff.
if you're exhausted joopson it means you've been woke for too long, so go to bed and you won't be exhausted no more
"A being of preternatural intelligence, cold reason and indomitable will, Guillemot forged his XIIIth Legion into a vast force of conquest and control, a weapon by which he made himself the master of a stellar domain in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, the Realm of Ultramar, which during his lifetime spanned five hundred worlds. "
I can't be bothered to download yet another storefront and deal with forgetting another password. It's inconvenient
about the letter - it could be that they are attributing significant part of performance to anti-woke backlash, but there are true believers at every level. I mean at highest levels of government in most powerful country in the world you have decision makers getting their opinions from exact same places nikhil has. Therefore, appeasing true believers in those circles may be important even if they don't see that it matters.