There’s an interesting concept called “Pareidolia” that’s been
on my mind lately. Essentially, it’s the word for how humans can perceive
significant imagery in vague stimuli, like seeing shapes in clouds and faces and/or rabbits on the moon. It’s part of this amazing human propensity for
creativity and interpretation. The most interesting way I think it tends to pop
up is in our ability to see vague faces in everything, as long as we can
identify anything that might be construed as two eyes and a mouth (this facet
tends to fall into the term "matrixing"). We have this innate need to
caricature things so that we can see ourselves in them.
I first heard of the concept in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, a textbook that analyzes the way comics are built and how
they utilize visual storytelling in a wholly unique way. It’s a great,
approachable book (told, of course, in comic format), and I recommend it to
anyone who’s interested in comics in the slightest. In chapter 3, McCloud looks
at how character design and details can bring you into a story. He looks at
what’s so intriguing about cartoons.
McCloud suggests we latch onto simple designs via a concept he
calls “amplification through simplification.” In his own words: “When we
abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as
we are focusing on specific details.” Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Because we all
have those very basic figures (give or take), we can all see ourselves in, say,
a stick figure. “Thus, when you look at a photo or a realistic drawing of a
face… you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the world of the
cartoon… you see yourself.”
I feel like this is something we’ve had to pay more attention to
as video games have become more complex. See, since their inception, games have
been tied to the strength of technology. We started off with very simple
strategies, like with Spacewar and Pong. As the tech got better, we
were able to design more complicated games that often had more complicated
stories. The better we could render characters, the more detailed their designs
could become. We had to rely less and less on box art and concept art to see detailed
characters— all we had to do was look at the character models in game.
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Here’s why I’ve been thinking so much about McCloud lately. It
all ties into diversity and representation in games. When games were newer,
when technological constraints could barely handle any kind of detail in
character design (I’m looking at the early arcade era through the industry
crash and up to about the middle of the NES’s life cycle), art design tended to
veer towards simpler, cartoony looks. Even more “realistic” designs, like in Metroid, had simplistic in-game sprites so you could easily identify a human shape. And
because they were all cartoony to varying degrees, the “amplification through
simplification” concept went into effect. We could see ourselves in these
cartoony shapes without too much trouble, even if we weren’t mustachioed
Italian plumbers. The simple design meant they were blank canvases. Not to
mention, their motivations were so simple (“rescue the girlfriend,” “beat up
that guy,” “punch the dinosaur”) that we could place ourselves into the game at
the drop of a hat. After all, I, too, want to punch a dinosaur. Who doesn’t?
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But over the years, our games have gotten a lot more involved.
Character designs have become detailed, as have backstories and plot. It’s
harder to see yourself in someone photorealistic, no matter how well his arm
hair is rendered. It’s just a facet of design.
The ultimate goal of any game is immersion. You want your player to tune out everything else and totally place themselves
in the game you’ve created for them. And an easy way to do that is to help the
player feel connected to their avatar, often through character design. But
since we’ve strayed so far from simple, cartoony characters (In many genres, at
any rate-- simple character designs still thrive in all-ages titles), players
have had a more difficult time placing themselves in the situation presented in
a game.
This is just one reason why the continual use of Grizzled White
Guy with Brownish Hair as a design in games has become so frustrating for
anyone who doesn’t exactly fit that description. We want to see ourselves in
the media we consume, and we can’t do that easily when character designs are so
photorealistic. It breaks our immersion and keeps us just a few steps away from
the protagonist. Which is enough to break flow and lose enjoyment.
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The need for new, distinguished and diverse characters has grown
exponentially since we’ve become able to create realistic avatars. And it
behooves us all to fulfill this need. Not necessarily to fulfill a quota, but
to bring immersion to players that haven’t been able to fully bring themselves
into a game for almost thirty years.
--
Annie Craton
Design Lead for NORA
