Does anyone sincerely want to play as "ugly" characters in games?

[Batou667]

It's a tricky one. Ugly can mean alarmingly proportioned and non-human looking, or it can mean unappealing. The two aren't necessarily the same - Kerrigan and Mileena are both people you'd cross the street to avoid in real life, but within the context of their respective games they look cool, powerful, and on some level appealing.

I "get" and largely sympathise with the calls for female characters to have more diversity and to step away from "conventional" (whatever the fuck that means) physical idealism, but at the same time I think there's a bit of disingenuous posturing going on. People like cool-looking avatars in their games.

What about a genuinely ugly character? As in, a character who actually "plays" as ugly within their game world, and is ostracised and insulted by other characters? Handled well, that could be interesting. A lot of quote-unquote "diversity" of characters in games is just window-dressing: male, female, young, old, the characters are all hyper-capable and handled almost interchangeably within their game worlds. The last game I played where a character's demographics were gameplay-relevant was Walking Dead season 2, where you have the capabilities, limitations and viewpoint of a young girl. A game that did the same for a disabled, elderly, or ugly protagonist... that could be interesting.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

With all the discussion lately about the need for more "innovative" or "unconventional" character designs (particularly regarding female characters), I wanted to ask if you would play a game where the main character is ugly. No, I don't mean "unconventionally attractive", "attractive in a different way", or any of those other euphemisms. I mean flat-out repulsive, unattractive, borderline-deformed UGLY.

Would I play an ugly character?

Ladies and gentlemen, the character class I enjoyed playing as most in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, AND in the Vampire the Masquerade tabletop game:

Spoiler

Hell yeah, Nosferatu are the best!

[http://s110.photobucket.com/user/absoldragon/media/blog/2012-12-22_00004_zps8a6942c6.jpg.html]

Not to mention that the main characters of "Of Orcs and Men" and "Styx: Master of Shadows" are an ugly giant Orc that looks like a Troll, and a disfigured little Goblin with severely chapped lips, and both of them are such engaging characters (moreso in "Of Orcs and Men") that they outshine most "traditional" AAA protagonists.

Ugly main characters? Bring 'em on. As long as they're interesting, I don't give a fuck how they look.

EDIT:

What about a genuinely ugly character? As in, a character who actually "plays" as ugly within their game world, and is ostracised and insulted by other characters? Handled well, that could be interesting.

The abovementioned characters and games work off that.

In VTM, everyone hates the Nosferatu because they're ugly, and smell like the sewer since they cannot afford to let the humans ever see them.

In the "of orcs and men" and "styx" games, you basically ARE an ugly monster to the human population, and it's designed to evoke the feelings of "Damn, the world hates these guys don't they...Hey wait...holy shit these guys are more human than the goddamn humans!"

 

[UmberHulk]

I would much rather play as an ugly looking character than a generic looking character. Personally I wish more rpg's gave you the option of playing a humanoid bug of some sort like the insecticides from Legend of Grimrock and I vaguely remember a mod for system shock 2 that let you play as a hybrid which I found pretty cool.

 

[Mid Boss]

Yes. My girlfriend plays The Binding Of Isaac obsessively. A title where you get progressively more hideous and deformed as the game goes on.

 

[DrOswald]

I prefer to play as a pretty princess whenever possible.

I mean, all other things equal, I like pretty things. There are times when it does not fit or there is a benefit to the ugly, and it can be a bit silly if everyone in the game world is ridiculously good looking, but by and large when I play with my digital dolls I want them pretty and handsome.

Edit: To elaborate, I will absolutely play a game where my avatar is ugly. Does not bother me. What does bother me is when the avatar or enemies are intentionally disgusting.

 

[Fox12]

Wow, I'm... a little bit disappointed in the comments section.

All I care about is the writing. I'd MUCH rather play as a well written, interesting ugly character then a bland pretty character. And, it's not like every character needs to be either a super model or quasimodo. I would like to see a range of character designs. Look at Silent Hill 2, for example. I don't think there was a single conventionally attractive character in that entire game, male or female. James looks like soggy white bread, Eddie's a gluttonous psychopath, and Angela looks like an old cat lady, despite being 19. The closest thing to an "attractive" character in the game is Maria, and the developers went out of their way to give her crows feet and a little bit of pudge. She was also a critique of the unrealistic, vapid expectations of male sexuality. And, yet, I cared more about those characters then any dude-bro Nathan Drake wannabe.

If looks are so important then go play Dead or Alive: Beach Volley Ball. Team Ninja seems to share your concept of game design. As for me, I put value in things other then just looks.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I prefer to play as a pretty princess whenever possible.

I mean, all other things equal, I like pretty things. There are times when it does not fit or there is a benefit to the ugly, and it can be a bit silly if everyone in the game world is ridiculously good looking, but by and large when I play with my digital dolls I want them pretty and handsome.

If you like Roguelikes and Visual Novel style games, you might really really enjoy "Long Live the Queen".

It's a game where you're a princess THRUST into trying to run her country after her mom dies and her (somewhat incompetent) dad has her take over in her mom's place. And everything is trying to kill you or depose you. Your only defense is training in the right things (Army commanding, singing, interior decorating, swordplay, stamina, etc), and praying that what you trained in is enough to stop you from dying horribly. XD

 

[DrOswald]

I prefer to play as a pretty princess whenever possible.

I mean, all other things equal, I like pretty things. There are times when it does not fit or there is a benefit to the ugly, and it can be a bit silly if everyone in the game world is ridiculously good looking, but by and large when I play with my digital dolls I want them pretty and handsome.

If you like Roguelikes and Visual Novel style games, you might really really enjoy "Long Live the Queen".

It's a game where you're a princess THRUST into trying to run her country after her mom dies and her (somewhat incompetent) dad has her take over in her mom's place. And everything is trying to kill you or depose you. Your only defense is training in the right things (Army commanding, singing, interior decorating, swordplay, stamina, etc), and praying that what you trained in is enough to stop you from dying horribly. XD

Oh, I know about Long Live the Queen. Great game and totally my speed. Thanks for the recommendation though.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Uh, I'm a Motorhead fan. Have you seen Lemmy Kilmister's face? No problem with ugly characters. Sure, I like playing attractive characters, but I love me some ugly too. Variety is the spice of life after all. I find it a bit weird when games are full of supermodels though.

 

[bossfight1]

It's really not about whether the character's ugly, in my eyes, it's about the character themselves; their personality, their story and so forth. I don't think designers try and make a character specifically 'ugly', they just make a design that best suits the character's role in the game.

In World of Warcraft, I could choose between the Alliance - consisting of Humans, Shorter Humans, Even Shorter Humans, Night Elves, the Draenei (decent) and the (admittedly cool) Worgen - and the Horde - which is more diverse in its selection of races. When I'm given a choice between pretty (meaning normal-looking) races and allegedly ugly races, I'm going for the second option because it's DIFFERENT. And hell, the female orcs can actually be kinda pretty in their own way.

You know the saying 'beauty is in the eyes of the beholder'? Well, you can replace 'beauty' with 'ugly' and still get the same idea. Sometimes, I want to play as a character that stands out among the crowd.

 

[DrOswald]

Wow, I'm... a little bit disappointed in the comments section.

All I care about is the writing. I'd MUCH rather play as a well written, interesting ugly character then a bland pretty character.

You seem to be answering the wrong question. The question was not ugly but interesting vs beautiful and boring. It was hideously deformed ugly vs not ugly in a vacuum. You added in the bland vs interesting part yourself.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

He's a novel idea. How about both?

Seriously, what's with these "you can either have this, or you can have that" crap going around here recently?

Diversity in games isn't about everyone being ugly, female, not-straight, or not-white. It's about having a more even distribution of demographics. The more options the better.

Doesn't mean every game has to have the option to be ANYTHING the player could possibly want, but I don't see how it means we can't ask for something different a little more often now and again.

I love my pretty Saints Row Boss and I love my Argonian dragonborn from the Elder Scrolls.

Both look good to me (though I'd be hard pressed to say if my Argonian is "attractive"). In the end though, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I think Bayonetta is pretty attractive, but other people are turned off by her limb proportions.

One persons butt-ugly is another's wet dream, so how about we just try for all kinds of different characters?
Best of all worlds.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Yeah ... give me a battle-scarred valkyrie in cracked full plate armour, partially dragging one leg due to old war wound. That being said, I find scars not so much sexy as interesting, so I might be one of those rare few that will play 'ugly' characters but I don't necessarily see them as ugly?

Then again ... where you haven't regular, realistically scarred look in games, and you have the Grim Dark W40k Fantasy Flight RPGs where people are not so much looking scarred and more it seems like they shower in sulphuric acid every day. That's not so appealing. I mean, it suits the theme of humanity becoming less recogniseable.

 

[FPLOON]

I... feel like I have answered this question before...
*briefly checks history*
Anyway, of course I would... in a genre that I mostly geared towards... and I know about the game's gameplay beforehand... Other than that, bring on the subjective ugliness!

 

[halisme]

Eh, I tend to go for the more monstrous races in MMOs, like the char in GW2. So I suppose that does mean I play ugly characters, but I don't purposefully make them ugly.

 

[DEAD34345]

Sure. In fact, I've created and played as ugly characters quite a few times in games where you can decide your characters appearance. I'm kind of surprised that people really have trouble empathising with ugly people, in fact I'd have thought it'd be easier if anything. One quick way to get an audience to like a characters is to make them an underdog, and a truly ugly person might have a lot of difficulties which would make them more sympathetic.

That said, I'm not one of those campaigning for ugly characters, or greater representation or whatever. I don't think there's a "need" for any kind of characters, people and corporations will always make the games they want to make, or the games they think will sell. If that happens to be a bunch of attractive but grizzled white dudes, well, it's probably indicative of all sorts of troubling cultural problems, but attacking the symptom isn't going to help. It's just going to limit people's ability to make the game they want to make, and probably create a bunch of pointless anger that will be directed at all the wrong places.

 

[Pr0]

Man nothing makes a thread a true Escapist thread without at least 20 replies worth of sanctimonious opinion slinging that doesn't even address the point of the OP.

Do I wish to play as ugly characters in games?

No not really, and nor will I take the easy way out and claim that "ugly is subjective" and thus attempt to deflect people disagreeing with me.

If a game has a character creation system I view aesthetics as a challenge. And by aesthetics I don't mean "boob slider at maximum".

Character aesthetics are a huge draw for me in any game I play, in fact if a game doesn't have any kind of character customization at all it spends far less time on my play radar.

Conversely though games with extremely deep character creation systems are quite often games I rarely ever fully finish because I get so tied up in making different characters.

Now its going to be dead easy for someone...and they'll probably do it in about five replies or so, to come in and quote my post and say "your aesthetics are not my aesthetics"...and that is, yet again, a cop out stance.

So to answer the OP, no I don't want to play ugly characters. But not because I have a problem with ugly people, more because making characters that look like Ugly Shepard isn't an aesthetic challenge at all, its literally just hitting randomize a few times then setting a bunch of basic sliders to extremes then going "lawl look how clever I am".

The true challenge isn't about breast size or typical beauty, its perfecting even imperfections to the level that a character you have created almost seems more real than the world it inhabits. And I can spend hundreds of hours collecting the mod side resources or even making my own where what I need can't be found already to achieve the peak aesthetic look that I am going for with a character at any given time...its probably the biggest thing I enjoy about gaming.

Anyways I won't belabor the point by posting my entire screenshot collection (I am not the author of Ugly Shepard btw, I just borrowed that one as an example, the Inquistor there is my creation though and its just the tip of the iceberg with the kind of stuff I do).

The issue for me is ugly is easy, beautiful is hard.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I mostly play RPGs, FPSs, the odd Third-Person shooter and occasionally DotA2 and such like.

- RPGs...I don't particularly care. In Skyrim, yes I created an attractive character, but then I've also played Planescape: Torment, in which we take on the role of a pale, scarred, immortal amnesiac who smells of formaldehyde.
- FPSs...couldn't give a damn what *I* look like since I cannot see myself.
- DotA2...I play multiple heroes of either gender. Masked, fat, green, blue, otherworldly, whatever.
- Third Person/MMO...Hmmm...tricky one. Given a character creator (eg. any BioWare or Bethesda game) I'll make my character attractive, be it male or female. Saying that, I've also played Styx, Dark Souls and the like where the main character is non-human or ugly and don't much mind.

On the topic at hand tho, where attractiveness ties into the flogged-to-death moaning about diversity, I also don't care. If there's a romance plot, it might be different and attractive characters are more compelling. But for any other story, it doesn't matter. I thought the tattooed/pierced girl in Watchdogs was repellent, but her looks made no difference to me, the story or her character (which was just fine...assuming a character whose motivations made no sense in the first place is "fine").

A different example would be Glory and Eiger from SRR: Dragonfall. I realise they are in essence 2D portraits and small sprites (I think they're sprites?) but regardless, neither are great looking. Eiger is a buff troll while Glory is a beat-up, mechanical thing. It doesn't matter tho because Eiger is bloody brilliant and Glory, tho not so effective perhaps, has the best, fleshed-out story and arc of all the team.

I've played so many games with strange or unattractive characters that it doesn't much bother me if I'm enjoying it. Styx, Leisure Suit Larry (back in the day), multiple RPGs that if not given a choice, I don't much care. If given a character creator, I probably would create an idealised man or woman.

 

[ExDeath730]

I woudn't matter in the slightest to say the truth.

About WoW, i played as an Orc main, my alts were a Troll and a Tauren, i did have an Blood Elf, because i was a hordie in a PvP server and really wanted to play Paladin ( and the Napoleon Dynamite dance just sold that to me )

But anyway, most of my characters that i create are not really beautiful or pretty or anything like that, my Femshep is, but that's because i made her to look like my sister, my male sheps are just "normal", and in most games i usually go for normal people instead of super models.