I don't want to make this black specific problem all about me, a white guy, but does anyone feel like hair choices in games are just getting worse in general?
I play old RPGs and always find a hairstyle I like, but now I'm playing Dragon Age Inquisition and there's like 10 variations of "bald" and no good hairstyles at all. I just want a damn Pixie cut, it's not even a rare haircut and it wouldn't look too out of place.
Also if you tie hair and beard to a single choice you burn forever in game designer hell.
The best character creator I've personally seen was Star Trek Online. Fallout 4 was pretty decent too, but again lacking for hair options.
I'm gonna edit to clarify, it's bad normally and it's even worse for black characters.
Makes sense. The higher the fidelity, the more dev time it takes for each player option, so when you're looking for features to cut during crunch time it's easy to see character customization options as a waste of time.
I think I've come to associate graphical fidelity with bland gameplay and storytelling. All of the best looking games out there are by Ubisoft or EA or one of these other big game companies, and every single one of them has so much money dumped into it that it becomes "too big to fail" and that means that the choices made by the game designers are extremely conservative. Can't take any chances and risk making the game fun, just make it like every other game in its genre so that it makes its money back.
I don't want to make this black specific problem all about me, a white guy, but does anyone feel like hair choices in games are just getting worse in general?
I play old RPGs and always find a hairstyle I like, but now I'm playing Dragon Age Inquisition and there's like 10 variations of "bald" and no good hairstyles at all. I just want a damn Pixie cut, it's not even a rare haircut and it wouldn't look too out of place.
Also if you tie hair and beard to a single choice you burn forever in game designer hell.
The best character creator I've personally seen was Star Trek Online. Fallout 4 was pretty decent too, but again lacking for hair options.
I'm gonna edit to clarify, it's bad normally and it's even worse for black characters.
I've noticed that, yeah. The 90s hairstyles are no longer represented in games, when they used to be.
The most devastating one are the lack of mohawk and devil horns in Fallout 4.
They had tonnes of cool "punk" haircuts and then replaced them with bangs, or a buzz cut.
Edit - okay Fallout 4 has a mohawk but it's an unlock and not available at the start.
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Makes sense. The higher the fidelity, the more dev time it takes for each player option, so when you're looking for features to cut during crunch time it's easy to see character customization options as a waste of time.
I think I've come to associate graphical fidelity with bland gameplay and storytelling. All of the best looking games out there are by Ubisoft or EA or one of these other big game companies, and every single one of them has so much money dumped into it that it becomes "too big to fail" and that means that the choices made by the game designers are extremely conservative. Can't take any chances and risk making the game fun, just make it like every other game in its genre so that it makes its money back.
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