Too much information: video game character creation has gone too far
I’m having a midlife crisis with character creation in video games. My kids have always known the joy of recreating themselves virtually, but those of us who started playing in the 1970s as yellow balls with ghost-munching mouths still feel a tingle of excitement at those opportunities to put yourself into a game.
The first time, for me, was when I created my own player in Fifa’s Career Mode in about 2006. This was an intoxicating addition to the football game genre, because you could live your dream of playing for the team you supported. But I was overweight, 6ft 2in and balding. In-game Dominik had the acceleration of an Acme anvil and looked like a fat Stanley Matthews. I could create a smaller, leaner whippet of a player who could score a bucketload of goals and lead Celtic to glory, but it wouldn’t be me in any way, shape or form.
Role-playing games were kinder. Your body shape didn’t affect your character’s abilities, so it was easier for me to create a doppelganger to walk the wastes of Fallout or make soup in Skyrim. But the older you get, the less you want to stare at yourself in a game. It’s supposed to be escapism. You don’t want a reminder of the saggy face that looks back at you from the mirror.
I recently tried to create a middleaged mini-me in Far Cry 5. It was tough. I was challenged from the very first option: skin tone. Middle-aged Scottish skin tone is almost bluey-white until you get angry, stressed or exposed to the sun, in which case it turns bright red. There hasn’t been a game made yet that can give you that level of dermatological complexity. Red Dead Redemption 2 may have recreated every hair on its horses in 700bn megapixels of detail, but none of those hairs, or horses, looked Scottish.
So I went for the palest, least healthy skin tone the game offered me. Anything just short of translucent, basically. I went for the same eyes and nose as I have in real life: tiny piggy eyes and a nose that sticks up and flares out. I gave myself the thinnest pair of lips available and tried to replicate my golfball face by selecting the “minimal chin” option. I was losing self-esteem by the second.
Then it came to hair. And that’s when my resolve buckled.
I have awful hair. What is left of it. I can’t hide from that. It was OK back in the early 90s but then it retreated like a politician’s principles as I got older. I shave it close because if I let it grow for a month, I’d look like Trevor from Grand Theft Auto 5. And he is a psychopath who pulls people’s teeth out.
So, I gave myself the hair I have always dreamed of. I pushed the ingame head thatch to the very limits of wish-fulfilment: a fro, or a mullet. Both represent the opposite of what my meagre hairline offers the world in real life. If the point of video games is to let you step into an alternate world and live a reality you will never get to experience in real life, then allowing me to play a character with fully functioning follicles is the apex of escapism. I go for the mullet, and I liked this new redneck me.
Then my son told me if I really wanted to fulfil my virtual face and body fantasy wishes, I should try the new Saints Row Boss Factory. He said there has never been character creation like it. You can control and change … everything. Including chest size and groin size. I know I am firmly ensconced in middle age with 2.5 adult children, but I cannot resist going for 100 in the groin, which must be the name of a Blink-182 B-side. Then I start on my legs. Again, the range of choice is ridiculous. By the time I get to the option of an Oscar Pistorius leg blade I am starting to feel overwhelmed.
Then I open a section entitled Body: Modesty, which has options to Force Underwear (another potential Blink-182 title), allowing your boss to have pants or not, albeit with naughty bits blurred. Then an option to Show Nipples unblurs the nipples. If that wasn’t enough, you can choose the size of the nipples. Body: Modesty seems such a needlessly coquettish title now. Why not just say: “DO YOU WANT PORN? OF YOURSELF?” Some much-needed light relief is provided by the Modesty: Bottom options, which allow you to swap the blurred genitalia with everything from a shamrock to a fried egg.
After an hour I have a topless woman with two robot arms, a leg blade and a fried egg over her bits. She wears bunny slippers, librarian glasses, a studded mask and a golf glove, and is equipped with an emote that has her singing Hey Nonny Nonny with an acoustic guitar.
It’s madness. I feel grubby. I go to save this abomination so I can look back at it years from now to see how bad things were in 2022, but I am terrified it will upload to the cloud and this will be my gaming legacy. So I press cancel, take a long hard look in the mirror, and learn to love my old face again.