Makes me frustrated and hopeless, Its quite clear that they do this for the male gaze and whatever its called, but that doesnt justify it and makes me very sick.
Not saying that beautiful characters are bad, but semi naked characters with unrealistic beauty which both have nothing to do with the game at all is terrible, very terriole.
Why ruin a good game for the so called" male gaze" or “sex sells” thing? why?
I feel like a hypocrite and a loser.
Not sure if indie games are any better, itch io is very good, it has great (hidden) gems.
But its also filled with dating games and whatnot, I didnt check the nsfw games, but I wouldnt be surprised if they filled the entire front page.
Anyway, Its a deep issue for me, wanted to vent, thanks for reading.
The playable character (PC) is the focus of attention and therefore gets disproportionate effort put into it. There is usually only 1, maybe 2-3 of them so making a 100 outfits for each PC probably means making a 100 outfits, maybe 300 in the absolute worst case.
If I remember correctly, a game like GTA San Andreas had around 300 different NPCs. So making just one second outfit for each (toggle, not slider) is extra 300 outfits. For most games, the effort is better spent either adding more outfits for players or more NPC types to improve variety (more gamers care about that than NPC sexualization). Or just bigger map, or more missions, etc. Of course it depends on the type of game.
yeah but the npc outfits and the main character can be the same.
In some games they can be the same, and in some they are. But in many games, that doesn’t make sense. Maybe the NPC has a role, e.g. a police officer needs to wear a police uniform. Or maybe the NPC has a personality that the clothes help express. An innocent religious girl will not wear revealing outfit and a rebellious daring one probably will. Taking that away with a slider could really deform what the game is trying to express. Especially if NPCs don’t get enough screen time, their looks are important to convey their character.
PS: There is also a technical limitation. It’s not just artist effort that focuses on PCs. They clothing of playable character will often be more complex. Perhaps it is more detailed. Perhaps it can be combined (different top, bottom, accesories). Perhaps it deforms around character creation sliders. Perhaps it has physics enabled. All of this is extra load on the GPU and in many games is simplified for NPCs. So giving NPCs PC outfits may kill performance. If I again bring up GTA SA as an example (because I know a lot about how the game works under the hood), the main character CJ is the only one that has clothing handled separately from the player model. For most NPCs, their clothes are part of the NPC asset and can’t be swapped as that would take extra effort and resources.
Now non of this means it is impossible, but for most games, it is just not worth it.
yeah that is why I mentioned im thinking along the lines of games like cyberpunk than witcher. where the main character has a lot of options. I mean it already seems like there are sales to be made from games with a lot of character customization options. it definately is a draw to begin with.
True, but those options usually sell because they are somehow eye catching, bombastic, etc. The players want to stand out. They don’t want to look like a random NPC.
a lot of times you can mimic an npc. the npc’s need to stand out a lot to. You often see the I wish we had X as an option where it is one an npc has in the game.
Yeah, I feel we are going too much into details that vary greatly between games.
yeah I kinda meant im surprised someone does not do it while no one is doing it. obviously if every game dev did do it then it would not have unique draw.
If you mean using same clothes for PCs and NPCs, some games do it. The Sims, Hitman games, Rimworld, many RPGs like Fallout and Skyrim.
As for the sliders, yeah. I have never seen something exactly like that. But I expect it just wouldn’t fit well in most games and also wouldn’t really be much of a sales point. People would always prefer just one of the settings, so it wouldn’t be better than a game where it is the only option.
I can also already hear the screeching from game journalists and religious groups about adding such a slider.