The Sims 4's Intuitive Character Customization Could Be the End of Appearance Sliders

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're an avid fan of The Sims franchise then there's a good chance you've already seen the character customization trailer for The Sims 4 that was released last week. In addition to giving us a good look at the entire updated Create-A-Sim process, this video shows the nitty-gritty details of editing a Sim's face and body. In fact, The Sims 4's tactile feature-sculpting reminds me a lot of Black Desert, a Korean MMORPG currently in closed beta whose character customization has been a point of fascination among fans (see my post about it here).

What these two games have me wondering is if slider-based customization is on its way out, or at least on its way into the background as more direct ways to manipulate an avatar come into fashion. While sliders can give you finer control of each individual feature, list after list of bars and dials labelled with unclear and intensely specific things like "Eye Apex" can be incredibly intimidating... And that's when they're implemented well. When they're implemented poorly they're downright baffling, like the appearance sliders in Dark Souls 2 that sometimes seem to adjust everything but the feature you expect them to.

Direct feature manipulation like what we've seen from The Sims 4 and Black Desert is much harder to execute than the alternative, meaning that it's unlikely it will become standard any time soon. Even so, our old friend the slider's days may still be numbered.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times, and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.</

Comments

[melponeme_k]

I don't know why but these avatars seem sleazy to me. I get the same slimy, creepy, sleazy vibe from High Fidelity's avatars as well.

And it isn't uncanny valley. This is something else. Second Life avatars don't have that sleaze factor...at least not on purpose.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Thius reminds me of two things from Poser's history.

Magnets were like this but horribly complex to figure out zones for.

Later, I think in Poser 7 but not sure, there was an ability to direct select a zone on the model and just start grabbing and I think how you grabbed intuitively tried to figure out the scale of the zone and the strenth of the change.

This looks like the next step in that process - but only because while working with a known avatar, they can assume the force of the morphing pull.

That said... saving the data for this changes is not trivial - you end up creating massive multi-megabyte files that are just "this vertex to that spot, that vertex to this spot, and how this relates".

- And that means is an idea likely dead in the water for an online game.

[Kitty Revlover]

Eve online has something similar, but since there are different races in the game, the options are fairly limited.

While I would love to jump back to the sims franchise, too many issues with my computers and the fact they don't treat mac folk very well, make me wary. Although I am glad they are continuing the Goth tradition, but my favorite family was the sims in the vegas house with all the lawn flamingos.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Loved it. It would affect the polygons, but maybe Sims 4 has some good optimisation tech.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Maxis has been pushing the envelope on character creation. It remains to be seen if anybody else will pick up on it. Intuitive modeling tools are a net gain for everybody, save those that profit on counter-intuitive modeling tools.

[niks]

Loved it,thaanks :)

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

@melponeme

The reason they look "creepy" is the Sims equivalent to "skins". They're not as good as SL skin, which is one of the many reasons why SL can have performance issues. SL users routinely use super detailed skins that no sane game developer would ever use.

[melponeme_k]

@cronocloud

I don't think it is the skin although that could be part of the issue.

I think it is the animations they are using. Which spells doom for HIFI if this is the case.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Finally had a moment to watch the whole video.

Notice the ethnic diversity of the developer team for Sims.

There's a good amount of it.

Also gender diversity.

There's a good amount of that.

That is because they're normal tech workers from Silicon Valley. When I step outside my office - I see even more diversity than that.

So WTF with the makeup over at LLs (see the Drax files where you can see some of their staff).

Now... Look at the Sims characters he creates.

Notice how EASY he can get to ANY ethnicity on the freaking planet... No limits. No difficulty. Just poof and he's got any look desired.

Now go into SL and try to do that. Euro-looks are easy, in the last two years African female looks have gotten easy (males still suffer from overly muscled skins)... outside of that you start having to make weird compromise choices...

Now compare all of this in this video... with the new avatars that just launched for SL...

And its just a sad panda moment...

[Pussycat Catnap]

Also...

I am sooooo buying Sims 4 now...

The variety in those avatars was amazing. These people get diversity and customization and the importance of the avatar for identification.

LLs would still be 'Ruth only' if we users hadn't been pushing them for the last decade. They seem to have no understanding of how important the avatar's visual is to its owner, and less about how important it is to see variety / diversity.

I may be the loudest voice on this, but I'm not alone in it or people would not be flocking to the San Francisco Bay Area in droves. I choose to live in a place with no majority ethnicity, and a whole lot of cultural variety and diversity for a reason. I like knowing people from all walks of life and all ethnic backgrounds (including Europeans counter to what some conservative-talking-points people think of me. When I say equal and 'one love' I mean for everyone).

So it gets disturbing logging into a tool that does not represent that. Especially so when that tool is made here in the same place that is so globalized.

So I am sooo buying Sims 4 - they get it. They don't disrespect me by neglect.

Too bad its not a virtual world AND a game, but only the game.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Well-said, Pussycat. I can't think of anything to add to that except my whole-hearted agreement.

[Walker]

always hated sims, supposed to be a relaxing game where you can slowly build a career, enjoy and have fun on weekends etc and instead the gameplay is too intense, no time to rest in comfort, almost never... rather play my bubble shooter flash game at http://thebubbleshooter.net/, i'm done with "big games" anyway

[Account Deleted]

@ CronoCloud Creeggan

It is the other way around Sim skins have been
HDx1024 & hdx2048 for years with several well known skin creators busted for stealing skins and converting it to SL standards to be sold on marketplace.
http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php?t=622625

1/8 of all makeup & eyes sold on marketplace is stolen sims makeup

Quality example
http://sclub.mktm.co.uk/en/2012/04/ts3-skin-f1-0/

Since all sims stuff is mostly free. greedy SL sellers fill their stores up with it then come onto forums like this complaining about the linden terms of service violating their creative rights.

[Account Deleted]

@ San Francisco

(Insert Comment)

[zzpearlbottom]

I was a avid player of the sims franchise, loves the fact that almost all content was free, that adult mods where more then widely in use and that i could do whatever as it was a offline game, where i didnt need to explain any to nobody.
But in no way the quality of the avatars in terms of sex appeal can be compared with Second Life ones, even in 2010, much less now.
And the complains are in fact, of ripped off content from Second Life creators, being offered for free to use on the sims, not the other way around lol.

[Account Deleted]

@ zzpearlbottom

Agree it goes both ways but just know most SL content that goes to Sims is done as a deliberate act by kinggoon copybotters as a way to punish SL content creators not just random Sims modders borrowing content.

Secondlife creations are being passed around in thousands of zip files across over 12 platforms by kinggoon. Everything mesh in Secondlife can be found in endless locations across the internet.