I admit, I don’t often stop to consider the fashion of the character I’m playing. They either look cool or interesting or sexy or funny or not. But then again, I’m not Tim Schafer sadly enough. If I were, I’d obviously dress better at the least:
So, on his left side, he tucked the shirt in, to show his trim figure and stylish belt buckle. “What a handsome young man,” you might say, “If he gets that shirt washed, he may date my daughter.” But his right side is untucked, like the shirt of a wild man, a renegade, a scoundrel. “What is that guy up to? Why is his shirt untucked? Does he not give a damn about me and my rules?”
These are his comments after playing Uncharted. I admit, they weren’t my comments after seeing that game, but you know, maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I’m not seeing the inner workings of the design. Now I start to wonder, did the Uncharted guys spend a lot of time thinking about the shirt? Did they have meetings on whether it should be fully tucked or not tucked at all? Were there angry emails that went back and forth about the color, the design, the tuckedness of it all? Or did they just stumble upon the “mullet” of character design?
Now I have to take it a step beyond that. Did the Gears team think about the armor they had the guys in (I’m guessing not much beyond, “that’s awesome, dude!”)? Why did the Gears people dress that one girl they showed in a cut scene in clothes, in a war zone, where as all the guys were dressed in some sort of super futuristic armor (a pet peeve of a friend of mine)?
What about those damn WoW bastards? Did they honestly sit down and consider how hideous their armor looked, even when a full set it made and think that was great? It’s Blizzard so they must of had user testings, focus meetings, and more. How did the mish mash sillyness that is the WoW armor/clothes setup pass whatever QA they have?
Really, how much work goes into character design and the clothes they wear? I’m assuming it’s different at each company, but I wonder how much real thought is put it into something so obviously important. Heck for that matter, do companies think it’s important or do they just have a guy throw some designs up and one gets picked and that’s that?
So many questions, so few answers.
-
What Would Matt Do: What would I do? I think the question is, what wouldn’t I do.