More look than feel?

The event started at 7.00 p.m. with Autodesk giving an exclusive presentation of their new software. This was followed by a talk from Richard Hince of Artem Digital on their head scanning and facial capture systems.

With the rapid advancement of game console and graphics technologies, game developers are now able to create highly detailed and realistic looking game characters. But how believable are these characters when it comes to emotional interplay? Are we even approaching effective simulation of basic human emotion? And do mainstream developers and publishers even care?

Evidence suggests that at least some are beginning to. When developing Half-Life 2 the design team used a famous psychological application called Ekman's Facial Action Coding System a technique more commonly used to examine and categorise facial behaviours in terms of implied emotional expression. French developer Quantic Dream's recent E3 PS3 demo 'Heavy Rain' appears to champion the next gen console's facility to use its graphical capabilities to delivery a profound emotional punch, albeit a currently non-interactive one.

Meanwhile the whole area has begun to catch the attention of journalists and commentators. A recent article "Can games inspire feelings as well as fun?" asks whether games can now inspire feelings as well as fun. They state that,

"A game that can evoke complex emotions -- longing, despair, empathy -- is the holy grail for some in the industry. Not only would it open gaming to a true mass audience, but it would confirm their vision of interactive entertainment as the greatest story-telling medium since the invention of film."

This statement poses three questions -

Is an accurate representation of emotion in a game character necessary to fully enjoy the gaming experience? Or could a basic structural avatar arouse the same types of emotion in the player? For example, are bodily representations of emotion alone sufficient enough to recreate empathy towards a game character? And are these emotional representations any different to those recreated by actors in films?

Richard Hince

Richard has many years of motion capture experience. He is responsible for technology development in the field of motion capture and 3D digitisation of real world objects at Artem Digital.

Yours with feeling

IGDA London Chapter Team