Zhukov said:
I actually prefer character creators where you choose from premade features rather than fiddle with sliders.
Sliders tend to result in faces that look fine during creation but then fall apart when animated or when seen from a particular angle.
Although of course providing more and varied features to choose from is never a bad thing.
This is very true, and in all honesty, most games don't need a character creator at all. I can see that changing a little as gaming becomes more inclusive, and going forward most games that aren't about a fixed protagonist should include an option for male or female, white, black, asian [Middle Eastern should also be included, but I'll be damned if I think a games company would go against the current xenophobia in that area at the cost of profits, to try and be truly socially equal - without making it an obvious publicity stunt]. You don't need all the options, and the ability to choose everything, just a preset you can somewhat identify with. You'll never be able to get everyone, but cover the main bases and I think that's reasonable.
Character creators belong in, and IMO should be kept to, games about expression of yourself. Most Western RPGs come to mind here. In these games its about placing yourself in that world, and using it to express who you as a person are; or if you would rather, express who someone you invented as a character is through role play. For this, you need to be able to create the character, its an important part of expression.
Take something like Battlefield for instance... Nothing is gained by having you spend 30 minutes in the character creator before you start playing. Most people will still do it, because the option is there and why the hell not play as yourself, but it'd be 30 minutes of boredom at odds with what that player would rather be doing - shooting things - and its something they'd likely never think of again once they started playing as it has 0 impact on the game at all, and they'd never even see themselves. Only time it'd be noticed is when you run into other players who had just messed with the creator to create a half-alien crosseyed skeletal dwarf with a purple mohawke to play as, or some other eldritch monstrosity.
Star Wars battlefront had a crap character creator? That's good - because if it had included a good one, honestly, it would have just detracted from the game further. In these games the point of the character creator isn't to let players express themselves, but to create diversity - whether racial and gender or more simply just a diversity of character models - for the multiplayer so that not everyone looks the same. Same probably goes for Destiny. You're covered in so much armour that really all the character creator will do is slow the player down and put them in a lull before the game at least tries to throw them into some hectic shooting gameplay. The feel of the creator is at odds with the feel of the game.
Yeah, some people want a character creator in everything, and want to always feel a connection to their characters in that way. Not all games are designed for that type of player though, and its a good thing they're not. There are games with that as a core focus, there are other games where its not even considered. That creates variety in the gaming scene, and lets everyone have games geared to their tastes, rather than the actual increasing trend these days of watering down niche games into amalgamations of every conceivable genre to try and appeal to all players at once. TBH even that has thankfully started to slow, especially with the rise of many successful indie games, and big developers leaving to go indie themselves.
But back to fully on topic... Character creators are not needed for every game. They actually take away more from some games than they add to them. The games that do need them? Generally have good ones. Ones that don't need them? Should simply offer a handful of presets, rather than a crap character creator. Depends on the game as to whether they're a good thing or not.
