What is the magic of "pinching the face for two hours, playing for five minutes"?

Every facial detail that can be altered is precious.

Back in 2019, when the first trailer for "Eldon's Ring of Law" was released, a discussion group called "Elden bling" was already built on Reddit.

The theme of this group is also obvious: a place dedicated to The Ring of Eldon's face pinch and equipment pairing.

With the release of the game, the "Shine Eldon" group has also been built to be very lively, even no less than the game's main forum. As we've seen, some of the beautiful face-pinching pieces come even faster than the game guide:

For players, this has become a widespread phenomenon: although the next game world has countless vast boundaries waiting for me to explore, I'm sorry, I just want to get tangled in this acre and three points of the character's face first.

"Pinch your face for two hours, play for five minutes", such a joke, has been circulating in the game circle.

But to say that it is a "joke" is not entirely true - although this sentence is somewhat exaggerated, but for some players, this is a common situation.

This phenomenon is especially evident in RPG games: even though the game may have just finished a thrilling opening animation rendering your world on the verge of collapse, even though NPCs have just told you that they are about to die... But the player can always be calm as water in the next face pinching session, make a cup of tea, and start to adjust the position of a mole on the character's face for ten minutes.

Pinching your face is a top priority. For many players, this is already an important part of the gameplay.

There may have been a tradition in this matter. As early as when the game was still using the pen as a medium and existed on paper, people showed great enthusiasm for "designing characters". In the last century, when tabletop role-playing games such as DnD became popular, players have begun to "pinch" a character by drawing themselves.

It wasn't until games entered the computer age that the "design of characters" didn't have to be so itchy.

In 1988's Pool of Radiance, there was already an original model of the character design system: players could choose one of several different sets of images the game offered to represent their character.

Although from the current point of view, this is not even a pinch of face, and the choice is pitiful. But decades ago, it was an amazing degree of freedom, worth a dozen minutes of careful selection.

The degree of freedom that this game can give to the player is also gradually improving with the development of technology.

For example, "Dungeon Siege", which was praised for having a character customization system in its early years. This series of games, which began in 2002, offers players the possibility of "changing genders", "changing faces" and "changing hairstyles" for characters.

Even if these are only limited collocations, they can create something different. This is also the "face pinching" gameplay in early 2000: the game offers a number of different templates that players combine and match.

Although there is only a small amount of pitiful room to play, players still return with a lot of enthusiasm, wondering which hairstyle with this face is more harmonious, and whether adding a scar will be more in line with the human design.

It was not until the advent of the "slider-style face pinching" that the real idyllic era of pinching faces really began. The so-called "slider-style face pinch", that is, the player can pull the slider left and right, and define every detail of the character's face more freely.

This means that players can pinch almost any face in the game.

It was also from the birth of this more detailed way of pinching the face that role-playing games were added a little more color. Rather than rush into the game world, people prefer to sit in front of a computer and spend tens of minutes deciding what their character looks like.

"Pinching your face" began to turn into a starter. It's one of the big parts of the gaming experience, and it's also a way to play. Of course, like playing the game itself, this is also a technical activity.

After the appearance of "slider pinch face", it has also been criticized by a small number of players. They think the system is too complex, and if they are not careful, they will make the character look beyond recognition - after all, designing the face is a delicate job, and the slightest carelessness will become discordant.

But these voices were soon buried by the great wave of pinching faces. After all, the most exciting thing for a gamer is to enjoy the right to dispose of the game characters – every change that can be allowed is precious.

For example, after some games started offering the option to "change body". The game circle even gave birth to a proper noun called "boob slider", the meaning of which is obvious: a slider that can change the size of the character's chest.

Whenever a new game is released, a small group of players will run into the forum with such a focus and ask if there is a "big wave slider". If they get a positive answer, they will immediately "add to the shopping cart", and vice versa, they will leave in sorrow.

This is also the greatest value of the existence of the "face pinch system": to better realize everyone's fantasies. With the change of systems, the way for players to achieve their fantasies has become easier. Not only is there more freedom, but the way is also more humane.

In some adult games, including I-club games, face pinching (although not just pinching) has even become the main gameplay. Although the actual "operation" time of players entering the game is not long, they are still obsessed with pinching out one "fantasy" after another with different flavors.

Stimulated by the greatly increased play space, pinching the face has begun to be independent of the game for players and has become a "creative" way. Take Soul Power 6, which has had the most free face-pinching system in recent years, for example, and after the game's release, its player community has almost become a variety of character exhibition halls.

The strange pinching of the face is already a beginner for the players. People have even restored a large number of characters from virtual works through this game.

It is worth mentioning that this is already a kind of gameplay in the game circle, which is named "virtual cosplay" by enthusiasts, which refers to the use of games to restore the appearance of celebrities or characters.

It's hard to reset your appearance in reality, but in virtual games, you just need to click the mouse.

Regardless of how they perform in the actual screen afterwards, players will faithfully adjust every detail of the character's facial features.

There is also no shortage of people who try to restore themselves with games.

Of course, compared to these fanciful creations, most players will still choose to be a traditional honest person when opening the first file of the game: according to their personal aesthetics, and the style of the game itself, design a pleasing and human face.

Even though it's a whole few hours

No matter how much players expect from the game, how many times they scold the mother when watching the news of the delayed release, and how many times they have seen the progress bar during the download process, there is only one link that can calm them down instantly: pinch their faces.

Pinching the face is important. For most gamers, this is a fact that does not need to be explained.

The cause of this phenomenon comes from a variety of factors. The main thing is to "increase the sense of engagement": when your carefully designed and created characters appear in the cutscenes, moving the plot forward, facing the most terrifying demons in the background story. This sense of participation will greatly improve the game experience.

You'll feel like a virtual, self-created, controlled "other self" that has accomplished a lot in the game — not just a level.

In a role-playing game, the characters created by the player are also often considered to be the psychological mapping of the player. Through the operation of "pinching their faces", their emotional bonds will also be strengthened.

In a way, these characters represent another "personality" of the player in the virtual world. It will even reflect some expectations of the players themselves:

A scholar named Nick Ey has studied players' self-expression and social interactions in virtual environments in a large number of MMO games. He once concluded that "in general, people create slightly idealized characters based on their true selves."

However, depending on personality differences, the actual situation will be slightly different. For example, introverted players will be more inclined to do so. Extroverted players, on the other hand, may be more inclined to experiment with new identities through their characters.

It is worth mentioning that the effect of pinching the face is not just a simple visual enjoyment. As the player shapes the character, the character is also "shaping" the player himself:

In Virtual Tennis 2009, the University of California, Davis, did a study in which they randomly assigned 96 women two roles, one obese and one slimmer.

The results showed that those who were assigned obese characters were more negative in the game than those who were scored slim - less physically exerted.

This is also the "amoeba effect" in the virtual world that has been discussed in recent years , players will unconsciously behave more in line with their avatar in the game. For example, male players who play female trumpets will prefer cute emojis than male players who play male trumpets.

Of course, even without talking about this, the existence of the face pinching system is equally important. It satisfies the player's desire to create. Some players simply want to use the game system to create their own "beauty".

Some Korean-style MMOs are loved by a large number of players because the face pinching system is more delicate and humanized, and it can pinch out more beautiful characters without mods.

For example, "Black Desert" in the end game period has created a phenomenon that allows players to play for hours just by pinching their faces.

After the launch of the mobile terminal of "Black Desert", it did not give up the obsession with pinching the face because of the migration of the platform, and did not back down at all in the high freedom of the pinched face.

Therefore, only in the early days of the launch, many players shared a large amount of face pinch data.

Some players even said that they were not doing their jobs because pinching their faces was too fun:

I've spent all my time pinching my face, and I heard the game is pretty good too?

This article is reproduced from the Game Research Agency (ID: yysaag) with permission, please contact the original author for secondary reprinting.