We're making games, and games are affecting us in turn... Recently, a dressed UP master on station B suddenly burst into flames, because her appearance is similar to the heroine of the game "Final Fantasy 7" Tifa, and even more similar than many people who deliberately imitate costumes. For a time, this news quickly spread in the game circle, and fans who like Tifa ran to the UP social account to leave a message. In one day, her account rose by more than 100,000 fans, and has now reached 332,000 followers, and it has also attracted the attention of some foreign gamers.
The reporter learned that "Final Fantasy 7" is a role-playing game released by a Japanese company in 1997, and it was re-listed after being remade and optimized in 2020. Tifa is one of the heroines of the game, and together with the male protagonist of the green plum bamboo horse (the player's operation character), she fights monsters and upgrades.
How to describe Tifa's popularity in the game circle? According to the data, she has won the first place in the world's most attractive game heroine, the first place in the world's sexiest game heroine, and the first place in the world's most beautiful game heroine selection.
The production company projects the pursuit of beauty onto Tifa, so she seems to have all the images and characteristics that a goddess should have. The game's character description reads: Tifa has the appearance of an angel, the figure of a devil, the voice of a bird, willow eyebrows, large eyes, thin lips, plus a standard melon face, wide double eyelids, high nose bridge, all the beautiful features of Western women gathered here, and also has a long black hair of Oriental women...
A gamer who was concerned about the incident told reporters that he saw Tifa's shadow in the UP master. As a loyal player of this game, it is fun to see it. "It's really similar, especially the eyes and hairstyle", "It's so pretty", "It turns out that someone can really look so pretty", "Pretty is too standard"... The comments section of the main video is full of such comments.
Why is "modeling a face" so appealing?
In final fantasy 7 games, the player's manipulative character is the male protagonist, who is introverted, non-verbal, inferior, and like many boys, he longs for powerful power when he is young. And Tifa is his green plum bamboo horse, and the only person who knows his true past, and his feelings for him are not as simple as "friends of green plum bamboo horses".
It's because of this setting that it's easy for Final Fantasy 7 gamers to get emotionally attached to the virtual person Tifa. Generally speaking, the longer you go into the pit, the deeper the feelings you pour into.
But in addition to the emotional factor, it has to be said that the perfect appearance set by the game company for Tifa is indeed very attractive, and she is what we now often call the standard "modeling face". Originally, modeled faces were often used to describe star idols or entertainers. It refers to the appearance standard in line with the public aesthetic, the facial contour is clear, can digest and absorb various makeup, and the facial features are more three-dimensional, just like the game modeling. In fact, Tina, a virtual person who really relies on data models, her appearance is a veritable "modeling face".
The appearance of virtual people is synthesized from digital information, so it can avoid the shortcomings of people, and the nose, eyes, mouth, etc. can be pinched into a particularly beautiful shape. For example, the producers who had been interviewed by the Yangtze Evening News before said that their team used big data calculations to customize the facial features for its virtual people, and determined the values according to the shape and characteristics of the netizens' favorite facial features, and after continuous modification, finally made up an image that conformed to the aesthetics of most modern people.
Also, you know what? Your aesthetic will actually be affected and changed with the investment in the game.
The German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer once talked about the overcoming of subjectivity by games: people tend to be in a state of immersion when playing games, often for the purpose of relaxation, and this relaxation is not done through a state of complete freedom and idleness, because once you participate in the game, you must obey the rules of the game and take the purpose of the game as your own purpose. Therefore, there is no gamer as the "main body" in the game, and it is not so much that we are playing the game, but that the game is playing us. In this way, although people have made games, the games in turn may not be completely controlled by us.
This is also true when it comes to the game characters. For games like Final Fantasy and The Sims, the production company tried to keep the modeled characters as close to humans and the real world as possible when they were launched. But when the player plays, indulges, and gives affection to the game again and again, these seemingly human-like characters will in turn affect the player's aesthetic.
This is also one of the "alienation effects of games on people" that have recently been discussed in academia. Over time, gamers will gradually get used to the aesthetics of the virtual world, and substitute these aesthetic characteristics into the real society, thinking that people who look like game characters are beautiful.
One more word
There is no fixity in aesthetics, and the discussion of this event is not aimed at the UP master. First of all, the author recognizes that the UP owner is very beautiful, and this report only discusses the alienation of the game's aesthetics to people. Is a person beautiful or not? Has the game affected you? Is this effect good or bad? The answer lies in personal judgment.
Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News trainee reporter Sun Qingyun
Proofread by Xu Heng