Do you see many attempting to portray older people effectively? It''s always youngsters.

What do you mean by "Older people". In what kind of game? Do you mean 45+ people? What is "not" portraying an older person effectively? If the role was made for a gun-weilding grandma then there has to be a good "reason" behind it right?

In my games (Nes to X-Box), older people (45+ here..) are either one of the folowing: crazy/evil/mean, very intelligent and knowleged, war-raveged vets, comatose veggies, inspiration/leaders to the younger protagonist, ghosts/sprits or a mixture of what was listed.

Type-casting happens in movies as well as games.

Hell, youngsters are not portrayed effectively... how many teens do we see killing hords of people... wait a second, let me re-phrase that...

Lamont G.
CG Artist
San Diego CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

To answer your question: No.

Lamont G.
CG Artist
San Diego CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

quote: Original post by Lamont
What do you mean by "Older people".

People with wrinkles.

Bah, you know what I mean.. age groups.

Lamont G.
CG Artist
San Diego CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

If wrinkles defined age, then all the sun-baked people in Arizona, Nevada and whatever will have issues...

Lamont G.
CG Artist
San Diego CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

[edited by - Lamont on January 2, 2004 8:41:44 PM]

quote: Original post by bishop_pass

quote: Original post by Lamont
What do you mean by "Older people".

People with wrinkles.

Ah, but wrinkles require more polygons.

I suspect a large part of it will be a question of trying to provide characters that the audience will identify with best. The demographic for most commercial games is centered around the ''young person'' area. Plus, the majority of people making games are young people. That''s quite a heavy bias.

I don''t necessarily think that''s the way things should be - a greater number of characters would mean more variation, and variation is always good. But that''s the way it is.

Richard "Superpig" Fine
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
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quote: Original post by bishop_pass
Do you see many attempting to portray older people effectively? It's always youngsters.

Does this imply that you want to see more old people in games? Or just that you have noticed that there aren't (m)any?

John B

[edited by - JohnBSmall on January 2, 2004 8:57:43 PM]

The G-Man in HL2 has wrinkles, as does Dr. Vance. You''re right though; for the most part, it''s early 20''s to late 30''s. I guess that might be because most people have a more uniform archtypal idea of people in the "young" category. There are many "deformations" that occur with age

Later,
ZE.

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This is an observation not related to games but to drawing. Most books on figure drawing use only young and attractive models. I don''t know of any that show drawings or pictures of fat or old people. Same goes for kids.

I suppose most people like to think of things pleasing to them, so they tend to forget about other options. It''s somewhat like me defaulting to a white male adult in my mind when I see the word "he."

Also some people tend to associate good drawings as being about good looking people. I think that''s wrong; it''s all about line rhythm in making a drawing look good.

Well, that''s my rambling on the subject.