Every facial detail that can be altered is precious.
As early as 2019, when the first trailer of “Elden bling” was released, a discussion group called “Elden bling” was established on Reddit.
The theme of this group is also obvious: a place devoted to face pinching and equipment matching in “Ayrden Circle”.
With the release of the game, the “Shining Eldon” group has also been built very lively, even as much as the game’s main forum. As we can see, some beautiful face pinching works are even faster than the game walkthrough:
For players, this has become a widespread phenomenon: although there are countless vast territories waiting for me to explore in the next game world, I am sorry, I just want to get entangled in this face on the character’s face. One-third of an acre.
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“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, for some players, this is a common situation.
In RPG games, this phenomenon is especially obvious: although the game may have just finished a tense and exciting opening animation, rendering the world you are in is on the verge of collapse; although the NPC has just told you in a hurry that you are about to end… but Players can always be as 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.
Pinch your face is a top priority. For many players, this is already an important part of the gameplay.
This may have long been a tradition. People have shown great enthusiasm for “designing characters” as early as when the game was still on paper with the pen as the medium. In the last century when tabletop role-playing games such as DnD became popular, players have begun to “pinch” a character by themselves by drawing.
Until the game entered the computer age, “designing characters” didn’t have to be so far-fetched.
In 1988’s “Pool of Radiance” (Pool of Radiance), there is already the initial model of the character design system: players can choose one of several different images provided by the game to represent their characters.
Although from the current point of view, this is not even a face-pinch, and the choice is poor. But decades ago, this was already a great degree of freedom, and it was worth spending a dozen minutes carefully selecting.
And the degree of freedom that this game can give players is gradually improving with the development of technology.
For example, Dungeon Siege was praised for having a character customization system in its early years. This game series, which started in 2002, provides players with the possibility to “change gender”, “change face” and “change hair style” for characters.
Even if these are only limited combinations, they can create something different. This is also the “pinch face” gameplay in the early 2000s: the game provides some different templates, and players can combine and match them by themselves.
Although there is only a small and pitiful room to play, the players still return with a lot of enthusiasm, wondering which hairstyle matches this face more harmoniously, and whether adding a scar will be more in line with the character.
It was not until the advent of “slider face pinching” that the real pastoral era of face pinching really began. The so-called “slider face pinching” means that players can freely define every detail of the character’s face by pulling the slider left and right.
This means that players can pinch almost any face in the game.
It is also from the birth of this more detailed face pinching method that role-playing games have been added a bit more color. Rather than rushing into the game world, people are more willing to sit in front of the computer and spend dozens of minutes deciding what their characters look like.
“Pinch your face” began to become an appetizer. It is one of the important components of the game experience, and it is also a kind of gameplay. Of course, like playing the game itself, it’s also a technical activity.
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After the “slider face pinching” appeared, it was criticized by a small number of players. They felt that the system was too complicated, and that if you were not careful, it would make the characters completely unrecognizable – after all, designing human faces is a delicate job, and the slightest carelessness can become discordant.
But these voices were soon buried by the big wave of face pinching. After all, the most exciting thing for a gamer is to have the right to dispose of the game character – every allowable change is very precious.
For example after some games started offering the option to “change body shape”. There’s even a term in the gaming world called “boob slider,” which means something obvious: a slider that changes the size of a character’s chest.
Whenever a new game is released, a small group of dedicated players will run into the forum and ask if there is a “big wave slider”. If they get a positive answer, they will immediately “add to the shopping cart”, otherwise, they will leave angrily.
This is also the greatest value of the “face pinching system”: to better realize everyone’s fantasy. With the change of the system, the way for players to realize their fantasy has also become simpler. Not only a higher degree of freedom, but also a more humane way.
In some adult games led by I Club games, pinching your face (although not just pinching your face) has even become the main gameplay. Although the actual “operation” time for players to enter the game is not long, they are still obsessed with pinching out “fantasy” of different flavors.
Stimulated by the greatly improved play space, face pinching has become independent of the game for players and has become a way of “creation”. Take Soul Capability 6, which has the most free face pinching system in recent years, as an example. After the game was released, its player community has almost become an exhibition hall of various characters.
Strange face pinching is already elementary for players. People even restored the characters of a large number of 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 fans, which refers to the use of games to restore the appearance of celebrities or characters.
It’s difficult to reset your appearance in real life, but in virtual games, you only need to click the mouse.
No matter how it behaves in the actual screen later, players will faithfully adjust every detail of the character’s facial features.
There is no shortage of people trying to restore themselves with games.
Of course, compared to these unrestrained creations, most players still choose to be a traditional honest person when opening the first file of the game: according to their own personal aesthetics, and the style of the game itself, design a pleasing and consistent game Human face.
even if it’s a few hours
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No matter how much players look forward to this game, how many times they scolded the mother when watching the news of the delayed release, and how many times they watched the progress bar during the download process, there is only one link that can calm them down instantly: pinching their faces.
Pinch your face is important. For most gamers, this is a fact that needs no explanation.
The reasons for this phenomenon come from a variety of factors. The main thing is “increasing the sense of participation”: when your carefully designed and created characters appear in the cutscenes, move the plot forward, and face the most terrifying demons in the backstory. This sense of participation will greatly improve the gaming experience.
Some Korean MMOs are loved by a large number of players because the face pinching system is more delicate and user-friendly, and more beautiful characters can be pinched without mods. For example, works such as “Black Desert” and “Sword Spirit” have created a phenomenon that allows players to play for hours just by pinching their faces.
You will have this feeling: a virtual, completely self-created and manipulated “other self” that has accomplished many achievements in the game – not just cleared the game.
In role-playing games, the roles created by players are usually considered as psychological mappings of players. Through the operation of “pinching the face”, their emotional connection will also be strengthened.
To some extent, these characters represent another “personality” of the player in the virtual world. It will even reflect some of the expectations of the players themselves:
A scholar named Nick Yi has studied players’ self-expression and social interaction in virtual environments in a large number of MMO games. He concluded that “in general, people create slightly idealized characters based on their true selves”.
However, the actual situation will be slightly different depending on the personality. For example, players who are more introverted tend to do this. Players who are extroverted may be more inclined to try new identities through their characters.
It is worth mentioning that the effect of pinching your face is not just a visual enjoyment. When the player shapes the character, the character also “shapes” the player himself:
In “Virtual Tennis 2009”, UC Davis did a study: they randomly assigned 96 women two roles, one obese and one slim.
The results showed that people who were assigned to the obese role performed more negatively in the game than those who were assigned to the slender role – less physical exertion.
This has also been discussed in recent years, the “amoeba effect” in the virtual world – players will unconsciously make behaviors in the game that are more in line with their avatars. For example, male players who play female accounts are more likely to post cute emojis than male players who play male accounts.
The existence of the face pinching system is particularly important for this reason. It satisfies the player’s desire to create – to create the “beauty” in the player’s own heart.
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