Motion capture in Games.

In today’s lecture when Kevin talked about the portrayal of women in video games as typically being hyper sexualised (not that it ever bothered me). Specifically the part about using motion capture technology on real people to get the realistic motion of say, a woman gyrating her hips, I was reminded of the game ‘Batman Arkham City’. I never really thought about how ridiculously over sexualised the female characters are, I noticed sure, but It appealed to me as I can only assume it was intended to. Cat woman is a leather clad dominatrix, Ivy doesn’t bother with pants, The main love interest Talia has a follow sequence dedicated to watching her bum as she leads batman down a hall, and Harley Quinn is nothing but sexual. In many of the movie style clips through ought the game Harley can’t seem to sand still, insisting on flaunting her goods in front of the player and dropping sexual innuendo into everything. I figured that motion capture had been used in the cut sequences, especially for the girls’ many gyrations but I never would have guessed who the girl behind the sexy movements was…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGL1pIQVJVo

…………………………………….  >.<  

And since then I have never looked at the characters the same way, and now when I play through again on hard, every time I see Harley or the other ‘sexy babes’ I shudder a little and think of the truth behind the wiggle.