Wii Hardware Stores Player Caricatures, Profiles

[score]

From Game|Life (http://blog.wired.com/games/)

Game|Life is able to exclusively reveal that the Wii hardware will include a feature by which players can create "profiles" of themselves that include not only personal information but a caricature of their face that any Wii game will be able to access and use, as seen in the demonstration of Wii Sports Tennis.

Read More (http://blog.wired.com/games/index.blog?entry_id=1493873)

[Intruder]

Very cool and fun. Early on I had dismissed the Wii, but now it seems that I am more and more interested in it. It's price point features and new style of gameplay seems rather appealing.

[Deadend]

It sounds like it's in the hardware and not on the server, as it would be quite cool if it was linked to your username in online games, or letting you sign in at a friends house.

God, I hope MS and Sony swipe this idea in some form for their systems. Having a unique name AND face across all games would be cool, even if it gets distorted by various games as needed.

[MajSheppard]

Are we going to have more new Wii news every day?

[thecrazyd]

Are we going to have more new Wii news every day?
We can only hope.

[Deadend]

We can only hope.

Wii love Wii News, Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

[Spigot]

God, I hope MS and Sony swipe this idea in some form for their systems. Having a unique name AND face across all games would be cool, even if it gets distorted by various games as needed.
It would be neat if the Wiivatar had different costumes depending on the game you're playing. A little red or green plumber hat for when you're playing Mario Galaxy, a Link-style hat for Zelda, a headband for Wii Sports, etc.

[mkelehan]

Controllers will have unique IDs, and profiles will be linked to controllers. So, rather than having to sign in every time, every person in your house just needs their own controller. Whichever controller turns the system on determines the active profile. It's really a smart way to do it.

[Steele Johnson]

Are we going to have more new Wii news every day?

What a strange question. You do know why you come to this site, don't you?

[grimjoe]

God, I hope MS and Sony swipe this idea in some form for their systems. Having a unique name AND face across all games would be cool, even if it gets distorted by various games as needed.

Im sure they will, and Sony will prob say they invented/created this idea when they copy it lol

[Intruder]

Are we going to have more new Wii news every day?


Is this a gaming news site, I thought it was a porn site. bahhh

[Evil Avatar]

Are we going to have more new Wii news every day?

Every piece of news we can find. The snide commentary is just a bonus.

[Carnisaur]

This seems to contradict when Nntendo said there would be friend codes. Maybe it was all just a bad dream. A horrible, horrible dream.

[AversionFX]

Wow, how freaking cool is that. I wonder how widespread this will be with games.

[Blade]

Finally the ideas first put forward as tentative games Talent Maker, Stage Debut, and Mario Paint 64 are coming to light.

This might confirm the rumored camera functionality of the Wii-mote!

[outfromoutwhere]

I'm pretty sure the smartest way to do this would be to either have a sort of paint program with template features, or to do a complete template system, so you just mix and match parts (lots and lots of parts) until someone looks like you. Getting everyone to take a usable picture would be hard, and turning those pictures into recognizable caricatures would be even harder.

[KamaItachi]

Controllers will have unique IDs, and profiles will be linked to controllers. So, rather than having to sign in every time, every person in your house just needs their own controller. Whichever controller turns the system on determines the active profile. It's really a smart way to do it.

I like the idea, but I hope there's a back up plan in case controllers get lost/broken or you can switch a controller over to a "guest" profile if a friend comes over.

[superherotaco]

Is this a gaming news site, I thought it was a porn site. bahhh

I don't know about you, but half the reason i come here is for the porn.

[Blade]

There's porn here?!

*quickly scans the frontpage and then frantically searches the archive*

[Vandabo]

There's porn here?!

*quickly scans the frontpage and then frantically searches the archive*

I seem to remember some hentai game ads but that's all.

As far as having a little WiiMe goes, I think it would be kind of cool. Maybe various accomplishments in games could unlock more options to customize it. I'm sure they will try to milk it as much as they can regardless.

[Kelegacy]

I can't wait until this system gets released. Good God.

[Johan]

Wii...looking better EVERY day. Perhaps the former king of the gaming 'hill' will march right back up and smack MS and Sony off on the way up ?!?!

[Spigot]

Wii...looking better EVERY day. Perhaps the former king of the gaming 'hill' will march right back up and smack MS and Sony off on the way up ?!?!
No... Nintendo would jump up, land on Sony and kick its shell into Microsoft, earning a 1 UP in the process.

[theguido]

Sounds like fun. Very much looking forward it.

Not looking forward to launch day, however. I just got a job at a Best Buy and the days following launch should be interesting, to say the least.

[ChaosDent]

This is something that would fit in really well with Wii Connect 24. Perhaps your console isn't just recieving content, but can serve content like your profile and your settings if you connect your Wii-mote to another player's console. Since this is built in, hopefully there will be a lot of games that take advantage of it, and I'm hoping some of them eventually graduate from the armless Wiiple in Wii Sports and Wii Music.

[jeffool]

Damn, and here I was thinking that my 'IDGamer' system I've been tinkering with would be a first. :(

And I really hope that they don't store an image of your character so much as personal information. This way the player can be better integrated into any game despite art style.

If controllers keep track of variables like sex, skin tone, hair color/style, height, weight, proportions, eye color/size/placement etc. of the player, then any developer can include a decently representable player avatar and we wouldn't have to start over from scratch on every game. And it would take an insanely tiny amount of space.

[jeffbax]

It sounds like it's in the hardware and not on the server, as it would be quite cool if it was linked to your username in online games, or letting you sign in at a friends house.

God, I hope MS and Sony swipe this idea in some form for their systems. Having a unique name AND face across all games would be cool, even if it gets distorted by various games as needed.
The new 360 Camera supports you to use that as your gamer photo... don't know about it being grafted onto game models though.

[CapnBob]

It's like they're paying attention to all of the ideas I've had for the system... Where's my tin-foil hat??

[Pantsmonkey]

If it mapped in 3D you could just wipe it over your face like a shaver and it would pickup the scale fairly accuratley. With and inverse selection of course. You would then just click on the colours and pow your done.

I would love the ability to map the walls of your house and store that on your Wiiport Card as well.

That way you could setup your own "Base" that whenever you went somewhere else to game was allready sorted you plugin your controller and pow all your shit is there.

You fastest times in Mario Kart. It would even check your friends Wii and see if he had any faster times loading them onto your Wiiport so when you got home you could better his time. Copying ghost data if available.

I always hated my friends having faster mario kart times than me we all used to swap carts so that we could go and beat the other persons time.

Gotta love that Wii News

[Achilles]

I was wondering how they’d keep people from putting dirty pictures up as their characters since some people seem to be under the impression that these might be linked to a ‘gamer tag’ like thing. However it appears that they will not be shared, upon reading the article closely. You can make one for somebody else and it sounds like you’ll be able to assign it to them, possibly to their friends code, but there’s no indication that these will be shared like a Live gamer-pic.

[Zeal]

YEAH, YEAH...............

[Deadend]

I was wondering how they’d keep people from putting dirty pictures up as their characters since some people seem to be under the impression that these might be linked to a ‘gamer tag’ like thing. However it appears that they will not be shared, upon reading the article closely. You can make one for somebody else and it sounds like you’ll be able to assign it to them, possibly to their friends code, but there’s no indication that these will be shared like a Live gamer-pic.

That's not revolutionary then :(.

It seems that Nintendo is taking large steps sideways. They have their controller, which can do many things, but I guess it could have more sensing abilities, their online system... well it sounds unimpressive (friend codes, BLEH!) and the fact that they want to store information on local Wiis and not on a remote server is kinda odd.

Maybe it's just because almost everyone, after hearing the first part about Nintendo's Wii ideas gets hyped up, as they are great ideas, but I end up feeling disapointed as well... as Nintendo seems to fear the last couple steps towards amazing.

[shnastybiznastic]

YEAH, YEAH...............
Okay, I know trolling the Nintendo threads is your thing, but I really can't comprehend the meaning of this post.

If it's supposed to be conveying boredom, then it would be better to use lowercase, since not only is uppercase the internet equivalent of screaming, but it dosent look very bored.

Also, why have so many periods? An ellipsis only has three periods, if you just want to trail off, three is enough.

The target of your troll is also ambiguous. Are you trying to convey boredom with the newly announced features? Are you bored at the comments being posted?

Please, in the future, troll coherently and with a discrete target, all these unknowns are eating me up inside. :)

[RMan]

I was wondering how they’d keep people from putting dirty pictures up as their characters since some people seem to be under the impression that these might be linked to a ‘gamer tag’ like thing.
I'm guessing/hoping that like jeffool suggested that the 'image' will not be an image but the settings that generate that image. Note that they say there will be an editor to create these player representations, not that you will be able to upload images, or capture with a camera add-on or something. The suggestion that this feature would be ‘part of the hardware’ (which IMO means stock software feature, not sure why this would technically be a hardware feature) implies a cross title feature that may be useable for more than just their sports titles. My guess is that they’ll store and potentially transfer the information used to generate the caricatures with standardized settings, then later they can add more advanced features that could allow the data to be used for various artistic games (IOW, allow games to have scale settings for facial features, or slide their placement on the image, etc). I think it could eventually end up a facial generation package that could really add to a lot of games, with the advancements of MMOGs and social gaming in general, I wouldn’t be surprised if all the consoles eventually do this (I love the idea of being able to recognize my in-game avatar across titles with different styles, that’d be fun even with SP games where it makes sense).

[OrangePulp]

I'm pretty sure the smartest way to do this would be to either have a sort of paint program with template features, or to do a complete template system, so you just mix and match parts (lots and lots of parts) until someone looks like you. Getting everyone to take a usable picture would be hard, and turning those pictures into recognizable caricatures would be even harder.

Not really. You can go to the website of the company that makes the face rendering software for Oblivion(www.facegen.com), get their software, and use it to make a cg face of a headshot picture. Then, you can check where the sliders are at, copy that into Oblivion, and you have your face in the game. Or Chuck Norris (http://youtube.com/watch?v=MP9CHQZ3mHw&search=chuck%20norris%20oblivion), as the case may be.

To make it a caracature, they would just have to have some kind of formula or what have you for modifying some of the values, which doesn't seem that difficult to me (well, if you're a professional who deals with face recognition software).

As for the thing about remotes matching profiles, I do like that idea, except that I hope there's still an easy way to have them set to guest, or switch the profiles, or something, as I intend to use the wii for a lot of multiplayer, and that will require remotes to have changing profiles, or guest profiles, or something.

[Wedge]

Okay, I know trolling the Nintendo threads is your thing, but I really can't comprehend the meaning of this post.


Don't feed the moron/troll. The ignore list is there for a reason, and there is no reason anybody who can put two thoughts together should not have Zeal on their list.

Of course: Ignoring them does not work when people keep insisting on quoting them :)

[shnastybiznastic]

The ignore list is there for a reason, and there is no reason anybody who can put two thoughts together should not have Zeal on their list.
Yeah, I would ignore him, but if you read his posts in "Comic Book Guy" voice, then he becomes a source of joy. :D

[Achilles]

Note that they say there will be an editor to create these player representations, not that you will be able to upload images, or capture with a camera add-on or something.It’s true they never suggest a camera or being able to pull images from photographs. This sentence initially threw me, but they were talking about games pulling down the profile. And if you insert compatible software into the Wii, it will pull up the images that you chose. So the feature is more of a ‘create a character’ than it is putting yourself in the game. But it does seem they’re working on a tool that may allow you to paint your own if you want, though I’m not sure what the extent is. Maybe you could paint a wang, maybe it just lets you assemble an image from a bunch of different parts. Either way it's on your system, so nobody else will see it unless they come over to play with your Wii.

So really this is a create-a-character for a profile on your local system only, only for use with compatible software.

[RMan]

But it does seem they’re working on a tool that may allow you to paint your own if you want, though I’m not sure what the extent is. Maybe you could paint a wang, maybe it just lets you assemble an image from a bunch of different parts.
Yea, it seems the ‘assemble’ type of system, I think a painting system would be bad for many different reasons. The feature, if it’s developed like I think, could be a really cool feature that could have dramatic impact on games, even though it doesn’t seem sexy at first. Basically, imagine a highly developed face builder, but also standardized and the data can be accessed from many applications. An application that wouldn’t normally bother doing user created faces might if the face generation is already there, and the users can spend some time really making a face they like. So, you could really tweak out your persona for the Tennis game, then it can automatically be loaded up for your default character in a MMOG, then tweaked again if you like. Clearly the online update stuff could also be really great for adding new facial features and what not. Again, not a sexy feature, but since it’s benefit could be shared among many games it’s impact could be significant.
So really this is a create-a-character for a profile on your local system only, only for use with compatible software.
Yea, but I wouldn’t assume that it’s just for the local system. If it’s the assemble setup, the data could easily be smaller than a hundred bytes per face, so this could be sent every time you connect to an online game, or cached on a central server. Unlike an image, the data would be super tiny (images aren’t bad either, but in contrast to this they are). It’s certainly something that each system should do if they’re trying to push the concept of massive or even small scale community gaming.

If it's really highly developed then a system like the 360 achievement system could even register accessories, like Snake’s bandana or Lara Croft’s sunglasses, that could be unlocked through a game, or even purchased with achievement points and become visible in other games (the game could choose not to allow non-stock accessories, of course). For lighthearted games, or as an unlocked feature for even serious games (like unlocking it after you finish the entire game), I think this could be really cool, and would be a great tool for viral promotion of other games through players discussing their accessories. Again, if highly developed, could be a wicked cool feature.

[mister_slim]

Im sure they will, and Sony will prob say they invented/created this idea when they copy it lol
Actually, some PS2 games could use the EyeToy import the player's face. I believe Tony Hawk used it online.