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Abstract This thesis will investigate how developers can create recognizable and historically realistic female game characters while balancing historically accurate aspects and creative aesthetics. This paper is meant to give a better understanding of the importance of accurate historical female costumes in games, and investigate whether or not these are preferable to a gaming audience. The results will be reached by analysing the results collected from two online surveys where six 3D models’ turnarounds from two different eras with different levels of historical accuracy will be represented. Keywords: historically accurate, female costumes, game studies, game character costume design, recognition of historical costumes Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Background 4 2.1 How Historical Costume and Character Design Has Previously Been Done in Entertainment Media 4 2.2 The Issue with Idealized Female Character Designs 8 2.3 The Consequences of Altering History 11 3 Central Question of the Thesis 14 3.1 Method of data gathering 16 3.1.1 The Survey and the Sample Group 16 3.1.2 The Predictions for the Survey 17 3.1.3 The artifacts 18 3.1.4 The Second Survey 19 4 The Research Behind the Artifacts 20 4.1 3D Models and Posing 20 4.2 The Style of the Artifacts 21 4. 3 Fashions of the Two Historical Eras 22 4. 3. 1 16th Century Fashion 22 4. 3. 2 Edwardian Era Fashion 29 5 The Production Process of the Artifacts 36 5.1 The Base of the Artifacts 36 5.2 The Design Process of the Artifacts 37 5.2.1 The Design Process of the Accurate 16th Century Artifact 37 5. 2. 2 The Design Process of the Accurate Edwardian Artifact 39 5. 2. 3. The Design Process of the Semi-Accurate 16th Century Artifact 42 5. 2. 4 The Design Process of the Semi-Accurate Edwardian Artifact 44 5. 2. 5 The Design Process of the Creative 16th Century Artifact 46 5. 2. 6 The Design Process of the Creative Edwardian Artifact 48 5. 3 Summary and Conclusion of the Artifacts 50 5. 3. 1 16th Century Artifacts 50 5. 3. 2 Edwardian Era Artifacts 51 5. 3. 3 The Textured Version of The Artifacts 51 5. 4 The Pilot Study 55 6 Evaluation 58 6.1 The Study 58 6.2 Analysis 60 6. 3 Conclusion 73 7 Concluding remarks 74 7.1 Summary 74 7.2 Discussion 75 7.3 Future work 78 References 79 1 Introduction Video games inspired by history have been a part of the gaming industry for a very long time. Take for example the classic games The Oregon Trail(1971) or King's Quest(1984), both of ​ ​ ​ ​ which were released in the infancy of the industry. Historical games have almost always been present and popular among the gaming audience. History has influenced games from many different genres such as role playing games, strategy games, and first person shooters, to varying degrees. Some games have merely been inspired by the aesthetics of history, whereas others have sought to replicate history, but regardless of how games are inspired by history, some historical aspects are almost always recognizable to the player. By reflecting aspects of authentic history, developers are able to create a feeling of the past both in realistic and in fictional settings. In these games there have been many characters who have been clad in what we perceive as historical fashion. Though, when depicting a historical era within a medium meant for entertainment, aspects of historical fashion are often changed. This is the case for both character design in games, as well as costuming for theatre and film. Costume design and character design are closely connected as they both have similar ways of adapting historical aesthetics and fashion in order to better present story and character. Costumes are often changed for many different reasons, such as to create a stronger character impression, create a mood, or to appeal to a modern audience (Andersson, 2011). However, games have a few other reasons that are unique to its medium such as to fit a more simplistic graphical style, technical limitations, or to appeal to the mainstream target audience. Gaming culture unlike theatre, or film, is a culture which is very male-dominated (Lynch et al, 2016), and so designs may also be adapted to create a stronger appeal for this specific group. These design changes make the clothes lose the context they once had, and we can no longer see them as true reflections of history. Video games however, often do not mean to recreate the past, but to create an experience which a modern audience can appreciate and relate to. An experience that reflects the values and perceptions of modern society rather than those of the past. Yet despite the many differences, we still recognize the past. In this study we wish to explore how developers should make use of historical aesthetics in their character designs, specifically their female character designs, to appeal to the general audience. Is there a preference for true authenticity, or is the preference merely for society’s perceived idea of authenticity? If a fictional interpretation can still be recognized as a product of a 1 certain era of history, is it preferable for a depiction to only represent certain elements of an era rather than recreate it fully? These are the questions that we wish to explore, and by doing so we hope we can collect information that will be helpful for character designers who want to design costumes inspired by history. It’s however difficult if not impossible to study and research the reaction of players to all of history’s different aesthetics within a single study, thus we have decided to focus on two specific eras: The early renaissance era, i.e the 16th century, and the Edwardian era, i.e late 19th century to early 20th century. There are multiple games that have depicted or taken inspiration from said periods, for example Assassin's Creed 2 (2009), Dragon Age ​ Inquisition (2014), Dishonored (2012) and Bioshock Infinite (2013). All feature varying ​ degrees of historical authenticity but still predominantly feature aesthetics typical of the historical eras we aim to study. Many other studies and articles have analysed and discussed the relationship between modern media and historical fashion. Such as the article “Competent, Capable, and ​ Practically Dressed”: The Representation of Women in the Assassin’s Creed Series which ​ discusses how the Assassin’s Creed games depict history with a focus on the appearance and roles of the female characters (Fishbune, 2018). The article The Tyranny of Realism: ​ ​ ​ Historical accuracy and politics of representation in Assassin’s Creed III (Shaw, 2015) similarly discusses the Assassin’s Creed games’ relationship with history but with a more general focus on history itself (Shaw, 2015). A great article discussing the depiction of ​ ​ historical aesthetics in media and its reflection of society is the article The maiden fair: ​ Nineteenth-century Medievalist Art and the Gendered Aesthetics of Whiteness in HBO’s Game of Thrones (Downes & Young, 2019) which brings up how our perception of the ​ medieval ages have been heavily influenced by values of the victorian era. These are but a few examples of texts written within the subject, but they show that the way history is portrayed in entertainment media is a subject that is and will remain relevant as history is something that will remain forever present. The study that will be performed for this paper will further explore the subject with a focus on multiple eras, something which is rarely seen in other texts. Commonly most texts only focus on one era. We will study the perception of these eras, how knowledgeable the general audience is of these eras, and how to create an appealing character inspired by these eras. Focusing both on historical depiction and game development is something that makes this study unique for its kind. 2 Inevitably a discussion of the appearance of characters, especially female characters, will bring up the subject of sexism in entertainment media. Sexism is very much present in both film and gaming culture, both within the media and in the culture surrounding it. Female characters have been objectified and portrayed in damaging ways for years in the media for both children as well as adults (Munilla, 2018). As gaming is closely related to film, these issues exist within games as well (Lynch et al, 2016; ESA, 2009-2020). Both in games and in the male dominated fan culture that exists around them. This paper will mainly focus on visual aesthetics of history. Though we will discuss certain aspects of society and sexism in gaming culture, we will not analyse these societal topics in depth as this is not the focus of our study. 3 2 Background 2.1 How Historical Costume and Character Design Has Previously Been Done in Entertainment Media Costumes may to many seem similar to fashion, and while it is an aspect of it costumes are different from fashion. Costumes are created for a specific purpose (Moloney, 2014), and are rarely meant to be garments worn outside of a specific context. They strike a balance between reflecting society and reflecting the character. Costumes can show a society’s values and perceptions of other cultures, eras, careers, etc, but they are also meant to create an impression of an individual. Costumes are as mentioned designed to show character (Andersson, 2011), to create an image of something (Moloney, 2014). A character design is essentially the same thing as costume design but the actor is digital. Costume and character design both try to convey an identity and narrative to the viewer (Maloney, 2014; Salomaa, 2018).

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