Tattoos and video games

From slums’ doodles to living works of art, tattoo was a cultural commitment, but it has since changed and is invading our day-to-day life. Representation of a piece of soul or just an ornament ? This is now transcending the reality and it’s joining the world of pixels, for the happiness of some, and the indifference of others. You’ve understood, today we will talk about tattoos and video games.

Let’s start quickly with this subjective question : What’s the first impression about a tattooed character ?

The only goal of the tattoo is to be aesthetic.

Tattoo's tradition was so shared and mixed with other cultures that it surely has lost its nature during the last centuries. It means that a lot of persons may can't understand the message and the meaning of this activity. Nevertheless, the beauty of certain patterns doesn't need a message to their eyes, and the illustration is enough for them. Some developers use the tattoos like this. Grand Theft Auto V let the player personalize his avatar, like in the MMORPG for instance. However, the urban context, unlike an epic-fantasy world, allows the player to tattoo himself in a tattoo shop, in order to upgrade his personalization. Since the player embodies the member of a gang, the choice of his tattoos is limited to a style quite... urban: references to guns, drugs or money. Even if the choice is huge, the game doesn't let the possibility to draw our own tattoo, without changing or moding it. This mechanic is too bad because it only restrains personalization. I'm forced to admit that the tattoo can be used for purely aesthetics goals, like character personalization.

The tattoo is a synonym of a deep and touching story.

The act of a tattoo is generally really serious: it will be carved in the flesh until the death. It must have a message strong enough to be sure to not regret it. Tattoo turns into the expansion of your soul, of your personal story. You’re going to say: Sure, but this has nothing to do with video games.

I’ll explain it to you thanks of the character of Kratos, from the saga God of War (but not the 4th). Let’s sum up quickly his story. Kratos, a spartiate warrior, exchanged his soul for the power to annihilate the whole enemy army. Ares accepted, and Kratos, armed two blades gifted by the god, eradicated any adversity. However, his bloodlust pushed him to kill his family. His grief is reinforced by the kidnapping of his brother by Ares, in order to break the family ties and turn him into a true warrior. The spartiate, already violent by nature, became mad with rage and sought revenge in the deicide. He tattooed on himself the red marks of his brother, in order to accomplish a prophecy: a man with red marks will destroy the Olympus. The games are extremely violent, which fit well to the character, but let’s imagine Kratos isn’t tattooed. It would radically change the story and the player's feelings. Warrior’s tattoo is a representation of misery, turned into violence, and take it away means to not play a conflicted character anymore, just a violent one. Be violent can be hard to accept, but if it’s done without any reason, it can cut right now the will of playing. Some of you can say that the tattoo wasn’t mandatory to create a complex and deep character. Sure, but would it have the same impact ? I remind you that God of war saga are games with a third person camera, it means that the player can see Kratos during all the game, including his tattoo. A pretty useful trick to remind the player the value of his acts.

Tattoo gives a feeling of power, style and causes admiration or fear

In many cultures, tattoo was a synonym of power and warriors multiplied them, on each enemy killed. Some developers use this idea in their Character Design, and it can be relevant to look at their work. Let’s talk about El Sueño, leader of the Santa Blanca drug cartel, in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands. This is a mysterious man and we don’t know many things about him, nevertheless, his acts speak for him and finally see his face, masked by so much of symbols, create in the spirit of the player another tension: He’s really scary. It’s interesting to notice that his tattoos say more than words about his hierarchy, like the letters S and B, for Santa Blanca. In just one look, the player knows this character isn’t an ally, and he knows he’s unique, due to his unique Character Design. All these informations will agglomerate in the player’s mind, and a worry, a tension will grow in his imagination. It’s interesting to underline this choice, which can dive the player into an atmosphere, without the use of words, nor music. So with the polished cinematics, the character is threatening, upsetting.

Tattoo is a community-based symbol

It’s not rare to see people tattoo themselves by imitation, relatives or friends, socialization can pass by this, but I prefer associate it to the fact that the tattoo is a sign of membership of a community. What is better to represent his commitment to a community than an unerasable graphism. It’s due to commitment to certain communities that tattoos aren’t loved everywhere. In fact, I’m talking about the yakuza, and their traditional tattoo, called irezumi. Hanzo, a character from Overwatch has his arm entirely covered of irezumi. This link this the criminal environment is totally wanted by the developers, and justifies the japanese origin of the character, and his acrobatic skills. What’s better to climb walls than an japanese assassin ? Tattoos are useful to the depth of the character too: Hanzo seems to be wise, but he wears such symbols. If we dig a little, we notice quickly a conflicted man, representant of a nefast society and an unhealthy environment, forced to accomplish acts he’s regretting like his brother murder. As a matter of fact, community-based tattoos are used to give depth to a character, or to give a message, but they can have a less psychological utility: dive the player into a theme, a universe. Gang tattoos are unfortunately the best examples if we want to talk about community-based tattoos, but it can help a lot the player to discern his allies from his enemies. It’s the case of some beat them all, where players beat up

some tattooed punks, treated as scum because they don’t have any other utility than to be hit. It can be justified to serve gameplay in this case, but it can have a more subtil impact. Raynor’s Hyperion crew, in Wings of Liberty from Starcraft 2 campaign, has key characters which are tattooed: Tychus, Raynor or Swann. In fact, those tattoos doesn’t bring gameplay, nor backstory and a weak impression of power

(even if this is subjective), but they do serve a goal ! Community-based impact of the tattoo give an immersion and can sometimes give coherence to a universe. In the player’s subconscient, tattoos from Raynor’s rebels mark a way of life: Fighting, drinking and liberation. The characters smoke, drink and curse, just tattoos are missing to achieve to stereotyped picture of the rebel alien-destroyer brute.

Tattoo have to justify powers, because a game mechanic can be associated to.

In ancient cultures, especially maories, to tattoo had several meanings: It was to be handsome, or demonstrate his valor in battles. But some of them had another goal, more spiritual. In fact, it wasn’t that rare to tattoo himself in order to avoid or counter curses. It’s the case of the gecko symbol, the carrier of mana, which have the power to keep vitality in his owner. Thanks to this myths and legends, tattoo can take some supernatural aspects, and the idea of using tattoo to justify some powers in video games is more relevant. Styx : Master of Shadows use tattoo for his gameplay. Indeed, when our dear gobelin Styx is hidden in the darkness, his amber tattoo glow up, in order to show to the player that the player is well-hidden. This makes the shadows and lightnings concept more explicit, and the player understand better where he can hide or not. This is really important for a stealth game, and it gave take back some frustration for the player, like getting spotted when he was feeling hidden. But why this tattoo is so important ? A simple icon on a corner of the screen do the same job. Admittedly yes, but the game want to be extremely immersive, this means low amount of HUD, which are by nature extradiegetics. Furthermore, the game is based on the fact to hide in the shadows, and have an icon which pop every time would explose the immersion. This is when the tattoo fulfill its role. In addition to fulfill his function of shadow indicator, the tattoo is intradiegetic and reinforce the immersion. Nevertheless, we can notice that this tattoo wasn’t keep in the continuation of the saga, and isn’t in Styx : Shards of Darkness : an amber dagger substitute the tattoo function, which doesn’t exist anymore, maybe because the story told takes place before. Plot coherence or assumed will ?

Tattoo serve to represent the evolution of the character

Some cultures used the tattoo or scarifications during ceremonies and rituals in the life of a person, especially to affirm to passage to grown age: those are rituals tattoos, or initiatory tattoos. Even if we digress from this ritual aspect, I think the tattoos from the Far Cry 3 hero are good examples. Let’s sum up the story. We incarn an american tourist, who goes in vacation on an island… unfortunately occupied by traffickers. The trip turns into a drame, and the hero become alone, surrounded by savage nature and pirates. The main character, Jason Brody, starts his adventure without any tattoo, and along his acts, his competences and so on, another tattoo, more and more detailed will be added on his left arm. This is a quite original way to represent a progression system, and it coincides with the tropical landscape, it’s innovative and really motivating and rewarding. However, I think there’s some

mistakes: The tattoo is fully shown to the player before being implemented. Moreover, it isn’t shown permanently in the main game screen, when the player can really feel to be the character, even though it had the advantage of being in his arm. This point is important because it would have reinforce this idea of motivation and goal to achieve for the player.

During my researches, I’ve often eared “I can’t tell which is my first impression, it depends of the tattoo”. It’s true, and that’s exactly why the tattoo is relevant in a Character Design: The precision in few pictures. We’ve seen that tattoos have many goals, it serves narration, gameplay or coherence. In addition to this, tattoo gives more refined sensations considering its source. Let’s take the example of tribal tattoos, or cultural (by this term, I mean all the maoris, south-americans, inuits, japanese tattoos…). Due to their nature, these tattoos are more able to generate community-based feeling, whereas modern tattoos will give a sensation of deep story, or simple estheticism. The power of the tattoo is in its multiculturalism, so in its flexibility.