BigStage and Funcom are teaming up to produce an online (and eventually in-game) feature that lets you put your mug into Age of Conan.
People play MMOGs to act out the lives of their fictional characters, which, most likely, look nothing like their real life selves, especially when it comes to gender (but that’s another story). Still, if you’ve ever wanted to actually see your own face inside an MMOG, you might have your chance soon enough. BigStage has been working on some technology that will import your face onto an Age of Conan character.
As it is right now, the extent of the technology is a bit limited. You can only paste your face into cutscenes and still images. Here’s how it works: you head over to BigStage, upload three photos of yourself (one looking head on, another slightly turned to the side, another even more slightly turned to the side), and you’re in business. Your face will be magically grafted onto the body of an Age of Conan character.
Once that’s done, you can add accessories (like an eyepatch or shades), change the expression on your face from blah to surly to angry to surprised and beyond, and share your picture via email or on Facebook/MySpace/etc. More interestingly, the face you generate transfers to cutscenes, and does it pretty well too – the jaw and facial movements don’t look horribly fake, based on this video evidence.
Of course, this isn’t much more than a novelty taken on its own. But BigStage promises that we’ll be seeing this kind of stuff “in-game soon,” whatever that means. So Age of Conan may be populated with regular people faces soon enough. Just don’t be surprised when your favorite female companion shows up online sporting a beard.
