Prosopagnosia, Gaming With Face Blindesss - Access-Ability 

Notice how none of the accessibility options take anything away from the experience of players who don't need them...and may lead to gameplay benefits for other reasons. Accessibility is just part of good game design.

Having distinct looking character is also, just, good character design. While not a hard rule, a great character design allows the character to identified by their silhouette alone. Not sure how that would help those with prosopagnosia, but I thought it was an interesting thing to mention.

It’s interesting that solutions for various accessibility issues actually dovetail really nicely with one another. Subtitles with the speakers name not only help folks with hearing issues, but also folks with facial blindness and ADHD as well

What strikes me is that so many of the suggestions are just good character design. Things that help differentiate can also help make for much richer characterization in general.

I don’t have full face blindness, but I struggle differentiating between similar looking people. That’s why I really hate when characters look the same and people brush it off as “that’s just the style!” Like, even in one style, different characters should look different. Especially if they’re protagonists

Huh. You know, I always had considerable issues remembering faces in real life. I would often think that maybe I just didn't care about people, but that would also happen to me with movies and series. Hell, I was probably the only one who didn't gasp when Keanu Reeves was revealed as Johnny Silverhand in that memorable Cyberpunk 2077 reveal trailer, with my only thought being "Who's that?" as everyone else in the room applauded wildly (thankfully Keanu showed up right away, but still!). This also happens to me in videogames. My best (or worst, depending the point of view) was during my play of The Walking Dead: 400 Days. When you jump to a side of the road with one of the characters, you land right next to the person that was shot during Episode 3 of the original series... and I never recognized her. It was only later, while watching other people play and react to it, that it finally dawned on me. Go figure.

So I discovered I have a mild form of face blindness when I played Little Hope. I can’t recognize people or character without similar hair styles or without glasses. I knew identical twins growing up, and they looked nothing alike when one of them cut their hair short, and I didn’t recognize my co-worker without her glasses, or when she died her hair. A single character in a game that changed his hair looked completely different to me.

Theme songs. Like, it seems dumb and corny to have a character come in to his guitar lick or whatever, but oh my god it so helps. And it doesn't have to be full anime of walk in freeze frame to personal jingle and character name (though I mean yes please?), but even good movies have personal themes. Lady in a cloak sneaks by but what's that flute? Oh it must be Leia, because I know that song. It helps, so much.

i've been patiently waiting for this video! this is such an amazing coverage of the condition, thank you so much for everything you do!!

For if this issue impacts me, well, my husband feels the need to warn me when he's going to get a haircut in case I don't recognize him when he gets back (Obviously that didn't come up at all last year) - I am still utterly clueless on if people talking about how all Hollywood actors look the same these days is a meme or people being serious, that's basically always been the case for me. Absolutely on distinct silhouettes really helping, but that's good character design generally, same with finding voices more recognizable than faces. This also combines, for me, with difficulty with names, so the solutions you mentioned about displaying names more often don't help me that much, unless you've got few enough characters that each can have a distinct colour to present those names in a different colour for each. Definitely helps me somewhat, mind, just not as much as I suspect it helps others.

Great video Laura. I've never heard of prosopagnosia before today. And I love that so many of the methods for mitigating it are simple that all games could be accessible to those with face blindness with just a few tweaks. 😃

I'm all for a more diverse cast in games, and before now had never even considered that it would make it easier for players with face blindness. Brilliant vid!

thank you for doing a video on this, it's always been something i wish more people bring up and discuss, especially in games. even stuff like "making sure the camera is focused on the speaking character and having their nameplate with their subtitles" helps so much.

I don't have an issue generally with facial recognition but a lot of these suggestions would help a lot as I just don't have a great memory. Eg. I am 125 hours into Skyrim spread out several months as I often don't have time\energy to play for stretches. It would be great to be able to pause and get a rundown of the character talking to you about some obscure sub mission from 3 months ago.

Great video as always, but this time about a condition I have, so I'm extra pleased. And the part about cartoon characters made me realize why I has such an aversion to watching live-action movies as a child and preferred cartoons instead - I had a really hard time following the plot of live-action movies. I got better at it when I got older, but I still struggle from time to time.

Thanks for this! I've suffered from face blindness most of my life, and not recognising characters when they appear in a different context when you're supposed to isn't even something I've linked to it (I can't follow the plot of Dunkirk at all, to give a non-game example).

I like the idea of bio notes that you can check to see where you've met that character before.

This is one of the best summaries of prosopagnosia that I've ever heard. Thank you!

Once again this show makes me consider I might be effected by the discussed condition. One game series where I really have trouble tracking who is who is Destiny. Aside from the core 3 voiced by famous actors the npc’s just blur together for me. Add to the fact I play sporadically over years and the adhd video reinforces why I can barely remember what’s going on and who I’m talking to. Outside of games I’ve confused my friends boyfriend with an ex of his multiple times whenever we’re eating at new restaurant. Part of it is he has a type but I also now think part of it is the new location.

Thank you for making a video about face blindness! Now I have a video I can show to coworkers when giving feedback on character design and UI work, and helping them understand my perspective and the perspective of players like me. Also this video makes it very obvious to me why I am so attracted to anime-style character designs. Anime can get fairly critiqued for characters having the "same face" everywhere, but they almost never have the same hair; combine that with the exaggerated personalities and voices, and you can see how anime characters are unusually distinct from eachother in ways that I actually can see and appreciate.

My autism - can't recognise faces easily. My adhd - can't remember names easily lol

I've been looking forward to this video, and I think you did a marvelous job. I have a touch of the ole face-blindness myself, and there really aren't many resources online that discuss the struggles it can cause, or the coping mechanisms we develop. In fact, my main coping mechanism is voice recognition (to the point that I can probably recognize more famous people by their voices than their names) and you are one of, if not the only, person I've heard even mention voice recognition as a coping mechanism. Thanks Laura ❤️

As an autistic transgender woman with prosopagnosia this video makes me too happy Great to see someone talking about this

Great video! Loved this!

This is my reply in a prosopagnosia support group where your video is being discussed: "My gosh.. this is an incredible video. She's spot on with everything in this video.. It's not been an issue in most of the games that I play. However if I'd done more realistic adventure/plot driven series lately, her suggestions would be of great benefit."

Love this! Recently discovered I've been living with prosopagnosia my whole life a few years ago!

Really interesting video! I didn't know too much about this subject so it's great to learn more :D

hope game designers see this! i cant even imagine how frustrating it would be to play a game while struggling to tell characters apart.

Really good video I have prosopagnosia, and tbh, I think video games are probably the *best* medium for me to recognize characters in - they tend to operate on cartoon rules of "everyone always wears the same outfit", but also they tend to be a lot more aggressive about including names (above heads, in text boxes, in glossaries, all the stuff you mentioned here) than any other type of media (except maybe books, where this problem doesn't apply). I think the history of game graphics has tended to lead to designs that work well, too - you can't distinguish Mario & Luigi by face when their faces are 6 pixels apiece, so you have to use the rest of their design. Though, yeah, there still has to be thought about it, now that we have the technology to start making players rely on distinguishing faces, so lets hope games stay good about this one.

This part of my brain malfunctions from time to time, and all of a sudden I won't recognize the person I am talking to and have to remind myself they aren't a stranger. I've never had it happen while gaming though.

Oh no. I thought having a hard time regonizing people outside of the context that you typically see them was totally normal. 🙃

i was in my 30's before i relised i was face blind.

Neat video! I had prosopagnosia myself, and I cant think of a time it has impacted my ability to play a game... which may be because I mostly play games with cartoon art styles in the first place, which I gravitate to subconsciously because of my prosopagnosia lmao. Fun fact: I first realized I was faceblind when playing 999, which has a character with prosopagnosia and which introduced me to the concept. Less fun fact: upon replaying 999 I realized that game is super demonizing towards the condition, which is a bummer.

Y'know I guess it makes sense that I prefer cartoony or anime-y styles, what with having face blindness. I'd never thought of it that way until this video.

Honestly my face blindness is one of the reason im not a huge fan of photorealistic games. The more cartoony a character the less my brain store it as a face and more a pattern, plus usually more cartoonish character just have a more distinct style for their characters

I used to have a lot of trouble with faces in movies as a kid, I got a little better over the years but I still have trouble all the time. I have trouble with names too unless they have a meaning that I'm aware of, but that's more just my memory being weird. Subtitles pretty much solved the issue tho, I have them on everywhere, movies, tv shows, games, whatever.

maybe this isnt the best place to ask but it does feel like the best place for an answer; what is it called when you can recognise a face in full detail and have an intimate understanding of each part of it with absolutclarity BUT when you are not looking at the face the details go away and the general parts get muddy? like i can look at a face and take crystal clear stock of each tiny feature and remember those features the next time i see that face and can pick up tiny changes and alterations and i can name other faces with the same form and movements but within a few minutes of looking away i can't actually remember basic things like nose shape, skin colour gradation, freckling or eye shape without having to think really hard for a long time and even then not really being able guess much of any of it like going mentally from 1080p to 240p

Does anyone know what the game at 5:30 is? I've been trying to figure it out but can't place it!

I have proso, born with type, I never thought of this. Cartoons with no realistic features really don't affect me. Otherwise I just accept times I have no idea who the fudge is who. Being lost in story lines is well normal to me at this point. I saw a Monster Hunter Rise clip. Love that game. Players are so customizable with armor and layered armor faces are not nessisary. You can tell peeps apart by their fashion sense.

I hate beauty standards for this exact reason... everyone is trying to look the same (well at least that's what it looks like when you have trouble differenciating people already). The little cues I used to get are masked or polished to make them less visible, everyone has similar clothes, wear the same color scheme, wear their hair the same way... how do they expect us to keep up?!