Uncanny Valley in Video Games: An Overview

Abstract

The uncanny valley is an idea proposed by Masahiro Mori (1970) regarding negative emotions present in contacts with almost humanlike characters. In the beginning, it was considered only in the context of humanoid robots, but this context was broadened by the development of highly realistic animations and video games. Particularly evident are players’ interests in the uncanny valley. Recently there have been a growing number of reports from empirical studies regarding participants’ perception of highly realistic characters. In the paper, a review of publications concerning the uncanny valley hypothesis in video games is presented, as are deliberations about the impact of the uncanny valley on the game industry. According to the results, there is a need to recognise which attributes of virtual characters cause the uncanny valley effect.

Medium Specific Uncanny in Contemporary Video Games

“…The academic discourse surrounding the uncanny in video games is usually focused on the alienating effects of realistic-looking humanoid characters (Kätsyri, Mäkäräinen and Takala 2017;Ratajczyk 2019), invoking Masahiro Mori's (2012) concept of the "uncanny valley." There is even a claim that the ubiquity of these characters in video games and computer-generated animation changed our perception and desensitized us towards this sense of the uncanny (Tach 2013) where an ambiguity regarding the human/nonhuman, animate/inanimate nature of the character is triggered by its appearance, movement or other observable behavior (Kirkland 2009, 1).…”