Who's Seraphine and what's the drama?

In June 2020 a mysterious digitally drawn pink-haired girl appeared on Instagram and Twitter, telling the world she wants to share her music and connect with people.

Meet Seraphine, a virtual influencer created by Riot Games to market their new playable character that goes by the same name in their game League of Legends. Seraphine is an LA-based aspiring songwriter and producer who shares snippets of her daily life on her social media, including pictures of her cat, drawings in her journal and details about her music career. Her Twitter account was created in June 2020 and her first photo was uploaded to Instagram in the same month on the 26th. She's also on SoundCloud and Spotify. 

Even though her origins or creator wasn’t stated anywhere in her profiles to begin with, it was quite early on that the fans of League figured out she has something to do with the game. It started with people noticing the character's art style was similar to LoL's and bit by bit Seraphine was dropping hints the fans would notice. For example one of these details was in a picture she posted on Instagram August 12 with another LoL character Annie's teddy bear Tibbers in the background:

To make sure you get the idea, here's Tibbers as seen in an official video about Annie's origins:

As Seraphine's not real there’s obviously a bigger agenda behind all this. Using Instagram and Twitter like a real human has helped create a great amount of hype and speculation around her, as post by post she’s been revealing more about her goals and existence. The post with most engagement by now has been the one where she revealed she’s going to collaborate with K/DA, a virtual music group consisting of four more characters of League of Legends. This was also something that fans were expecting since there were many signs pointing to it.

K/DA is a heavily K-Pop-inspired group consisting of Ahri, Akali, Kai'Sa and Evelynn, who are also playable characters in LoL. The group was unveiled in 2018 League of Legends World Championship Opening Ceremony with their debut single POP/STARS and it was a huge success, catering to fans of League but also to K-Pop enthusiasts who didn't necessarily know anything about the game. To be clear, the characters in the actual game have another backstory and their K/DA versions belong to a kind of an "alternate universe". One point of this is to sell so-called skins that serve to change the look of the character in-game. 

When the long-speculated collaboration between Seraphine and K/DA was finally confirmed Riot also started releasing chapters of a comic explaining the backstory of how Seraphine was found by K/DA and what is going to happen next.

The picture Seraphine uploaded to announce her collab with K/DA.

Up until recently Seraphine's been interacting with her fans quite a bit and they have been over the moon. She has not only answered her fans’ comments on social media but also asked them for help / inspiration / motivational messages in various posts. She’s also been sharing fanart of her on her Instagram and other indie artists’ music on Twitter. On October 11 she also posted a photo of a cork board with printed out supportive messages she received from her fans on Twitter, giving thanks to the loving community she has. 

All in all it’s a very interesting strategy for a game company to get their fans emotionally invested in a character by making her seem like “one of us” and dropping hints here and there of what might be her next move. Right now she's headed to Shanghai with K/DA to perform in the final of League of Legends World Championship, which is obviously the main goal for the hype apart from releasing the new character.

Seraphine's possible skillset was leaked in late September and on October 13 Seraphine’s character, or champion as they’re called in the game, hit the Public Beta Environment. Now that people actually know more about her unique abilities in the game, her playability and backstory that was released on League’s official website, there has been a very noticeable backlash from fans. Many criticise her for being just a copy of Sona, who's one of the older champions with similar skills and a music theme. The engagement of Seraphine's Instagram photos seems to be going down as well. Many people are disappointed and don’t think the hype was worth it. Every day more haters are showing up and the latest comments on almost all her photos are from disappointed fans calling her "Sona 2.0".

Seraphine posted this picture on Instagram on October 13, with the caption "look how far we've come, you and i". Here's what you can find in the comment section:

The truth is, without having played the game I had no idea who is this Skarner and what Seraphine supposedly did to his people. I did read Seraphine's lore on the official website, and digging a bit more around the internet I think I finally understand what's going on.

On the official website Skarner's described as follows:

Skarner is an immense crystalline scorpion from a hidden valley in Shurima. Part of the ancient Brackern race, Skarner and his kin are known for their great wisdom and deep connection to the land, as their souls are fused with powerful life crystals which hold the living thoughts and memories of their ancestors. In an age long past, the Brackern entered hibernation to avoid untold magical destruction, but recent, threatening events have roused Skarner. As the only Brackern awake, he strives to protect his kind from those who seek to harm them.

According to Seraphine's backstory, she can actually hear the emotions of people around her. This also applies to the Brackern crystals and as song is very important to them, in Seraphine's lore it is mentioned she connects deeply with one of them in particular, gets lost in its song and, in the process, learns to handle her power. And based on all the comments I've seen the haters say that makes her a psycopath and an assassin. Um. Okay.

TL;DR the hype turned into drama overnight and now the internet's full of memes about how Seraphine is just another Sona and Riot's only trying to make money with her and the skins they're releasing for her.

Oh Twitter...

However I would say this strategy has worked like a charm in getting people’s attention as even many of those who don’t play the game seem to be aware of the phenomenon she’s become, myself included. I'm so deep in this I can't get out anymore and might or might not have downloaded the game in the end. Haha. Help.

All images in the post belong to Riot Games unless otherwise stated.

Animation in Procreate part 2

Back to animating with Procreate! This time, as promised, I went for something a bit more complicated. I wanted to draw something cute and halloweeny so here you have a lil' witch riding her broom.

I first drew her from scratch in Procreate.

I duplicated the file to start animating since I think you can never play too safe with these things. I always prefer to have the first version as its own file. As you can tell I did make some adjustments in the animation step as well, for example I made her hair a tad bit shorter and changed the look of the broom's bristles.

First version (6 frames)

Second version (10 frames)

As you can see above, my first animated version was a bit stiffer than the final one. That's because in the end I decided to add a few frames more to make the animation flow smoother. 

All in all, the process took quite a lot of time, way more than I expected to be honest. I'm quite happy with the result but I'm still considering working on it and making her move more, perhaps by adding a bit of bounce to the broomstick as well as her limbs. I also realize the whole animation could be even smoother, though that doesn't bother me as much. I feel I've certainly learned a lot through this experiment and hope to continue doing so!

Controversial video games of the past

My boyfriend’s latest project has been setting up a RetroPie, an emulation station you can make with a Raspberry Pi. One of the first games we tried playing on it was Mortal Kombat 3. I was somewhat familiar with the game having played it on a MegaJoy II controller (a Famicom clone) as a kid, but understandably I don’t have very clear memories of it as it was just one game among others and certainly not my favourite one. When you start the game, a disclaimer pops up on the screen warning the player about the amount of violence in the game. Mortal Kombat 3 was released in 1992 so the graphics don’t really allow for a very realistic portrayal of violence, and from the perspective of a modern-day player I found the disclaimer quite amusing at first. However it did pique my curiosity and I decided to look into it a bit more. This led me on a discovery of the first controversial video games and how they caused moral panic back in the day when they were released.

Death Race

It could be said the first video game to cause such controversy was Death Race, released by Exidy in 1976. It was an arcade game in black and white with a bird’s eye perspective. The player controlled a car and the objective was to drive over ”gremlins”, small stick figures that appeared on the screen. When driven over they would let out a scream and turn into a cross symbol the player had to avoid for the rest of the game. It was claimed to promote excessive violence.

The working name for the game was ”Pedestrian”, that suggested the gremlins were actually originally visioned to be humans. Death Race was also the first arcade game to feature a human-shaped target. Just a year before the game's release the cult movie Death Race 2000 had come out, and the similarity in the name and the content didn’t go unnoticed. The film is about a dystopian future and a cross-country road race where contestants get points for running down and killing pedestrians. 

Mortal Kombat

The first game in the Mortal Kombat series was released in the arcades in 1992 and it was an instant success. Violence was used as a selling point and it was especially evident in the use of "fatalities", brutally violent moves the player could use to finish off their opponent but that did nothing for the actual gameplay. In 1993 the game was released for home consoles and worried parents called for a censored version. The console version that was released on Sega Genesis was indeed censored, but you could easily access the uncensored content by typing in the code "ABACABB". On Super Nintendo only a censored version was released, with the blood recoloured gray and some of the most graphic fatalities removed. On Nintendo the game had better music, bigger sprites and more colours, but the Sega port sold way more.

Doom

Another controversial game I remember from my childhood is Doom. I used to watch my dad playing it on our PC. This was a time long before we had internet and the only thing I personally did as a kid on that computer was playing with MS Paint. Oh, the memories. While watching my dad play Doom I remember the thrill of waiting for the monsters to appear, but I guess I didn't really pay attention to the violence since I have no memories of it whatsoever. 

Doom was released in 1993 by id Software, and even if it wasn't the first first-person shooter it did set the standard for the genre for years to come. The game ran on DOS, it consisted of three episodes and was distributed as shareware. Due to the game's popularity Microsoft also commissioned a port for Windows 95. Doom sold approximately 2-3 million copies in six years and was played by 10 million people within 24 months of its launch. 

Doom shocked parents with its blood, violence and creepy themes. After all the whole game is set on one of the moons of Mars where the player has to fight against monsters straight from Hell with weapons such as guns and chainsaws. The first-person perspective makes the player a very clear part of all the violence that was going on. Again, it might not seem like much to us now, but as the game was on of the firsts of its kind the impact was understandably big. And it certainly didn't help Doom's case when it was found out that the killers of one of that time's worst high school shootings were avid players of Doom. 

Development-wise Doom was revolutionary with its meticulously designed levels, multi-player option and a free set of modding tools that was provided for the players to modify and create their own levels in the game. It could be argued the controversy made Doom all the more popular, as any kind of hype surrounding a game.

The society has come a long way from the early times of video games. For example nowadays we might be talking more about game addiction or minority representation in games rather than violence. But surely as long as there'll be games there'll be controversy around some of them. 

Sources / further reading:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280555272_Analyzing_Game_Controversies_A_Historical_Approach_to_Moral_Panics_and_Digital_Games

https://www.ign.com/articles/2011/05/05/the-history-of-mortal-kombat

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/06/29/violent.video.games/index.html

https://www.museumofplay.org/blog/chegheads/2012/05/death-race-and-video-game-violence

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27620071

https://www.ibtimes.com/doom-turns-20-we-take-look-games-history-1505336

https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/knee-deep-history-20-years-doom-2D11722313