Gender- and Age-related Differences in Designing the Characteristics of Stereotypical Virtual Faces

Abstract

The characteristics of virtual faces can be important factors for avatars and characters in video games. Previous work investigates how users create their own avatars and determines the generally preferred characteristics of virtual faces. However, it is currently unknown how the preferred characteristics of avatar faces depend on the players' age and gender or if these demographics can be predicted based on the data provided by an avatar creation system. In this paper, we investigate the effects of gender and age on the facial characteristics of 4,215 virtual faces created by 1,475 participants (994 male, 481 female) mainly from Central Europe using a web-based avatar creation system and the Caucasian average face. Our results show that with increasing age, men and women design increasingly realistic and less stylized avatars. We also found that young persons design more androgynous avatars, while adults further increase the masculinity and femininity of their avatars. However, women with higher age decrease the femininity and increase the masculinity of stereotypical faces. Based on the data collected during the avatar creation process, we can predict the participants' gender with an accuracy up to 91%, which open up new use cases for video games and avatar creation systems. We discuss potential social, biological, and cognitive explanations for our results and contribute with design implications for games and future avatar customization systems.