Equal Footing: Style Personalization in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

14 April 2021

This was originally written in my last year at York University for a human-computer interaction class, in collaboration with Teng Zhang and Kyra Younan. Their work was massively helpful in producing this paper.

Abstract

Competitive multiplayer games are an extremely popular genre in video games. Personalization is an important aspect of many of these games. By limiting the options for personalization to those only affecting style, and not physical appearance, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout creates a uniquely egalitarian environment which reflects the fair footing it presents to all players.

1. Project Idea

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a multiplayer obstacle course game where up to 60 players compete to clear courses and be the last contestants standing1. The game provides options for the player to personalize their characters, using costumes, colourization, patterns, and faceplates2. They notably do not allow changing physical attributes (such as height, weight, etc.) of the player avatar. The options they do present can be classified as “style” attributes3.

The game provides no text communication and no ability to set custom usernames. Instead, the game provides randomly generated short titles using simple nouns. To make their characters unique, players must use the personalization system. The options provided by this system enable an ambient communication between players, reflecting their personality and identity.

The game does not provide any gameplay customization, placing all players at an equal footing. This provides a fundamental level of fairness that provides equal opportunity for all players to compete and win matches. The only separation between players is their skill while playing, and what personalization options they may have unlocked.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout's system of style personalization provides players visual ways to express individuality through their self-presentation. The game avoids implying differences of capability by enforcing all players share the same physical attributes, creating an egalitarian environment.

2. Background

2.1. Mechanics of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

The game pits up to sixty players against each other in courses that consist of obstacle courses. Players race to the end of the course, avoid getting knocked off the course, or otherwise avoid elimination in game-show style. Each stage eliminates a chunk of players, resulting in further rounds having smaller and smaller pools of players, until eventually only one player remains1.

Players each control a Fall Guy, a round puffy character which have been nicknamed “jellybeans” (as acknowledged by publishers Devolver Digital4). The Fall Guys wander through each level in a very innocent manner, bumping into things and emitting soft yelps of joy. Before entering a competition, you are provided options to personalize your Fall Guy, by changing various features of their appearance1. Despite the term “guy” being singularly connotative of somebody of the male gender5, Fall Guys themselves as a group have no gender-identifying features, and can be dressed in a wide variety of presentations12. There are notably costumes with traditionally strong gender connotations in both directions, such as the “Princess” (feminine) or “Elder Dwarf” (masculine)2.

2.2. Personalization vs. Customization

Games use both personalization and customization to allow players to affect their experience playing the game. Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably6 (and indeed Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout refers to their personalization system as “Customization”12), there is an important difference to emphasize between the two terms.

Customization allows players to change their characters to affect elements of playing the game itself. This can include skills, statistics, capabilities, features, and anything else that might impact gameplay6. Despite them using the term “Customization” in the game itself, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout contains no methods by which to change your character’s skills or gameplay features.

Personalization allows players to change their characters to appear differently, without changing the way the game itself plays6. This can be further divided into two main categories of personalization: “Physical” attributes, such as weight, height, and other bodily features; and “style” attributes, such as hair, costume, makeup, or other modifiable surface elements of appearance 3.

When examining the numerous personalization options available in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, it becomes evident that these features are all categorizable as “style” personalization. “Pattern” allows you to print a different pattern on the body of your Fall Guy. “Colour” lets you pick a pair of colours with which to colorize that pattern. “Face” lets you pick a faceplate for your Fall Guy, which simply dictates the color of their face and eyes. Finally, you can pick a “Costume” in two halves (top and bottom) which is worn on top of your Fall Guy’s body2. Through all these changes, you cannot change any physical features of the Fall Guy’s body.

2.3. Costuming in video games

When personalizing their characters, players will gravitate towards personalizing highly identifiable features. They aim to recreate their sense of self with their character, often by enhancing physical attributes. Even when changing physical attributes, players will often still pick style attributes that are reflective of their personality3. Changing their style to match an overall unique aesthetic is one of the most effective ways for players to express themselves7.

Being able to modify their appearance in online games has been directly linked to overall satisfaction3. This enables them to feel a distinct sense of self, cultures their individuality, and can enable them to resist feelings of social pressure8.

2.4. Ambient communication through visual cues

Ambient communication uses a wide variety of visual cues to deliver signals passively to an audience.9 Visual cues are visibly recognizable features, such as colour, location, marks, patterns, and many other features10. The meaning of many visual cues is affected by cultural interpretations11.

Beyond communicating aspects of themselves, visual cues can communicate status. Items that possess overt rarity can indicate power and capability at the game7.

2.5. Homophily through personalization

Despite presentation often aiming for individuality, personalization can also be used to express specific membership in groups. It can indicate a community identity, such as affiliation with a certain subculture or fandom. It can also indicate alignment with other players, such as people who may be playing an online game together7.

Games may also provide a sense of unity by presenting methods for players to influence the design process of personalization items. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout runs a community hub on the platform Discord, in which players may collaborate with the developers on designing costumes12. This can help create a greater sense of belonging, as the fandoms desires may be directly represented in the game itself.

2.6. Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism is a political philosophy which favors equality. This is often represented through economic equality of condition or status, but also applies philosophically to equal worth, and generally to equal opportunity13.

Competitive activities such as sports rely on a sense of fairness to operate continuously. For participants to be able to compete fairly, there needs to be a basic level of equality between players. This is most commonly a sense of equal opportunity14. The connection can easily be forged that truly fair competitive activities require an egalitarian attitude, where skill is the only true division between participants.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout notably contains no ways to modify gameplay, as all transactions are purely for personalization options. This avoid a common problem in some games, where unique items which may provide higher opportunity are available for purchase, which often is termed “pay-to-win”15.

3. Discussion of the Mediation Afforded by the Technology

3.1 Mediation

The game offers very few methods of direct communication, only providing some gestures and a victory animation. The primary way players can communicate is through their personalization2. This enables ambient communication by changing the passive interpretation of the environment through the other participating players. The primary features communicable through this is their sense of identity, temperament, and attitude. There is also some capacity to telegraph skill at the game through rarer items which require more victories to obtain. Additionally, there are items which are uniquely available from playing longer, which can telegraph dedication to the game (which may be separate from skill)2.

Due to the lack of direct communication through text or voice, there is a very anonymous sense of participation in the game itself. Players’ ability to communicate ambiently can say much about them, but there is little space for aggressive or abusive players to dominate conversation.

The methods of personalization available provide this communication in a way that does not interfere with the gameplay itself, thus ensuring that equal opportunity is provided to all players. Thus, it manages to create an egalitarian baseline of play.

3.2 Signs and Symbol Systems

The game uses a combination of outfit elements to provide players ample opportunity to personalize their character. A Fall Guy is a short stocky character with visual similarity to a “jelly bean,” possessing no recognizable gender and in general only abstract humanity. It is an extremely cartoony appearance1.

The Patterns available for personalization vary wildly: abstract shapes such as chevrons, simple colorization like gradients, pajama-like patterns of hearts and flowers, animalistic features like chicken feathers, and many others2. These patterns can have wildly varying attitudinal implications. A new player with a more aggressive attitude may pick the “Lightning” style to don a pattern of angular lightning bolts across their Fall Guy’s body. A more lighthearted player might be attracted to the “Ice Cream” pattern, which provides alternating wavy stripes and “sprinkles” of inverted colour. Or perhaps a humorous player might pick the “Undies” style, which applies the classic “heart-covered boxers” pattern to the character’s lower half.

As patterns increase in rarity (and thus become harder to get) they become more overtly stylistic: Animalistic patterns, such as “Zebra stripes” or “Chicken”; more Halloween-variety morbid aesthetics such as “Stitch-Up” (patchwork skin) or “Skelly” (skeleton features); complex elements like fleur-de-lis and gingerbread men2.

The player then selects Colours for their Fall Guy. These consist of two colours, one primary and one secondary, which then colorize the pattern they chose2. The implications of various colour-schemes are less overt, though certain pairings with some patterns match more strongly than others. Some rarer colours are more traditional palettes associated with specific things, such as “Pumpkin”: an orange and black scheme that is distinctly reminiscent of Halloween; or “Starry Night”, a blue and yellow scheme distinctly like Vincent van Gogh’s painting of the same name.

Each Season of content has different themes, such as Season 4’s science-fiction theme12. Many of the colours in the season are aesthetically reminiscent of science fiction films or computers: “Game On” resembles the palette of a Nintendo Game Boy, “BSOD” shares the colours of Microsoft Windows’ famous crash screen, several uncommon skins are primarily black with neon highlights, and “epic” rarity skins include chrome colouration. Players who specifically gravitate towards the neon-highlighted colours may be reflecting a more night-life-associated aesthetic, such as rave subculture, or enjoyment of neon science fiction like TRON.

There are also specific colours available for advancing in rank2, which are thus obtained through winning games. These almost all consist of one of the two colours being gold. The currency obtained through victory is “crowns,” and thus this coloration reflects the regal theming of victory. Indeed, the hardest colour to unlock, requiring over two thousand crowns (which requires less than two thousand victories, though still a lot of playing) is simply called “Regal Purple” and consists of the purple and gold colour scheme often associated with monarchy. These colours can outright imply a supremacy at the game when selected.

The player is then able to pick two costume pieces, one upper and one lower, to put on their Fall Guy. All costumes have a matching pair, though the top and bottom may be unlocked separately. Costumes include a wide variety of subjects, from animals (White Dove, Mallard, Raptor, etc.) to sports participants (Knockout, a boxer; Pitcher Perfect, a baseball pitcher; etc.), to food items (Hot Dog, Tomato), and more. There are several costumes which specifically are references to other popular video games2.

An important element of most costumes is that they usually provide either a hole for the Fall Guy’s face, or otherwise avoid obscuring it2. They all maintain a distinctly fake look, akin to a mascot or Halloween costume. This results in even aggressive or powerful-seeming identities such as a dinosaur or monster being downplayed to that of an affectation, managing to avoid any actual connotations of capability or strength. A demon does not look more powerful than a princess.

The character’s face is a static design of simply two eyes on a circular faceplate. This faceplate is separately selected, allowing face and eye color to be completely independent from the rest of the body2. This also emphasizes the layering of costuming present, and the basic equality of all Fall Guys, who ultimately are equally capable under whatever dressings they have been donned with.

There would be implications to allowing the personalization of physical attributes (such as height, weight, etc.) that would be counter to the environment the game is trying to culture. Even if such personalization does not affect the capability of players to perform various actions, differences in physical appearance can imply the existence of differences of capability3. It was thus a good decision to not allow any sort of personalization of physical attributes. All Fall Guys possess the same base model, and even elaborate costumes do not obscure the physical features shared between the abstract characters. This further enforces all communication to be purely through aesthetics, without implications of differing capability.

3.3 Power and Agency

A large amount of the costumes available in Season One in the “legendary” rarity tier are references to other video games, especially games available on Valve Corporation’s platform Steam. It is likely worth noting that Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout originally released on PC via Steam16, and these tie-ins are representative of the priority of association between the game and broader gaming culture. Several of the costumes are referencing games produced by Valve Corporation itself, such as Portal and Half-Life 2, whereas others are referencing games published by Devolver Digital (the publishers of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout), such as Enter the Gungeon and Gris2.

Season Two shows an expansion into tie-ins with other more popular franchises, such as Godzilla and Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as popular independent video game Untitled Goose Game. It is potentially notable that these tie-ins came about after community suggestions via Discord became available12.

There are many costumes that are available as rewards for progression during specific seasons, or for playing during limited-access periods like the pre-release beta2. These costumes can reflect a certain dedication to the game, or availability to play frequently. In addition, this motivates players to play frequently, for fear of missing out.

As mentioned prior, many costumes require crowns to unlock them, which are earned by playing successfully. The higher rarity costumes are much more commonly unlocked with crowns than kudos. Unlike crowns, kudos can also be bought with money2. The fact that some costumes are restricted to only purchasing via crowns, or via advancement, restricts the ownership of some costumes to players with a high degree of skill, instead of those with wealth. That said, some costumes can be bought with large amounts of kudos, or directly through DLC2, and thus there is also specific ways that wealth can be represented through costumes.

An important distinction with all these costumes is that ultimately the content of the game is determined by the developers. Though they solicit requests and suggestions from players via their Discord community12, they have a final say on all methods of personalization available in the game. Additionally, the publishers (Devolver Digital) likely have some amount of sway in pushing the developers to include certain costumes, as seen from the high number of Devolver Digital games with tie-in costumes2.

4. Approach

By introducing a wide variety of personalization options, the game enables many ways for players to uniquely identify themselves. There is a wide variety of options for all variety of presentations, unified by the abstract nature of the Fall Guys themselves. It is notable how the game abstracts away any sense of defined gender with the Fall Guys, leaving them entirely androgynous physically. They do not have an archetypical male or female form, being round and (as has been alluded to even by the company’s twitter17) bean-like. All gendered attributes are locked into costume elements, whether it be fake beards or princess dresses2. There is very little potential for dividing between gender presentations in the game, as all Fall Guys are themselves gender neutral.

The game’s tie-in material presents unobtrusive costumes that players can use to signal their interest in other video games. These can in turn infer potential details about the player’s aesthetics. A player who chooses to dress up as the goose from Untitled Goose Game might enjoy the affectation of a mischievous animal, as the titular goose of that game is18. Likewise, dressing up as the “Doom Slayer” from DOOM may imply a level of intense aggression as displayed by that character19. However, even in such an extreme case as the Doom Slayer, the game’s stylistic dedication to mascot-style costumes renders any serious sense of threat or aggression extremely mild. The costumes are clearly costumes, rendering them a display of interest and aesthetics more than indicative of actual proficiency.

What does signal proficiency, however, is the more exclusive personalization options made available through longer play. Uniquely connotative colours are provided for winning lots of games, signaling royalty. The more intricate and detailed patterns of higher rarity can visually signify proficiency by them being more interesting and eye-catching, drawing attention and singling out proficient players.

The game’s use of rarities does an effective job of highlighting the general level of difficulty or exclusivity entailed by obtaining a personalization option. “Common,” “Uncommon,” and “Rare” difficulties seem relatively generic or seasonally themed, whereas “Epic” and “Legendary” rarities include tie-in content, limited events, or many victories2.

In addition, there are ways to signal familiarity with the game separate from proficiency. Some costumes, such as the “Big Bad” (a large wolf) were only very limited in their availability, as rewards for playing the game early2. Possessing and playing with these costumes can signal (to a knowledgeable player) that the player has been playing for a while. However, these signals are only interpretable with existing knowledge. The connotations of these type of exclusive outfits are only known to players who are keeping track of what is available where, and do not inherently suggest qualities of the player.

There has also been a pack of costumes released as DLC every season, containing unique costumes that are otherwise unobtainable. Like with limited-time costumes, these can signal to knowledgeable players that somebody is dedicated to the game. Purchasing the costumes is an additional way to support the developers, and shows an interesting in continuing to play the game. It also can be a display of wealth, as somebody capable of paying repeatedly for DLC likely is of higher wealth. That said, much like with limited-time costumes, they do not overtly display these facets.

The lack of implication in limited outfits or DLC makes them a fascinating example of providing exclusive personalization options for more dedicated players, without those players aesthetically dominating the game. It is worth noting again here how players cannot choose their own name: The game provides a random string of words to make a short title, and you can choose to randomize it as many times as you want. This results in players being very hard to identify between games, and unidentifiable in terms of linking to social media profiles or gaming usernames. With up to sixty players in a game, it is very unlikely you would even necessarily notice playing with the same person twice in a row.

5. Results

Players are capable of very vibrantly expressing themselves in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, without being overtly personally identifiable. A wide variety of identities can be expressed, both aesthetically and representationally. Each Fall Guy is locked into their bean-like body and becomes a canvas on which players can paint the message of their identity expression. There are no clear gender divides, no clear social strata, and at most displays of skill. There is not even the room to misinterpret aesthetic decisions as indicative of qualitative differences.

This dedication to presentation as pure aesthetic expression reminds players that they are at an equal footing. Not only does it make strong decisions in providing personalization options, but it makes strong decisions about limiting other varieties of personalization. The enforcement of shared physical attributes is a constant reminder of the equal opportunity all players are presented with.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout provides a uniquely egalitarian environment that is uncommon and rather unique among currently popular online games. Rounds of the game are a plethora of cute bean-people running around in goofy costumes, a wide array of aesthetics on display. It is no wonder that “jelly beans” is the common comparison, as a screen of Fall Guys resembles a colorful jar of the confectionary. Players are presented enough options to feel included in whatever their unique presentation is, without feeling excluded by high-skill players dominating the game visually, or high-wealth players using flashy powerful features. The game provides a constant reminder of the equal opportunity of success and reflects the even fairness of the gameplay itself.

All beans are on an equal footing.

References

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  2. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout Wiki. 2021. Customization.
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  12. Skylite. Messages posted in #how-to-suggestions channel of Fall Guys server. Discord, June 9th, 2020.
  13. Richard Arneson. 2013. Egalitarianism. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta (Summer 2013), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  14. Björn Bartling, Ernst Fehr, Michel André Maréchal and Daniel Schunk. 2009. Egalitarianism and Competitiveness. American Economic Review 99, 2 (Apr. 1, 2009), 93-98.
  15. Brad, C., The outrageously fun Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout could be gaming's next megabit, PC World (Online), Sep 2020, pg 64-68
  16. Mike Minotti. 2020. Fall Guys sells 2 million copies on Steam in under a week. VentureBeat.com, (August 10th, 2020).
  17. Mediatonic. 2021. Message posted by @FallGuysGame. Twitter, April 10th, 2021.
  18. House House. 2019. Untitled Goose Game. Panic, Worldwide, September 20th 2019
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