Enclothed Cognition, Skins, and Player Behaviour
So after I just finished this video, it got me thinking about the game many of us have played more than any other. Now we talk a lot about aesthetics of a base skin matching the feel and narrative of a character. That's about being true to story, but what about skins?
Some of us talk about how skins can affect the way we play, even though most of us still regard them as strictly cosmetic (removing some skin outliers that impact clarity of game information), but do what about when deciding what skin to use? I know that I have a system of certain skins, for example, depending on what position I play Morgana in: Ghostbride for top, blade mistress for mid, Lunar Wraith/sinful succenlence (once they fix the face on the splash art D:) for support, and blackthorn for the (non-existent) games where i attempt Jungle Morgana.
I imagine that sorta system is pretty common for a lot of players, but does it go beyond that? Are you more likely to be more aggressive or passive depending on the fantasy of your skin? Do you even notice? Do you only conciously notice skins during the loading screens ( pretty splash arts)?
I'd also love to hear from rioters involved with character and skin design (or any that would like to chime in) how much, if at all, is this sort of thing thought of during skin design? Is it strictly the narrative/gameplay fantasy of the character that determines what skin series you want to put them in? Is changing the way players play based on skins something you've ever even looked into? Perhaps this could be a new metric you could track (similar to skills ranked first; comparing KDAs, wards placed, etc across a statistically signifcant enough group if it exists) and release some sort of cool dev blog post, or maybe even a study of your own! (I'd be so down for RIOT research and academia department. Sounds like awesome reading, and a great way to use such a powerful tool to better game design and SCIENCE!!! https://youtu.be/b6Y6YNhyxOI ^here's some side swag about that!) .
Feel free to leave thoughts and feelings below about anything in the post, and lets get everyone in on the conversation! I'm sure there's olent of rioters there who love to talk about this kinda stuff.
