Okay so the term “stock animation” might be misleading, so let me explain what I mean.
In case someone that doesn’t play the game is reading this (first of all: Welcome) allow me a bit of context. During training you can choose to “go out” which can result in the girl going to Karaoke, going to a temple, or actually taking a stroll. When this happens the animation that accompanies it changes depending on the girl.
If we take Karaoke as an example, there’s about 6 different animations that can play (pretty sure it’s only six, but I’m working mostly from anecdotal experience) and as you can see they all convey a different mood, like it’s showing each girl singing a different kind of song (and keep in mind it isn’t the full animation just the final frame).
It’s not just Karaoke, however. All the other things that can happen during outings have their own animations. Other activities like resting in summer camp also have their own stock animations.
This is what I mean by “stock animation”. Not “stock” in the broader generic sense, but stock in that it’s a preset assigned to each girl individually. A pool of predefined motions set to each girl from a selection of a few per situation.
And I love them so much.
Let me put forth a more detailed example before I examine in detail why they work so well so we can all be on the same page. And for that let’s use all three Symboli girls: Rudolf, Sirius, and Kris S.
Here’s each of them in that order with: Strolling, Karaoke, Temple, and Summer Camp respectively.
Do you see how none of them have the same selection of animations? Not only that but when you play their story you go “of course Rudolf is more delicate with the temple fortune” or “of course Kris S uses the more lowkey singing animation” or “of course Sirius is a predictable fuckboy (female)”.
Now you hopefully understand what I want to talk about and what my ultimate point is. So with that in mind let me explain to you not just why they work but how the economy in the variety is a strength… and to do that I will seemingly get sidetracked, but rest assured it will all (hopefully) make sense in the end.
You know how in every field there’s that “newbie fantasy”? That thing that everyone starting out with more confidence than experience thinks they can do and they often trip on?
In game development there’s a few of those. The ones from when I started around 14 years ago were “a game where every single choice matters” and “some massively multiplayer sort of game”. I haven’t kept up with things but there’s always a free bingo spot for whatever game is trendy at the time too.
For this explanation we’re gonna focus on the first: A theoretical game where every choice matters. Our first big project (that never really came out) was based around a butterfly effect sort of scenario, a game where every single choice resulted in a different branching of things, which sounds impressive… except it’s not.
The first and most immediate problem is that implementation and testing is going to be Hell. Even if you somehow get past that, however, the game ends up becoming more a matter of memorization than of mechanics or narrative design being engaged naturally. And ultimately there’s going to be enough redundancy where it’s neither feasible nor wise to make everything unique.
Let me illustrate the point with a couple of diagrams (and just in case you can’t see where I’m going so far, please bear with me). Let’s say, hypothetically that there’s a game where you can choose to be good/neutral/bad and every choice matters, every single one will result in a completely different branching.
For starters you’re gonna see firsthand what “exponential” means.
Keep in mind that for the sake of this argument we’re not trying to make this mess of an idea work plausibly. The point is to illustrate matters of workload and redundancy rather than anything design-specific.
With that in mind, for the sake of this very same argument, let’s pretend for a second that there’s about 5000 words worth of script in between each choice. In that case this diagram would be 200.000 words (assuming also from start to the first branch) of which the player would only see 20.000 at any given time and 5.000 of which the player would grow sick of.
And if you think about this idea, you can immediately see the redundancies that might crop up or the things that are worth cutting out. Would a last minute neutral option matter when you’ve gone till the end picking good? Would a last minute bad choice be narratively satisfying if you were already a saint? What difference would a neutral choice at the end of being pure evil make?
So let’s trim the diagram, since each shape is meant to be a pivotal branching let’s pretend that there might be minor variations in dialog but keep what direction the story would take.
If you follow the rough idea of “you can only retract the path you took once” not only are you lowering the workload from 200.000 words to 110.000, you’re also giving the hypothetical player a clear, concise, and legible directive they can understand and base their choices on without them feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of there being 27 endings.
This illustrates the first point I want to point you towards: economizing and trimming isn’t just something you do to save on resources, but something you do to aid legibility.
In Uma Musume the animations are part of the visual feedback you get for your training choices: Your girl caught the ball or ate dirt, your girl went to Karaoke and got two stages of motivation up or went for a stroll and recovered stamina, your girl is celebrating or dejected after making it through the finish line.
Making a single animation for these things is the baseline, and then to spice things up you add variants specific to each girl, and following the idea of economizing for legibility you make a pool of stock animations that really stand diagonally from each other. After all, why make two different variants of “sexy pose” for something like training? You can make a single very well-defined sexy pose that stands in contrast to a different just as well-defined cutesy pose.
Which brings the question from a design perspective of: Why make such variants to begin with?
Because Uma Musume is all about character.
Your girl isn’t just a spreadsheet you have to balance, the game depends just as much in your emotional investment in the girl and how that investment might affect your choices. How that 10% risk of failure is exacerbated when your girl is protesting that she’s tired, how your choice of which race to take next might be influenced by what the story tells you your girl wants, how winning this or that race isn’t just a matter of completing the next objective but seeing the next step in her journey be accomplished.
The game doesn’t want you to just pick a faceless bunch of stats, it wants you to be invested in the process, it wants you to think about it in more personal terms because the game is all about stories of chasing dreams and being passionate about something and it wants you to partake in that mindset.
And the genius thing about the stock animations is that, if you think about it, we all have our own stock things that we choose or get assigned and define us to varying degrees.
Do you like hot coffee or cold coffee? Is there coffee at all in that cup you fool you absolute buffoon? Do you prefer Kinoko Choco or Takenoko Choco? Do you eat your McDonald’s fries before or after your burger? Do you pour cereal first or milk first? Can you whistle? Can you snap your fingers? Can you roll your tongue? What’s your zodiac sign? What’s your chinese zodiac sign? Which Power Ranger did you wanna be as a kid? Which Sailor Scout was your favorite?
The stock animations feel natural and even like they contribute to your investment in the character because they feel that way. You learn which pose your girl strikes in the beach, you know by heart they seem to be singing a really cheerful song in Karaoke despite how sour they act the rest of the time.
And while I’ve focused on animations, that’s not the only thing! Does your girl wear her jersey open or closed? Does she roll the ends of her sweatpants? Does she wear socks or kneehighs when racing in uniform? Does she run with her hands open or in fists? What color are her pajamas?
By the way, there’s so many other animations I haven’t even mentioned.
Every so often the game holds an event called “Umasanpo” where you go out for a walk outside with one of the girls. This event has come in different flavors, from a summer variant, to a variant where they go out with one of the gyarus in the cast, to a KFC one, and they all have their own pool of animations so on top of all the questions posed up there we can add others like: Does your girl hit the watermelon or miss it? Does she eat like a normal person or almost choke with food? Does she order a normal amount or destroy your bank account? Where does she take you when the option to go somewhere indoors presents itself? And that was before training scenarios started adding more variants!
The result is that as these different sets of animations pile up more and more it’s like the depths of each character get explored more because more and more scenarios present themselves. It’s the same effect as, for example, how my dad wasn’t particularly a dog person but when we got cats he became a cat person so hard to this day we’re lowkey shocked about it.
And to illustrate this last point about the depths of a character developing as more stock animation scenarios get added, let me revisit the earlier example of the Symboli girls but we’re going to add one extra animation: The one that plays in the latest scenario (as of this writing) when you’re doing a PR run for the onsen you’re helping:
Sirius might be a predictable fuckboy (female) but the fact that she’s so ultimately willing to play along no questions asked despite her grumbling is also an important part of her character. One that comes into relief when she’s the only Symboli girls to strike the same goofy pose as Hokko Tarumae even when neither Kris S nor Rudolf are really that self-serious either.
Keep your eyes open for these animations, the game wants you to learn more about your girl through them.