What is the reason for the rule that custom avatars cannot look too realistic?

[Bynum]

I've won three custom avatars in Spin n Win, which among non-trivial prizes are three of the six I've won.

I'm definitely not capable of photoshopping a good one, but having 3 to use if I could find someone to make them caused me to look into it.

I don't see what the problem is with them looking like they could be real people, as written in the documentation:  "If you asked someone random / nothing to do with this game, "do you recognise this guy?" then they wouldn't think twice about it just being a photo of a real person. To be obviously getting passed, you need the response to be a double take, followed by "that's not a real person, is it?" "

I don't get that.  The only reason given was if you were going to do that, you might as well start from a real photo and stylize it.  But you shouldn't be able to start from a real facial photo, unless you have the subject's permission because I think there's a legal right, and if not a moral right, to control how one's likeness is used.  Even if one made it look too much like a specific, known real person, while using avatar parts and a bit of editing, I could still see that being a problem.

But I think avatars that would create the effect of seeming they could easily be a real person's pic, despite that they aren't, I wonder why that is strongly frowned upon and almost always grounds for rejection.

I think it would be great if every avatar in the game were realistic-looking enough that they looked like they could be real.  That would be far too much work for the devs to come up with as many different avatars as are available and make them all look like they could be actual photos.  But if someone creates one or has one created for their fighter that looks like it could be a photo of a real person, though it isn't, I'm wondering why that isn't allowed.

[TheBuster]

I think it's because the majority of fighters won't have customs pictures and the custom ones need to fit in and look like the generic ones. It's a bit jarring to see these weird ass avatars and then just have some guy be Mike Tyson's actual face. This isn't supposed to be real MMA it's a different universe with weird looking creatures and the avatars have to reflect that.  

[Bynum]

40 minutes ago, TheBuster said:

I think it's because the majority of fighters won't have customs pictures and the custom ones need to fit in and look like the generic ones. It's a bit jarring to see these weird ass avatars and then just have some guy be Mike Tyson's actual face. This isn't supposed to be real MMA it's a different universe with weird looking creatures and the avatars have to reflect that.  

You may be right about them being concerned that very realistic avatars could stand out and look outside of the universe, but I wanted to clarify that (for different reasons) I did say that I'd understand if it was just they can't look too exactly like a specific, well known person (as opposed to just looking a lot more like it could be a photo of a stranger), because there could be legal issues:  In some cases people have a legal right to prevent their "likeness" from being used without consent.

I don't know if this is a case where that would apply, but even if those laws wouldn't apply one could question the morality of using something that looked almost exactly like a recognizable real person's face, when that person has nothing to do with the site and might be made to "smack talk" something the real person wouldn't say, etc...

I'm referring to just an avatar that looks like it could be the photo of a real person, even though it doesn't look like a specific real person in particular unless there was a major coincidence that it happened to bear a striking resemblance to some non-celebrity by chance.

The difference is right now any of the base avatars and pretty much any that could be approved, if you showed someone unrelated to the game the picture and asked "Do you know him?"  They might have to double take but would say "That isn't a real person, right?" where I'm suggesting it could be okay if someone asked that question would easily think it was probably a real photo but would say, "No I don't know that person; who is that?" (not looking like someone in particular, but looking like it could be someone real).  Those who decide may still think it would look out of place among pictures that no one would think for more than a second was a real photo:  I don't know.

 

 

[Rocket]

The problem that you have is that a well knownperson to you may be a stranger to me and vice versa. Players from all over the world play mmat so to avoid the potential for problems, Mike likes avatars to look like his base avatars. 

 

Making them more subjective such s almost real, opens the door for a million different issues because my real differs from yours. Where as you see the avatars as I see the avatars, no confusion. 

[Rambo]

racism

[Zello]

I find these rules kinda lame tbh. I get it Mike wants the avatars to look a certain way it's his game he can do whatever he wants but it's dumb imo. If I want my fighter to have a real picture of Floyd Mayweather or Mike Tyson let me god damn it idgaf.

Other text based sports games I've played have let you use whatever you wanted for avatars and they didn't give two shits about it.