Making realistic female characters, one motion-captured body at a time

The stereotypes of women in gaming have been with us for a long time. They’re often depicted as princesses who need to be rescued or overly sexualized objects. But Marla Rausch, the chief executive of motion-capture business Animation Vertigo in Irvine, Calif., has witnessed a change in recent years.

Her company helps create the ultra-realistic bodies and faces in games such as Beyond: Two Souls and Until Dawn. It doesn’t do the motion-capture itself, but it takes the data and, using a big team of technicians in the Philippines, cleans it up so that it can used state-of-the-art video games. This behind-the-scenes tech is one of the engines behind modern video games, and it is only beginning to become a more diverse environment.