The "Uncanny Valley" of Games

[Gothic_Demon]

But it was no ordinary lamb, oh no.

It was, in fact, THE LAMB!!!

It had a porcelain face, shaped somewhere between that of an animal and that of a young child. It had reddish paint across the cheeks adding a bit of blush; it had dark, glass eyes.

It was the most disturbing thing I've ever seen.

My wife bought me one of these before we got married. There is a running joke about sheep and people from the part of the UK where she was born. She thought it would be funny.

I couldn't sleep with it in my room. It just kinda freaked me out. In the end I gave it to a charity shop.

 

[mmadsen]

So why is it called the uncanny valley?

From The Uncanny Valley: Why are monster-movie zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating?:

Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori is not exactly a household name — but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as “the uncanny valley”.

Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human “look” . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.

This chasm — the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis — represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment — affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that.​