WTFmageddon: the Avatar suit turns you into a real-world game character

Avatar Man 1

Have you ever wished that you could walk down the street looking like a video game character from the late '90s? Have you ever dreamed of being a blocky, polygonal person, covered in blurry textures? Now you can, and it's all thanks to Marc Owens' 'Avatar suit'. This is the strangest thing you'll see all day.

Here it is, in all its low-fi glory. There's a man in there somewhere. Look, you can see his chin, though it's impossible to discern the expression on his face. Is he laughing or crying? It's impossible to tell.

The costume alone isn't the best part, the camera is. That white object sticking out of the back of holds a camera behind the suit. This then films you in third person as you go about your daily business and projects the image into the VR headset. The result? You can go through life looking as though you're in a game, when actually you're in frozen food bit in Tesco.

The suit is was created as part of the Design Products Collection, from the Design Products Department of the Royal College of Art. If you want your very own avatar suit, or more information on the project head over to the RCA website .

I'm not sure if this is brilliant or scary. I'm leaning towards scary. What do you think, would you wear the avatar suit?

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.