Saints Row devs had a debug NPC named Skinballs that helped the team light all skin tones correctly, but modders preferred to wear his literal skin as an outfit

You wouldn't think that four floating spheres wearing human skin could become such a meme-y player fascination, but that's exactly where the ball-loving Saints Row community is at.

If you're at all interested in Saints Row modding, there's a good chance you've seen something called Skinballs, which sounds more horrifying than it looks. Skinballs is essentially a 'character' in the loosest term, which consists of four surprisingly smooth floating balls, each with a different skin tone.

After being spotted in a developer stream of Saints Row The Third many moons ago, Skinballs kind of became a series fixture, with many mods letting you actually take control of the bobbing balls. Just imagine getting into a gun fight with that.

Saints Row 4 Mods: Skinballs Outfit! - YouTube

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And, now, former Volition Games (RIP) developer Elizabeth Zelle has shared where the community icon came from. "On Saints Row we had a debug NPC named Skinballs (lol) that was literally just four spheres wrapped in different shades of skin texture so we could test lighting for different skin tones during development," she said in response to an IGN report about how darker skinned custom character are practically invisible in Love and Deepspace cutscenes.

The root problem is that many developers test lighting and tune everything around whiter skin, with darker skin options being an after thought or less of a priority in production. Volition smartly got around that issue by testing for various skin tones with just one loveable character. (Thanks, Skinballs!) "Teams need to plan for that kind of testing with intentionality, and not enough do," Zelle added.

You can play as the four-balled icon in a Saints Row 4 mod available here.

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