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6 votes
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Patching Salt Lake 2002 to run on modern systems
6 votes -
How I designed Fruit Ninja
9 votes -
Development notes from xkcd's "Gravity" and "Escape Speed"
17 votes -
Does adding story to open world survival games work well? An agonising deep-dive into the strange game that is The Forest.
5 votes -
Blinks are useful in VR, but triggering blinks is tricky
11 votes -
Why I decided not to do Emrakul, and how we shipped it anyway
10 votes -
How two people spent twenty years creating gaming’s most complex simulation system
5 votes -
Naughty Dog's game design is outdated
6 votes -
How hard is it really to create your own video game?
I kind of want to start this discussion because something I’ve always wanted to do is make a video game, even if it’s just a small indie platformer. I’ve even gone so far as to plan out an entire...
I kind of want to start this discussion because something I’ve always wanted to do is make a video game, even if it’s just a small indie platformer. I’ve even gone so far as to plan out an entire game universe timeline with fleshed out characters and factions, but I have no point of reference on where to start. So, how do you start this process and where are some resources to learn?
19 votes -
Douglas Adams on the 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' game (1985)
4 votes -
Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?
9 votes -
2022 saw launcher bloat turn from a minor annoyance into a genuine problem
12 votes -
Meet the man who invented microtransactions years before Oblivion’s horse armour
6 votes -
Exclusive: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon details with Hidetaka Miyazaki and Masaru Yamamura
5 votes -
Why do God of War's characters keep spoiling puzzles?
1 vote -
Leaderboards aren’t just for games: A pep-talk to inspire developers
3 votes -
Making text adventure games (1985)
4 votes -
What is the Fourth Dimension really? 4D Golf Devlog #2
5 votes -
Morality in games mechanics
4 votes -
Exclusive: Final Fantasy 16’s developers open up about Game of Thrones comparisons, sidequests, and representation
4 votes -
What makes a good detective game?
7 votes -
Evennia, a Python MUD/MU* creation system
4 votes -
Have MMO's lost the RPG?
7 votes -
Open source is democratizing video game development
6 votes -
Open source is democratizing video game development
9 votes -
'It gets better after 100 hours...'
7 votes -
Inform 7 concepts and strategies
7 votes -
Standard patterns in choice-based games
11 votes -
The immoral design of Diablo Immortal
6 votes -
Factorio's journey to Nintendo Switch
9 votes -
Rockstar Games issue message regarding recent leak
@Rockstar Games: A Message from Rockstar Games pic.twitter.com/T4Wztu8RW8
7 votes -
Crafting is (kinda) pointless
10 votes -
Why the hell are there so many fishing minigames?
6 votes -
The making of Wildermyth
5 votes -
The animation of Final Fantasy IV
8 votes -
The problem with mini-maps
9 votes -
Architecture in video games: Designing for impact
7 votes -
The theory and practice of cameras in side-scrollers
7 votes -
The Futures of Inform (Talk transcript and slides)
3 votes -
Why do we love hostile worlds?
7 votes -
How Townscaper works: A story, four games in the making
8 votes -
How to combine video game genres
3 votes -
Are great games being ignored? An investigation
6 votes -
Bloodborne PSX: Recreating Bloodborne as a PlayStation One game
4 votes -
Platformer Toolkit
3 votes -
Foone reverse engineering SkiFree, one function at a time
@foone: OKAY SKIFREEThis is a game originally from 1991, developed by Chris Pirih, and included on one of the Windows Entertainment Packs. There's a modern 32bit version by the original developer, on the official site:https://t.co/Yoj7PDmkcV pic.twitter.com/ETQa1wdqqR
8 votes -
JavaScript physics engine for the absolute beginner
1 vote -
I need help with gender options in my game
I'm making a video game, which is sort of a mixture of a puzzle game and interactive fiction. I'm a little uncertain about some name and pronoun choices that I currently offer to the player and I...
I'm making a video game, which is sort of a mixture of a puzzle game and interactive fiction. I'm a little uncertain about some name and pronoun choices that I currently offer to the player and I thought that you guys might be able to help me.
The game is in English. At the beginning of the game, the player chooses the main character's name and pronoun. This is presented through two screens that offer the choices through textual narrative. It goes something like this, with [brackets] marking the options that the player can currently choose between.
This is the story of...
[...Alice Aster.]
[...Alan Aster.]
[...Al Aster.]
It is...
[...her story.]
[...his story.]
[...their story.]
Detached from the wider narrative context, this method may seem clunky, but I believe it works within the game itself. Mechanically, that is. I'm less sure about the options that I'm offering.
The player can choose any of the three options in the first screen and again any in the second, regardless of what they chose in the first. This affects the player character's name and pronouns used throughout the game.
Now, there clearly are also many other pronouns that people identify with in English, just like there are many other names. However, for technical and design reasons, it would be challenging for me to have the player freely type in their preferred name or pronouns, and neither can I really present a long list of options. At the same time, by condensing all non-binary choices into the most common (?) "their" and by assuming that "her" also equates to "she" and so on, I wonder if I end up coming across as someone who thinks they are on top of things, but clearly has only a very superficial understanding of the topic. Which, to be honest, might not be that far from the truth.
Similarly, of the three names offered, "Al" is intended as a more gender-neutral or non-binary option than the other two. Does that make sense? Would there be a better way to handle this? Are there names that better signal non-binary or gender-neutral identity?
Or am I simply approaching this wrong?
The game itself does not deal with gender identity. As you can see, I'm not the right person to write about the topic. The choice of gender in fact has relatively little effect on the story itself. The player also has no choice over other matters of identity, including their character's cultural background or family structure. The character is not intended to be the player, but someone whose story the player follows. But it still feels important for me and for the story to offer a choice about the name and the pronoun. And I wouldn't be comfortable with it being just a "traditional" choice between male and female, as it would quite explicitly imply and reinforce assumptions about the world that I think we should move away from as a society.
Not that my game is of course going to change the world in any meaningful way. But having worked on it for about six years now, it has been one long personal learning experience for me. And this feels like another opportunity to understand something better.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice.
14 votes -
Allegations of sexism, bullying, and burnout: Inside the Microsoft studio behind State Of Decay 3
4 votes