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 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.
I love that you're concerned with identity... everyone should be, for without an identity we are nothing. I fell like "their" is the best compromise in a sea of "means well but doesn't have popular support" options, but I also wonder... would it be possible to leave the first name up to the player and have the game insert it where necessary? I don't know how difficult that would be (or if, given your game it would even be desirable), but when talking about crafting an identity, a name is usually pretty personal.
But even if that isn't the case, I do commend you for giving players options at all!
Thanks for your kind words.
Allowing players to freely enter their name would be technically possible, but it would introduce some design and narrative challenges that I'm not too keen to tackle. Additionally, there is also a conceptual reason behind limiting the player's choices here and elsewhere.
I just wouldn't like to limit those choices in ways that reinforce ideas and assumptions about the world that I don't want to promote. Not that it's ever possible to avoid that entirely, but this at least feels like a place where I would like to find a solution that I'm comfortable with.
That's cool. Like I said, I didn't even know if it would be desirable, and I can certainly understand wanting to limit it for thematic reasons... a writer has to craft the scene they want. Either way, you're putting more work in than 99% of designers, so you're already aces in my book.
Reading my earlier reply again, I must say that I didn't intend to sound so dismissive of the idea. Although I'm not too enthusiastic about the challenges that allowing a free name choice would introduce, I'm certainly going to give it some more thought. Like you wrote, it would definitely allow crafting an identity in a very different way than what a simple multiple choice selection permits. But then again, you are also right that I want to have control over certain narrative and thematic aspects. It's a delicate dance.
I'm a writer (amateur, but I still love the craft) so I get it. I didn't take it as dismissive, just that you have a roadmap and you know where you're driving this thing. :)
Not LGBT myself, but I found the question thought-provoking and think I have a good approach: make the options for names + pronouns + any other gendered phrases a plaintext config file (JSON or the like) in the game’s base install dir.
That way, anyone passionate enough to care can tweak those values as they please, with minimal added complexity or UI clutter on your end.
An interesting approach! I'll look into this possibility. Although it might be a bit challenging in mobile versions.
Depending on what you're doing, your can play with mobile OS dialogues to direct your user to the file, and then they could open it with an external editor. I don't have a lot more insight into specifics - my work over the last year was writing the HTTP API that supported the mobile app my company launched last year... But I didn't get my hands too dirty in the mobile work. That said, you should be able to point your user to a plaintext file somehow.
Genderfluid person here.
First thing: While some people may be a little disappointed if you don't go beyond he/she/they, there's not many who will be genuinely angry about it or anything. If you can just text input for the he/him/his/himself equivalents, that'd be practically ideal, but it's not a major problem if you do otherwise. Unfortunately, there's no perfect option here, and what you can at least try to do is insert a tooltip that can give some kind of reasoning or something if you really want to stick to those three to make... Something work. I don't know what's going on in your head or in your programming and how that might change things. But, assuming you want to keep the options limited and don't want to give the player the option to choose anything within the program... Let's look at some other stuff, starting with the names.
Second thing: The names. Alice/Alan/Al feels, to me at least, like two masculine and a feminine. Maybe Alay/Alè, if you really want to hold to AL-something? Not really sure on that- there's a lot more possibilities here to look through, and names are ultimately a lot subjective.
Third thing: Adding a way to change names/pronouns mid-run sounds like a really good idea to me. Sometimes people realize they're trans later in life and may be uncomfortable coming back to a save file that misgenders them when they had the option otherwise, and sometimes, for the rare handful like me, it just changes because it's an annoying little social construct that won't sit still. Being able to change it on the fly shouldn't be overly taxing on you (I hope), but will be very meaningful to the few who use it.
Fourth thing: You've already hit upon one of the big things I wanted to call out, but I'll restate it. If someone wants to use "Alan" and "She", that's her choice. Sometimes gender is a complete mess, and there's no need to restrict that. Thanks for being supportive of that.
Fifth thing: Is gender actually important to this in any significant way? I get the feeling this isn't going to be heavy on character creation, and this isn't necessarily 'me' that's in the game, so there's a few options there that I think you could think over for it. Some might take more careful scripting, but are still functional. The option of just... Removing the concept of the player's gender from the game. Give them a set of names to work with, and connect no gendered concept to any of them- no one ever refers to you by he, she, or even they- it's always "you", "Alan", "my rival", "Captain", and so on. This could take a LOT of work, and may come off a little stilted if you don't do it just right. But there's also just the choice of... Making a definitive character. Not every story needs to be a self-insert. Then it becomes the question: What do YOU want from YOUR story?
Sixth thing: In line with the tooltip idea explaining your reasoning above, could you do as FluffyKittens said in this very thread and leave the pronouns/names/etc., as a plaintext config and have the tooltip explain how to edit that file should the player desire to use neopronouns, or use a mix of pronouns, or whatever?
Thanks for thinking of us in the first place, by the way. Even just being willing to ask is a really, really good start.
Thank you so much for your thoughts. Much appreciated!
I think I need to reconsider "Al". You are right, it probably defaults to male in most people's heads. Alay or Alé could work better.
One option could be to make all offered names more gender neutral. Many such names are very beautiful, and fresh, and less bound to a specific culture, all of which are a bonus for me. I really love the sound of Alay. The names Alan and Alice go back to Alan Turing and the Alice from Lewis Carroll. But those are just thematic markers for myself and not really something a player would pick up on anyway. They have already changed a few times over the years, as has the family name. Names are hard.
I have also considered the possibility of doing away with pronouns entirely, but like you said, it's hard to write like that, and the results weren't very satisfactory in terms of flow and rhythm. I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible, but it might be too much of a challenge for me to make it work.
Another option I have considered is to use only the pronoun "they" for both the player character and for everyone else. But that would automatically draw attention to itself, and likely prompt the player to expect that the game is about gender identity. Of course, if done right, it would be possible to subvert those expectations, or even explicitly deny them. Still, I remain hesitant about it. Even if the pronoun "they" has other qualities that I like.
It's good to know that the current pronoun options that I offer could also be satisfactory. And as it's come up a couple of times, I will definitely look into providing an option to change the pronouns in the settings, or a config file, at least in the non-mobile versions of the game.
You are right that gender is not directly important in the game, and in a way the entire character creation is those two questions that I ask about name and pronoun. In another sense, the entire game is one long character creation. The storyline probes questions about family, society, and the way we relate to and communicate with one another. Within that context, gender seems to become relevant enough to matter as a choice. Although I'm not entirely sure why, and maybe it's a question that I still need to answer for myself.
The fact that you're even thinking about it and are here asking questions is an awesome starting point!
Would it be terribly difficult to let the player change them at a later date? Perhaps in the options menu?
Thanks! Developing the game has taken me to interesting directions and I have learnt a lot about the world and myself. It's been an interesting journey.
Technically, an option like that would be doable, although I would be a little concerned about how it would affect narrative cohesion. Do you think many people would want to change their choices mid-way through a game? I know it's impossible to really answer without knowing what the game is about.
There is currently an option to start a new game with a separate save file, if a player wants to restart. So, in that sense the choices are not final by any means. Although if you are something like ten hours into the game, it would of course not be a very tempting proposition to start from the beginning.
I'll definitely think about it.
That's true, but any inconsistencies in the narrative would be a direct result of the player's choice to change their name/gender, so I don't think they would be terribly bothered by it.
I don't think many people would use that option, but I think a few might and I'm sure they would really appreciate it.
And yeah, starting a new game is an option, but like you said it can be a pretty high cost in terms of time commitment.
I have a rather straightforward opinion on gender for player characters in video games. If I'm supposed to be playing as me, or as a character that I created to be my avatar, then I should absolutely have gender options. But if I'm playing as a character who is given to me, I feel that gender options are, at best, completely unnecessary. I'm perfectly fine playing through a game and pretending to be someone of a gender that I'm not part of. Heck, as a male I sometimes prefer it, because it means there might be more to the character than the macho-fest that default-male player characters tend to be.
And as far as names go, I don't think it really matters if its just a handful of choices; I'm either going to have a character who shares my name or not. So either ask for a name or go with a default. If you ask for a name, though, that's an invitation to try to step into that character's shoes instead of thinking of one's self as observer.
Interesting! Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever in my life made a video game character that shares my name, or my identity. Frankly, I don't think the thought of doing so has ever even crossed my mind! I've always automatically "taken a role", one way or another. And maybe that's what I enjoy most about video game stories, the ability to be an actor in a story, and to shape a person.
This must definitely also colour my approach to designing games. Which is certainly something to keep in mind. Thanks!