Choosing Your Character's Gender

[Captor Medicine 5]

Something that I've seen in a few games is the option to choose your character's gender. A lot of the time it's for those more open world games, where you do a lot of customization to make that character yours. However, I've also seen it used in games that are a little more rigid plotwise (i.e. The Summon Knight: Swordcraft Story games). I'm currently working on a game which has one of those more rigid plotlines, in which the player won't have much by way of deviating from the plot (maybe a few side quests). There wouldn't be any customization to the sprite, so the only things you would choose would be the name and the gender.

 

Basically what I'm asking is: would it be worth it to implement a gender selection feature, or would it be better to just choose a gender and have that be the player's gender for this type of game?

[Bunni89 85]

I definately love a gender choice option SPECIFICALLY when the plot is linear with few differences. It seems to ruin the entire point of choosing to play as a different gender if you're essentially playing a different game instead. If I'm picking that option, its because I wanna play the original game as intended, but with a character that looks like me. I really dislike when one option is some sort of afterthought or stereotype instead of just... well, an alternative option. Especially when its usually the female option that sucks, and there's so few RPG games with female main characters EXCEPT these choice-based ones! I hated the old Harvest Moon games where if you're female you only get to play half of it and it ends once you get married, cos apparantly all wives are supposed to quit thier job or something.

I really really love Swordcraft Story and the way they did it! You choose your gender and your summon partner and still play out exactly the same story but with different dialogue. It really feels like just choosing your gender, and nothing changes because of some creator's silly idea that men and women all universally want different things out of a game and could never bear to play the same one.

 

So in summary: yes, I think you should do it! I'd definately like to see this game of yours!

[+ Sughayyer 163]

I gotta second Bunni89.

 

The only games I played in which I could change the gender of my character were the Dragon Quest series. I like the customization of the character: to be able to choose a few traits only for the sake of diversity, affecting the game only minimally.

[Tsarmina 2,612]

I second (third?) the gender option ^-^ It just involves the player SO much more, hurrah. It also includes a much better probability and potential for a game+ ^-^

[estriole 326]

star ocean 2 use this concept well.

basically we play the same story either we play claude or rena. but with a slight different "point of view". Private action also add more depth to each personality. character we can recruited is also differ a little bit. it increase the re-playability of the game by bits. the good thing is. even we play only claude route. we still get the story which already satisfy us (so if you want you can choose to not replay using rena path). but if we want to know the 'whole' story when they separate. we can choose to play twice.

[Pikalyze 4]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. I just had to point out that you could choose your gender, even though it doesn't make any difference really, except on what pokemon you end up with

[Ryo' 10]

I actually think that this is a good idea, the only problem is it is hard to implement, okay, maybe not that hard, but time-consuming, since each gender should have different dialogues and such. Either way it's a pretty cool feature for a game.

 

Whether its worth implementing or not, well, it depends on the execution. Will the plot change if you chose the other gender? or will it stay the same with just minor changes on the dialogues? Does the background story of one gender differs from the other? Take Tales of Xillia for example, here you chose between two characters with different gender and different background, nevertheless it has the same plot, the only difference is the characters' point of view.

 

Anyway... It's a good idea. Heck, in these type of games, after beating it, I even play it the second time just to see what happens if I'm playing the other character.

[Cecillia 652]

It'd be quite a lot of work if you're going to make it with different perspectives and such, but it's a good idea for those who prefer that type of customization. It'd definitely be unique.

[+ Titanhex 284]

Any time you implement a feature you need to consider what it adds to the game versus the work it requires. Also whether the feature you're adding fits within the creative direction of the game.

 

What benefit does adding this feature provide?
Never add a feature just because you feel it'll make more people want to play the game. Never add a feature that is just fluff and filler. Don't do these, no matter how simple or easy it seems to add the feature.

 

Does the new feature enhance a core feature of my game? If not, will the new feature become a core feature of the game?

If either answer is no, then don't do it. Also, do not create more core features than you can handle. A core feature is anything that when you remove it, you drastically alter the gameplay.

 

Does the feature keep with the style and atmosphere my game tries to convey?

Lets face it, if the feature doesn't mesh well with the experience you're trying to get the player to engage in, don't do it.

 

Ask yourself if the player would have more fun as either gender. Would they play the game differently. Does picking a gender enhance a core aspect of your game. How far back will this feature push your production time.

 

Hope this helps.

[Bunni89 85]

I completely disagree with you titanhex, no offense. I feel that if people never added any features just for enjoyment instead of purpose, then you'd get a very bland minimalist game that's average but could never be great. And to be honest it sounds a little cruel to say "NEVER add anything no matter how easy it is!" Uhh... why? Is the creator's time meant to be so valuable that they can never go off the train tracks even slightly? Would it actually hurt the creator to do this one tiny thing that they can apparantly do so easily?

If someone in real life said "Yeah sure I could do that, it'd be easy. But I just don't want to." then I'd think they were being a bit of a dick for no logical reason. Its especially annoying with regards to a topic like this. I don't think "make the game inclusive of both genders" is something tiny and pointless that nobody should ever attempt to do.

In my experience the games I've loved most have always been the ones full of "fluff and filler", as you call it. Easter eggs, extra effort, everything that DOESN'T make you play the game differently. That's the stuff that always takes me up a notch from "this is a good game" to "this is an immersive experience, full of proof that the creator really wanted to make a piece of art". Final Fantasy 9 made me play it 14 goddamn times and learn the entire script off by heart and I'm STILL replaying and still finding hidden easter eggs and minigames and STILL having fun!

But for example I would never bother to play Puzzle Bobble twice if it was just a blank interface with a white background and coloured squares. The fancy effects and cute characters help create a brand image, add longevity and generally just make the player HAPPY! A game can be functionally perfect and never bring people back to play again because it just doesn't capture anyone's interest. You can outright sabotage a great idea by giving it terrible presentation and a sense that everybody involved did the absolute minimum amount of work possible. Obviously everyone only buys one copy of the same game, but good quality, graphic design and longevity can make the players want to spread the word and bring in even more customers. It could make them become huge fans, it could make them buy other stuff by your company, it could make them buy merchandise, or make interesting fanart, or stay up until 4am debating on forums about the meaning of that mysterious cliffhanger ending, making the sequel come out into a giant sea of hype and sell like hotcakes!

And specifically when it comes to stuff concerning what the internet calls "social justice"... then you're just gonna lose players and cause fandom arguments by saying "that stuff doesn't matter, it'd be easy but I DON'T CARE". A lot of the audience DOES care. There's actually many reasons to not have a gender option. Many that make sense! That is not one of them. That just sounds like deliberate provocation if you say it out loud...

 

Plus like I said before.. I find it really weird when the two gender choices have entirely different gameplay or story. If you're gonna do two options for entirely different games, then you could call them anything. Make em two boys. A black guy and a white guy. A human and an alien. Whatever. The gender seems more like a side effect of the choice rather than a main feature. I never pick the female option because I don't want to play the same game, I pick it because I DO want to play the same game, with a character that looks like me. I dunno how many people agree with that, though. (Maybe have a poll?)

And it could be quite easy to have a gender option that doesn't push back production time at all. Just do it half-assed with no fluff, like you said XD Simply have the pronouns change and nothing else. Or just write it without anyone using pronouns to refer to the main character. You could even only draw one character model and just make it ambiguous so it could be a boy or a girl. That way you don't even need to put a choice option in the menu, you could just let the player interpret that character as whatever they want! It'll still appeal to people who want the ability to choose gender, even if it wouldn't add anything ELSE to the game. (And indeed you can potentially make a gender choice a very interesting thing if you want to put in the effort.)

 

EDIT: Re-reading this, I think it ended up sounding rude. Sorry about that! I have nothing against you titanhex, I just disagree with your game design philosophy. Hope I didn't offend!

Edited December 14, 2013 by Bunni89

[+ Titanhex 284]

Unfortunately there's a large difference between an indie game and a publisher based game. I think you're missing the point, too. Design isn't about adding as much as you can. It's about following a direction that conveys the experience and brand you desire.  It also means following a budget and time constraint. Believe it or not the ultimate weapons in the FF series were actually an expansion to a core feature, and the game would be very different without them. You may be thinking too liberally about what fluff and filler is. (Perhaps even playing devil's advocate here?)

Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say now.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Titanhex

[Infamous 10]

Allowing a player to choose their gender is a nice thing I think, especially in the circumstances you mention. The only thing that you should worry about is the implementation, which could be difficult depending on how in depth you get. Dialogue and even a character's entire backstory could have to be altered all throughout the game. Just taking into consideration the limitations of RPG Maker, a lot of switch control, or at the very most extreme, two different versions of the same maps and events

[Bunni89 85]

No, I'm not just holding this opinion because I'm "playing devil's advocate", it's my actual opinion XD And I didn't at any point say that you should add everything you can, just that I personally don't believe in throwing out good ideas to make something more unique and artistic merely for the sake of profit. I think you kinda exaggerated my argument there or maybe I wasn't clear enough?

If anything I'd say that indie games should be more about the art and have less worries about budget etc because often they're not even being sold. You've got no excuse not to put as much effort as you can into a free game, except because you don't want to.

So it should be the creator's choice if they want to go completely barebones and leave out "fluff", they have absolutely no obligation to only use what's necessary like in a game with an executive-imposed set of limitations. Many indie games in other genres are all about the art, I don't think RPGMaker should necessarily be more similar to commercial gamemaking.

 

Also wtf? The ultimate weapons in FF? What has that got to do with anything? The game experience isn't "very different" without them, if you mean what I think you mean. Excalibur, Masamune, Save The Queen and etc are all just bonus features. By the time you get them, you don't actually need them because you can already steamroll over every boss. They just serve the novelty of letting you completely and utterly blast everything into oblivion with 9999s on every attack. Plus, the time it took to write a new weapon name and stick it behind some difficult conditions would probably be less than an hour. They're a perfect example of an easter egg of fluff that adds nothing except making the game a bit more fun with more longevity AND they're so easy to do that it'd seem shoddy to leave them out. And FF9 was great for it, because it had a bunch of ultimate weapons and the quests to get them were ridiculous fun silly things that appealed to what the fans already showed they wanted- for example the Excalibur 2 for speedrunning. There's absolutely no reason to add that in, because there wasn't even a clue that it existed in the first place. Its hardly a necessary gameplay feature. But it IS a nice surprise for anyone who stumbled onto it by accident and a great source of replay value and word of mouth when it gets spread around the internet and turned into a challenge. It's fluff, its unnecessary, its easy to impliment. And people loved it and it ended up being one of the big things everyone remembered about the game.

 

Though now this is going offtopic and becoming about fluff vs necessity rather than gender choice vs no gender choice. Don't wanna clog up the thread so I'll stop here. If you feel like chatting about it, drop me a PM or maybe we could make another topic? But I'm fine to drop the argument and leave it here. I don't think I'll convince you to change your mind and that's fine. Everyone has different ideas about what makes a good game!

[shadowblack 103]

Allowing a choice of gender is something that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. The first two things that come to mind when I think of such a choice are:

1) Is there any romance in the game? And are the potential love interests (PLI for short) story-based (i.e. you MUST marry someone because it’s required by the story) or entirely optional (you can pursue romance if you want to, but you don’t have to)?

 

If you have a single gender you just decide who the PLIs are and that’s it. If you have two genders, then things can get a bit complicated:

- some PLIs will be interested only in one gender, making them unavailable if the character is the other gender

- some will prefer one gender over the other, making it difficult (but not impossible) to win their love if the character is the other gender

- some won’t really care, so either gender will be fine with them

 

In all of the above cases some of the texts will change based on the character’s gender, meaning a bit more work. And that’s with just two genders. If the game’s world has more than two, then things get even more complicated… which brings me to the second issue.

 

2) The world. Or at least the area(s) where the game takes place, as most games don’t include the whole world. Are there any places where one gender is seen as below the other? And if so, are these areas optional, or is visiting them required to complete the main story of them? In the former case you can have areas that are gender exclusive, providing a bit of a difference between the two genders without any major impact. In the latter case it means a lot more work, as the dialogue in any such area will likely vary greatly based on the character’s gender.

 

There could be other gender-based limitations, too, such as – for example – only women being allowed to become priestesses and only men being allowed to become Paladins (especially if each class has exclusive options not available to the other classes).

 

 

In short: Yes, it can be worth the effort to allow the choice of gender, but it depends on the story and the world of the game.

[Captor Medicine 5]

After reading through this whole thread, I think I'm going to start up a poll. There are a lot of compelling arguments in here. The way that I'd be implementing it, it wouldn't be all that hard. There isn't much by the way of romance or anything of that sort, it's just a straightforward game, a single class for the character, the same events regardless of gender. There might be a slight difference in how the other characters react to things, and obviously pronoun differences, but otherwise it would probably fall under that "filler and fluff" category. I'll be making a separate thread pitching the story, and the poll will be there~ You guys have given me a lot to think about, but, being rather indecisive, I'm going to leave it to a vote ^^; Regardless, I'll keep all of this in mind when I'm making my game~

[+ Titanhex 284]

Yeah honestly this isn't going to go anywhere. I've read a ton of VG design textbooks and articles, so changing my "opinion" on video game design isn't likely happening. Though to be fair we're probably just at an impasse due to interpreting each others message wrong.

 

Anyways, we'll see what the polls say. But such an arbitrary decision making process probably won't help your game. Still, in the end a little experimentation with different elements when you're starting out probably isn't such a bad thing.

 

If you do go this route get ready for long event pages that contain dialogue and a lot of copy-paste and conditional branch repetition. It seems small and easy but it's actually tedious and time consuming, and once you start, it gets harder to go back. Is that really worth something that's "Filler and Fluff"? I suggest doing something that will challenge and inspire you instead.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Titanhex

[Bunni89 85]

Or alternatively we just have different opinions. I really don't like all this implying that I only disagree because I misunderstand you, that's a weird thing to assume. In any case its Captor's game so I just hope that our comments were useful enough to help give them different perspectives on the subject!

My personal opinion is that a filler and fluff game is way less tedious to make because you're doing things you wanted to do- things you found fun. it's still gonna be tedious to make any sort of game, but for me it tends to be way more tedious to make one that's all about being the best or being experimental or perfect or correct or mega artistic... as opposed to making a game you'd enjoy playing.

But obviously that differs for everyone. If you find pointless fun games to be boring to make, then I'm not gonna disagree with your opinion. I'm just feeling a bit guilty now cos maybe our lil mini debate has taken things off track?

It should really be about doing what you want to do, rather than what people on a forum want you to do. So, Castor, if this gender choice is something you'd enjoy making, then make it! if its something you wouldn't enjoy making, then you don't have to feel obliged to make it. And its probably better to read over the posts in this thread and see what you agree and disagree with, rather than just going with whatever wins the poll. A game has to be fun for the creator too, otherwise it'll probably never get completed. It would suck if your game just bored you out of your mind and wasted your time,  because you felt you were forced to include something that the community wants, even if you don't want it. I'd say its a bit silly to leave it all to a poll instead of forming your own opinion, since majority rule doesn't always necessarily make the best game.

[Tsarmina 2,612]

Well, poll can help. There's a reason why people always seek ideas from others before making big decisions. Whether or not this counts as said decision, I don't know, but I also like to collect some opinions ^-^

[Bunni89 85]

I know lol, I agreed with a poll earlier on XD I just meant that polls are meant to be about gathering info, not deciding things for you. You should look at it and go "hey, seems people want XYZ, I should consider that" and then go think about it, rather than just obeying the poll instantly. That seems a weird way to do it. I know from experience that things become a mess if you work that way, I used to be so obsessed with polls that I couldn't draw anything without asking if people would like it first...

[Tsarmina 2,612]

Wowz. O_o Yeah, I use polls to gather general thoughts, and THEN I debate again with myself haha. That being said, *switches addressee here* I honestly don't really see any negative effects of implementing gender choice--unless more in-depth stuff is not what's needed. Which is some cases, that's true.

[Omnimental 2]

The way I see it, whether or not the player chooses the protagonist's gender should be decided by what style of protagonist you're looking for.  Games where the player is the protagonist (eg. Pokemon) work better when you can choose the appearance of your avatar, but games that about the player experiencing the protagonist's story (eg, FF7) work better when the character's designs are set in stone.

 

Really though, if you want to provide the option, go for it.  Easy way to provide for dialog changes would be to name some blank actors with the gendered words and use the \n[X] function instead of writing he/she, his/hers, etc.

[Tsarmina 2,612]

I suppose dialogue could be copied that way, though honestly I feel that females and males would react to a certain situation differently (and this option is kind of out if you include romance, unless you have homosexual version).

[Omnimental 2]

Oh yeah, if you want to truly account for the different sex of the protagonist, then it would be a fair amount of work.  I was just thinking of the quickest path to accomplishing a protagonist who could be either sex.

 

Of course, you could just use the \n[X] function for the generic stuff, and insert IF statements where you think the protagonist's gender would matter.

[+ Sughayyer 163]

I figure this is probably over, but it makes no sense to say "you have to put a lot of effort in your game" and saying "nah, that's too much of an unnecrssary effort in your game". It sounds a bit contradictory.

[TheHarmp 155]

I think it depends on what kind of game you're making
For example; World of Warcraft with full customization (gender, name, looks) is awesome for the game that it is.
But (another example) Final Fantasy games have everything predetermined (besides the names, sometimes)
It tells a story like you're watching a movie, and you don't get to change a lot.

I can't say I like the one more than the other, but I think a final fantasy game wouldn't work as well with full character customization
(make one badass mean mofocker, to find out (s)he is a scared crybaby in the storyline, for example)
as where WoW would SUCK without having a choice in class, looks, the whole shabang.

And in final fantasy you have 8 - 16 different characters with each their own things so you have a bit of everything
and in WoW it's just one character per player, and the need for multiple players with different classes etc.

and there's quite a lot of ways to work with, but it should fit the game you're making.
I personally wouldn't like to have to fully customize 16 different characters
and I wouldn't like playing a WoW like game without having a few options.

To sum up; I think it can add to a game if it's done right and fits the game