Video Games & the Sexy Gender Binary
Dec. 21st, 2024 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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mrsonvsyoutubeThis is a really thoughtful video that's absolutely worth watching for anyone who wants to put thought into gender in gaming, how the male gaze effects decisionmaking, and any game devs out there ready to start putting together their character creators.
I'd say "I'd take this to heart in my own game dev" but honestly... at least with the character creator-specific stuff... I keep coming up with ideas without any complex character creation at all? The delivery game I was starting to think up with
ysabetwordsmith recently I was picturing as being first person with no character model (though since multiplayer has come up now I guess you'd need something...).But it's still important to keep in mind for the worldbuilding. As this video points out, when all the important, "relatable" characters (and there's another whole rant about judging characters worth about how much they are or aren't relatable, but let's leave that for later) are highly-gendered and non-conformity is left for outcasts, weirdos, and the monstrous...
THAT'S NOT GOOD!
And I'd argue it's less important than to be perfect Tumblr-safe progressive in your representation than to try to make characters that feel real and fit into their setting. How do people treat gender in your world? What are the standards, what are the exceptions? What ways does it chafe some people? If you ignore all that and just glue in modern discussions about transness and gender into the narrative it feels random and jarring and out of place.
*looks over at the looming mountain of "dismantling the male gaze" discussion that's waiting*
Yeah I'll... tackle that another time, too. Safe to say that this video has some really good points about how even playing a female character or romancing a man is still presented in a way to encourage seeing yourself as the man and the woman as being for you.
It can be really uncomfortable!
My comment:
I'll always remember my first two games of Monster Hunter, World and Rise.
The character creators in them are VERY gendered, and yet in World I could make a cool butch woman with lovely sideburns who just. Felt good to look at in an aesthetic way, and felt like "I want to do more with this OC", and then... in Rise... the facial hair options were suddenly much more limited for women, and I just couldn't make the same woman again.
It the real like I'm a guy, and I want to be perceived as a guy. But in games I love blurring the lines much more and it's... really frustrating and sad how rigid gender options in character creators can be.
FFS how are modern AAA games who are intentionally including trans rep in their games worse at this than DARK SOULS?!
It's... upsetting...
ETA:
Ugh Youtube seems to have eaten my comment over there and it's not showing up. Maybe I'll try to remake it later, maybe not.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-22 11:41 am (UTC)I'm a gender scholar, and the latest description I like is Swiss Army gender, so I have a different perspective than usual.
Most humans are XX or XY; most XX feel feminine and most XY feel masculine; and that's true for whatever culture they're in and however it organizes those identities. When most people can just grab the standard model, they tend not to question it. Many cultures have one or more additional genders, sometimes just because they like it and other times due to a quirk in local genetics that creates a pattern that doesn't fit neatly into one or the other. Since most programmers are straight men, they are likely to make a game that appeals to them personally. If we had more women and genderqueer people writing games, we'd probably see more diversity in genres, mechanics, character generation, storylines, etc. which would be great.
Some of the issue is that games often play into fantasies that people have, which can get into ideas that are not always prudent or even safe. Developers don't seem to consider this often.
Do you really think it's good idea to practice wrecking a vehicle over and over in a game, when you drive a vehicle in everyday life? That might do unfortunate things to your reflexes. Meanwhile slaying dragons doesn't share the same risk because the planet we live on doesn't have giant flying doomcritters to worry about.
Is it really a good idea to raunch on female characters in every video game if you want to actually get laid, ever? It certainly isn't going to help your chances. Now if you were simulating how to eat pussy, at least you'd learn what the hell a clitoris is and what to do with one, which would definitely improve your chances over the many schmucks who do not possess this valuable information.
Some people put their politics into their games, with or without thinking it through. This often has clunky results, like the point in the video about clumsy handling of trans conversations. It's representative but it's not graceful, and it doesn't match the worldbuilding very well.
Thing is, gender studies and worldbuilding are both big complex topics. They don't always appear in the same person, or even the same team. I happen to like both, I know other people who do, but it's not all that common. Probably not as rare as art/writing or art/math combinations though.
Anyway, if other people are doing a sloppy or deliberately skewed job of things, that just looks like opportunity to me. A lot of what I do is niche writing because I'm interesting in things that are not all that common, and I have audiences who share my quirky interests. So while all the mainstream superhero stories tend to be about punching people in the face as a way of solving crime (and how is that working out for you?) we're over here exploring what superpowers would or would not change in society and how society would deal with those changes. The entire superhero field is crammed into one narrow sliver, leaving ... everything else ... for the rest of us to play with. Same with gender. It's very easy to tell fresh stories when nobody else is writing asexual pr0n or the identity dynamcis of being a trans superhera who can gendershift.
The problems are easy to fix, if people choose to fix them.
>> I'd say "I'd take this to heart in my own game dev" but honestly... at least with the character creator-specific stuff... I keep coming up with ideas without any complex character creation at all? <<
And that's fine. The video mentioned "mx" as an option. If a game doesn't require gender, or it would be distracting, or you just don't really care about it -- then leave it out. That doesn't hurt anything. You can't put everything into any one game.
Do you like the idea of complex character generation? It's great for a social type of game where character relationships and interactions will be vital. I don't know how hard it would be to code, say, that nifty triangle slider. I do know it would be easy to tell the computer, "Randomly generate characters for all these roles, of which 50% are female, 49% are male, and 1% are something else." Or whatever your gender breakdown is for that setting, you might have 2 or 20 or if you are writing sapient mushrooms over 10,000 options. The point is that you code your demographics, and that prevents problems where all the important characters are male.
Then again, you could ask players, "Who is sexually relevant to your character?" ( ) Men ( ) Women ( ) Other ( ) Nobody. Check all that apply, for whatever mix of sex/gender you've decided to build. This would tell the game what sex(es) the Important Significant Other or Dangerous Seducer could be.
>> The delivery game I was starting to think up with
Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. You don't need gender or elaborate character development for a logic-puzzle game to work. Your character is not going to be hauling a 2000-pound gold statue with their sex organs. Their sex/gender just isn't relevant to their ability to deliver cargo.
Now, if we wanted to add that for fun, we could. I'd have no trouble generating several cultures each with its own sex/gender dynamics; I've done it repeatedly. But it takes time, so you have to ask if that's how you want to spend that time. Would it make the game more interesting for players? Who's the target audience and what do they enjoy?
>> (though since multiplayer has come up now I guess you'd need something...). <<
You could if you want to, but you don't have to. We'd just need a way to tell them apart, which could be as simple as Player 1 / Player 2 or names.
Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game. It should be versatile enough to offer different strategies, which means one player might want to build a badass who can kill anything that interrupts a delivery, whereas another might prefer to build a sneaky character adept at avoiding trouble. In this regard, a big buff character (of whatever sex) would be better suited to the badass option while a small plain one would excel at the latter. Mechanical statistics like strength and speed will logically relate to muscle mass and height, but boobs are irrelevant. Yes, they can flop around unpleasantly when running, but bundle them into a bodice and you're good to go. So I could see an argument for including at least some physical details if we wish, but it's certainly not required for a cargo delivery game.
*ponder* I don't think CarGo has characters. It's like Tetris, you're staring into the open end of a vehicle and you have a bunch of shapes to fit in there as best you can. There's not a character picking them up, because it would block part of the view.
>> But it's still important to keep in mind for the worldbuilding.<<
Bear in mind that most people build from the surface in, not the core out, and it shows. Badly. You get better results if you start with geology, meteorology, biosphere, etc. and work up to "What kind of sophonts and societies would grow out of this setting?" But not everyone is a giant sciences nerds or cares about that stuff. If you just want to hack imaginary critters to pieces, it doesn't need to make any biological sense, although I find it wildly distracting when I am staring up the back end of a kaiju and -- "Wait, where's the anus? This creature is the size of a building so it should be at least the size of a manhole and clearly visible from this angle."
>> As this video points out, when all the important, "relatable" characters (and there's another whole rant about judging characters worth about how much they are or aren't relatable, but let's leave that for later) are highly-gendered and non-conformity is left for outcasts, weirdos, and the monstrous...
THAT'S NOT GOOD! <<
It's not good, but it's normal for bigoted societies. It's part of the identity literature arc. Most people start at the beginning (no representation) and progress through crappy renditions until arriving at trait-having heroes 2+ decades later. I never have that patience; I see a new trait and slap it on a hero immediately.
>> And I'd argue it's less important than to be perfect Tumblr-safe progressive in your representation <<
Forget it. Don't even try. You can never please everyone, especially not people who love to bitch about things. That way lies wretched art.
>> than to try to make characters that feel real and fit into their setting. <<
Exactly.
>> How do people treat gender in your world? What are the standards, what are the exceptions? What ways does it chafe some people? <<
If you want to go there, I can talk about gender for ages and if you want examples, here are some of my QUILTBAG characters. But I don't think a cargo delivery game would be the best context for that.
>>If you ignore all that and just glue in modern discussions about transness and gender into the narrative it feels random and jarring and out of place.<<
Yeah. Every culture has their own way of looking at things, and while there's some overlap, much is unique. So a lot of the gender politicking in video games looks stuck on because it is stuck on. Same problem happens with race. They throw in a random mix of skin tones in a story context where that makes absolutely no sense. You want diversity? You can have it, but set up a scenario that supports it. Or hell, why not build a Sword & Soul game with all black characters?
>> *looks over at the looming mountain of "dismantling the male gaze" discussion that's waiting* <<
It's not hard, especially if you have a diverse team. Different things look hot to different people. Then again, are you playing a game for soft pr0n or are you there to complete a mission? In most games the sex/romance is a distraction. I gotta wonder how many guys died because they were too busy watching Lara's ass to spot a trap. Heh, yeah. I've had a guy fall into a swimming pool while staring at me. I would definitely create opportunities to die of testosterone poisoning in a game. Or you are rude to a female orc and she pulls your arm off.
>> Yeah I'll... tackle that another time, too. Safe to say that this video has some really good points about how even playing a female character or romancing a man is still presented in a way to encourage seeing yourself as the man and the woman as being for you.
It can be really uncomfortable! <<
Eh, it's the lack of flexibility and responsiveness. If you can build a character that you find relatable, whatever that is for you; and you can tell the game what kinds of sexual or romantic content you like and dislike; then the storyline can adapt itself to your interests. The awkwardness comes when players are stuck with options that don't match their interests.
>>The character creators in them are VERY gendered, and yet in World I could make a cool butch woman with lovely sideburns who just. Felt good to look at in an aesthetic way, and felt like "I want to do more with this OC", and then... in Rise... the facial hair options were suddenly much more limited for women, and I just couldn't make the same woman again.<<
I like the idea of a butch with sideburns. :D
If you have a character engine with options, then they should be free to mix and match for the most part. You might have, say, a range of 5' to 6'6" for males and 4'6" to 6' for females but (in humans) it shouldn't be 6' to 6'6" for males and 5' to 5'6" for females. Honestly, even if someone doesn't have access to body modification, there are disguises -- you can stuff a sock down your pants to create or enlarge a bulge, and people do that all the time.
I think it would be amusing to have a nonhuman race with no sexual dimorphism, who normally distinguish things like gender via pheromones. But in a reeking human city, their noses go too numb for that, and misgendering is embarrassing. So they wear horn jewelry denoting whatever the scent normally tells them, like gender. It would be right there for anyone to see, but I bet you most players would never notice it.
>>It the real like I'm a guy, and I want to be perceived as a guy. But in games I love blurring the lines much more and it's... really frustrating and sad how rigid gender options in character creators can be.<<
Go you!
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-23 02:15 pm (UTC)>> >> (though since multiplayer has come up now I guess you'd need something...). <<
>> You could if you want to, but you don't have to. We'd just need a way to tell them apart, which could be as simple as Player 1 / Player 2 or names.
>> Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game.
In this case I meant "something" as in, any player model at all. :p
Because you need a bare minimum of "able to see where other players are in the world" unless you want things to get confusing fast.
But yeah, customizability is optional here. I'd at least want vague humanoid shapes ala Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, but I do so love me a detailed character creator... It's hard to balance "I'd love to have this" vs "would this actually contribute to the game?" and "is it worth the time investment?".
>> Do you really think it's good idea to practice wrecking a vehicle over and over in a game, when you drive a vehicle in everyday life? That might do unfortunate things to your reflexes. Meanwhile slaying dragons doesn't share the same risk because the planet we live on doesn't have giant flying doomcritters to worry about.
Huh. This reminds me of something that came up rereading the Valdemar books. One character with his psychic "teleport items" powers was contemplating using them in battle re: teleporting people's hearts out. And he was chided against "tainting" his powers that wa.y and you expect that to be rara your powers are only meant for good. But no it was "hey, the next time you want to teleport someone out of danger in a hurry you don't want to risk having the wrong reflexes". Which like. Fair.
On the other hand context can shape which of our reflexes gets expressed, and the physical difference in situation can matter a lot. On a couch with a control in your hand, wrecking cars by moving the thumbstick isn't going to translate as badly to sitting in your vehicle strapped down with your seatbelt, using a steering wheel.
And ordinary life situations can mess up your reflexes too. I once almost walked out into traffic because my brain triggered my "crosswalk time" function too early. Thankfully I barely even lurched an inch before stopping myself.
>> I'm a gender scholar,
Oh no y'all playing at the "professor" level while I'm sitting here in the 201 classes not exactly feeling the urge to graduate. :p
>> Some people put their politics into their games, with or without thinking it through
I'd argue unless you're doing some very basic, abstract gameplay, it's hard not to put your politics into games.
If you're not doing it thoughtfully on purpose, you're doing it subconsciously. And that isn't always bad, but it means you're not putting consideration into what elements of your politics that you express.
Part of the problem of course is all the different meanings of what exactly "politics" is... But when you're taking is as "a persons worldview about how people should interact", then it's almost inescapable.
>> Now if you were simulating how to eat pussy, at least you'd learn what the hell a clitoris is and what to do with one,
XD
I will neither make, nor play, the pussy-eating simulator game.
But I would respect the hell out of anyone who decided to make it.
>> "Randomly generate characters for all these roles, of which 50% are female, 49% are male, and 1% are something else." Or whatever your gender breakdown is for that setting
When I was generating random DnD NPCs I was using D100 and broke it down like 2-50 = male, 51-99 = female, 100 = trans (secondary roll for ftm or mtf), 1 = agender.
When you just want some rando filler character you don't exactly need much thought, just slap together a quick and dirty diversity option and trust in
Corvax Our Lord of Randomnessthe dice.>> You don't need gender or elaborate character development for a logic-puzzle game to work. Your character is not going to be hauling a 2000-pound gold statue with their sex organs. Their sex/gender just isn't relevant to their ability to deliver cargo.
:p
And it's just not a game where anything about WHO you are really matters to the gameplay. It's a puzzlegame wrapped up in an open world shell. Any sort of customization of your character is pure deco. There's no significant character relationships (having rep at doing your job at most). There's no in-built RPing, just what the player chooses to do.
...though it does remind me of an idea I had with my Discord friends about making a character generator that was exclusively about designing your hands in excruciating detail. If it would fit any game it would be this game where your hands are going to be central to the gameplay and the most you see about your character. :p
>> That way lies wretched art.
Oh for sure. Doing art by public opinion poll is performance art. It's not going to result in anything good in the final piece. :p
>> Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game. It should be versatile enough to offer different strategies, which means one player might want to build a badass who can kill anything that interrupts a delivery, whereas another might prefer to build a sneaky character adept at avoiding trouble. In this regard, a big buff character (of whatever sex) would be better suited to the badass option while a small plain one would excel at the latter. Mechanical statistics like strength and speed will logically relate to muscle mass and height, but boobs are irrelevant.
Of course that's all only if you want players to even have character stats in the first place.
>> Then again, you could ask players, "Who is sexually relevant to your character?" ( ) Men ( ) Women ( ) Other ( ) Nobody. Check all that apply, for whatever mix of sex/gender you've decided to build. This would tell the game what sex(es) the Important Significant Other or Dangerous Seducer could be.
While not an unreasonable way to set up the player's options, I do prefer the Stardew or Dragon Age methods.
Either "here's everyone, they're all bi/playersexual", pick who you like.
Or "here's everyone, they have THEIR preferences, pick whoever you like that you can convince to like you back".
I wouldn't want to lock in my character's sexuality from the start even though I know that 95% of the time I'm going to pick my favorite of the boys.
>> Bear in mind that most people build from the surface in, not the core out, and it shows.
You're going to end up making me dig back out my Mccloud books. :p
Not right this moment though.
>> You get better results if you start with geology, meteorology, biosphere, etc. and work up to "What kind of sophonts and societies would grow out of this setting?" But not everyone is a giant sciences nerds or cares about that stuff.
AUGH the speculative evolution community can be scary sometimes.
I want to imagine the evolutionary paths of fun creatures!
I know that knowing the chemistry would make them more plausible and help me with figuring out likely ways things would change under various conditions. But I'm not doing it. I'm not studying fricking chemistry I just want to play with animals.
And to be fair, no one's actually trying to shove the chemistry on me. :p
But it's still intimidating seeing some people like "I'm gonna make a planet with an atmospheric composition like so, which means these effects on ocean acidity, which means-"
Terrifying.
>> although I find it wildly distracting when I am staring up the back end of a kaiju and -- "Wait, where's the anus? This creature is the size of a building so it should be at least the size of a manhole and clearly visible from this angle."
PFT.
Yeah the "huh its butt just is a weird little crease and no detail". I'm good at tuning that out and focusing on the way it's trying to step on my head, but I do notice. :p
>> So while all the mainstream superhero stories tend to be about punching people in the face as a way of solving crime (and how is that working out for you?) we're over here exploring what superpowers would or would not change in society and how society would deal with those changes. The entire superhero field is crammed into one narrow sliver, leaving ... everything else ... for the rest of us to play with.
YES. *rattling back and forth against the bars*
I dropped out of following BNHA for a lot of reasons but one of which was just. I'm so frickin. Exhausted by stories that add some huge detail that would completely upset the status quo, *set themselves in the future*, and the changes stop just short of actually reshaping basic society.
BNHA is particularly annoying to me because it's actually ADDRESSED but dismissed by the story itself? Repeatedly?
Oh we just made laws saying you can't use your quirk.
You can summon items from your skin? Can't use it except as a licensed hero against villains, because it would change the economy otherwise!
It's something particularly common in Japanese media I see but hardly unique to them. Have to always revert back to the status quo no matter what we throw at it.
I guess it does as you say, leave a wide untouched field to explore for the rest of us in "how would X change the world?".
But sometimes I just. Don't want to always be putting in the work myself. I'm visiting this other world because I want to see what they do. And then they disappoint. :p
I could flail around on this subject going back and forth for longer than I have energy for so anyway! Lemme find another bit of your post...
...doing this out of order adds a level of chaos and searching around trying to make sure I'm covering everything I want to cover.
>> Now, if we wanted to add that for fun, we could. I'd have no trouble generating several cultures each with its own sex/gender dynamics; I've done it repeatedly. But it takes time, so you have to ask if that's how you want to spend that time. Would it make the game more interesting for players? Who's the target audience and what do they enjoy?
Also "how much can you fake a more complex culture by throwing a few minor details out there".
Like if you make all the shopkeepers women and all the men in the town are wearing blue hats... clearly there is Culture happening here, but you don't need to write a mini-novel about why they're like that. :p
>> >> How do people treat gender in your world? What are the standards, what are the exceptions? What ways does it chafe some people? <<
>> If you want to go there, I can talk about gender for ages and if you want examples, here are some of my QUILTBAG characters. But I don't think a cargo delivery game would be the best context for that.
XD
Ha, no.
I was not fully distinguishing "talking about the cargo game" vs "talking about games in general"...
>> I gotta wonder how many guys died because they were too busy watching Lara's ass to spot a trap. Heh, yeah. I've had a guy fall into a swimming pool while staring at me.
My asexual ass once again baffled at allo behavior.
:p
>> Or you are rude to a female orc and she pulls your arm off.
XD
This is making me think...
I'm sure there's a market for a game where trying to romance characters involves figuring out their culture-specific methods of signalling romance and making sure you're behaving politely by THEIR standards.
I'd find it a lot of fun to work on!
But yeah also the idea of placing little "don't be a dick/don't get distracted by the horny" traps into a game is really funny!
>> >> Yeah I'll... tackle that another time, too. Safe to say that this video has some really good points about how even playing a female character or romancing a man is still presented in a way to encourage seeing yourself as the man and the woman as being for you.
It can be really uncomfortable! <<
>> Eh, it's the lack of flexibility and responsiveness. If you can build a character that you find relatable, whatever that is for you; and you can tell the game what kinds of sexual or romantic content you like and dislike; then the storyline can adapt itself to your interests. The awkwardness comes when players are stuck with options that don't match their interests.
I'm not sure this is addressing the same point I was talking about the video addressing?
The video brought up things like how you can get scenes where if you play a female character and romance a male, the focus is STILL on the female's naked body and you might not even see much of the man.
How games are reluctant to sexualize male characters even when you're clearly actively romancing them.
The unbalance in some games when you're playing a male character vs a female one in how much the camera highlights you vs your choice of romantic partner.
The game can present you things that match your interests but then still shy away from treating those interests fairly.
*wobbles hand vaguely*
I'm not sure if my struggles to express this are a "it's 6am before breakfast" problem or a "this is just hard for me to express in general" problem. Probably the latter but the former doesn't help. :p
>> I like the idea of a butch with sideburns. :D
BEHOLD, Libera!
She's easier to see in bright light but it does weird things with her colors. :p
I really just. Love how natural the sideburns look on her? Like. Of course she has them. They belong there. She'd look weirder without them.
I love her overall face. The color (when the light isn't making her grey and peeling the orange out of her hair), the shape, the vibes. The MH: World version of her is entirely aesthetic, though. If I ever made her into a proper OC I'd pretty much have to grow her a personality almost from scratch.
But I do... think I know what the foundation of it would be.
Judging people on looks? Sure. But you can get away with that far better in character design than in RL. :p
Bonus (links to full size):
While I was out trying to get some good pics, this fricking anjanath comes running out and was WAY too close to me, but when I ran away and looked back, she was just getting a drink.
I probably would have been tempted to try fighting her, but
A. I wasn't exactly prepared for a fight, I was just on an expedition so time would pass and the sun would come up.
B. I'm used to playing World with an Xbox controller and I was on mouse and keyboard.
C. It's been so long since I played and I'm SO FUCKING RUSTY.
It was not the time to test myself against a fire-breathing trex. :p
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-24 10:24 am (UTC)Because you need a bare minimum of "able to see where other players are in the world" unless you want things to get confusing fast.<<
Good point.
>> But yeah, customizability is optional here. I'd at least want vague humanoid shapes ala Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, <<
Then you'd need a way to distinguish them for different players, so some ability to customize would make sense.
>> but I do so love me a detailed character creator... It's hard to balance "I'd love to have this" vs "would this actually contribute to the game?" and "is it worth the time investment?". <<
Well, your enjoyment is one reason. Widening the player market is another.
Then consider how detailed it would need to be vs. how much time. What are some mods that would be simple? How complicated is that very nifty slider? And it costs nothing to make all the options available for any character. Do we need 36 versions of facial hair? Probably not, but 3-6 would be nice.
>> But no it was "hey, the next time you want to teleport someone out of danger in a hurry you don't want to risk having the wrong reflexes". Which like. Fair.<<
Totally credible threat. With Fetching, you could pull someone's organs out, unless the way magic works in a setting makes it hard to reach through someone else's personal energy. But Teleporting is delicate -- you have to get everything right at tremendous speeds or *splat*.
In fact over in Terramagne, it's one of the superpowers most prone to injury or fatality at manifestation for that reason. There are combat teleporters, but not many, and even most of them are just snatching people out of a scrum and dumping them away from it. Very very few actually use it to hurt anyone, let alone remove body parts. And part of that is the culture, because The Teleport is one of the most cohesive subcultures and very serious about presenting themselves as safe so society doesn't pitch a pogrom and try to murder them all.
>> On the other hand context can shape which of our reflexes gets expressed, and the physical difference in situation can matter a lot. On a couch with a control in your hand, wrecking cars by moving the thumbstick isn't going to translate as badly to sitting in your vehicle strapped down with your seatbelt, using a steering wheel.<<
True, that helps.
Mostly what I was thinking about was the visual effect on reflexes, where a split second can make a huge difference.
>>And ordinary life situations can mess up your reflexes too. I once almost walked out into traffic because my brain triggered my "crosswalk time" function too early. Thankfully I barely even lurched an inch before stopping myself.<<
Oh yeah.
>> Oh no y'all playing at the "professor" level while I'm sitting here in the 201 classes not exactly feeling the urge to graduate. :p
Sure, but you're the one with the video gaming experience who's learning to code. Two people with different skillsets can accomplish more than either alone, or even two people with the same skills.
>> I'd argue unless you're doing some very basic, abstract gameplay, it's hard not to put your politics into games.
If you're not doing it thoughtfully on purpose, you're doing it subconsciously. And that isn't always bad, but it means you're not putting consideration into what elements of your politics that you express.<<
To some extent this is true; people have habits of thought and interaction. If you build a society from the ground up, however, you can use a list of questions like "How does this society do X?" Most people have at least read enough history to be aware that cultures do things differently, and what some of those differences are. Like some are more peaceful or more aggressive, some are rigidly gendered and others not, etc.
Where I see a problem is, basically, proselytizing. The sexy binary is one example, which is largely thoughtless but sometimes deliberately nasty. Some trans inclusion is elegant and some is just awkward. If you want to include something, it has to feel natural and not either tacked on or just waving it in your face.
Take feminism. Bitching and harping about inclusion just irritates people. Go build a game where players can design any character they want and the NPCs have randomly generated gender per role. Action, not just talk. You don't have to say "women can do anything they want" if you build game that appeals to multiple genders and includes female characters in diverse roles.
I've been an activist since I could talk. I've done all the marching, letter writing ... nagging. But the most effective method I've found to get people saying "I did the thing" is plain old storytelling. I write scenes that make people want the things. And it's no accident that flip phones resemble the old Star Trek communicators. Hell, I've got the Elder Scrolls cookbook and it's brilliant.
A good video game is immersive. It's not just fiction telling people how cool an idea is. In a game, you can show them, you can let them live it vicariously. And if they like it, maybe they'll copy it. So don't should on people. You can include natural consequences and logical consequences without nagging them out loud. Mostly focus on demonstrating why your ideas are awesome. That's a bit more challenging than a canned speech, but it works better.
Say you wanted to promote the idea that multiculturalism is good. There are studies showing a mixed group is better at problem-solving, so you could code that in as a slight advantage in the odds for a mixed party. Being polite instead of a dick similarly improves your success rate. It doesn't stop anyone from enjoying a slaughterfest if that's what they're into, but does reward those who work and play well with others.
>> Part of the problem of course is all the different meanings of what exactly "politics" is... But when you're taking is as "a persons worldview about how people should interact", then it's almost inescapable. <<
I would say, politics is about directing people en masse, and that includes a level of stratification and pushiness that goes beyond just culture.
Especially, avoid ticky-box politics. Don't be the game going "Oh look at me being all trans-inclusive this is so special!" Be the game that just doesn't put gendered rules all over everything.
It's what irritates me about woke-politics. It's all talk and little or no action, at a time we desperately need practical action. People just want to be praised for doing stuff they ought to be doing anyhow. It's a distraction that often actively gets in the way of real work, especially when people think they can tick a box and call it done. >_< Shut the fuck up and do something useful.
Which is basically what the video pointed out about games that pretend to be trans-inclusive to attract attention but really aren't.
>>When I was generating random DnD NPCs I was using D100 and broke it down like 2-50 = male, 51-99 = female, 100 = trans (secondary roll for ftm or mtf), 1 = agender.<<
Yeah, that works.
>> And it's just not a game where anything about WHO you are really matters to the gameplay. It's a puzzlegame wrapped up in an open world shell. Any sort of customization of your character is pure deco. There's no significant character relationships (having rep at doing your job at most). There's no in-built RPing, just what the player chooses to do.<<
Yep. We could, of course, build some cultures for variety, and some might be matriarchal (favors female characters, won't deal with or just disadvantage male ones) and others patriarchal (opposite).
I think reputation is worth considering, in the factual sense of deriving it from actual job performance (how fast you deliver, and your percentage of intact delivery). Reputation in a social sense doesn't always match the facts, and would only be useful in a more roleplaying game. Performance is a good thing to have for character advancement, if you don't want to use rigid levels, and I think performance would better fit a cargo game.
>> ...though it does remind me of an idea I had with my Discord friends about making a character generator that was exclusively about designing your hands in excruciating detail. If it would fit any game it would be this game where your hands are going to be central to the gameplay and the most you see about your character. :p
Yeah, if you're ever going to do that one, here's the place for it. You could do a lot with it, and still have a simpler build than a whole body. A few basic hand shapes (long and thin, beefy, squarish, pudgy, etc.) plus adornments (nail polish, hair, tattoos; you wouldn't want to wear jewelry while hauling). Have a simple 10-scale of skin tones, or more complex with a bunch of base colors and 5-6 shades of each. Freckles or not, maybe an in-game option like stripes or dapples.
Limb differences: simply include a toggle to "turn off" either hand or any of the fingers. If you added a bit more code, you could make the game harder with a macro command like "If missing 1+ fingers, adjust odds of dropping an item thusly; if missing a hand, use this amount." But you don't block a one-handed character from being a drover, because people can learn to work around stuff. Or buy a prosthetic body part to compensate.
I think it would make the game stand out.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-25 11:22 am (UTC)At minimum I'd expect different shirts. If you go a selection of patterns and players' choice of colors, you have both personalization and colorblind assistance. And it would be a good way of having a filler system in place if you did want fully custom characters but needed something simpler in the meantime to test the multiplayer system.
...you'd want to decide very early if the game was going to be co-op or purely singleplayer though. It's basically always worse to try to tack multiplayer on top then to build it as part of the game's foundation.
>> Do we need 36 versions of facial hair? Probably not, but 3-6 would be nice.
As long as one of them is actually my bead for once. :p
Player creators rarely allow the full feral lumberjack. If I grab the tip of my beard and stretch it straight, it touches my belly button. But a "full beard" in a game is often barely down to the chest if you're lucky, and frequently only like two inches! Cowards!
>> In fact over in Terramagne, it's one of the superpowers most prone to injury or fatality at manifestation for that reason. There are combat teleporters, but not many, and even most of them are just snatching people out of a scrum and dumping them away from it. Very very few actually use it to hurt anyone, let alone remove body parts. And part of that is the culture, because The Teleport is one of the most cohesive subcultures and very serious about presenting themselves as safe so society doesn't pitch a pogrom and try to murder them all.
XD
Yeah I've seen other powers have that same thing happen in various settings... the "everyone is terrified of what we could do so we heavily self-police" thing...
Honestly it's not hard to turn pretty much any power into nightmare fuel if you take it to extremes. Wynn can control Plants at will (though it does take energy and focus). Not hard to imagine the terrors someone could get up to when every single plant in the area is a potential weapon, including the poppy seeds on that muffin you just ate. :p
>> Mostly what I was thinking about was the visual effect on reflexes, where a split second can make a huge difference.
Fair enough. Cars are certainly a matter of fast reflexes for emergencies. That's part of why I don't drive. My brain can randomly lag out. And indecision is a major problem for me and can cause me to freeze up. A terrible thing to have happen behind the wheel!
>> Yeah, if you're ever going to do that one, here's the place for it. You could do a lot with it, and still have a simpler build than a whole body. A few basic hand shapes (long and thin, beefy, squarish, pudgy, etc.) plus adornments (nail polish, hair, tattoos; you wouldn't want to wear jewelry while hauling). Have a simple 10-scale of skin tones, or more complex with a bunch of base colors and 5-6 shades of each. Freckles or not, maybe an in-game option like stripes or dapples.
>> Limb differences: simply include a toggle to "turn off" either hand or any of the fingers. If you added a bit more code, you could make the game harder with a macro command like "If missing 1+ fingers, adjust odds of dropping an item thusly; if missing a hand, use this amount." But you don't block a one-handed character from being a drover, because people can learn to work around stuff. Or buy a prosthetic body part to compensate.
Yeah for sure, all these options are great plus I agree on not blocking people out. Honestly I'd even be included to have this purely be a visual thing for personalization. Also because that makes it simpler. There's too many different games available in this space and it's hard to narrow down to just the one you want to make. :p
An extremely detailed peusdo-RPG with player stats? An experience where the character is irrelevant and it's purely about the game objects?
Also, on custom options:
You can add that furry or monster fan appeal with inhuman hand options. Paws, paw-hands, claws, etc.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-24 11:22 am (UTC)You wouldn't necessarily have to. However, you need ways to distinguish characters if you want it to be more than a pure logic puzzle. Stats are a useful way to support player strategy choices, like making a beefy character to fight through opponents or a sneaky character to avoid them. Both can succeed, but you have to think differently for each.
A different approach would simplify down to "If you buy a sword, you can use it, and it always works the same for everyone." Bit samey, but maybe easier to code.
>> While not an unreasonable way to set up the player's options, I do prefer the Stardew or Dragon Age methods.
Either "here's everyone, they're all bi/playersexual", pick who you like.
Or "here's everyone, they have THEIR preferences, pick whoever you like that you can convince to like you back".<<
Those are good options.
>> I wouldn't want to lock in my character's sexuality from the start even though I know that 95% of the time I'm going to pick my favorite of the boys.<<
Well, you could always make it changeable. I was just thinking of it as a way to avoid player squick if they don't feel comfortable that a certain type of character might make a pass at them. It genuinely bothers some people, and is easily avoided. Alternatively you could make all the sex/romance interests turn on the flirt only if the player initiates it, but that'd leave out people who like to be pursued spontaneously.
>>AUGH the speculative evolution community can be scary sometimes.
I want to imagine the evolutionary paths of fun creatures!<<
That's totally fine.
>>I know that knowing the chemistry would make them more plausible and help me with figuring out likely ways things would change under various conditions. But I'm not doing it. I'm not studying fricking chemistry I just want to play with animals.<<
Just think of it like leveling in a game. If you're happy playing at a basic level, you don't need to make it more complicated by advancing. There will always be people who know less than you, and people who know more at least about some subjects.
>> And to be fair, no one's actually trying to shove the chemistry on me. :p
But it's still intimidating seeing some people like "I'm gonna make a planet with an atmospheric composition like so, which means these effects on ocean acidity, which means-"
Terrifying.<<
I can build a pretty solid ecosystem, or a pattern of geography that makes sense. I can't do the math to make a toroidal planet, but I damn well saved the notes that someone else posted of theirs, and that's enough for me to write on it if I ever get around to it.
Everybody can do something, nobody can do everything, and that's just how worldbuilding works. You do you. Add skills if you want them, otherwise don't worry about it.
>> PFT.
Yeah the "huh its butt just is a weird little crease and no detail". I'm good at tuning that out and focusing on the way it's trying to step on my head, but I do notice. :p
I could parse a crease as a vent inside a fold. There are small reptiles built like that. But you know ... scale? I've seen an anatomically correct, life-size dinosaur model with a vent the size of a hubcap. Even at cow size, the hind parts are really eye-catching.
>>YES. *rattling back and forth against the bars*
I dropped out of following BNHA for a lot of reasons but one of which was just. I'm so frickin. Exhausted by stories that add some huge detail that would completely upset the status quo, *set themselves in the future*, and the changes stop just short of actually reshaping basic society.<<
I heartily encourage you to drop by my Poetry Fishbowl and give me prompts, whether standalone or any of my established series. January will be short forms, which isn't conducive to complex topics, but then we'll be picking themes for early 2025 so watch for February.
>> Oh we just made laws saying you can't use your quirk.<<
Like that ever works. The most you'd manage is if powers were extremely rare and also not good for either combat or escape, using them in socially unapproved ways would incite a mob.
>> It's something particularly common in Japanese media I see but hardly unique to them. Have to always revert back to the status quo no matter what we throw at it.<<
Bear in mind that Asia is unusually entrenched, and Japan is a tiny island that couldn't cram that many people together without suppressing everything that might cause friction.
>>I guess it does as you say, leave a wide untouched field to explore for the rest of us in "how would X change the world?".
But sometimes I just. Don't want to always be putting in the work myself. I'm visiting this other world because I want to see what they do. And then they disappoint. :p
That's what crowdfunding is for. ;)
>>...doing this out of order adds a level of chaos and searching around trying to make sure I'm covering everything I want to cover.<<
For future reference, you could copy the message, then change color of passage as you use them in your reply, letting you track what remains to be covered.
>> Also "how much can you fake a more complex culture by throwing a few minor details out there".
Like if you make all the shopkeepers women and all the men in the town are wearing blue hats... clearly there is Culture happening here, but you don't need to write a mini-novel about why they're like that. :p <<
It works better when you look at structural elements more than surface elements. You don't need to -- and can't -- show everything but there are things that give a lot of bang for buck.
This lets you screw gender binary to the wall if you feel like it.
Culture A: 2 genders, both do equal amounts of work, but men do "outdoor" things while women do "indoor" things. An outgrowth of men hunting vs. women crafting.
Culture B: 2 genders, both do equal amounts of work with fair overlap at ground level, but only women are allowed to work in the sky and only men underground. An outgrowth of believing the sky is male (receptive to females) while the earth is female (receptive to males).
Culture C: 3 genders, all do equal amounts of work, but the men and women have kept historical areas of expertise while the third gender has taken over the abstract and technological stuff because it hadn't been claimed yet. Compare with the recent rise of formerly disdained geeks who became precious with the advent of computers.
Culture D: four genders, two common, one uncommon, one rare. The two common do most of the ordinary work, the uncommon gets stuck with the scutwork, and the rare are lazy sods who expect everyone else to support them except for this one crucial thing they do. Compare with social insects.
Culture E: doesn't care about gender enough to make a static count, let alone use it to sort what people should be doing. Your basic bohemians.
Now if these cultures were visually distinct, and shared a marketplace, you would have diverse genders represented throughout; but on closer inspection, you'd notice that certain types of people appeared in some places but not others.
>> I was not fully distinguishing "talking about the cargo game" vs "talking about games in general"... <<
Admittedly I'm doing no better on that point.
>>My asexual ass once again baffled at allo behavior.<<
Imagine that you're going along, and suddenly your brain refuses to smart and your body proceeds to dumb. This can really suck.
Let me know if you need sexual stuff explained. I'm not mainstream but I'm familiar with a lot of it.
>> I'm sure there's a market for a game where trying to romance characters involves figuring out their culture-specific methods of signalling romance and making sure you're behaving politely by THEIR standards.
I'd find it a lot of fun to work on! <<
I agree, that's a cool concept.
>> But yeah also the idea of placing little "don't be a dick/don't get distracted by the horny" traps into a game is really funny! <<
I'm all for it.
>> The video brought up things like how you can get scenes where if you play a female character and romance a male, the focus is STILL on the female's naked body and you might not even see much of the man.
How games are reluctant to sexualize male characters even when you're clearly actively romancing them.<<
True as a flaw in those games, but easily fixed in designing a new one.
>> The unbalance in some games when you're playing a male character vs a female one in how much the camera highlights you vs your choice of romantic partner.<<
It's a code issue.
Camera: follow object of desire from perspective of player character.
When condition = sexytimes, clothes of significant other = off.
Or you know, let the player decide how much to peel off their love interest and their own character. Point and click to remove clothes, click and drag to throw clothes around room because that's funny...
Then maybe have a 1% chance of an enemy barging into the room or a monster attacking, and they panic when they realize that they de-equipped everything to have sex. Or 10% if they are bareass in the woods.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-25 12:24 pm (UTC)Yeah I was thinking I'd want a game where the player choices come down to the ways they interact with the world and the tools available.
>> Alternatively you could make all the sex/romance interests turn on the flirt only if the player initiates it, but that'd leave out people who like to be pursued spontaneously.
Honestly that's what I'm used to, so I sort of reflexively treated it as the default.
>> I could parse a crease as a vent inside a fold. There are small reptiles built like that.
Oh, no. That's not what I was thinking of. I was thinking of like, Dark Souls' Asylum Demon (image of its butt). :p
>> I heartily encourage you to drop by my Poetry Fishbowl and give me prompts, whether standalone or any of my established series.
I appreciate the invitation!
I was never really into poetry, though... with some exceptions like Shel Silverstein. I guess I could at least have a look though.
>> Like that ever works. The most you'd manage is if powers were extremely rare and also not good for either combat or escape, using them in socially unapproved ways would incite a mob.
Oh yeah, the guy even knows it doesn't work. Even has a spinoff manga about unlicensed vigilantes, the main character of which is a guy who likes to use his power to make his commute a little faster.
...I stopped reading that because there was an uncomfortable scene that honestly I hope I misremembered how bad it was.
>> [Culture A/B/C/D/E stuff]
See that's doing a small amount of work and letting it stand subtly in the background.
I'm more a throw some random half-baked idea out that implies more is true and then go "wait, if that's the case that implies-" sort of worldbuilder. :p
>> Imagine that you're going along, and suddenly your brain refuses to smart and your body proceeds to dumb. This can really suck.
>> Let me know if you need sexual stuff explained. I'm not mainstream but I'm familiar with a lot of it.
Oh no, no. I get it. My brain gets caught up on stupid stuff too and distracts me.
It's just when I'm not thinking about sexy stories I keep forgetting sex is like hunger for a lot of people. This physical force that wrenches your brain around. For me sex thoughts are interesting and fun but they're so easily discarded when something important comes along. Like a cat that can be pet or completing this dang Minecraft house I'm working on.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-24 09:02 pm (UTC)That is so awesome! :D
Looking at those first two pictures makes me think it would be fun to create a race whose sex-linked traits were more of a smooth spectrum than standard humans with their almost-a-binary model. So depending on individual genes, a person might have no body or facial hair, a human-average amount, able to grow sideburns, a mustache, a small beard, a heavy beard, or they're just kinda hairy all over. They might have no breasts, or only when lactating, small all the time, larger all the time, etc. And so on. Whether an individual could function as female, both, or male biologically would depend on the combination of traits. It would encourage a society where gender expression was quite free and social roles were flexible. They would probably think basing castes on gender was as ridiculous as basing them on hair or skin color.
Standard human: "Uh ... about that..."
Spectral human: "Your culture is insane."
>>I really just. Love how natural the sideburns look on her? Like. Of course she has them. They belong there. She'd look weirder without them.<<
I agree. And well, some female-bodied people do have facial hair, while some male-bodied people do have breasts, just usually less than the opposite sex has.
>> I love her overall face. The color (when the light isn't making her grey and peeling the orange out of her hair), the shape, the vibes. <<
Agreed.
>> The MH: World version of her is entirely aesthetic, though. If I ever made her into a proper OC I'd pretty much have to grow her a personality almost from scratch.
But I do... think I know what the foundation of it would be.<<
Well, that's good.
>> Judging people on looks? Sure. But you can get away with that far better in character design than in RL. :p
A key reason people often judge by looks is that most people use their looks to communicate things about themselves. How they style their hair, what kind of makeup if any, jewelry, the clothes they wear, symbolic emblems or colors, etc. Sexual characteristics can be emphasized or minimized. Even body type can be modified somewhat -- if a person is all over muscles, then that tells you they spend a ton of time working on those.
>>While I was out trying to get some good pics, this fricking anjanath comes running out and was WAY too close to me, but when I ran away and looked back, she was just getting a drink.<<
I think it's great to have a large dangerous creature that doesn't attack every time it sees a character, but might just be doing about its own business. If a character wants to pick a fight with random wildlife, they can; but if they just mind their own business (or stand still, or make a noise, this should vary by creature) it will leave them alone.
For the cargo game, consider:
* All (Terran) lifeforms need water, so any waterfront gets higher traffic than surrounding dryland.
* Most creatures have an activity cycle typically expressed as diurnal (day active), vespertine (dusk), nocturnal (night active), matitunal (dawn), or crepuscular (dawn and dusk).
* So if you go to a waterfront, the rate of encounters will be significantly higher, but you will encounter different creatures at different times of day. If you know the activity cycle of the apex predator, you could then choose to raise your lower your chance of encountering based on when you are doing things.
It's one of the things that makes a world feel more realistic but is not super complicated to do. Basically there are adaptations for living in bright, dim, or little to no light. Bright light creatures may have smaller eyes and good color vision. Dim or dark light creatures tend to have large eyes (e.g. owls) but may instead minimize sight (e.g. bats) in favor of a different sense such as hearing, smell/taste, or touch. With Terran animals, you can just look it up; with imaginary ones, put in an indicator or two and it should look plausible enough for gameplay.
It allows an interesting range between an apex that is active 2 hours a day and rampages for food while everything else tries to avoid it vs one that is active all day or night but roams casually over a much wider area. You avoid the first by hiding during just those 2 hours, and the second by trying to be somewhere else or again by traveling during its downtime.
It also lets creatures share habitat by minimizing conflicts due to different activity times. Locally this means different species most of the time, but humans do it with shift work. Imagine a small, numerous predator capable of swarming behavior. It could have a behavior trait such that neighboring swarms don't have the same activity cycle, thus each would hunt prey active during its own activity period. So their territories could be right next to each other or even overlap somewhat at the edges. You would always have a chance of encountering them, but if you knew their habits, you'd know that all you had to do was run far enough to get out of their territory so they'd quit -- and there wouldn't be another swarm waiting for you there.
Once you've built a creature, governing its appearance in play is a much simpler process of "If X, then Y" and percentage odds. You could even make minor variations in features to cue different traits, like "green hellcats are grass hunters and brown hellcats are treetop hunters" without having to build a whole different creature. You don't have to detail a ton of biology as long as you have a general sense of its behavior as will apply to the game, such as when and where it tends to be active, how aggressive or timid it is, etc. This lets you create variety and mystery without overcomplicating things.
Frex, when I built the sea monster ecosystem for Torn World, I gave each species a role in the ecosystem (predator, omnivore, prey) and a reason for conflicting with people. Those reasons included a huge variety of things like: boats look like food, boats look sexy, a boat can be wrecked to make a great nest, territorial as fuck, fishnets are full of food, and likes to lounge on the same kinds of beaches as humans. So the methods for dealing with one were different than another, and water travel was really fucking dangerous -- they had a whole class of characters called warsailors who whole job was watching for and dealing with sea monsters. It's a simplified version of a real ecosystem's complexity, but it makes sense because it is inspired by that.
Something like that for a game where you have to cross territory, and either pack enough supplies or forage along the way, makes it possible to create variations in experiences during travel without having to hand-code a ton of individual scenes. It also allows players to learn about a setting naturally as they move through it. Imagine the fun of just showing 3-foot-wide monster tracks by the stream and panicking the player, but the thing is only active 2 hours a day!
Oh, that reminds me: giant animals actually are the norm. Humans here wiped out 98% of animal bodymass in the Holocene extinctions. Ignore anyone who tells you that loading a game with giant creatures is unrealistic. Have fun with that. I stumbled across the number while trying to figure out why there was a gator the size of a fucking bus in Peculiar Obligations that I definitely did not put there on purpose. Took me a while to work out that slightly lowering human aggression meant fewer extinctions.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-25 12:40 pm (UTC)Of course humans are less binary than a lot of us think we are.
...meanwhile I find that I keep thinking that if she was real there'd be good odds my grandma would have dated her. Especially if it would have been a terrible idea. :p
>> A key reason people often judge by looks is that most people use their looks to communicate things about themselves.
True enough. And her gloriously-styled pompadour makes me think she really cares about her presentation, too.
>> I think it's great to have a large dangerous creature that doesn't attack every time it sees a character, but might just be doing about its own business. If a character wants to pick a fight with random wildlife, they can; but if they just mind their own business (or stand still, or make a noise, this should vary by creature) it will leave them alone.
If you want to invest the time and effort you can put some serious AI into creatures too. Rain World has a wholeass ecosystem. I'd love to do a game where I actually simulate a priority system for animals where they might ignore you if something more important is going on right now.
...partly because I'm sick of games where a predator makes a kill and immediately is ready to chase you down when there's fresh meat RIGHT THERE. Yes, sometimes predators make multikills. And sometimes they're just playing. But quite often they don't want to expend more energy than they need to.
Being able to wait until the dragon eats a cow and then walking by while it's napping would be clever.
>> Frex, when I built the sea monster ecosystem for Torn World, I gave each species a role in the ecosystem (predator, omnivore, prey) and a reason for conflicting with people. Those reasons included a huge variety of things like: boats look like food, boats look sexy, a boat can be wrecked to make a great nest, territorial as fuck, fishnets are full of food, and likes to lounge on the same kinds of beaches as humans. So the methods for dealing with one were different than another, and water travel was really fucking dangerous -- they had a whole class of characters called warsailors who whole job was watching for and dealing with sea monsters. It's a simplified version of a real ecosystem's complexity, but it makes sense because it is inspired by that.
A good was of modelling a simpler and quicker to understand version of complex animal behaviors yeah.
>> Oh, that reminds me: giant animals actually are the norm.
Eh... *hand wobble* that's going to be a debate where you have to define what "norm" is first. Animal sizes go up and down all through prehistory. And arguably the norm is being a beetle. :p
But a fair point on it not being unrealistic to have lots of large animals in a setting.
Though I do agree with people who caution against too many large predators, because there's only going to be so much meat to go around. And if the planet is settled by sapient races they would have cleared out a lot of large animals just like we did. But sometimes you just have to say "fuck it, this is Monster Hunter logic because I want people to be skittering among giants".
>> I stumbled across the number while trying to figure out why there was a gator the size of a fucking bus in Peculiar Obligations that I definitely did not put there on purpose. Took me a while to work out that slightly lowering human aggression meant fewer extinctions.
...okay, this makes it sound like Peculiar Obligations is some kind of game or simulator, but I did a search and I'm getting a lot of "peculiar obligations" and proverbs and stuff. So what's that?