Video Games & the Sexy Gender Binary

[dreadlordmrson]

Watch on YouTube

This 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.

Comments

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Of course that's all only if you want players to even have character stats in the first place.<<

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. ;) dialecticdreamer is another worldbuilder who does prompt calls.

>>...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

[dreadlordmrson]

>> 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.

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.