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

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>This is a really thoughtful video that's absolutely worth watching for anyone who wants to put thought into gender in gaming, how the maze gaze effects decisionmaking, and any game devs out there ready to start putting together their character creators.<<

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 ysabetwordsmith recently I was picturing as being first person with no character model <<

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!