Choose Your Gender!

[Ellie]

So.

Games where you can choose your gender. What do you think of them?

I always said that my games would be "gender free" - you play as a character and your gender is never brought up. Now that I am using more realistic images this becomes more... Hmm. Difficult.

The bust images I am using are incredibly gendered.

One solution could be just to not use them. Possibly.

Another could be just to make everyone female, because the female one looks more male than the male one looks female, if that makes sense.

If I only used faces and cut the boob part of course.

I mean this is awkward:

...


The actual SPRITES are not an issue. They are big but small enough that all you can really tell is their hair style, not their gender.


Anyway.

A few questions that come off this:

1. Is it more sexist to make everybody "female" than to let people choose one or the other?

2. How do you feel about being able to choose gender (or not) in games?

3. What do I do?

 

[Ellie]

If I didn't use busts here's what I'd be left with.

First is a "male" with female hair; second is a "female" with male hair.

Does the former look female enough or the latter male enough to get away with?

 

[Xhukari]

Isn't this more "Choose your Sex!"? :p
I always thought gender was more akin to social constructs, etc, than physical features?

I see what you mean about the bust images though. I take it an androgynous build isn't an option? If you could go that path, then you could just give them options such as beards or makeup freely as options for both, and then maybe have what they wear determine body proportions? Such as dresses have breasts, topless is a male chest, leather/plate armour is under too many layers to matter.

If I'm not playing a specific character, I do generally like to choose my sex. On the sprite front, I think both work to be honest; everyone has different proportions. It's just that the male has more of an amazonian / female barbarian feel to it. Whilst the female as a male has more of a merchant or courtly prince feel to it.