Gender-Free Gaming

[Ellie]

Article from eZine Issue 19 to spur a conversation: viewtopic.php?f=202&t=78211

A friend remarked that they wanted to create a world for a game in which women are oppressed, a world of witch hunts and a patriarchal society, in order to have the main character, a girl, build her character in this harsh environment. The aim would be to show the struggles women face, and that you can still be strong in a world like this.

Which is alright. It's their game.

It led me to have the opposite thought, however. What about a world in which gender was completely not an issue, to such an extent that it would not matter what gender the main character (or any other character) was. Love, trial and punishment, opportunity, leadership - all of it would be available to anybody. In essence it wouldn't be a gender equal game because there would be no genders to equalise: it would be a gender-free game.

To a large extent I have tried to implement this in Afar, to varying success. Due to some confusion about the English language some dialogues end up muddled but for the most part it's quite easy to remove any mention of gender from the screenplay. As an MMORPG one of the first options available to a player is gender: male or female decides so much in games such as Guild Wars or RuneScape: your entire wardrobe is decided by what option you chose that early on and quests and other events are based around this.

By not having this option a lot more freedom is given to the player. Should they want to wear a dress or a top hat they can do, regardless of their gender.

Graphics

Faces are available to everybody. Some are androgynous. Others are, at first glance, genderised - beards, long hair, make-up - until you realise these are themselves not actually gendered traits if they don't need to be. Anybody can have a beard, anybody can have long hair. Leave that decision up to the player and not on whether they chose male or female and suddenly there is a lot more variety available in the game.

Word Choices

It's a complete misunderstanding that the English language has no gender-neutral words. This is pushed by people such as Richard Dawkins who think that they must use He or She when referring to anonymous people whose gender is unknown, but they're, in short wrong.

The gender neutral words "they", "their", "them" are and always have been perfectly acceptable;
it is a modern idea that only He or She are usable in official contexts. There is no immediate need for often mocked gender-neutral pronouns such as Xe or Schklee.

The problem with these pronouns is they're not just singular: "they" can mean one person or it can mean a group. However, to say it cannot be used as a singular because it's ambiguous is hypocritical when deciding it's acceptable as a group (despite still being ambiguous in the same way).

Throughout Afar I replaced any mention of He or She with They. It can be a little jarring especially to people to whom English is not their first language, but it is grammatically correct.

Use in real games

Angroginuity has often been central to Japanese games and J-RPGs, if only in the design of characters and the clothing worn.

"What if Link was a girl?" is often asked, but what if Link was neither? What if we were never told - would it be a problem? For the most part the games would play exactly the same, it would just need a few word choices changing.

Some games do go as far as not telling you the gender altogether however.

The best example is Leo Kliesen, a playable character in Tekken 6 and other games in the series. Leo is referred to by name alone or gender-neutral pronouns and has no costumes that reveal the torso, unlike other female characters, and is able to select female hair options, attacked by Anna's Slap Happy attack (only available against male characters), can equip male only items such as sledgehammers, and can be customised in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 to look like female Sora from Kingdom Hearts or the male Indiana Jones.

The development team stated they wanted to develop a character who would be loved by fans regardless of their gender and so purposefully made them gender ambiguous.

While they go a large way to make this happen they fall short of actually gender neutralising the game. Why are sledgehammers male-only weapons? Why do characters have attacks that can only be used against certain genders?

Can it be done?

In conclusion, gender-free games are certainly possible. There are many ways to do it and creating a society within a game that does not bias based on gender is easy. Simply neglecting to ask the player their gender is even easier, and completely unnecessary if you have customisation options. (Why not let every player choose every possible combination? Don't limit yourself!)

Should it be done?

I am by no means saying this is the future of gaming. If your game doesn't suit it, don't employ it. But it can be done and in the context of MMORPGs is a logical future move.

More and more gender is becoming less of an issue in our society. Maybe our games will come to reflect this, or maybe games will be used, as in my original tangent, as a way of portraying worlds where gender is an issue, as a warning or simply as a plot device. We can enjoy World War II films despite not agreeing with the things going on.

 

[coyotecraft]

This is a tie-in to ezine's May article on gender-free gaming. I'm taking the initiative and starting the topic myself. The floor is open to anything you want to say about gender in games. Examples of gender neutrality. When it works. when it doesn't work. The advantages and disadvantages. And probably most importantly, What's the point?

 

[Byron]

I don't really see any issues with it. Gender is the "sex" you feel you are "sex" is the bits you have.
If we're taking gender into account, it would be pretty cool to see a trans character, or a character that struggles with the fact that they're a guy or something. In terms of "does a character need to be a boy or a girl"
Well no. Not really. But the world is generally black or white about that subject so it helps to say x character is a boy. Y character is a girl. Just for immersion.
That being said, it curtainly made it easier to fap when I could imagine Leo Klieson as a guy. (But she's been confirmed as a girl)

 

[Ellie]

We both posted the same time hdear:

 

[coyotecraft]

Here's something. In Final Fantasy IX there was a genderless race called the Qu. The playable character Quina would be referred to as s/he. Personally I don't see why "it" can't be used as a singular gender neutral pronoun. But somehow "it" is too negative. I mean, it's ok to use it when talking about animals but not people.

Some trivia about Quina. S/he is not protected by Zidane's protect girls ability when low on health. Well that's consistent I guess, the Qu arn't girls. But Quina is affected by the Entice ability, aka Charm, which only works on male characters.
Vivi was raise by a Qu he called "Grandfather". He did have a mustache.


Besides the Qu the Final Fantasy series has a races that are based on only one gender.

The Galka, who as far as I can tell are only male.
The Mithra, a cat-race of females. There are males but they are rare(there is only one male character mithra that was introduced in an expansion). Similar to rabbit-earred race called the Viera. There are only female Viera in the games but it's said the males have a settlement somewhere else.

 

[Xhukari]

It is most certainly an interesting topic. And I feel that both can have their place in gaming... gender neutrality could work very well for sandbox games. Though I can see how implementing something like that could be a bit more difficult... essentially it would make any in-depth character creator difficult to get gender-neutral... Do you avoid any options which are stereotypically aligned with binary genders?

Another hurdle to it, would be that you would need to essentially challenge the player's views on gender-role as part of the story and/or gameplay... if your androgynous character does something which the player aligns with a specific gender, they would project that gender onto them. Unless you made the player confused, by having the character do/have/whatever two entirely contrasting gender stereotypes.

A big issue too, is how juvenile the industry and audience is in general; I would imagine that handling gender-neutrality would take a lot of finesse. And since how safe the AAA industry is, I can't see them doing it justice. However I can think of some characters which could have made good androgynous characters... Link from Zelda and Faith from Mirror's Edge could have worked. And the more I think of it, the more Faith could have worked so well as one; the story and gameplay and everything would lend itself so well to it... she could have had some a unisex Alias and a gender neutral voice & body...

 

[coyotecraft]

It's tricky to write organically when their gender neutrality puts their behavior in question as well as the characters who interact with them. The confusion is good for humor I suppose. "A gentleman never hits a lady" and then asks "You are a lady, aren't you?"

You could make Link a boy or girl. But in Ocarina of Time Princess Ruto only gave Link the Zora's Sapphire because she was crushing on him and wanted him to be her husband one day.

 

[Ellie]

Solution: Principal Ruto only gave Link Zora's Sapphire because they were crushing on them and wanted them to be their partner one day.

 

[aphadeon]

I have to disagree on the lack of need for gender-neutral singular pronouns. While "they", "them", "their", etc are considered grammatically correct, it allows for easy misinterpretation. It's the best dialogial solution in the present state of the English language, but I won't pretend it's syntactically equal to "he", "she", "him", and "her".

As for a game concept, where you have control over dialogues, this is easily implementable, and would make for an interesting experiment (mostly to see how observant the audience is, akin to Minecraft's "multigendered" animals.) However I do wish, for natural conversation's sake, that we could address the pronoun issue in a more appropriate fashion.

There is another issue to gendered pronouns, however. I don't think it originated out of need for gender distinction, so much as to offer context clues as to whom the statement is referring. Consider the following two examples (I only spent a moment on this, I'm sure better examples could be created.)

1.) Jack hid cautiously in the bushes, as Jill proceeded towards the well to draw water. The enemies were closing in from all sides, there wasn't time to spare. And at the worst possible moment, they slipped and fell.

2.) Jack hid cautiously in the bushes, as Jill proceeded towards the well to draw water. The enemies were closing in from all sides, there wasn't time to spare. And at the worst possible moment, she slipped and fell.

This uses a pronoun in the exact same place in each sentence, and nothing has been changed other than switching to the "grammatically correct" gender neutral pronoun. The second statement is easily followable, while the first leaves you wondering who slipped and fell (I like to assume everyone did.)

 

[Ellie]

It does, in that case, disambiguate, but consider:

Jack hid cautiously in the bushes, as Jim proceeded towards the well to draw water. The enemies were closing in from all sides, there wasn't time to spare. And at the worst possible moment, he slipped and fell.

Equally as ambiguous. It's only when there happens to be only one male and only one female in the sentence that using he or she helps. It would be better to, given two people were stated, use their name again:

Jack hid cautiously in the bushes, as Jill proceeded towards the well to draw water. The enemies were closing in from all sides, there wasn't time to spare. And at the worst possible moment, Jill slipped and fell.

Since given Jack is the subject of the sentence, Jill's role being a side matter, any pronoun should have referred to Jack - Jill is an extra.

For your example the sentence would have been:

Jill proceeded towards the well to draw water while Jack hid cautiously in the bushes. At the worst possible moment, they slipped and fell.

 

[aphadeon]

Agreed, for the most part. But even when there are 3 males and 2 females, a "he" or "she" can provide a significant context clue - you can immediately disqualify roughly half of the present party. When reading, assumptions have to be made at times - especially so for realistic (imperfect) dialogue. For these assumptions, we use the information available, almost subconsciously, to narrow down the possibilities and grab onto the most likely one.

It's not so much a matter of gender, specifically. Perhaps if we had pronouns that denoted hair color, this could be even more effective.

 

[coyotecraft]

Solution: Principal Ruto only gave Link Zora's Sapphire because they were crushing on them and wanted them to be their partner one day.

Idk if genderswaping characters based on the player's choice is an option. IMO it would be better for the character to respond differently or replace the character with someone else like they did it in Persona replacing Elizabeth with Theodore. That way characters are constant.



You could also make everyone bi. But I would still expect them to behave differently. Unless you lampshade the implications. Come on, royalty has a lot of expectations to meet, traditions to follow, heirs to produce. They arn't as easily explained as a rouge who makes their own rules and raised by prostitutes. (Like Zevran in Dragon Age)

 

[Ellie]

Royalty only has expectations to meet if in your game's world royalty has those expectations to meet. If in your game it's not an issue, then it can be made to not be an issue. (Not saying it should, but that it could).

 

[coyotecraft]

I know the topic is gender-neutrality. But I kinda like the idea of gender-specific aspects of a game. So playing as a girl wouldn't be the same as playing as a boy. I'm thinking in terms of favors from the opposite sex. Like a princess giving something to a boy because she likes him, but a girl would have to earn it. Or a guard would let a girl walk in but a boy would have to sneak in.

Or a type of protagonist, if they player is a boy he is your rival trying to out do you. But if the player is a girl he is doing everything to impress you. His motivations are different but the actions result in the same thing.

 

[Xilef]

If you are forcing the player to take the role of a male character, then justify that, give them "boyish" behaviour, if you're not going to do that, might as well give them the choice of male/female selection and let the player role-play their game how they want, Pokemon naturally fell into this because they had no justification for the player being a boy in the early games. That's gender neutrality of the player's role, at least how I see it.

If you're giving the playable character a clear-cut gender, have it make sense, don't just roll a dice to select a gender for them, you'll end up falling into potentially offensive territory by working around the gender you chose for them and writing a character that you presume would fit the gender, this is why a lot of people would suggest writing the world the story is in after you write the opening and ending then filling in the characters last of all, you can give people solid reason for being in the world and not have them be characters that end up feeling like super-heroes because they are so vastly exaggerated in the world around them as they go through the story.

 

[Jumping Jack Flash]

This is silly. Your just taking this too seriously, not everything has to be about it.

 

[coyotecraft]

You play as Amaterasu in Okami. Amaterasu (the wolf) is suppose to be genderless. It even says so in the game's instructions apparently. The confusion is that Amaterasu is an incarnation of a goddess with the same name, and other characters saying "her" or "fair maiden". This isn't the game defining the gender, it's just how characters THINK of Amaterasu . But players aren't used to that. It has to be made obvious that a character is making an assumption or seeing things from a different perspective.
"Good girl." vs "Good uh...girl?"
Otherwise it looks like the narrative is presenting you with a fact.

 

[Ellie]

That's a tricky one, and easily confusing. Not just with gender though. Portraying anything as a... idk, a thought-fact, that a character thinks to be a fact, but which isn't actually a fact, is difficult.

 

[Pokémaniac]

I missed this topic but this is a really cool discussion. I definitely don't think gender has to be disclosed, and I've stuck with that in my last 3 releases. I generally had to trouble; in the first 2 games anyone speaking was speaking to you directly so I got to use "you" instead of a gendered term. In no-one has to die, I used "they", and no-one ever asked the Visitor for their gender. I didn't see why I should waste time having a character say "look, I know we're in the middle of a fire and everything, but before we save ourselves we've gotta make sure we enforced the gender binary." I got a few complaints that nyeh they is not a singular blahblahblah but language is determined by use, and saying "his or her" has ingrained connotations.

The idea that we need gendered pronouns to differentiate characters is flawed. I certainly don't see the English language falling apart because everyone in a room is the same gender. for video games it's even less of an issue. The majority of text in games is dialogue and menu prompts; in both cases you can refer to the player by "you" anyway. And if you're using descriptive third person text, then if anything having an ungendered character refers to by "they" helps disambiguate; male characters are "he", female characters are "she", and the player (and other ungendered characters) is "they". That's 3 pronouns vs 2.

I don't think gender should be abolished in games, however. I think gender can be used in a liberating way. Let the player choose male/female/none-of-your-damn-business, and then don't restrict whether they have boobs or beards or both. Romances are a tricky issue- you can provide characters of varying orientations to be romanced, or just say "fuck it" and make every romance option bi/pansexual. Unrestricted romance gives all players more options regardless of gender, but some might argue having everyone with the same orientation limits characterisation(although that argument is rarely applied to the multitude of games with only heterosexual characters :P). It's really up to the developer I spose!

Okay that's my rant :S

 

[Ellie]

"His or her" seems far less grammatically pleasing to me. I know it's correct, but it doesn't feel natural to say. His or her work is very good. He or she is going to the shop. They are a single mom.