That's really silly. Why is offering they/them pronouns preventing accommodation for other groups?
This isn't a zero-sum game where they/them comes at the expense of she/her.
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Why do games lack Non-Binary/Gender fluid options and characters?
- Thread starter Gloomy
- Start date
That's really silly. Why is offering they/them pronouns preventing accommodation for other groups?
This isn't a zero-sum game where they/them comes at the expense of she/her.
I'm nb and would love the option. At the very least let me choose my pronouns if you're gonna force me into a binary body choice. Or like don't gender lock hair or clothing let me wear the cool shit I wanna wear in the body I want to play as.
thanks I genuinely love this post
I think it is a zero-sum game when there's limited time, money and resources to effectively turn a big enough profit by speaking to a big enough audience.
I'm not a game dev but I'm not sure how 'costly' it would be to include the option to choose your pronouns. Would it really be more taxing than including something like "if=nb then=they" or something?
Well... there is Etrian Odyssey. Its character creator is fairly limited, but within its scope I think it does an okay job.
- You have 8 choices for your character's portrait for each class. Usually, 4 of the portraits look kind of female and 4 look kind of male, but there's nothing that specifically delineates them as male or female. You can imagine whatever you want. Also there are several portraits that look androgynous.
- There is a selection of voices to choose from, half of which sound kind of female and half of which sound kind of male. You can choose whichever you want, it's not locked to your character's portrait or anything.
- The game never uses pronouns for your characters.
- In the Japanese version, if you choose the Prince/Princess class, the game asks you if you want to be called Prince or Princess. In English, the class is just called Sovereign (which is gender neutral).
- You have 8 choices for your character's portrait for each class. Usually, 4 of the portraits look kind of female and 4 look kind of male, but there's nothing that specifically delineates them as male or female. You can imagine whatever you want. Also there are several portraits that look androgynous.
- There is a selection of voices to choose from, half of which sound kind of female and half of which sound kind of male. You can choose whichever you want, it's not locked to your character's portrait or anything.
- The game never uses pronouns for your characters.
- In the Japanese version, if you choose the Prince/Princess class, the game asks you if you want to be called Prince or Princess. In English, the class is just called Sovereign (which is gender neutral).
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Where possible any game which allows for player customisation should include this option. However I don't agree that an absence of this option is excluding non-binary people, and it's pretty obvious why protagonists in most AAA narrative games cater to the widest audience. I do think this stifles creativity and means most of them are boring white dudes with brown hair. Games companies still want the money from the portion of the market who don't want to play as women, let alone POC, LGBT, non-binary etc.
Because no media is prepared for it. If media is still dealing with representation of Gays and Lesbians, non-binary and gender fluid will take way longer.
The first actual tax is voice acting, i.e. recording 3 lines where there'd otherwise be 2 lines, which is not trivial in a big script translated into multiple languages. The second tax is localisation. Most cultures don't deal with gender fluidity the same way the US does since a few years. The meaning of being fluid is most likely lost on, say, a Frenchman who isn't particularly aware of this aspect of US culture. Even in liberal Amsterdam fluidity is not well-known. Thus a character has to be revised for international audiences while risking outcry from US internet communities for 'censoring' the fluidity of characters. Etc.
This thread is reminding me how much I miss saints row
If a game lets me use they/them pronouns I do so. Pyre especially had a good implementation.
And Cyberpunk 2077 being binary only made me begin questioning that game's handling of gender well before that godawful tweet.
If a game lets me use they/them pronouns I do so. Pyre especially had a good implementation.
And Cyberpunk 2077 being binary only made me begin questioning that game's handling of gender well before that godawful tweet.
Flea counts right?
Flea identifies as a man tho, that's technically not non-binary.
They are starting to. Cyberpunk will from what we know. Won't be surprised if more games followed suit.
Not when the game has voiced characters, or when you take into account other languages (e.g. in Polish verbs also depend on gender).
I think the only game i can think of that asked ME my pronouns is Tearway unfolded, but it didnt have nb options.
It actually madem realize, since i was playing in spanish, it's very hard to put non binary options in heavily gendered languages such as all romance languages, it's not like the super flexibility English has where scripts would be changed minimally, i'd see it being a huge titanic effort to translate non binary scripts to Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
It actually madem realize, since i was playing in spanish, it's very hard to put non binary options in heavily gendered languages such as all romance languages, it's not like the super flexibility English has where scripts would be changed minimally, i'd see it being a huge titanic effort to translate non binary scripts to Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Thanks, these are both good points I didn't consider. I will say that non binary individuals exist throughout the world and non binary individuals fluent in those languages probably can offer good guidelines on how best to tackle these issue in an effective manner when it coms to localization and voice acting. Americans arent necessarily super well acquainted with the concept of NB people either but I don't think that's necessarily the best reason to hold off on it, but I do understand why.
I will also say non binary =/= gender fluidity. Maybe this is something lost in translation? But they are different things.
Tradition but generally when it comes to gender unless people obviously fall outside of the standard gender/sexes labeling system, consider themselves trans or have taken an interest in any of that at some point it can easily fly under the radar. People who have had doctors operate on them at birth to make a decision in what they are can often be unaware of that happening to them so it can even illude people that have had the forceful aspect of our societies desire for definition imposed on them. It's a complex issue and as the definitions are so ingrained in many different cultures resulting in trans issues probably being the least understood by wider society. When a product aimed at a mass audience its easy to see how developers decide to stick to conventions as its not easy. That's without even looking at things like androgyny and many other things I'm likely forgetting.
As someone who's not really familiar with the topic, what's the difference between the two and how could it (theoretically) be implemented in games?
Non-binary is more of a general term meaning someone who doesn't associate with the gender binary in the strict sense of being a man or a woman. It encompasses a lot of other gender identities as well as being one itself. Gender fluidity is associated with the concept that gender is fluid/changing and usually relates to a specific identity of being 'genderfluid'--basically meaning that how much you associated with a certain gender(s) may change day by day. A genderfluid person is usually considered to be nonbinary as well, but I suppose that'd be up to them whether or not they'd like to use that term.
I don't know necessarily how it would be implemented into games. I honestly think just giving pronoun options when feasible would help a lot, as well as not locking clothing and hair and makeup and etc. to certain presented genders. The distinction I brought up was more of an educational one because I feel that understanding terminology is pretty important if you want to talk about non binary folx.
because they take away time and resources while not offering enough of a return economically speaking.
a director'sjob is to have a vision and focus the effort of the team in the most efficient and profitable way possible
even allowing both maleand female models to wear the same outfits would need a lot of adjustments to avoid clipping and such
a director'sjob is to have a vision and focus the effort of the team in the most efficient and profitable way possible
even allowing both maleand female models to wear the same outfits would need a lot of adjustments to avoid clipping and such
Can you elaborate upon the resources required to add they/them pronouns?
Ultimately it's up to every developer/team to include or not in their game these options depending on their vision.
While not related to gender fluidity and pronouns, I know a big turnoff for me in playing Dragonball Xenoverse was that playing a male character meant playing a super-buffed guy.
I wanted to play a slim guy, someone like Android 17, and the game didn't let me do that.
The only option was to play a female human character with Android's 17 hairstyle and "pretend" she was a male, completely destroying immersion.
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Back to in-topic, it's a difficult ground to touch at the present state of things in the world. I already see the "concerned mothers association 783" making a big fuss of the game their kids bought with gender fluidity options. Most companies would probably want to avoid that.
However, things are gradually changing and we may see more inclusivity in more games as well in a not so distant future.
Edit: grammar
While not related to gender fluidity and pronouns, I know a big turnoff for me in playing Dragonball Xenoverse was that playing a male character meant playing a super-buffed guy.
I wanted to play a slim guy, someone like Android 17, and the game didn't let me do that.
The only option was to play a female human character with Android's 17 hairstyle and "pretend" she was a male, completely destroying immersion.
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Back to in-topic, it's a difficult ground to touch at the present state of things in the world. I already see the "concerned mothers association 783" making a big fuss of the game their kids bought with gender fluidity options. Most companies would probably want to avoid that.
However, things are gradually changing and we may see more inclusivity in more games as well in a not so distant future.
Edit: grammar
I'd tend to agree with this.
The best possible approach for me would be to see these options introduced more and more into indie games and hope that the popularity, and therefore future expectation, of those options would start to creep into the AAA sphere.
I wonder also to what extent companies and the general video game buying public even understand "non-binary" as a concept.
I think the larger audience understand "male or female" with a smaller subset understanding that some people are assigned male/female at birth but are either transitioning to male/female or have transitioned to male/female. That still comes under the umbrella of "male or female" for most people who will just see a trans-woman as a woman and a trans-man as a man.
So "non-binary" is only going to be understood, I think, by a much smaller section of the audience and then there is a question of whether that's worth the investment.
For example, Pokemon Sun and Moon support 9 languages. Pretty good right? Except there are literally thousands of languages spoken in the world today.
So companies are caught between investing time and money to cater to every possibility or just saying "well if you don't understand at least one of these 9 languages then that's too bad".
Sure, see the discussion between that post and yours, e.g.:
I agree with all of this, specially not locking clothes and hairstyles, but as everyone is saying, it's more development time.
About the pronouns, yeah, it's super easy in English, but imposible in other languages, in Spanish we don't have gender neutral pronouns and every adjective is gender dependent, so it's literally impossible.
About the pronouns, yeah, it's super easy in English, but imposible in other languages, in Spanish we don't have gender neutral pronouns and every adjective is gender dependent, so it's literally impossible.
In a game with voice acting, it can actually be pretty costly to add in another track of VA for a third pronoun choice.
It can also complicate things in other ways you might not think about. Like, say they added the option in mass effect, for example. On top of the VA, presumably this would come along with a new mixture of possible romance options separate from the set options for male and female. This would need testing and programming, and that's just mechanically. You'd also have to take into consideration the sex scenes. Say a particular option is shared between the non-binary and male characters, you'd have to make sure the scene does not imply that the character has a penis, which also crosses over into the conversation around games allowing their players to create characters who are represented as trans, which is another hugely underrepresented group when it comes to character creation (although I personally am not sure what the best way to handle that would be so hopefully people more informed than me have better ideas). Either that or create two different sex scenes, or only programme one sex scene for one of the two options and risk people seeing that as unfair treatment. And that probably is far from the only stuff that would be affected.
I would absolutely love it if games started to include options beyond male and female, but you have to keep in mind that a lot of games can only afford a single option to begin with. Persona for example is game that you'd really expect to have a gender choice, and they even managed to add it in to the third games portable release, but due to the way that game is made adding gender options into it is a substantial undertaking.
On the flip side however there are a lot of games that actually don't have much of an excuse for not offering non-binary options. Something like Pokemon which doesn't have VA to worry about, nor any inherent mechanical impact of offering more than two genders, could relatively easily implement the feature. It's very specific from game to game, but I can't really ever see it becoming a standard option unless the games that can reasonably implement it actually do. Expecting something like Pokemon to go for it is probably foolish, but I think it's a change that indie games could make happen. If something like Stardew had allowed for they/them pronouns that would have been a huge game that a lot of people played showing that it can be worth it, and maybe inspire more games to make the effort. Eventually we might even see these huge games put some of their obscene budgets towards non-binary player characters.
I guess it's sorta out there as far as example are concerned, but Forza Horizon 3 allows you to choose your preferred name from a list of muscular, feminine and gender neutral names regardless of what your avatar looks like.
However I think as far as voice acting is concerned, you're always referred to with gender neutral pronouns kinda like how Saints Row does it.
Either way I agree that more genderfluid/NB options in game would be great. Three of my best friends are NB and I'd love to see more representation.
However I think as far as voice acting is concerned, you're always referred to with gender neutral pronouns kinda like how Saints Row does it.
Either way I agree that more genderfluid/NB options in game would be great. Three of my best friends are NB and I'd love to see more representation.
most of big budget games are also voice acted, that would mean register another set of lines just to change one pronoun..since just voice over "they" over the lines would not sound natural at all.
Uh
People who use they/them pronouns don't have different voices than people who use he/him or she/her pronouns
Also a trans woman would just be a trans woman, a trans man would just be a trans man. Non-binary people also do not inherently have genital dysphoria.
People who use they/them pronouns don't have different voices than people who use he/him or she/her pronouns
Also a trans woman would just be a trans woman, a trans man would just be a trans man. Non-binary people also do not inherently have genital dysphoria.
It's still a pain for localization. Besides, Pokémon is a Japanese game, I don't know Japanese, so I have no idea if a gender neutral option is possible. Besides, how known is gender fluidity for Japanese folks?
EDIT: Oh, I missread.
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It would be relatively easy to have a character creator that could be sectioned under male, female and all options..which would then give you access to all clothes, bodies, faces, hairstyles and you could mix and match at will. That would barely take any work, so that should become a standard.
Choosing a pronoun would be easy to do if it's only a text based issue, but you can't realistically expect them to spend the additional time and money it would cost in a recording studio, for such a small percentage of users, to record new lines with different pronouns.
Choosing a pronoun would be easy to do if it's only a text based issue, but you can't realistically expect them to spend the additional time and money it would cost in a recording studio, for such a small percentage of users, to record new lines with different pronouns.
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There's lots of women protagonists. Seemed likes almost every game shown at e3 this year had a female protagonist
I think in games with fully voiced games it could be a 'problem' as in 'more expensive', when you can choose between different pronouns. On the other hand, DA:I even offered two completely different voices for each gender. When it comes to character customisation, I see no reason to block one hairstyle from being used with a different gender, though.
Such changes in a mindset is not easy and takes a while, I guess, since we are so used of thinking in easy terms and pigeon-holes, like black and white, good and evil, wrong or false, man or woman, and so on and so on. Having broken up this simple paradigm is quite the thing for many people, because they have to change and their former world picture is questioned and challenged; you are kind of telling people that they were wrong, and people usually don't like to be told that they are/were wrong. Damn, I know many people when you criticise something with good intention and in a polite way to improve their work (or something else) and they take it personally (for instance with less subtlety, "Don't tell me!" "Don't tell me my job!" or with killer phrases like "We did it like that for the last 10 years and that's that.") For some people it really seems to mark the end of the world.
Such changes in a mindset is not easy and takes a while, I guess, since we are so used of thinking in easy terms and pigeon-holes, like black and white, good and evil, wrong or false, man or woman, and so on and so on. Having broken up this simple paradigm is quite the thing for many people, because they have to change and their former world picture is questioned and challenged; you are kind of telling people that they were wrong, and people usually don't like to be told that they are/were wrong. Damn, I know many people when you criticise something with good intention and in a polite way to improve their work (or something else) and they take it personally (for instance with less subtlety, "Don't tell me!" "Don't tell me my job!" or with killer phrases like "We did it like that for the last 10 years and that's that.") For some people it really seems to mark the end of the world.
I'm going to speculate that for character options it's a combination of:
Time & effort: This generally isn't free to add. Especially if it's voice acted or you want it translated into many different languages.
Low demand: What percentage of people are nb/gf? This is a legitimate question, over the years I've seen numbers from 0.01% - 2% banded around from sources of unknown (to me) reliability. But if it is as low as 0.1% then I'd imagine a developer may use more of their limited resources to cater for other groups who may really struggle to play the game at all. e.g. The 4.5% of colour blind people, 8% if you look at just men.
As for a lack of, developer created NB characters... No idea. If it were me I don't think it would even cross my mind to do so. That's probably 31 years of non-exposure at work.
Time & effort: This generally isn't free to add. Especially if it's voice acted or you want it translated into many different languages.
Low demand: What percentage of people are nb/gf? This is a legitimate question, over the years I've seen numbers from 0.01% - 2% banded around from sources of unknown (to me) reliability. But if it is as low as 0.1% then I'd imagine a developer may use more of their limited resources to cater for other groups who may really struggle to play the game at all. e.g. The 4.5% of colour blind people, 8% if you look at just men.
As for a lack of, developer created NB characters... No idea. If it were me I don't think it would even cross my mind to do so. That's probably 31 years of non-exposure at work.
Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet, despite having "male" and "female" hairstyles and faces, allows you to use them whether you create a male or female character - the exclusive gender traits would be the voices and body type (such as bust sliders for females. It also influences clothing, you won't see costumes with skirts being useable by a male character). And since you're not playing as Kirito (for the first time), your character is never referred by gender.
Not that I think it's intentional rather than Bamco saving on recording and text editing.
Not that I think it's intentional rather than Bamco saving on recording and text editing.
Pokemon was surprisingly progressive when it comes to this. In S/M, they stopped asking your gender altogether and just ask you to pick a portrait you associate with, colours and all.
I guess there's the fear of making a NB character looks like it's shoved it in or missrepresented. We will eventually get there, though, time to time.
I'm cis male, but I chose the girl just because she is really cute and she has more clothing variety than the male, who I picked in X/Y (well, women have more clothes variety than men in general). They did the portrait thing in X/Y too IIRC.
Totally off-topic, but can I ask for the source of your avatar?
They'll have to record 3 lines any time the main character is addressed with a pronoun or gendered. In a huge RPG that adds up. For Ubisoft it was even too much of an expense to do it consistently with the two genders in Far Cry 5
People tend to bring up saints row as a positive but it's also very noticeable that the main character isn't ever gendered in any dialogue
I think it would be very easy to implement gender-fluid pronouns for games with written text but for voice-acting heavy ones, depending on the way they are written, it might be a slightly daunting or expensive task and I'm honestly not sure how big of a market there is to support that expense.
Not too long ago we had large developers making excuses not to include the option to play a female character and some very vocal "fans" (lets go with that word so we don't devolve this conversation into an insult fest) still make a big stink just because of the OPTION to play a different-gender character in certain new games.
While I have absolutely nothing against it, I think it will take a while longer before the representation of differing genders balances out and is commonly accepted by developers and gamers.
To answer the question though, I think it's because of a combination of lack of representation of non-binary/gender fluid developers in the industry, a lack-of/unproven market and possibly budgetary reasons in certain cases.
Not too long ago we had large developers making excuses not to include the option to play a female character and some very vocal "fans" (lets go with that word so we don't devolve this conversation into an insult fest) still make a big stink just because of the OPTION to play a different-gender character in certain new games.
While I have absolutely nothing against it, I think it will take a while longer before the representation of differing genders balances out and is commonly accepted by developers and gamers.
To answer the question though, I think it's because of a combination of lack of representation of non-binary/gender fluid developers in the industry, a lack-of/unproven market and possibly budgetary reasons in certain cases.
It's a tiny minority of people, so a lot more noise would need to be made for developers to take notice.
In text based games, sure I don't see why there's not an option to just change what the text says, Shovel Knight did a great job of letting you pick the visible gender and the pronouns used for shovel knight/all of the characters in the game.
But In something like say Fallout 4 or any voice heavy game, that's a new line for every other pronoun used, and what if your pronoun isn't included? Or someone elses isn't? I know it sounds like a cop out answer that "If we can't include everyone, include these two only" but yeah.
Though body type to pronoun(even between two) should be able to be picked.
But In something like say Fallout 4 or any voice heavy game, that's a new line for every other pronoun used, and what if your pronoun isn't included? Or someone elses isn't? I know it sounds like a cop out answer that "If we can't include everyone, include these two only" but yeah.
Though body type to pronoun(even between two) should be able to be picked.
Honestly I've wanted to see a game like Dragon Age or Mass Effect handle this, Like at the start of the game in customization, the first option you see as default is a non-binary character who you can then customize or use the presets. You can also choose you pronouns (He, she or they), romantic preferences, chest and body, bust, muscles, scars, make-up etc available for all regardless of gender.
And yes I'd also want fully canon playable Non-Binary characters, Leo from Tekken is cool (and one of my mains), but we need more (:
And yes I'd also want fully canon playable Non-Binary characters, Leo from Tekken is cool (and one of my mains), but we need more (:
Not locking customization options to specific models would be relatively easy. Including additional pronouns (I'm assuming you're asking for more than just being able to choose he/she) could be burdensome unless there were a single third pronoun that would satisfy this need. I'm not up on non-binary terminology so pardon my ignorance if that come off as a confused statement.
Edit: Bottom of the page misery. As a queer person who sort of needs a voice in this, I'm moving to the top of the next page.