Interactive Storytelling Summer 2022

Gender in Interactive Story

Something that I’ve been thinking about lately is how gender plays a role in interactive storytelling. In many RPG’s, the player can choose their gender and preferences. However, when it comes to some forms of interactive stories, the player’s gender is set and plays a role in the plot of the story. This makes me wonder about how the character’s gender can affect the experience of the player. Personally, I have trouble getting into the character if the character is male, because it creates a level of separation between me and the character. When I was younger, I always chose books that were written in the perspective of someone female, because I found it easier to relate to. Do certain interactive stories resonate more with people of the same gender as the main character?

In my interactive story, the player plays as a non-binary character. The character uses they/them pronouns, and their appearance is never really discussed. However, their love interest is female, which may cause some people to default into thinking that this character is “more male” for heteronormative reasons. I am wondering if the gender of the love interest may also affect the level of immersion.

Question for y’all: what gender are you writing your main character as, and how do you think that might affect your player?

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esther.fung

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2 responses to “Gender in Interactive Story”

  1. Tommy Avatar
    Tommy

    Esther I was thinking of the same thing!

    I always found it weird that white men are the “default” in games overall. And then anything that stays from that seems somehow more intentional and political? Like, I find having a character with a set gender doesn’t necessarily take away from the emersion as the point is to roleplay as someone who is not you, but that doesn’t seem to apply to everyone when they have to play non-male characters. Like its hard seeing big fusses over the main character’s gender not catering to cis men and suddenly the game is considered too unplayable and hard to get into. Video game communities having insane amounts of misogyny and whatnot is not new news to women and gnc people and it’s for sure something that was in the back of my mind when making characters. Like, will my audience assume these genderless robots are male? Did I write the dialogue too “feminine”? How will this be perceived by different people?

    The only two in-game characters for mine are genderless. They’re sentient robots and are alive and have pronouns outside he/they but they’re still genderless. Technically that could count as nonbinary and I have referred to them as such but I also don’t think robots and non-human characters make the best representation for trans people and so it isn’t like a core identity trait that has any effect on anything, its a descriptor. Also, can they be trans? They didn’t have any assigned gender at “birth”?

    I am somewhat unsure how people will perceive the character though, I assume they’ll be defaulted to the player as male and other as female just because of tone, tropes, and cis/het-normativity.

    I did some research on other popular robots/android characters and it seems to be somewhat similar. They’ll be technically genderless but present as so femme or masc they’re just that gender now. Hopefully my lack of visuals and therefore no secondary sex characteristics aids to the genderless presentation.

  2. hayden.ockey Avatar
    hayden.ockey

    This is a really interesting topic. I find that when I play games I tend to play female characters. The only games I chose to play males were the Monser Hunter games because the female armor looked ridiculous and the males definitely got the better looking gear. I am a male, and I never really thought it was much more than an aesthetic choice, but recently I’ve begun to realize what you are talking about here. In RPG’s I find the way that male characters are written is really un-fun and bland. You are always either some generic superman do-no-wrong wet paper towel man, or a brooding, angsty man-child. It’s not a 100% rule, but I find the writing and character interactions involving female characters in RPG’s to be a lot more interesting, nuanced, and palatable than generic white dude B going “I am man, I save world.” They recently announced that one of the playable characters in the next GTA will be a woman, and though I find the GTA games to be not my cup of tea, I’m interested to see how they tackle that from a writing perspective. In my project I currently have the character as a man because the file at the top of the zip for the character pack I downloaded was a man, though you only ever see his shadow and his hands. If time permits I definitely want to allow the player to choose between masculine, feminine, and a neutral body types to allow players to feel comfortable and immersed.

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