For me, being gender locked female is an immediate deal breaker. I am masc-nonbinary, so for me it’s just a comfort issue. I don’t play self-inserts, but I feel uncomfortable being forced to play a woman. If I am automatically locked out of half the content of a game though I will probably not purchase it unless it has an exceptionally compelling premise or characterisation.
Being gender locked male is not something I really like, but I will deal with it.
As a general rule, gender is one of if not the most important form of customisation for me, so unless there is an exceptionally important reason it need be gender locked my preference would be for gender to be selectable.
I don’t mind if games are genderlocked to male, as long as the game doesn’t expect my character to be stereotypical masculine.
It’s very rare for me to be able to read very far into a female genderlocked game (the biggest exception being A Pirate’s Pleasure). I have tried quite a few, but I just get either bored, or frustrated with the character, or something about the characterization makes me feel iffy and dysphoric.
Genderlocked games also rarely let you play as trans, or when they do, I often find the implementation dissatisfying, and rather half-hearted.
And I know it wasn’t asked, but I really would enjoy seeing more games that are genderlocked to being trans, either binary or non-binary.
Personally I don’t care about genderlock itself, but I do prefer it being clearly stated, because otherwise I may become super confused. For me whether or not I’d buy the game is more about whether or not the story interests me though.
Not a deal breaker, but definitely a serious strike against a game when I can’t play as a girl/woman. The right story in the right genre can convince me, though – I played and enjoyed both Study in Steampunk and Freshman Year: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets.
I’m a cis gender woman. Not to say I never play men, but I want that to be my choice. Though I did enjoy Belle de Nuit, Changeling Charade and Their Majesty’s pleasure, all of which have predetermined female protagonists.
This is how I feel about it as well. Usually, if I see an IF game is gender-locked male, I don’t play it.
Gender-locked female is obviously fine for me, since that’s what I play as, but I prefer to have some modicum of control over the character (personality/skills/etc.).
It doesn’t matter much to me. I personally prefer playing as a man, but as long as the story is good, I have no issue playing as a woman either. Not really a deal breaker at all
To go into a little bit more detail just so people can see what I am looking at.
The game that is gender-locked male is called Quiver - a Robin Hood Tale and was one of the possible pitches I submitted back in July and would have been pitched as a Heart’s Choice game with Robin always being male but you got to decide his personality and background and there were both female (Maid Marion and Isabella Du Courteray) and male romance options (Little John and Will Scarlet).
The game that would be gender-locked female is called A Familiar Magic this was a story where the MC was a witch that had broken one of the witch laws and had their soul put into the body of a familiar (a cat) and charged with mentoring a young witch as your punishment. In this world magic affected people differently, women gained the ability to wield magic whereas the men gained the ability to resist magic and would be recruited as witch hunters. Introducing a male protagonist would result in two completely different games and as I want my next game to be shorter increase the development time (and I do not want it to take as long as Season Two of UnNatural did as that was soul destroying)
As a player, I have been disappointed a few times by a gender locked male game that seems very interesting. I have no interest in playing as a guy, so I kind of just have to sadly move on.
But as a writer, it’s so much easier! The coding is so much easier, and I don’t have to think about “ok, now how does this scene change if it’s a guy?” I’m happy just writing a female MC, thank you very much
Now, how do you reconcile this? If your goal is to have fun and maybe make some extra cash along the way, then you should just do what you want. But if you want to eventually turn this into a career, then you need to have broad appeal, wherever it works within a story
Those both sound really good, especially A Familiar Magic. I would be excited to play either one.
I assume you have a good reason for why men and women are affected by magic differently in A Familiar Magic? I mean, technically you don’t need any reason other than you’re the author and that’s the way you want it to be, but is there a story reason that precludes tweaking the rules a little to appeal to a broader audience?
My main series is gender choice and the majority if not all my other future games would have a gender choice. These are just two stories I want to write and I’m interested in how the act of gender-locking affect my ability to tell a good story. As you mentioned locking the gender means you don’t have to worry how a scene would change because of the MCs gender but would that actually result in a better written story? I am curious to find the answer!
I believe I do have a good story reason, but I can’t see if someone would agree with it or not. How I saw it when I thought up the idea was it is down to their chromosomes. The first X allows you to feel magic while it is the second X allows you to manipulate it. So a women with XX could do both where as men are XY so they can only feel magic which is what leads to a few gaining a resistance to it.
I would never play a genderlocked female game, due to being a trans man in real life.
That said, someone will always have a reason for not wanting to play a genderlocked game, some more frivolous than others. They’re all ultimately valid, because personal enjoyment can be a fickle beast.
If an author decides to make a genderlocked game, that’s ultimately fine. But there will always be some who can’t or won’t play it, for one reason or another.
My WIP, Falrika the Alchemist, has a gender-locked female MC, and while there might be some variations in her personality, she has some traits that can’t be changed (like her klutziness and her determination). Well, I hope it ain’t a deal-breaker for some.
What if there’s a small percentage of men who got the other X chromosome? So they can’t feel it but can manipulate it, so someday they end losing control?
I mean I’m a guy, so I would naturally like to feel like it’s me in that fictional world. So it’s mostly just an issue with immersion for me.