Are gender-locked protagonists an instant deal-breaker to you?

Game Development Writing and Content
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At least when it comes to a HG or COG, having a MC gender-locked to female and usually also a MC gender-locked to male, will be a deal-breaker to me.

While I can sometimes switch things around for some of my plathroughs in some HGs or COGs and play a female MC in order to explore some romances or some options that I don’t feel comfortable exploring with my male MCs, I do greatly prefer having a male MC. And it’s important for me to have to the option to choose the gender of my MC, to be forced to always play a female MC in a HG or COG would just feel much too constricting for me.

The main problem I have with HGs and COGs with a gender-locked to male MC on a personal level, is that the MCs of such HGs or COGs are usually the kind of MCs I dislike the most to play as a male MC, that is MCs who are some kind of fighter/warrior and/or the “very good at everything” power fantasy types. So playing/reading such HGs or COGs will most likely mean me getting stuck with the kind of MC, outside of maybe female damsel MCs, I want to play the least. If there had been more HGs and COGs with gender-locked male MCs who didn’t fall into those stereotypes, I’d at least take a more positive attitude to that.

But I will also say that I’m, at least when it comes to HGs and COGs, are opposed to gender-locked MCs as a general principle, with the only possible exception being stories that focus so much on a quintessential female or male experience that it’s quite impossible to imagine them with a gender-selectable protagonist. I think it does encourage gender stereotyping too much, like with gender-locked male MCs being reserved for HGs or COGs focusing on warrior/fighter MCs and/or power fantasy MCs and gender-locked female MCs being reserved for damsel or woman in peril-stories(like Donor, from what I understand) or where the MC being the focus of romance is the focus. Even more importantly, it also de facto locks out those who need to at least have the option to play an MC of their own gender, out of those stories, instead of playing to what I think is one of the greatesChoice of Games’s, creating stories that makes readers feel welcome, whatever their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc and gives the space where they can feel that the story is for them, instead of them feeling like observers of someone else’s. story. So as a matter of principle, I would probably be, at the very least, very hard to convince to try even a HG or COG with a gender-locked male who wasn’t necessarily a warrior or good at everything-power fantasy character.

I’d give a bit more of a leeway to HC releases with gender-locked male MCs(but would require it including female ROs), both since there have been so much more HC releases with gender-locke female MCs and since it may be that making sex scenes at the highest levels of spiciness and other aspects of making pure romantic content is significantly more challenging for MCs of both varying genders and sexual orientations than making sexual and romantic scenes in regular HGs and COGs. I’d still need the male MCs to be a non-warrior and non-power fantasy MC for me to be interested, though.

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I’m transmasc, but I do enjoy otome games, so if an IF game is genderlocked female, there needs to be male ROs that pique my interest. If genderlocked male, there needs to be more than one male RO for me to even give the summary a chance.

But largely, I haven’t found any genderlocked games to be worth it, so far. My relationship with gender, all sides of it, is just too complicated for me to connect with what the writer wants me to connect with when they write a genderlocked game of any kind. (Maybe a nonbinary-locked game would do better, but I haven’t come across one myself.)

In particular, I both notice and fear when approaching a genderlocked game, regardless of what gender it is locked to, often right away the freedom of the player is heavily restricted not by the lack of gender choice but by the author themself falling into the trap of “women act like this” and “men act like this” and that’s what repels me from genderlocked game. Honestly, when a potential auther says “I want to write a game locked to this gender because I don’t know how to write the other gender” I assume they also don’t know how to write the gender they want to lock it to and will instead rely only on gender norms and tropes, which makes my skin itch. And not to say authors of gender choice games don’t also fall into that trap, but it’s just more often an author taking on this additional variation with the MC will also understand other variations need to be accounted for to really offer a player choice.

All in all, while I don’t think people shouldn’t write genderlocked games, for me I suppose it is kind of an instant deal-breaker. I don’t trust it and there’s a lot more gender choice games I’m more comfortable with that I could be playing instead, so I don’t see the point in playing genderlocked games myself.

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I usually pass on games that force me to play as a certain gender in general but gender-locked female characters are usually a instant deal breaker for me. I just feel like it’s impossible for me to connect with a character who is locked into certain things especially when they’re so different from me if that makes sense.

Also I’ve noticed a lot of female locked games have a large portion of their romance options be males which I really don’t enjoy romancing so it kinda marks off a big part of why I play ifs in the first place.

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Gender-locked male is a dealbreaker. I’ve just gotten old and grumpy and tired of being forced to play male characters - a few years ago I decided I was going to stop doing it. My time and money will go toward encouraging the proliferation of female protagonists.

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It’s not an instant deal breaker but it’s a hard sell. I mean the whole point of these kind of games is making the choices or having the illusion of making more choices than we actually are I read a wip where they didn’t have a choice to choose gender at all and I swear I didn’t notice until halfway in.

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Yep, for me all male-locked is always a dealbreaker in IFs. The moment I read the little tag, I don’t even bother with the synopsis or any other detail.

Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write a gender-locked game. If I ever made one, it would have a female MC, so yep, follow whatever your muse tells you. Whatever makes you happy as a writer. Just expect that many people won’t play because they always play with one gender specifically.

Luckily, we have both many people who play as only male MCs and as only female MCs. You’ll find your audience c:

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I don’t know if this is a common sentiment around here, but most often, I find gender choices to be a non-factor whenever I decide to try out a title from CoG or HG

In most instances, the hinge which makes a book enjoyable or not relies on how evocative, or immersing the experience can be, which doesn’t really make me inclined to favor one gender choice to another when the changes are marginal and only affect flavortext

People who think like me are probably a minority demographic though, so take that as you will

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If it is gender locked female it is an instant deal breaker for me, I flat out will not engage in any that are gender locked female and it sucks cause there are so many out there. As a guy who enjoys IFs it feels like there are so few gender locked male and absolutely none in the romance genre which also sucks as yeah I am a weird hopeless romantic who loves a good love story but I feel weird forced into the role of a woman.

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In my opinion, if the gender of the MC matters so little to the body of the game, then it seems silly to NOT include the option to choose. Even as someone who is only passingly familiar with choicescript, coding pronouns is fairly straightforward so it doesn’t add a heap of burden to the coding process, so adding it is only a positive (it opens up the game to people who wouldn’t play a gender locked game).

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Except when you want to code singular they in as well. It’s worth doing, but definitely not straightforward. :slight_smile:

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If it’s not possible to play a female MC then it’s an instant deal breaker to me.

If I have to play a dude then I can play the millions of AAA titles and JRPGs for all sorts of consoles (or PCs) out there.

It’s already annoying enough that I’m still being forced in most games to play as a guy, if I have to play a male MC in IFs then, too? No thanks lol

But if it’s important to you or for the story, then go for it and you should ignore people like me because I’m sure there’s enough of players there that would still play regardless!

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@Nocturnal_Stillness – you may not be looking for feedback any longer, but in case you are, I’ll put on my reader’s hat.

To me, without knowing the details apart from what I would see in a store’s gamer description advert, I would likely purchase the witch story and pass on the Robin Hood story.

There are quite a few Robin Hood types of stories and games out there, and a few that actually allow the female protagonist, so I would look to them first.

The problem with male-locked games is that the history of gaming is littered with male pov or locked games, with most female protagonist or female centric games being of the Laura Croft variety.

Unless the concepts or ideas involved in the game are so novel or different that they override every other consideration, I do not think I would target the Robin Hood game for purchase.

Being a HC title might change that calculation, but not necessarily.

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I don’t play games that force me to be male anymore. I’ve been a girl gamer long enough, where for a (long) while I had to play as a man, and feel that nowadays, that’s a bit ridiculous. If I see that it is genderlocked as a male MC, I just won’t bother.

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People have already covered the gender spectrum criticisms with this ones concept, but I will also say; you would need to be pretty careful with this part. What you wrote here is essentially saying that one gender is actively hired to hunt down another, and even worse it’s men hunting down women. From seeing you here on the forum I don’t think anything creepy or bad would be put in the game, but the premise alone will sound like a major red flag to some people. I would just keep that in mind as well.

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I feel like for me the biggest issue with gender locking (outside of my inability to play woman/female locked games from discomfort) would be that it feels like a good amount of the time the gender locking itself is rather… insignificant?

I feel like if you are making a deliberate choice to gender lock a game, then gender needs to be a topic of significance within the context of the story. If it isn’t then you should just make the game gender selectable, because as many have mentioned here, one gender or the other will hard lock them out of being interested in playing…

I wouldn’t mind gender locking more if it had significant impacts on the way the game shakes out, even if many would end up being inaccessible to me [I can play male/man locked games even if I don’t really want to, but I can’t play women as mentioned earlier, my preference is to just be able to be nonbinary]. But I would love to see there be discussions or explorations on gender and deeper or more specific sexuality or internalised conflicts. I think there is room for exploration there that is just significantly harder to do when you have to consider a huge variety of potential gender configurations to keep track of. [The same reason many prefer ROs to be non-gender-selectable, I believe.]

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Usually gender-locking of any kind is a deal-breaker for me. I suppose rare exceptions are possible, but so far I haven’t purchased any gender-locked CoG/HG/HC titles. I highly prefer to play as a male MC, so female gender-locked games are a no-go for me. What stops me from playing male gender-locked games is the fear that they will be written in a very stereotypically masculine manner.

I will never understand the idea that you have to write MC differently depending on their gender. Most of these differences are based on nothing but stereotypes. Thinking “how should I change this scene to fit MC of the other gender” is harmful, because it enforces that genders must act a certain way and there can be no alternatives. Women, men and nonbinary people are not three monolithic groups that are all the same within these groups, and don’t forget that gender-nonconforming people exist too. So the only differences that are okay to include, imho, are the external ones, if society in the story treats genders differently. But it still shouldn’t dictate MC’s behaviour, only what society expect from them.

Let’s say the author is aware that people of the same gender are unique individuals, and writes accordingly, without any weird assumptions and generalisations, but there’s still a reason why the game is gender-locked, and perhaps this reason even makes sense. Of course, authors are free to write their story however they want, but I think at least considering opening up gender choice is a worthy idea. It’s not a gender-locked story (and as far as I know was never supposed to be), but I use it as an example to illustrate my point: imagine if I, the Forgotten One was gender-locked to male because it’s set in a somewhat realistic medieval society and the MC is an army general. If that was the case, obviously many people who prefer to play as female MCs would miss out on a great story, but there’s another thing on top of that: several people on this forum have said that they played both genders and liked the female MC version much better because of additional challenges they have compared to male MCs.

So it’s possible that NOT gender-locking a game would not only appeal to a greater audience, but could even be more interesting to play as a gender that was supposed to be locked-out because of the very reason it was locked-out in the first place, making it a more unique and unusual experience for said gender.

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If your story is gender-locked, there would be a good reason why. I personally have nothing for or against gender-locked PCs. Whether your protagonist is gender-locked or not, what is important is how the protagonist reacts to situations and why and how they behave the way they do.

Now for the story content. The second one (Familiar Magic) is more eyebrow-raising. This is as there is an insufficiently strong reason why certain genders can use or resist magic. As with any category involving stereotypes, it’s very easy to fall into the stereotypes if gender is restricted. If gender is indeed locked, and the protagonist has additional internal conflicts (with regard to, but not limited to, gender itself) then the story can shine as well as a gender-unrestricted one with the same plot. That additional inner struggle can make all the difference .

In conclusion, context matters. A lot.

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I am certainly not trying to exclude anybody. In the world a trans-man would possibly be able to use magic, likewise a trans-woman would possibly be able to become resistant to magic. It is just that particular story requires the MC to have an XX chromosome otherwise the story would be different

I will probably stick to the witch being female, it seems like it would be tricky to write an option to be a trans-man especially if it comes off as excluding people.

Thank you for pointing that out.

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Okay that is a very good point and I’d have to really reconsider the concept as that I am sorry that never occurred to me like that. As witches tend to police themselves but even if witch hunters just catch them it will still come across as bad.

I’m going to go rewrite the concept.

Thank you for pointing that out.

Edit: just to add by they police themselves witch hunters can be any gender it is just men were seen as useful because of the resistance either way it doesn’t change your point and I will rewrite the concept.

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I guess I am just sad, people always lock characters to be female or male, we enby folks always end up getting the short end of the stick because so many binary people are icked by being locked nonbinary so we just lose lose :skull: [Aka there are games locked male or locked female for narrative reasons but the odds of any let alone many nonbinary locked games being made in terms of IF feels really low, at least none jump to mind for me].

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