Consolidated Gender Lock Discussion Thread

These threads always end up causing problems on the forum. It’s happened over and over. Everyone has said their piece. I recommend locking the thread imo.

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Seconded.

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Because Gender-lock is a reoccurring issue, having one open thread for it makes more sense than to keep opening and closing threads in a never-ending cycle…

As an aside … those with “Leadership” trust values can temporarily close a thread if they feel it needs a cooling down period … we just ask that you then notify the mods in your closing post that this was done.

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Testing the lock function and fiddling with the lock timer.

The thing about the general swaps is they come out sounding odd sometimes, as much as I liked Choice of Romance that one comes to mind. I liked how the Jazz heart game let me pick what sort of sexual role I preferred to play and I can understand people wanting to write certain types of stories about certain kinds of romances.

It’s all about choice, I think that includes the authors.

As far as the infinity series goes that’s a special case, the author worked really hard on a unique political setting that has bigotry and sexism built into it, and opened up the multi book spanning side quest to Bring more social and military rights to women

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My two cents about that series is that it might be more interesting to play as a woman who fights against bigotry based system instead as a man who may decide to show support for the women?

Anyway what I’d like to add to support @Kaelyn’s argument is that just do the math and count the HG games written with straight male audiences in mind (in a way even SoH could be counted among these despite it not being genderlocked) and how these games were recieved opposed to the female genderlocked ones. Only then come back here again and complain about something not being targeted for straight men for once. (This part isn’t necessarily meant for you @LJ_Phoneix)

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Well in that particular series a vast amount of the story would have be rewritten and added to accommodate a proper female perspective on the situation

I understand that and that it’s the authors right to choose if it that isn’t implemented, but imo the fact that we don’t actually see a womans perspective in it might counter your argument when you say it’s about womens fight against the patriarchal system of the world in the game, it’s just a side quest so my point still stands: it’s mainly for straight men (I’m saying mainly bc I saw some women and nb folk too who said they liked that series).

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But that wasn’t my argument, my argument was there are reasons authors might not want to do flexible gender roles in games, the side quest in infinity, that spans across the books, was my example of how this can add its own sorts of flavors.

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Oh, I see. Sorry then. I guess I might have misinterpreted it a bit then. Tho then this is another example of the difference in how the games meant for straight men and for anyone else gets recieved. Infinity series and other games with male genderlocked MC or even without the genderlock but written with a tone more suitable for straight men get more support and defense than games written for other audiences.

(Sorry, I’ll see myself out of this thread now until I actually have something to add about HC.)

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I try not to worry about the politics as much anymore. CoG has a wide selection of wonderful books written by multi minded and thoughtful people plus a staff that cares about everyone feeling included and represented.

I’ll be honest it bothered me when I first started reading them becuase I’m from an older generation but after exposing myself to the unique situations, the problems, and the many viewpoints individuals can hold I understand the way younger people think these days and can appreciate it. The CoG books are what helped me do that, becuase I understand the vast amount of media is still slanted towards my particular flavor of life.

(Sorry ladybird, I’m done)

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My understanding is there’s a book in the works from that series that’s going to be from a female perspective. Might what you’re hoping for? (I don’t know the specific details of the sequel.)

I know I’ve said it before, but I think you can get sometimes get stronger storylines by locking protagonists to a degree (at the cost of customisation) and there’s a place for both. Not just regarding gender choice either, that’s just one that comes up a lot, but there’s a lot of other background kind of things that can be locked in to give a MC a particular character or backstory causing them to have particular skills or personality traits. Outside of CSG’s having character locked games is quite common and accepted. The recent IFComp was won by a female character locked game, so they can be popular if well written and implemented. There’s other examples by Inkle as well which have male and female protagonists that are very popular too.

I can see why in a romance focused COG this would potentially be adventagous as you could get more RO scenes written with this particular purpose in mind, and I’m assuming most games would be specifically tailored around the romance genre rather than being added in onto a different sort of storyline (that sometimes doesn’t really need it). For people who want a romance game specifically, this could be a good thing.

Anyways, I’ll be interested to see how HC’s goes and if it’s something that proves popular or not. Still early days, hope that with more games there’ll eventually be something there for everyone looking for a particular combination and genre, and if the storylines do turn out to have better developed relationships from a RO’s standpoint, it might end up being a good thing. Sounds like straight people have played the wrestling game and enjoyed it, it’s just whether someone can enjoy playing as a character rather than yourself that is probably going to dictate if you can enjoy character locked games or not I guess.

I might be misunderstanding this part. Regardless, it made me uncomfortable to play the wrestling game. Being a mostly gay booksmart woman who hates sports, and detests fighting I could not finish my playthrough. It was too far removed from how I view myself.

However, just because I am unable to put myself in the position of such a character doesn’t mean the rest of the community is unable to.

Yep, but I think the key part here is that this game didn’t hold any appeal for you personally in the first place rather than it being only a particular locking problem. If you were a keen wresting fan but didn’t connect due to the male protag that’d be one thing, but this sounds more like something you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed whether it was a game/book/movie etc? I haven’t read it either as I have no interest at all in wrestling, and don’t generally play games for their RO’s. (I’ll play a romance game if it’s otherwise interesting, but am unlikely to pick up a romance genera game that I’m not likely to have a strong interest in other parts of the storyline to make it interesting enough for me to consider reading.)

Anyway, I’m pretty live and let live when it comes to this sort of thing. Just because that game isn’t going to interest me, doesn’t mean I won’t get others that will :slight_smile:

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It doesn’t matter since I struggle to play romance games as a different gender or sexuality. It always feels strange. At least from a first person perspective. If it were third person it would have been fine for me since I would not be playing as ‘myself’. If that makes sense.

As for genderlocks in general I don’t really care. My personal preference should have no bearing on the thoughts or feelings of other people.

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My sister writes about romances between women, and nothing else. She turned her hand to erotica a while ago. I showed her this thread and she just looked me in the eye and said that if I showed her how to write about a male lesbian, she’d be happy to do so. She hasn’t stopped laughing yet.

An important aspect that a lot of readers tend to forget is that every choice of this type, unless it’s totally superficial in which case it probably shouldn’t be there in the first place, adds a LOT of extra work for the author.
The financial rewards for writing IF very rarely justify that amount of work which means you’re relying on people writing it for the enjoyment of doing so and if they’re being castigated for not catering specifically to every new gender based definition that seems to appear each month, they might just not bother.

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Well, yes and no.

It depends on the author’s intentions. For instance, Natalie Cannon wrote Moonrise with a specific audience in mind, so it wouldn’t make sense to appeal to wider audience because of that.

You also have to keep in mind that it’s a lot of work to write an IF, let alone including romance subplots for multiple NPCs. Off the top of my head, I can only recall three IFs that were co-authored: Highlands, Deep Waters, Breach: The Archangel Job, and Diaspora. Almost all stories are created by a single author who may or may not be experienced in using the Choicscript software.

As someone who’s been on the forums since 2012, I disagree. I have rarely seen this sort of positive reception to gender-locked games, even if it’s not gender-locked to male.

If you check out the gender-locked-female tag, the most popular WiP is Donor. But if you compare Donor to a gender choice game that was published roughly in the same time frame, such as Shepard of Haven, then it’s clear to see that the latter blows the former out of the water.

Now keep in mind, there could be multitude of reasons - besides the gender lock - that Haven is much more popular than Donor and that is a completely different conversation.

Keep in mind that despite being members of the CoG forum community, we’re not a monolith.

@Eiwynn phrased it best in this post. As evidenced by this poll, stories that are gender-locked to anything but male are met with a mixed reception at best. Overwhelmingly yes, gender-locking to female/nonbinary/etc. just because you can is accepted, but there is a significant chunk of people who believe that that is not above criticism.

For what it’s worth, I find this dissonance to be particularly peculiar. Perhaps it’s because people have different ideas of what is criticism and what is not criticism, but I find myself agreeing with Mary_Duffy’s post when it comes to this contradiction.

You cannot personally believe it is acceptable for an author to gender-lock because they can while also holding the belief that you should be able to say “it’s not for me”. If you believe it is acceptable for an author to gender-lock on a whim but then turn around and say the story is not for you because of that factor alone then I will begin to doubt that acceptance.

If someone refuses to bake me a wedding cake based on their religious beliefs, I am not going to waste my time demanding they bake me that cake and will happily take my business elsewhere.

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While I agree that if a story has no reason to be genderlocked, it probably shouldn’t be for inclusivity, I do kind of disagree that you can’t hold both the beliefs above. Taking genderlocking out of it for a moment, let’s look at another thing that can turn people off a game: genera. If someone wanted to write a gory horror story, I’d probably pass since I’d have no interest in reading it. However, as long as it otherwise met COG/HG’s standards for publishing with regards to other factors I wouldn’t tell them that I thought they shouldn’t be writing it either. So yes, they’d lose my purchase when they published because “it’s not for me” but it could be for someone else.

The stores are often different to the forums. There seems to be less push back over male based games on the stores, while female ones have done better on the forums. Additionally locking orientation also seems to have this effect. This is tricky to rate though due to other storyline factors and few female/nb published games at present.

I agree that genderlocking almost always cuts down on your audience, and ones that buck that trend tend to have done well because people have really liked the storyline. (A possible example of where character locking for world building could be argued might be warranted.) It is a huge shame about the stores and female/nb locked game reception, but I wonder if this could change with heart’s choice as it sounds like there’s some really positive reviews coming in about their current games. It’s also not universal. IFComp was won this year by a female character locked game, so the IF community in general seems pretty open minded.

Donor is seriously underrated at the moment in my opinion. Unfortunately that’s what tends to happen when you character lock CS games. (Donor is character locked, not just female locked.)

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I’m only referring to whenever someone goes out their way to comment on a gender-locked game and say “this isn’t for me” or the like, especially if they believe that gender-locking a game on a whim is perfectly acceptable.

To me, it points towards hypocrisy. If you feel compelled to comment in a thread and criticize something that is related to the core gameplay mechanics* that the author has expressly stated will not change then it erodes away at the validity of your belief that gender-locking on a whim is acceptable.

In short, the two beliefs and the action of commenting are mutually exclusive.

Buying or choosing not to buy a product is a completely different beast since that, usually, makes the assumption that the product is ready for public consumption.

Taking your scenario with the genre of a slasher story, I wouldn’t consider that to be hypocritical since you’re not going out of your way to voice your displeasure for the product beyond letting your wallet speak for you.

*side note: would gender-locking/gender choice be considered a core gameplay mechanic?

Fair enough. The original comment by @Urban did not specify where they’d seen that pattern and I naturally assumed that they were referring to the forums. I can see the possibility of a pattern of male-locked games being praised in places outside of the forums.

Related to Donor’s character-lock, I’m starting to wonder if we should start a game development discussion about character-locking and what types of characters (besides the ones that violate CoG publishing guidelines) would be boo’d by the community.

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Simplest answer to this question is a solid ‘yes’. Either can draw the eye of a potential buyer, and both have merits as far as spinning tales for interested readers goes.

The single biggest hurdle I’ve noticed, at least with indie games that expressly note fem!MC, is that the character is very rarely defined enough for that to truly matter beyond the surface level of what’s being presented without resorting to tacky tropes in an attempt to more forcefully share the protagonist’s presented gender.

In much simpler terms–it’s hard to do it tastefully, without leaving their protagonist as a 1 dimensional blank slate with next to no defined personality. Not that this hasn’t seen considerable improvement lately, but it is still very niche as far as truly successful games of this type go.

Gender choice has the same weakness, but for completely different reasons. It may allow for more self-insert type creativity while playing, which all well if that’s all you want out of a game you opt to buy, but sometimes it really is nice to read alongside a character with more substance to their general makeup than “players can choose x, y, and z features!” making their own rules within the allowances of the author’s skill level at complex, layered storytelling.

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