Consolidated Gender Lock Discussion Thread

Gender-locked stories are an instant-skip for me. As I put it on another thread, my expectation is that either I can’t play my preferred gender, or I can, but I’ll have to abide by whatever roles the story or author enforces upon it; not a fan of that.

Clarification about story vs. author enforcing roles

I draw a difference between the story and author enforcing these roles like so: sometimes, the setting dictates the roles expected of the genders. Therefore, the presented gender roles are a story element and will probably be narratively explored. (Obviously, the author makes the setting, but they are bound by its rules, assuming they’re a decent author.) When the author enforces roles, they straight up force your character to act a certain way based on their gender, with no textual justification. Example: In Wayhaven (take a drink), your character’s emotional reactions are different based on gender. No choice involved, men MCs are just always more composed than women MCs.

I don’t have some moral issue with a story’s setting or characters having gender-based presumptions; in fact, I rather like when a story allows you to act outside of them and whoever involved reacts appropriately, so long as those reactions aren’t “Game Over, you wore pants as a woman and got killed for it”. The author trying to enforce such expectations is a different matter, of course; it does actually tick me off a bit.

That said, I just don’t touch gender-locked games or ones where gender is a huge decider of your character’s agency. They just don’t appeal to me, and there are plenty of other games out there that do.

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I can be won over by gender locked games, but I do have to be won over.

I mean, for every author who thinks their gender locked game is different, there’s a player who has had to play 3 dozen gender locked games (usually to male, lbr) already, you know? So like, if there’s a reason, or if the character is preset and not an otherwise blank slate, or if it just works, then sure, but it’s not appealing to me as a potential player. I mean, as a nonbinary person, I’m 95% of the time not playing “my gender” anyway, be that in videogames or IF, so it’s not new, which is fine, but also like… gets a bit old. It’s not that I can’t play characters outside my own gender–I pretty much have to. It’s just nice to be able to. And when it’s because someone didn’t want to try because they were afraid they’d do it wrong, well I can understand the anxiety, but that leaves a real bad taste in my mouth if I’m honest.

As for games that have “negative” reactivity to whatever gender I pick, I’m cool with that. I mean would it be nice if some of these games with deeper lore and worldbuilding than the player is ever going to see would react negatively to somebody other than queer people or women for once? Yeah, that’d be nice. (shameless plug! the romance I’m writing rn!) But I can still very much enjoy them. ItFO, for instance, was great and while it was absolutely a choice to make a culture that treated men and women the way it did, I still had a great time and found the extra challenge of the fem perspective fun.

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Gender choice doesnt mean anything unless it pertains to romance for me. This person likes girls so you play a girl & so forth.

If anything your racial background would matter more than your gender, much easier to differentiate & point out.

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I could get behind a game that reacts negatively to everyone.

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Finally a real home for those “I’m not Xist/Xphobic; I hate everyone equally” people lol

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I may write a game like that at some point. My setting is already a dismal place, upgrading it to “everyone hates everyone else and also themselves” would take just a few tweaks. Saturnine isn’t far from that point anyway.

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I very much like this idea

For me personally, I think it depends on the kind of fantasy being engaged in, and the level of honesty we want regarding whatever the source of the story is. For example, I think there’s plenty of room for both a 1940’s Noir-type story that reflects on the prejudices of the time (for example, having a harder time in some situations if your protag is a woman), as well as one that basically dismisses those prejudices and examines other elements of the genre. After all, the way gender, sexuality, and race are treated is a big element of classic Noir stories, but you can also ignore, flip, or reexamine those topics and still tell an engaging story about hard-bitten private eyes solving mysteries.
Another consideration when thinking of worlds is simply the “vocabulary” a character might have access to. Grain of salt here as it’s been a long time since I delved into the topic, but in my school days one of my professors posited that the most accurate term for William Shakespeare’s orientation was probably bisexual, as he seems to have expressed romantic interest in men and women, but he personally probably wouldn’t have used that term to describe himself. So a character in a setting with strict gender binaries might privately think of themselves as “not fitting in”, but might not have an understanding of the term “nonbinary.”
With the world you’re conjuring, I would consider the possibility of a protagonist’s internal view of themselves vs. their public expression. So one might be publicly perceived as a man, but in their private thoughts think of themselves more as NB. This might not ever come up in any concrete way, but could add an interesting flavor and tension to a playthrough.

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It took a while, but the last few years I have come to like gender locked games. My initial take, back in the day, is that I wanted to play what gender I wanted to play and I’d usually feel frustrated if I ran into a game that forced my character to be a certain gender. However (and this is obviously a huge simplification and I suspect the whole answer is more nuanced) I now feel that gender locked games bring forth a more immersive, complete experience than non-locked games - not always, but often, romances are better defined, social interactions seem more carefully crafted. From a writers perspective, as a bit of a wanabe storybook author, I can see why that might be . . . writing to account for prots of any gender can take a lot of extra coding and writing, which might sound great, but in actuality that means that time and energy will be taken away from other aspects of the game, and sometimes a more diffuse content will mean the story will be a little less strong here and there. Also, it can be very awkward trying to write a scene for multiple genders; I had one scene in particular where I think I was picturing a female character saying something that in my head sounded flirty and teasing, but when the game had a male character saying the same thing it came off as very edgy and socially crass. Keeping characters gender locked can help avoid some of those situations and also, as noted earlier, have other benefits in terms of making a strong storybook.

Now, I am not saying all storybook games should be gender locked - there are many, many awesome amazing non-locked games out there written by some wonderful writer-coders, but, I am also recommending to give gender locked games a try. To me they give a more authentic roleplaying experience and often have some of the most vibrant and immersive stories . . .

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I look at ROs in a woman locked story. Usually I tend to skip over several gender locked women. I avoid gender locked men completely.

I tend to go after games with open man or woman with open ROs too.

The Eagle one, I got to second page?! Maybe third?! I dont get far, not connecting well. Broadsides, same issue, its good but don’t actually like it much either, same reasoning. It causes disconnect being completely opposite and weird.

The most that I end up playing more than once are my favored only lists. Liked, I usually only do once, or a second if trying to remember something and can’t for next book if one coming. Favored tend to always be with broken MCs or in case of The Bureau, broken NPCs. Those people ended up on my favored, they need all the cuddlings! So adorbs!

Well, anyway…

I’m pretty neutral when it comes to gender-locked games, actually. I don’t have a fixed gender for my MCs, so it isn’t a big difference to have to play as an MC with a predetermined gender.

If anything, it increases the chances that it will have a more pronounced impact on the narrative/interactions with the other characters, since the author wouldn’t need to worry about writing different versions of the same scenes based on each gender available. It could make for a more tailored experience, which I really like.

I also don’t mind when the ROs are gender-locked (I actually prefer when that’s the case) or when they’re only available to MCs with a specific gender.

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I’m not usually worried about gender locking, as long as it feels authentic. Some games have to be gender-locked to make them work, while its not important in other ones where you can be whomever you want and play the game your way, not the way the author wants. But simply substituting he for she, or the other way around, does not always work when the protagonist is someone well-known in history or myth and that story is being re-written. Its easy for something to feel “off” in the telling and spoil the atmosphere the writer has so carefully built up, so congrats to anyone who tries it and pulls it off!
Thats why demos can be so important!

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I wouldn’t say that. If I had to code variable genders for every single RO like some writers do, I would likely give up at some point, but accounting for the MC’s gender isn’t that complicated from the technical standpoint. You need four, maybe five variables if you’re using a singular “they” for non-binaries. My current build has 170 variables, not including all the usages of *temp in the story. It’s a pretty minor change in the workload.

Now that… is unfortunately true. I fell into the exact same trap when writing flirt options; In many ways, women are allowed to express themselves more broadly without raising red flags. And in general, there are many little things that just don’t feel right when done by one gender as opposed to another.

Which is the main reason why I’m opposed to gender-variable ROs as a general rule. They can be done well, but more often than not, I can kinda tell what gender that character was actually envisioned as. And if that’s not the gender the character currently is, it leads to some unpleasant dissonance where it feels like the author and the code compiler are playing tug of war over what that RO should be.

With MCs, it’s not nearly as much of an issue, since the player should have a good amount of control over that character’s actions anyway and can (sometimes) steer clear of options they would find unnatural or off-putting. Still, the fact that gender is never just pronouns and that it impacts the reading experience in many subtle ways is something to keep in mind.

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Gender locks really tend to not be preferred.

If man gender locked, I wont be touching it. If woman gender locked, depends on ROs.

I rather chase games with open character designing and implementations as well as open relationship types.

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I like talking about this topic, and I tried to resist this thread, but couldn’t, so here’s an essay. XD

A quick note: what I’m going to say is mostly about the writing of the main character. The way authors write all the other characters should be under their full control, but in my opinion, when writing the MC, the interactive aspect of IF requires them to acknowledge the vast diversity of people who will play their game.

I believe that each person’s opinion on this topic will largely depend on their personal relationship with things like gender identity, gender expression and gender norms/roles, and it’s important to recognise this when discussing such topics.

If a book has gender differences in writing, or is entirely gender-locked, that will most likely be influenced by gender norms that exist or are inspired by our real world. Why else would one choice or action “feels” appropriate for one gender, but not for others? Why is it okay for a woman to flirt a certain way, but not for a man? It’s because we were all socialised to expect different genders to behave differently. These rules are socially constructed; such gender differences are not an innate part of humans that is shared by all people of the same gender without exceptions.

The gender expression of most women and men aligns with what society expects of them, so is it okay if the writing takes this into account and tailors the narrative in a way that makes playing as different genders feels unique? No, it doesn’t make it okay. There are people who are gender non-conforming, and it isn’t fair to exclude them altogether, or make their narrative less immersive simply because they are a minority. The issue of gender norms is, of course, bigger than IF, and it’s not the writers’ job to combat gender stereotypes, but I think it’s crucial to remember that many people seek escapism in fiction, and for some, it is the only place where they can safely explore and express their gender, so in my opinion it’s important to make a book as inclusive as possible.

I intentionally didn’t mention non-binary people in my previous paragraph: their situation is more unique since gender norms are based on the concept of binary. I think that may be the reason why some stories in which gender plays a big role tend to completely exclude non-binary identities. Non-binary people aren’t expected to follow the same rules as men and women are, so it’s harder to tell what would be the non-binary version of an interaction that clearly has a female and a male variant. A lot of authors seem to simply place them in-between masculine and feminine, which is not how non-binary people work: there are non-binary people who expresses themselves in a strictly masculine or a strictly feminine way - they don’t have to be androgynous. Just like women don’t have to be feminine and men don’t have to be masculine.

There’s nothing wrong with a writer wanting to include gender-related reactivity in their book, but I believe that it would be better to base it on gender expression rather than gender identity (or on a combination of both.) Imagine a scene like this as an example: the MC is in a direct confrontation with a bad guy. If the MC is a man, the bad guy is intimidated and thus treats the MC with more caution, which makes a fight with him more difficult. However if the MC is a woman, the bad guy overestimates his own abilities because he thinks that as a man, he can easily overpower a woman, so the female MC gets a chance to catch him off guard, which will make this scene different compared to the male MC. These scenes will only work with at least somewhat gender conforming MCs, because there is no way this sexist guy would treat a feminine male MC as seriously as a traditionally masculine man. And what if you play as a masculine butch woman, would he underestimate you just as much as a fully femme presenting woman? Probably not. Once we acknowledge how unique humans can be, things aren’t so black and white.

Gender expression can be included as a separate choice (like some books do this already), or there can be a few versions of interaction that feels more masculine, feminine or gender-neutral, and then players are allowed to choose what fit their MC. This is so much better than enforcing gender norms on the MC. The other characters can also react to how the MC expresses themselves, they don’t have to completely ignore it along with their gender identity: for example, they can be more surprised if the MC acts outside of gender norms, and even judge them if the setting is more restrictive in this regard, so this doesn’t mean that a book can’t be “realistic.” But the options available for the MC shouldn’t be limited in the first place. I think it’s entirely possible to create a story where gender matters and that is also inclusive for various types of MCs, but unfortunately a lot of these kinds of books seem to simply rely on stereotypes.

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Something else I feel like is important is: what does the writer want to write? It’s so easy to say what should happen from the reader’s perspective. Gender variable MCs opens the story up to more people, but that might not be what the writer wants. We shouldn’t begrudge them if they want to write a female MC, or male ROs, or any combination like that. But you can decide what you want to take the time to read.

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I wish you were just stating the obvious here, but you’re not. Plenty of people have a skewed, backwards idea of how IFs work, where the authors aren’t actually making content for the readers to enjoy. They’re cruelly imposing limitations on the player, ruining the reader’s fantasy (that was apparently just lying around before those bastards showed up) with their tyrannical whims.

I remember a thread about “genderlocked” ROs, as in characters who will only romance MCs of certain genders. One of the most liked replies was just a guy raving incoherently about how he will accept no excuses for genderlocked ROs, and how the authors writing those romances are railroading the player and trying to change their sexuality… somehow.

It kinda made me want to quit everything on the spot. All that vitriol towards games with any sort of “limitations” in them can be disheartening… though it can also be darkly funny, as that one review of Sabers of Infinity proves. You can DM me if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I won’t mention it here for fear of breaking Paul Wang’s spirit if he reads this thread.

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…what if it’s the author who has that view? :thinking: (It can be a real urge sometimes.)

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Then I respect that.

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I agree alot with this books are made for a reader to enjoy ultimately but they are also for the author themselves to share THEIR story and vision. Its one thing to not personally enjoy stories that are genderlocked or have gender reactivity however i feel like saying what an author should or should not do is alot more questionable because at what point is it about what the reader would enjoy vs the story the author is trying to tell.

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