The reason why it’s hard to imagine was because DB has already established the characters’ gender from the start.
If we have no idea of the characters’ canon gender from the start, readers will adjust according to what gender they play it in.
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Well I guess my answer is single minded but I for one don’t mind me being a straight male but I soppose for others that may not be so ideal so maybe add some more characters who don’t play as super important characters but just you know… being there??
And in a CS game, that merely requires changing a few variables… 
Everything about character, personality, backstory, likes, dislikes? That’s all the same (unless the author wants to change it) all that needs to change are the pronouns. Their personality is hardly undetermined; well, not unless they’re poorly written already, but that has nothing to do with the genderflip.
And if you’re put off by the idea that masculine characters can be female or feminine characters can be male, well, they can in the real world, too.
It’s true that sex, both the physical act and the sexual humour used in early Dragonball, yes, that’s a place where genderflipping might require a bit more thought. In most stories, it’s really not that much of an issue. If characters have children, well, they could adopt, or use surrogacy. 90% of the story really wouldn’t change that much. Does it matter if Goku has breasts or not while they’re shooting a kamehameha or spirit bomb at Vegeta/Freeza/Cell/etc. (which is pretty much the entire anime, if I recall 
)? The only real difference I can see is the sad loss of the vast majority of the shirtless scenes… 
The same way she saved the world while not pregnant?
(I mean, sure, the fact that she’d die before Goten’s birth is a bit of a plot hole, but, hey, they have a literal wish-granting dragon. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to get around.)
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I think the problem with genderflip is not the problem of the character losing their personality, but to the decision of the genderflip.
There’re pros and cons to genderflip/lock, but what works with genderflip will not always work with genderlock, vice versa.
If Goku was a female, we wouldn’t have the same DB as we know, now. If James Bond was a female, we wouldn’t have the same 007 movies. If Jack Sparrow was a female, we wouldn’t have the same Pirates of Carribean.
If Lara Croft was a male, if Xena was a male, if Cinderella was a male…
However, what if T-800 was a female? How about Gandalf? Indiana Jones?
We tell fictional stories to be heard. And when we’re creating our stories, we’ve decided who will be our audience.
It’s natural to have our main character genderlocked to our audiences’ gender, especially for kids-show. If we used opposite gender, it’s likely that the character is either eventually sexualized, or the story will have a defined theme, or the story is a follow-up/spin-off from the previous one.
However, some stories might still work even if all of their characters genderflipped! Without changing their context too much.
In the end, the decision to genderlock or not is made at the same time we decided to write down this “exciting, awesome, wow” story or not. That’s why it’s often hard to explain why one didn’t allow genderlock/flip in their story.
If you switch your characters’ identity, you’re writing a new story.
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Yes, an established character- and the character in question would be like @resuri08 said established as being genderflippable, unlike someone like Goku who, from what I’m getting from your post (never watched the show, sorry,) is male and has been established as such.
The plot holes and discrepancies you’ve mentioned here are specific to a show that, from what I’m gathering, has already established its main character as male. It made that narrative choice and stuck with it, the same way a different story here could establish a character as gender flippable, make that narrative choice, and stick with that while writing.
Which is usually what most do, and like @ParrotWatcher mentioned requires only a few variables for the pronouns.
I just wonder about this because, even taking this concern into account, there’s a lot of games that have gender flippable characters whose personalities, wants, likes, dislikes, etc. stay the same. Not to mention they have very strong personalities as well.
Take, for example, Tally Ho- full of very, very strong personalities- a good majority of whom flip gender. (I think, actually… all of the romances do? Correct me if I’m misremembering.) I don’t think any of their personalities are diminished or loss with the change of a pronoun, they’re just as vibrant as before.
Or, for another example, Fallen Hero utilizes the gender flipping characters as well. Ortega is still Ortega and Dr. Mortum is still Dr. Mortum no matter which gender the player picks.
Then there’s Wayhaven Chronicles, which is almost all about character since, well, it’s romance-focused and usually romance-centric books focus a lot on the characters of the romances. All the romances there flip genders and yet their personalities stay identical to one another, with nothing lost by being gender flippable, I think.
And there’s many more than that, too, and in so far as I’ve seen none of the ones that have gender flippable characters have lost anything by implementing that. In fact I’d dare to say that many of them have some of the strongest characters I’ve read.
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He’d probably be really cute and look something like this:
The daring, dashing adventuring parts of the character would also remain completely intact. Other then that I’ll admit I have minimal knowledge of Tomb-Raider. But a cute guy in a skimpy outfit can raid tombs just as well as a girl in the same.
Besides Lara is likely one of the most sexualized characters in video game history, so no reason a male/brother/cousin/counterpart wouldn’t either.
I think I unknowingly did so anyway, even as a kid. There were some cartoon shows on during my youth where I always felt far more drawn to the cool male villains then the dumb kid hero’s. Now of course I know why, but back then I was just an ignorant little kid.
True, but the truly great stories do use little things to differentiate them. So they can still fill the same role in the story yet use the subtle differences to enhance the character. I think Suzanne/Simon in XoR are a good examples of that. However this isn’t necessary if you don’t want to as an author and in many cases just flipping those few variables creates perfectly passable characters. Although even @ParrotWatcher had some, imho valid, critiques about how lack of emphasis on the subtle differences made the male mc in both Affairs of the Court and a Midsummer Night’s dream feel a bit off.
However those issues may also indicate more of a problem with world/society building then they do with characters themselves.
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Lara isn’t really sexualized in the new tomb raider games. Most of her outfits in the last game were long and meant for enduring cold temperatures.
A male Lara is more like Nathan Drake from Uncharted.
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I said I didn’t have much knowledge of either Lara or Tomb raider didn’t I? Still in a way I suppose it’s a shame if they covered her up more recently as I say spread the eye candy, skimpy outfits for everybody!! (who wants them on their cute video game characters, no matter the gender).
Still, main point, if the main objective of a game is being a dashing adventurer who raids tombs (skimpy outfit or no) that’s a role that seems equally suited to both genders to me, so giving players a choice of gender or a full character creator wouldn’t seem out of place to me.
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The new games changed her to be more realistic, both in appearance and in personality (she can get scared at the start and is more fragile) although it feels weird where she gets really shaken after her first kill but then you proceed to kill like 30 more people with no hesitation. The game-play didn’t really match the plot.
The old Lara had skimpy clothes, big breasts and was more of a badass from the start. I think for this game a gender choice wouldn’t fit though, the whole franchise is based on Lara being a female. If you make her a male she won’t be unique anymore and will be just another explorer guy.
I’ll defer to your franchise knowledge, still I think Rena’s point is valid and a male “Lara” would feel weird because much like the other franchise discussed, Goku and DBZ, it is an already established franchise. If you’re creating a new game about being a daring adventurer and raiding ancient tombs giving gender choice seems the better option to me and it wouldn’t feel “weird” to anybody. I’d advocate for the possibility of skimpy outfits too, but like most other things in a good choice game that can be left up to player choice. 
And we are right now again comparing apples with oranges by throwing in established characters (although in case of Lara Croft she actually maybe more of a subversion of the typical roles by being basically a genderbent version of Indiana Jones…so she may actually speaks for the appeal of ignoring set gender expectations)
But anyway in this case it’s still talk about a WIP, none of the characters have an established gender.
(curse the small buttons on phones,I did send it too soon) Anyway, as far as I understood is the problem mostly based on the author’s idea of how gender should influence characters and their personalities. That’s more of a “try to look at it differently” / “may get creative”/ “may examine your own expectations on gender a bit more” problem if you ask me.
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Uh… yes we would… She wouldn’t be played by Johnny Depp, but Jaqueline Sparrow could do exactly the same things in exactly the same plot without any changes. (At least in the original; I guess later ones may have messed things up. 
)
Not Midsummer Night’s Choice; I’ve not played that one yet. And my main criticisms with Affairs are not related to the genderflips of any one particular character, but due to the fact that the culture was written with very obvious gender roles, which are then handed out at random (especially if you’re playing as a gay protagonist… 
)
Most of the time, I’ve been perfectly fine with genderflips, especially in modern settings.
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Yes, world/society building, as opposed to problems with specific characters. As for Midsummer, I apologize, did I get you confused with TSSL again, by any chance? Because I do remember criticism to that nature with that title. 
A point people didn’t mention about gender choice that I think is one of the main reasons (if not the main one) why companies often make just 1 gender in the game is that making more genders can be difficult.
In CoG you’d just need to switch a few lines in the code so there isn’t much reason to genderlock a game but in a game like Tomb Raider you’d have to make a whole new male model, get new animations, new voice actors and so on. This can take a big effort and costs quite a lot of money.
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That doesn’t sound like him, either… 
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True, yet in its golden days Bioware built a successful business model in part on just doing that. Even some franchise action/adventure games used to give the choice. Like Star Trek Elite force.
Though I’ll concede production costs of AAA games haven risen sharply since then. Bethesda does it too for its open world games.
Ugh, look at me getting my wires crossed and simultaneously proving why humans make the worst kind of (eye) witnesses.
I basically summarized an entire 2016 discussion in my head and then mis-attributed who said what to whom and and when of the different actors in it. 
That said my own take was that in addition to leaning to the feminine side (which isn’t necessarily bad and the mc in that game does need to be able to pass as a believable female quite well) the mc in there got pushed a little bit too much into the damsel category for my liking.
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I’ll be honest in that I haven’t read XoR (less of a game person, more of a story person- and though the story sounds absolutely fantastic it also seems to be more game heavy and, if I’m being wholly honest, I’m terrible at games so…) So I can’t speak to how its differences aid the story. I do think that adding in minor differences for characters in which, well, anything about them changes can be useful- but only if it makes sense in the context of the world.
So, for example, if you’re creating a truly equal fictional world where gender has no effect on the story it would make sense for a gender flippable character to have, again, no effect on the story. Sure, some minor details like maybe appearance might be worked in but even then I don’t think necessarily has to be to get the same effect.
Ex. the description: “$!{npc_hishertheir} short, black hair dances around ${npc_hishertheir} sharp face.” would work for establishing a character of any gender, really. (Apparently it won’t show the little sign at the beginning but just imagine that’s coded correctly, haha.)
As for wording and gender I’ve already given my whole spiel over on here (which makes this the second time I’ve linked this old thing of mine in reference to something like this, aha. I just don’t want to repeat myself.).
I can’t remember much from Midsummer that you might be referencing but from what I remember of Affairs of the Court and what I’ve heard that definitely sounds like more a world building problem than a character problem.
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I think that where romance is involved it, at least for me, does have an effect on that part as I’d like for the ro’s to view my mc as a desirable guy and I do like some flavour descriptions to that effect. I think the romance can be okay even without such things, but that’s it. I think it would be merely okay for me if it omits those aspects and merely sticks to flipping a few variables and pronouns in the code. For it to be good for me it would need to acknowledge the specifically male aspects and to be great the specifically gay ones too.
Ugh, I can’t describe things very well today it seems. 
That being said, even having just “okay” romances that are the result of just doing the minimal work of adjusting pronouns and flipping a few variables in the code is obviously better than nothing at all and acceptable enough in games where romance is nothing more then an optional aspect.
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You did fine I think!
And I definitely agree that if I’m romancing a female character it would be nice to be acknowledged as being interested in my character as, well, a woman rather than what can often default to nebulously male in that specific kind of relationship (since that’s the situation I can speak to best, aha).
I think I was thinking along different lines- instead of focused on romance I was focused on character personality, ahaha.
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DA:O had exactly one RO for me, as a gay man. Had Leliana been genderflipping, then it would have given me two options, same as most other people (okay, so a bi Alistair would make more sense, but that’s a different topic). Would that be pandering? Well, honestly, after a lifetime of games which pander to other people, I could do with more games pandering to me.
You say that Jack is a well defined, 3D character; if Jill does exactly the same things as Jack, has the same reactions, acts in the exact same way, then how is she a less well-defined character?
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