It’s not a game it’s a TV show, one which I’ve found mostly unteachable by the way.
Oh so it’s like an educational show about what homosexuality is?
Ack, stupid phone autocorrect, I meant unwatchable.
Ugh, I so prefer a proper computer for actually replying to people, then again commutes can, on occasion, be just long and boring enough for me to break that rule.
Thanks for all the insightful replies. This is the most articulate online forum I’ve ever been part of!
From the comments, it’s clear that having optional sexuality is important (it’s called CHOICEscript, after all), but truly great writing and storytelling can obviate that.
My reluctance to give the option is, as some suggested, probably out of laziness.
I’m rethinking my approach now.
Just gonna toss in there, it can and does matter on the point of the story.
Quick use of The royal legacy here. I originally planned to leave the MC nameless and probably genderless. (This was mainly for the sake of, if the MC was to go down in history, and alluded to in another book/game, regardless of if the MC was a girl or guy it would equate to both.)
This MC would be referred to as your Grace or my liege or The Noble. Leaving no need for he’s she’s or otherwise. As for the matter of portrayal as several have pointed out. (Hadn’t formerly taken that into account)
The MC could definitely go about doing things that could be seen as feminine or masculine to help in "building their image’ to what the MC can identify with. Though that probably wouldn’t be the best way to go about it, it could help with upping likes and dislikes in other characters so each character has their own personality and love preference instead of “everyone’s bi for the mc”
Here’s how you do it, using my work as an example. First on the startup text document somewhere before any of your actual story starts is where you put your variables.
*create male false
*create female false
*create name "name"
*create surname "surname"
*create fullname "fullname"
You’ll also want to put in something like this.
*create gender "male"
*create he "he"
*create him "him"
*create his "his"
*create man "man"
*create sir "sir"
*create Mr "Mr"
*create boy "boy"
*create guy "guy"
*create mister "mister"
*create handsome "handsome"
*create dashing "dashing"
Then somewhere along in the story you’ll have the player choose their gender.
*choice
#Male
*set gender "male"
*set he "he"
*set him "him"
*set his "his"
*set man "man"
*set sir "sir"
*set Mr "Mr"
*set mister "mister"
*set boy "boy"
*set guy "guy"
*set handsome "handsome"
*set dashing "dashing"
*set male true
*goto name
#Female
*set gender "female"
*set he "she"
*set him "her"
*set his "her"
*set man "woman"
*set sir "ma'am"
*set Mr "Ms"
*set mister "miss"
*set boy "girl"
*set guy "girl"
*set handsome "beautiful"
*set dashing "gorgeous"
*set female true
*goto name
Now whenever you type this.
${he}
The player will see whatever text is in the quotation marks. If they chose male they’ll see he. If they chose female they’ll see she. If you type
${dashing}
Males will see dashing and females will see gorgeous. If you want to capitalise it you type it like this.
$!{dashing}
That exclamation mark means it’s capitalised. Males will see Dashing and females will see Gorgeous.
Type
$!!{dashing}
And the entire word will be capitalised. Males will see DASHING, females will see GORGEOUS.
Now for then name. Somewhere in the game you’ll have the name section show up. Usually people have names suggested as well as the option to make your own so it’s best to do the name after gender that way your example names for females are Jane, May, etc and not Bob, Jack (although, I played a game with a female character called Jack and it actually sounded pretty good for her), etc.
*label name
*if gender="male"
*goto male_name
*if gender="female"
*goto female_name
*label male_name
*fake_choice
#Jason
*set name "Jason"
#Ryan
*set name "Ryan"
#Carth
*set name "Carth"
#Uh none of the above, it's actually...
*input_text name
*goto hello_name
*label female_name
*fake_choice
#Sarah
*set name "Sarah"
#Paige
*set name "Paige"
#Diana
*set name "Diana"
#Uh none of the above, it's actually...
*input_text name
*goto hello_name
*label hello_name
Now whenever you type
${name}
People will see the name they have chosen. Whether it be Jason, Sarah, or something they’ve made up.
Then if you want to do a surname option.
*goto surname
*label surname
*fake_choice
#Guzman
*set surname "Guzman"
*set fullname "${name} ${surname}"
#Hale
*set surname "Hale"
*set fullname "${name} ${surname}"
#Baldwin
*set surname "Baldwin"
*set fullname "${name} ${surname}"
#None of those. It's...
*input_text surname
*set fullname "${name} ${surname}"
Now the surname is set, I’ve also set the full name as you can see. So if you type
${surname}
People will see the surname they chose or created. Type
${fullname}
And people will see their first name and last name together. So Jason Guzman or Sarah Hale or whatever. You can do this sort of stuff with anything. Go to the startup text document and create a variables such as
*create eye_colour "eye colour"
*create head_look "head look"
Then have some choices in the story somewhere.
*choice
#My head looks stupid.
*set head_look "stupid"
*goto eyes
#My head looks fabulous.
*set head_look "fabulous"
*goto eyes
*label eye_colour
*choice
#And my eyes are a brilliant gold!
*set eye_colour "gold"
*goto yep
#And my eyes are a beautiful purple!
*set eye_colour "purple"
*goto yep
*label yep
You turn your ${head_look} head to face the giant mirror beside you and stare
at your glorious, shimmering ${eye_colour} eyes.
That can read four different ways depending on your choices. Such as
You turn your stupid head to face the giant mirror beside you and stare
at your glorious, shimmering gold eyes.
Or
You turn your fabulous head to face the giant mirror beside you and stare
at your glorious, shimmering purple eyes.
If you already knew all this, well then, shit. I really should have checked that out before typing all this up. Oh well.
It took me two whole minutes to read that. I am in awe.
I absolutely did not know all that. Thanks! This is very useful.
Yeah, I get carried away when I start typing sometimes. I don’t know why that face is called kissing, looks like whistling to me. Just pretend it’s whistling.
@Matt_Slaybaugh If you go to this link you’ll find the tutorial to choicescript. If you haven’t already read it, check it out. It tells you pretty much all the stuff you’ll need to know to make a game.
When I’m asked to choose the MC’s gender, I often flip a coin or roll a die.
One caveat on this issue: I’ve posted a couple of questions in the past about what “readers” might like, and whether certain creative decisions I am considering might be a turnoff to “readers.” Each time, I’ve been reminded that members of the COG forums represent a minority (and apparently quite a small one) of the actual audience for these games. If you are considering something like a Hosted Games story, the sort of thing that will wind up on Amazon and various app stores, I expect you will find an audience that doesn’t care as much about choosing gender and orientation as much as forum members generally do.
That’s what I’ve been told, anyway. Anyone with more direct experience, feel free to correct me.
I made a game a while ago (Zebulon) and I’ve recently been getting back into Choicescript with a new idea. Dan may have added some code options since then (it’s been 5 years or so and Choicescript was still somewhat new). I’ve been scraping off the mental rust and think I have most of the basics of the code down, but doubt that I would have come up with your technique. Using pronouns as the variable names makes it intuitive and simple - very useful.
Yes, this is only downer in Diabolical.
Yes, a story can be compelling if the protagonist is not specifically defined. It’s worth noting that most traditional interactive fiction did just that; for example, Zork. (The fact that I played Zork and got eaten by many grues in my youth probably shows my age…)
Sexuality is, of course, completely unimportant if there is no romance. However, if there is, and there’s only romantic partners of one gender, that’s definitely going to be problematic for players not interested in that gender!
I think a lot of genderqueer people would disagree with you on that…
I’m just going to paste part of a conversation I had with @snoe about that very topic. We were discussing the issues humans have with labels, especially with people that, while being biologically one or the other gender, found themselves having physical attributes that left them in a state of ambiguity before closer inspection, or psychologically either opposite or fluid on the gender spectrum.
On to the paste:
The issue of labels is tricky, though. What do you call a chair without its “chair” label? What about wood? You see the problem with wanting to avoid labels?
The same is true of gender. For most of history, if you looked like a man, you were a man. If you looked like a woman, you were a woman.
Then we come to accept that the brains gender can be the opposite of the body. This lead us to transgender men and women. I’ve never made the distinction. Once medical assistance was completed they were the gender they wanted to be and defaulted to man or woman depending on the direction they went.
Then I come to CoG and discover people sit at varying points on the male <—> female scale. What do I call them? All these fancy made up words like xe/xer/xim/xeir, etc pop up that I have no idea how to pronounce.
These are in effect still labels. Labels made up by people not quite male, not quite female and finding themselves bumping hard into the fact that not a single language on earth can accommodate for them not being either male or female.
My preference, purely for ensuring smooth communications is to default to the binary option a person is happiest with. This shouldn’t diminish how a person feels about themselves and while it can certainly be used to attack and abuse people by those less confident in their own identities, it shouldn’t be taken as an attack by default.
So when it comes to yourself and your characters, you should pick the label you and they would be happiest with for communication purposes and for people you deem worthy of the extra detail, you explain how you really are as a person. Your characters should follow suit.
There is no wrong when it comes to personal identity. People on occasion just need to squeeze into a label briefly to make communication work.
As someone who’s known to be a bit vague when it comes to my own gender. Though I find it fun to play both sides of the coin. And even the narrow edge between.
I remember saying that the choices only matter as much as the writer can make them. That goes for gender neutral characters although you’ll find as I did through the prodding of others that people will assign these labels themselves.
People don’t like the unfamiliar at large so they associate with the things that are familiar. But on that statement you can use the unfamiliar to your advantage. Say if the main character wasn’t human… that frees up a lot of that elbow room to play with common conceptions. The further from human it is the less likely they are to think of its gender as opposed to its species or race. Thusly making it easier to a accept. Who here can tell or cares to be able to tell a male snake from a female? I mean it’s a snake!! Dogs on the other hand familiar but it’s different if it’d your dog or someone else’s. Then you see an ambiguous type person and your brain can’t help but try and solve the puzzle and assign that label.
But that’s kinda dependant on one’s point of view and the story you’re trying to tell.
Good luck by the by.
I prefer gendered characters or acknowledgement that my character is third-gendered. I prefer the same extension to companions as well; gender flexible companions never translate well to me.
Well, very few games explore sexual orientation as an identity marker beyond who you choose to pursue romances with. Usually, a PC’s sexual orientation comes out in the romantic choices they make (unless the game genderflips love interests), and other characters’ orientation either comes out in their availability or lack thereof, or they’re bisexual or playersexual.
Maybe I need to check my privilege (it may be easier for someone who’s theoretically heterosexual to not care about fitting in with the heterosexual “tribe,” and it may be easier for an autist to not care whether I fit in anywhere), but I’m okay with seeing sexual orientation in a game only be relevant to romantic choices.
@MoHair, disagreement builds character.
The Fleet did a gender-neutral protagonist pretty well.