I’ve wondered about this too — whenever a thread is started on the subject of fixed protagonists vs blank slate ones, or roleplaying vs self-inserting, commenters tend to come off very strongly on the fixed protagonist / roleplaying side. Yet it is acknowledged that blank slate / self insert games are more popular, so it must follow that more players enjoy those, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that from a thread where most opinions are along the lines of “blank slates are so boring” and “playing as myself would be so boring”. So I wonder why those of us who self-insert don’t own up to it more often? 
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@cup_half_empty asdfghjkl; honestly, same! I comment on the ones I do like, and leave the others alone. Am I part of the problem?? 
@Myrtle Maybe blank slate fans are more shy? Forum members have played lots of Choice of Games and are more willing to try something different?? Who knows? Not me. 
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I think one of the issues is that everybody seems to define fixed/blank slate protagonists differently.
Some use the term fixed protagonists to describe people with fixed backgrounds/broad stroke personalities, others use them for fixed gender/major looks, some that it needs the whole thing to be fixed, like many computer games.
Same with blank slate, some seem to see them as super varied but with bland personalities so you can do self-inserts, like the type where your character don’t have dialog unless you click that choice, others see them as characters where you’ve got options to define your looks/gender/personality…
Sometimes it feels like we’re talking about similar things, just using different terms.
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Almost any well-designed and executed game has a place here – the closest in the HG library that matches your quoted preferences is: Study in Steampunk: Choice by Gaslight.
This is considered by many to be a classic. It is not a top-seller, per se, but it holds its own.
This is the crux of the problem. “Fixed protagonists” is a term of art that has a gradient nature to it. What is a “deal-breaker” to one person, may not be to another. I use Study in Steampunk as the standard, because it is the HG most like a traditional “Choose Your Adventure” style of IF that is also well executed and written.
I think this is because of multiple reasons, the two strongest being: First, it is very hard to grasp what the demo will show by what the interest check tells. Secondly, the CoG/HG/HC fans in this community are addicts to IF and they always crave new content, and they will always encourage an increase in the supply.
This is true of every game genre, style and design. It is just a fact of gaming life to deal with as a creator.
We will agree to disagree on this, because there are so many games that the term “regular” becomes meaningless.
With that said, a better analysis would be a compare and contrast which would provide more context for the two games in question.
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Don’t call us out like that! 
This might surprise people who’ve seen me advocating customization many times before, but I don’t actually have a problem fixed protagonists. In theory.
It’s just that in practice, they almost never fit into the pretty tight confines for characters I’m interested in playing. 
Because, while I don’t really do self-inserts, I’m not someone who enjoy roleplaying just any sort of character, and I think the issue too often gets framed as those two being the only possible options. You’re either a True Roleplayer, who will play any role, or you want customization, because you want to recreate yourself in the game. And that a way too binary a way to look at it.
You know what the first thing that pops into my head when I hear “fixed protagonist” is?
That the game will be gender-conforming and hetero-normative, that it won’t be something that’s intended for someone like me.
'cause that’s what experience has taught me.
A fixed protagonist game will automatically have less of an audience, simply because it’ll alienate part of potential readers.
When we’ve had these discussions before, there have always been multiple female forum members stating that they either can’t or won’t play a game where they can’t be female. Personally, I’m almost never able to play a game where I’m forced to play as female, but I also feel absolutely no connection to the standard macho man game protagonist. They simply just bore me, and their stories have been told over, and over, and over.
Many people who have similar experiences of games never being “for them” has found a haven in CoG/HG, because while the games might not be directly tailored to them, they at least allow the reader to play as the sort of characters that other games don’t let them. So, a good part of the forum inhabitants might not be interested in a specific fixed protagonist, just like not all of us like a specific genre, or plot. (Granted, they are less likely to write posts complaining that your game is about steampunk furry pirates.)
So, would I read a fixed protagonist game?
Sure! I might even write one at some point. But I won’t play one where I’m not interested in the MC. I have tried multiple, because I’m an addict who play pretty much everything that gets shared in the WIP category, but I have either had to stop partway through, or just not been interested enough read any of the later updates.
Am I going to buy a game where the MC is either AFAB or a macho non-queer man, whether they’re fully fixed or not?
It’s going to be a really, really hard sell…
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Personaly i disagree here.
Soh got criticized because it went from fixed protag book 1 to the sequel having different mcs to then the story going back to and this time in my opinion forcing a players mc to be fixed when they each had evolved differently. In the previous entries. Witch made some mcs behave in a way that didn’t fit with their built up personality by the player. Thus far.
Witch is different from what the author of this thread wants to produce. Namely a consistent fixed protag.
I think the best move here is for the author to test out their idea and make a demo. With a few chapters. Let us readers see how we react to the narrative. That way if it flunks. The author doesn’t have to do many months of unnecessary planing. And if enough people respond then they have a template to work with.
Personally i don’t mind a fixed protag as long as
1 the protags decision making is up to the player. I don’t like having choices in the journey but then those choices not affecting the ending
Case 2 if there is no customization then personality trait should at least be there to express various emotions.
Case 3 If even that doesn’t exist then consistent choices related to set protags actions and feelings must not be derailed by the player.
What do i mean by this?
If the fixed protag is evil. They should only be allowed to make nasty choices . Sure it can be of various degrees but it must be nasty to keep in line with the fixed evil protag. And to avoid plot inconsistency
Same vise versa if they are good. Only the narrator in case 3 unlike case 2 should be allowed to play with a characters personality. And the choices should reflect that personality. Unless they go for case 2.
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I just want to say how sad this trend makes me on a personal level. I’m hearing more and more, especially from the younger generations, that they aren’t interested in reading about characters that aren’t the same gender or similar to them. When I ask why I have been told that they aren’t able to connect with a protagonist of a different gender.
Part of the beauty of literature is being able to explore the world from someone else’s perspective. I think being able to invest and see through a character’s eyes, especially one who is different from you, is a valuable tool in developing empathy for others and an interest in the world around you.
It seems depressing to think we might come to a time when adolescent boys will not experience Scout Finch’s loss of innocence and adolescent girls won’t experience White Fang’s challenges simply because of they can’t connect with a perspective from a different gender.
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I don’t want to derail this thread so I’ll only make one comment about this (I’ll gladly talk about it with you elsewhere if you’d like), but I think playing a game (especially interactive fiction) and reading a book are two different things.
At least in my experience, I can’t play a game like The Witcher because I feel deeply uncomfortable putting myself in the shoes of a man, just because videogames are much more of a escapism for me than literature, and I find it hard to “escape” when I’m forced to be another gender. I’ll gladly read any book with a male protagonist, however, because there’s a distance between me, the reader, and the protagonist. I think that’s where a lot of female players come from when they say they can’t play games with male protags; I don’t think it’s necessarily applied to other types of media as well.
PS: I love White Fang! Cried like a baby when I read it.
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I would love to see people’s reasons here for and against playing different gendered protags in another thread. I am personally torn in that I really like the idea in concept and rarely do it in practice. I still haven’t played the infinity series here for that reason. I actually think I would be more likely to play something like the witcher though, where the protagonist is fixed-gender, but also more defined in personality as well, so perhaps its just that I don’t really enjoy blank slate or very customizable protags that are also opposite gendered.
I don’t think we have people getting wildly over enthusiastic here 
What’s being said is that if you want to write it go for it, and some people will like it, BUT your audience almost certainly won’t be as good as a blank slate design. I can tell you from experience that writing a locked PC character DOES decrease your audience substantially compared to a blank slate one. (And I’m not the only one to have said so on this thread.)
In saying that, no one’s trying to cause a personal affront to people who like more customisation in their PC character and I never do understand why it gets taken that way (not wanting to start up another massive argument thread about it here either!) Sometimes people have a story to write that works better with locking of certain story elements to do what they want. I’m not sure why it’s polite NOT to comment as long as it’s civil and doesn’t amount to I don’t like it so don’t write it. If there are helpful comments to be made I don’t think anyone would consider it impolite. Some people prefer one style over another or like both. Not sure why we can’t have live and let live.
Again, no one’s saying that at all. Polls and threads on this topic have consistently shown that the audience for CSG’s favours blank slate characters. User defined characters allow self insert, but for some types of storylines they do so at expense of story focus. Character locked stories often have a specific senario that they want to present to the reader, and run a specific type of story. The further into blank slate territory you get, the more you can self insert if you wish, but the less you can tailor a story to a particular set of events as there are so many options you need to cater for if you want to do it properly, and you may not be able to tell the story you were aiming for at all. For some types of storytelling the first works better, for others the second. It’s not that they’re more or less boring, just different.
I know I’ve brought this one up before, but Donor is an example of a locked character that works well with its story premise. You have your basic attributes locked in. Your history, anxiety issues, prescription medication, lack of people who will actively search for you, lower strength than your captors etc. You can move around the degree that some of those perameters affect you (for example you could find a weapon to offset your lack of strength to a degree, or try to find ways to manage your anxiety about the situation etc) but the story is set up to make you FEEL in a very specific way and approach situations with those thoughts always in mind. It puts you into a character’s shoes, rather than playing as yourself.
This makes it a very different experience to a blank slate set up. It’s neither good or bad, it just works with this sort of story the author wants to tell and will appeal to some people but not others. I don’t understand why games need to be shot down if they don’t fit the normal mold as long as the author is aware the odds are against them for having a best seller on their hands by writing it in that way for this audience.
Agree completely. I think this is actually one of the reasons why I tend to like well written defined PC’s, even if their character is completely different to my own.
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At least for me, the thought process behind not commenting is that “Well, that game wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but good luck anyways!” is not a very useful comment, and sometimes that is really all I have to say. It’d be different if I could say “I’d play it if X happens or if you can do Y or if the game has Z characteristic”, that feels more constructive. But why comment only to say that I don’t like sci-fi or fantasy very much so I probably won’t be playing yours, or that the plot you outlined is not interesting to me?
So that’s why I can definitely see happening that the author only gets positive comments for the initial interest check, and then that doesn’t translate into a big audience for the actual game: those who had nothing positive to say said nothing at all (that, and other factors that have been mentioned before, such as the demo not meeting players’ expectations from the outline, etc.)
Not here, no. That comment was referring to opinions expressed in threads specifically about what type of game players prefer. My apologies if I was confusing the issue and/or derailing the thread.
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For games like The Witcher, I think when people come to the game expecting classic Witcher RPG, they don’t take the “connect to protag” issue as hard as the ones who is looking for escapism (fantasy, story). I think I see some discussions where if there would be The Witcher 4, the game could center on Ciri or Letho, the Kingslayer antagonist in the second game.
This issue depends a lot on players’ expectation. Even in one of Satisfactory’s Steam discussion, there’s this one hot topic centered about the PC being a female, while the game itself is a First-Person Factory-Building sim—absolutely no relationship between the two.
Regardless, I think this topic is a bit off-topic. I’ll let it pass as an extra chunk to bite in the thread, but when it starts to derail, I have to ask you guys to talk it on a new thread to keep things tidy.
What is a Fixed Character? that is a key factor because some people consider fixed characters thing they aren’t. I heard people say Vampire Bloodlines, Skyrim or Cyberpunk 2077 are Fixed characters. And they aren’t In all of them you can select your origin race your future stats. … Of course, you have several fixed points in the storyline but that is in absolutely all games with a storyline.
I love those games Same I like games with slight more fixed As it is Mass Effect or Dragon age Or The Kotor games . But Still, YOU CAN choose the Pc personality.
The witcher You are Gerald and You will be that character not matter if you hate him. That is a fixed character. For me, that is no big as a house. I don’t see the reason play a game when the pc is totally determined It is not my character so why I will invest time and money on it? For that, I can read a normal book as I will have the same agency… Zero.
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True, and I don’t think it’s terribly helpful to have a dozen or more comments dogpiling that they don’t like sci-fi, so write fantasy instead for example. What might be a constructive comment is that there is a greater audience for fantasy than hard sci-fi, so if you’re going for readership alone and don’t care what genre you write in, sci-fi game about being a starship captain might not be the best choice.
Yep, in the end, the best indicator is probably to get a demo out there and see how many likes and comments it’s getting as a very rough indicator. (Although other factors can play into that also, but it gives an idea.) Putting a chapter together usually isn’t a huge amount if work, and you can decide from there if readership is your main concern for writing a particular genre or concept.
It also depends why you are writing something. Is it primarily for money, recognition or for yourself 
. Those things are not exclusive, but can heavily influence what you write. It also depends on what the best route of publishing is. If you have your heart set on hard sci-fi, just because these have the odds stacked against them to become fan favorites, dosn’t mean a lot if there’s not a better coding and distribution point option for this genre to get your game out there. So yep, it’s nice to let authors know the score, then let them make the decision either way with their eyes open.
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For me if I want a game with a completely fixed protagonist I would read a book. As for me I would not say anything doing an interest check either.
I know that if I ever got to the point where I dare publish and WIP I wouldn’t appriciate a comment saying, good game, but I don’t read high fantasy. That is non-actionable feedback and not useful at all. In the same way people who genderlock their games, presumable wants to have it genderlocked. Me saying that ‘I am not going to play it because it is genderlocked’ is not anything they can use. Not once the decision is locked in.
As for not playing IF with straight cis men anymore? Well that’s simple. IF like that compete with any other book and game I want to read or play, since there is a pretty high chance of they too being about a cis straight man. They don’t really offer up anything new and, covid-19 aside, I am sadly no longer a teenager wiht nothing, but time on my hand. I have limited time and money and I don’t want to waste it on something I can get elsewhere.
Not saying that I would never buy a genderlocked game. I enjoyed Study in Steampunk, but I picked it up because sherlock holmes, not because of the genderlock and I think that the genderlocked add nothing. If the mordred game had ever been finished I might have picked that up because Modred is a litarary character I find fascinating. But male straightlocked science fiction game? There is nothing there to sell me on the premise. I would just not look at it - and saying that to an budding author is nothing, but demoralizing.
As for fixing other aspect other than gender. I am fine with it, but if it is aspect where I just don’t enjoy the protagonist I put the story away. I know I dropped SoH already after book 2, because I saw the rails going towards an destition I did not want to go and thus got off. I didn’t really find it worth commenting on before now. It is not like it is the failing of the author that I realized that the story being written wasn’t for me. The more fixed you make a protagonist the more you run that risk.
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That is a good example of why the relative success of Study in Steampunk does not do much to refute the lack of interest the CoG community has in fixed protagonists overall. In that case you’re dealing with preexisting characters that have a very significant appeal built in, as evidenced by the glut of films and TV shows still made about Holmes over a century later. This is also true of the Pride and Prejudice one, as well as Saga of Oedipus to a lesser extent, since Oedipus has historically not been a box office draw on the line of Sherlock Holmes.
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Preexisting characters with good appeal do seem to often get a pass on character locking. I guess everyone understandably loves to explore good stories about their favourite characters, however are also less likely to take a chance on unknown ones. (Shame so many of them are still locked behind copyright- Thanks Disney.)
With those masks I can’t imagine why lol. (Seriously they freak me out. Oedipus’ story is really misunderstood courtesy of Freud making most people run for the hills rather than read/watch it as well it seems.)
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