Yes, it is important to me. This is because I tend to play these games as a sort of self-escapism fantasy, where I get to adventure into different worlds. And since I’m a woman, that means I would like to pick a female character. However, that said, it’s up to developers to make the kind of narrative that they want. The audience shall enjoy the games that interest them or catch their attention.
As someone who once had this viewpoint (more or less), I feel like I can safely say: yes you can. Or, at least, you don’t need to play a literal self-insert to relate to a character (in fact, I dislike “blank slates” MCs who are supposed to facilitate the players’ insertion, and I’d rather play a MC with a distinct personality, even if that personality isn’t my own)
When I was young and discovering the wonderful world of role-playing games (both tabletop and videogames), I exclusively played male (and good aligned) characters. I mean, I am male, so it was definitely easier to identify myself to a MC of the same sex, right? (and since I at least aspired to be a good person, it made sense to play characters who had a somewhat similar mindset) Even as games began to give you gender-choices (I grew up with Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, KotOR… in general, I feel like Bioware had been an important part of my life for a long time), I tended to avoid playing female characters - and when I did, it often was to try to tackle one of those “evil playthrough” (that I could never finish most of the time). I mean, if the disconnect was here, might as well go all the way.
And then… it somehow stopped to matter. Is it because I had an epiphany that somehow the opposite gender wasn’t some sort of alien species I could never hope to comprehend or emphasize with, or maybe I just learned to differentiate better between me and a character I’m controlling? Truth be told, I don’t really know. But not only am I okay with playing a MC who’s of the opposite gender, now it’s often my go-to choice. In fact, I’m at a point where gender-locked male games do piss me off a bit (I give gender-locked female games a pass, if only because there are so few of them in comparison).
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This is the crux of the problem. If the protagonist is so malleable that they are faceless, then that means the protagonist is formless. It’s like forging a weapon from steel. If there are no parameters to the forging then the weapon that results will not be the protagonist the author is calling for.
If the author sets boundaries for the protagonist then a fully fleshed out character with customization is possible. Such a boundary may or may not be gender. The lack of a gender does not determine if a character is fleshed out or not, the overall character design does.
An example: An heir to a throne - first-born, legitimate and acknowledged by both parents, baptized in the Church, possess magic and is totally hale both physically and mentally can be a fully fleshed out character.
If the author’s story then weaves that character, regardless of further customization (gender and sexual orientation) into the whole, you still get to experience who the protagonist is and the reader still has the ability to get into the skin of that protagonist - seeing the world through that character’s eyes and through their different perspective.
There are a couple of CoG/Hosted Games that accomplish this through the author’s writing skill. @MultipleChoice 's Samurai series and @malinryden’s Fallen Hero series are two such.
I can understand why you may not enjoy the customization level of games like Safe Haven on principle but I would put forth the idea that the protagonist isn’t defined by RPG elements being chosen to customize the protagonist but rather it is the choices made throughout the story defines them. Choosing the humane route should give you a different story than choosing a more cynical route.
There are a couple of CoG/Hosted Games I feel accomplish this well. @JimD’s Safe Haven series defines the protagonist this way as does @Havenstone’s XoR series.
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Soon if we play male does that cut out romance completely or can we have a gaymance
WayfaringBroad last posted 2 years ago … they may be taking an extended break at this time.
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If a story forces MC to be a certain gender, I do not mind. Of course, I would prefer the game be flexible with both, but only if the story is still a good one.
It is really rather simple, if a game is female locked it most likely isn’t for me. If a game is straight male locked it definitely isn’t for me.
That said what drew me here specifically was the chance to be a gay protagonist, get the boy in the end and all of that experience that is usually still reserved exclusively for straight guys in the mainstream media and AAA games, or for the female protagonists in many visual novels.
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You should play the new Assassins Creed Odyssey you can be gay with romance options as well now.
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I see your points, but you also have to take into account that character of the protagonist may be an integral part of the plot. It doesn’t have to be, but it usually is, especially when we’re talking about “literary” approach to our “games”. The WIP I’m working on will feature classical character creation because it’s to be a kind of “generic” adventure story so the character of the protagonist is not that important. The second WIP I have planned though is about a very specific character from my world and the plot simply wouldn’t work without his very specific circumstances, so no character creation there. (Though I’m toying with an idea of giving an option to play the game as his sister, an alternative perspective, basically 2 games in one - however the plot is still to be heavily influenced by the pre-defined character of the protagonist, either one)
As for bigotry argument…
I don’t buy that one bit. I’m sorry, but Huckleberry Finn is not “condoning” racism. As a matter of fact, you have to be a mouth-breathing idiot to think so. This race to the bottom, the lowest common denominator is getting out of hand.
You cannot criticize anything if you are not even allowed to describe it. Really, the greatest and most poignant criticism of 19th century slavery and racism that I ever read is Flash for Freedom, a darkly-comical adventure novel written in 1st person from the perspective of a total borderline-sociopathic bigot (sexist, racist, classist… you name it), who insists on calling everyone non-white a n… and who, in spite of experiencing the horrors of slavery first-hand as a slave himself can see absolutely no connection between himself and the poor souls he himself happily enslaved and sold away just a few chapters ago. After all, they are just n…
This is how you write poignant literature of social criticism. This is how you understand how this abominable system worked and how otherwise decent people (that Flash encounters) could not only condone but even participate in. Sorry, but Schindler’s list would have been a much lesser movie if the character of the camp governor wasn’t presented in such depth and, yes, even humanity. By the end of the movie we at least get a sense of how he got there. He is not a space mutant from beyond who was born evil and so someone we cannot relate to at all. He begun as human, as us… and so this is a poignant warning - do not be like that guy don’t end up like him. If he were a space alien, we wouldn’t be able to relate, the character wouldn’t serve this critical moral purpose. Saying “don’t be like Jaws” would be pointless but you can say “don’t end up like Darth Vader”.
In order to combat evil, you have to understand it. Clutching pearls, averting eyes and declaring evil-doers unfathomable and nonredeemable monsters is, paradoxically, what usually creates evil in the first place. Flashman from the novel I’ve mentioned is not really “evil”; as the protagonist through whose eyes we observe the world of the novel, he is even sympathetic at times. But he is a selfish bastard, an anti-hero, a cynic, burdened with all the prejudices and mores of his times. But is he evil? At times he does evil deeds… but is he an evil creature? No, he is human. A messed up creep and coward, a liar and a cad. But evil, as in elemental, inhuman evil? No. He is just a human being, not a god, not a demon or a boogeyman, just human.
Again, all evil that humans do to each other comes from de-humanization, from declaring someone else “evil”, unfathomable and therefore not human anymore. You don’t have to talk to non-humans. You just tell them to shut up or worse. Study tribal warfare, for example. The most horrible atrocities imaginable become acceptable and commonplace once you are comfortable with the concept of the “other”, that that neighboring tribe is not really “people” and that you don’t have to talk to or understand them. What is happening in our cultural landscape today frightens me, I must admit. It is as if we have forgotten the true lessons of world wars and are gearing up for new ones…
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There’s a difference between portraying bigotry and inviting a player to partake in it. @ParrotWatcher didn’t mean (or, didn’t in my understanding I suppose, I don’t want to put words in your mouth) “no piece of media can ever contain any sort of discrimination,” just that if there’s a game where players are allowed to play bigoted characters, the author runs the risk of alienating players who would be targets of that bigotry. Even if at the end of the game someone says “hey, transphobia is bad,” there still now exists a game where transphobes have been welcomed in and invited to express their ideology, and me and a lot of other trans people probably would’ve set that game down the first time that type of option appeared. It’s completely unfair to say that people who are of marginalized identities are just turning a blind eye to other identities or points of view, when the issue is that we very rarely get to see points of view other than those. Worrying whether or not the targets of bigotry are sympathetic enough to straight white cis people really isn’t a pressing issue of our time–and if the goal of your writing is to open someone’s eyes to a different experience, I’d like to point out that someone politely expressing why they don’t want to play any more games about straight people when they’ve already done it enough might be less of a target than any of the swathes of gamers on other sites and forums who call for boycotts and death threats when popular or AAA games start to acknowledge minorities
And from a purely practical standpoint, Choice of Games as a company has rules about how much, I forget how exactly they word it, “hateful content” they allow in games published under their labels. If you explicitly include bigoted content you run the risk of them requiring it to be changed or removed before publication. (I don’t work for them or know the ins and outs of said rule or I would try to be more specific and helpful, sorry that’s vague.)
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Well, @HomingPidgeon has already said most of what I would have said about the bigotry issue… (Also, it is worth bearing in mind that even explicitly anti-bigotry stories like American History X and Cabaret have been used as recruiting tools by neo-Nazis, but that’s straying a bit off-topic.)
Regarding this, though: I still don’t see why the main character needs to be male. Sure, they will need to act in certain ways to drive the plot, but I don’t see how that would have to make them male. 
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Regarding this, though: I still don’t see why the main character needs to be male. Sure, they will need to act in certain ways to drive the plot, but I don’t see how that would have to make them male. 
Hera has two main characteristics: loving to her children, jealous to her husband’s lovers. Why is it impossible for a male character to have those characteristics?
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Jungian archtypes refer to unclear concepts and images that are defined by the culture and psych of the writer presenting them. They are constantly evolving in meaning because culture and the concept of “being” whatever you are using as your archtype image is in constant flux.
Let’s examine one of these strongly gender defined just to show how malleable they are:
The anima archetype appears in men and is his primordial image of woman. It represents the man’s sexual expectation of women, but also is a symbol of a man’s possibilities, his contrasexual tendencies. The animus archetype is the analogous image of the masculine that occurs in women.
Every gender defined parameter in the anima archtype has changed since Jung’s theory was first put forth. Not only that, but it has changed in different countries into even more different meanings. Spanish machismo is different than the Anglo-Saxon version
Not only that but qualities of one archtype often exist in others. Qualities in the anima archtype exist in the shadow archtype making it extremely difficult to know where one begins and the other leaves off. There is even a question of the existence of multiple archtypes or multiple images of a single archtype.
All this doesn’t mean you can’t use your own version of Jungian archtypes - a lot of us do. My version of the Mother, Child, Villain, Hero, etc is not going to line up with yours. I can guarantee this.
Because Jungian archtypes are so malleable, I am using other systems of archtypes together with the Jungian versions.
There are several things wrong here. First; Athena, Venus and Hera were different from one metropolis/city/town in Greece to the next. In one place, Athena is worshiped one way and in another, she is worshiped in another way. Not only that but her stories and attributes changed and morphed over time.
So, yes, changing out gender could work and would work, especially since attributes in Greek mythology are not set in stone to one deity or another … there are many examples of one deity’s duties and attributes being attributed and taken up by others over time. Nothing in Greek mythology is inviolate. Nothing.
Another simple fact: Authors constantly take mythology and change them to suit their writing purposes … You Hera example doesn’t hold water because you say “you can’t” but then you acknowledge that “you can” but then “it wouldn’t be Hera” but it is … just because you don’t want it to be doesn’t mean the author that makes the changes agrees with you.
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