Is inclusivity a must?

Game Development Writing and Content
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If I were writing a game set in a medieval, Eastern fantasy, or mixed setting, I would focus on making it as aesthetically immersive as possible, drawing inspiration from the novels and stories I have read. For example, I would probably avoid including additional races commonly found in xianxia settings, since they would break my immersion and make it difficult for me to continue writing naturally.

On the other hand, medieval-inspired settings are often less restrictive when it comes to cultural influences, so I could create a world inspired by Persian, Roman, Greek, or ancient Egyptian styles.

Alternatively, if I were writing a supernatural high-fantasy game, I could divide the world according to geography, geology, climate, and weather. Different peoples or species could inhabit different regions, with players choosing a starting location and then customising their characters within the boundaries of that group.

But what about gender and sexuality? Since I prioritise aesthetics, I would prefer medieval or xianxia-inspired settings to retain traditional social structures and relationship norms. However, that would not mean that every character would have to conform to those expectations. I could still include asexual or aromantic characters and explore the social pressures they might face because they do not follow the roles expected of them.

In a high-fantasy setting, I would feel more comfortable offering players greater freedom in how they define their characters’ genders, sexualities, and relationships.

I do not understand non-binary identities very well, particularly the ways in which gender identity and sexuality can differ from person to person. However, I think I could represent non-binary, asexual, and aromantic characters through their characterisation, relationships, and social experiences. For example, I could portray societal expectations that place pressure on them, then give players choices that allow those characters to challenge or overcome the insecurities caused by that pressure. The focus would be on the pressure imposed by society, rather than presenting their identities as problems that need to be fixed.

I have read guidelines stating that games hosted on the official site should be inclusive. I believe inclusivity is valuable, but I also think representation should be handled thoughtfully. I would rather include fewer identities and portray them respectfully than include many identities superficially or inaccurately.

For certain genres and settings, I may therefore choose to limit the themes and identities I include to those I can represent thoughtfully and accurately. However, I would still want to avoid implying that identities I do not include are invalid or do not belong in the world.

So, is inclusivity something I must provide? Or is it acceptable to focus on the identities and themes I can portray respectfully while remaining open to learning about experiences different from my own?

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If you’re writing for CoG you will need to be inclusive. HG does not require this as such, it sounds like what you are describing would be acceptable in a HG

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First off you don’t have to do anything if you’re writing a Hosted Games project. But in general there’s an expectation that games not be gender- or sexuality-restricted. Some games that are restricted in those ways are great and popular but they’re not considered the norm.

I’m not sure if you have a specific project you’re considering, but you’ll get more detailed feedback if you talk in a more specific way. eg: are you referring to what genders or sexualities the player character will be able to play as? or whether there are non-straight NPCs or romance interests? or whether all the powerful characters are men and all the female characters are only there to be pretty? Different aspects of discriminatory settings, and how that affects the play experience, will have different responses from prospective players.

My general feedback though is this:

When I’m playing in sexist/homophobic/transphobic settings, I like seeing how marginalised characters live and find community in the setting. I’m a lot less interested in generic “women / queer people / trans people in this setting have a rough time because of societal pressure, they’re alone and lonely, non-marginalised people never give them political or personal support, and there is no way they can live a fulfilled or interesting life”. So when thinking about what setting bigotry you’re including, think about how those elements would or wouldn’t affect marginalised PC and NPCs directly.

It’s worth searching the forum on this topic too, as it comes up every so often and there’s a wide range of discussions and opinions on here about it.

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If you’re planning to publish through Hosted Games, you can do pretty much whatever you like as long as it isn’t portraying hateful attitudes in a positive light. CoG has more specific requirements for inclusivity in games developed under their guidance, but that can be put into practice in a variety of ways. There are a number of CoG games that are, even if they contain fantasy elements, very much set in this world, and reflecting the assumptions, prejudices, and pressures that exist there.

As long as your story contains more than a handful of characters, there should be some attempt to reflect the diversity that exists in the world. (By “the world” I mean the world of your story, which may or may not include the same kinds of variety that exist in the real world.) But as you know, there are some potential pitfalls you want to avoid. Misrepresentation is the big one, of course. You don’t want your characters to be caricatures or stereotypes, and you definitely don’t want to get the facts wrong. But there are other possible issues.

One I see a lot is what I think of as checklist syndrome - where the characters are not so much people who genuinely feel like part of the story as they are tokens that allow the author to check something off the list. Remember when you were in elementary school and you would get a word problem in your math textbook that was like “Ahmed, Brett, Jorge, LaTosha, and Xiaomei need to measure out exactly ninety-two and three-quarters feet of cloth priced at $1.27 a yard” as if hanging out in self-consciously diverse groups to buy extremely specific lengths of cloth for no particular reason were just average everyday human behavior? Don’t do that. Don’t throw in a trans character, a fat character, an asexual character, a character of color, and a wheelchair user just so you can say they’re all in there. It’s better to represent a few identities well than try to do it all.

The other thing I’ve seen that’s absolutely cringeworthy is when you include a character whose identity becomes their entire personality. If your gay character announces his sexual orientation to everyone he meets within the first five minutes, can’t have a single conversation without mentioning that he’s gay, and doesn’t have any interests or affiliations that don’t revolve around being gay, you’re doing it wrong. Some of the best representation I’ve seen in interactive fiction involved characters you might not even learn are gay or trans in every playthrough. I’m asexual, that’s absolutely a meaningful piece of who I am, but it’s not something I usually bring up unless I’m trying to educate people about asexuality - which I’m actually thrilled I need to do less and less often these days.

If you want to represent an identity you don’t know much about, you need to take some time to learn about it. This is especially true if it’s one of your main characters, and especially especially true if it’s a possibility for the PC. In order to write about how they defy expectations and pressures, you need to know what those pressures are. They might not always be what you would expect! If you have questions about representing something specific, you can ask them here - there are lots of people here who would love to help you bring some authenticity to your writing.

And to build on what Harris said, please remember that there’s more to any identity than the ways it sometimes makes it hard to fit in, and there’s more to societal expectations than just giving marginalized people a hard time.

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Have you read “I the forgotten one”? its a hosted games game that i feel does the historical nature of gender and sexuality very well, it shows the expectations and bigotry of the time very well, if you play a female character people will comment on how strange it is for a woman to lead an army and there are queer characters who have to hide such an important part of themselves and you dont even find out them unless you’re doing a very specific route. it also show’s the racism and xenophobia of the way people would interact with other countries and the like

i would highly recommend you give it a read if you havent already

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I have to be honest, I thought this was going to be a troll post! But instead your questions seem nuanced and genuine–hooray! :slight_smile:

Personally I think as long as your question is not a veiled way to say something like “No queer people existed before 2005” or “Everyone in Medieval Europe was white and heterosexual” and it’s clear you are genuinely trying to acknowledge perspectives other than “white straight male as default”, you are thinking about this in the right way.

Both Hosted Games and Choice of Games titles go through a lengthy beta testing process as well. If you are concerned that your representations of people who aren’t like you might be offensive or incorrect, that’s a great place and time to ask for feedback and listen with an open mind. The forums are a pretty diverse place!

I would add also that medieval Europe was 100% not just a bunch of straight white dudes straight white duding around the place, as it were! Although certainly there were major differences between our modern conceptions of sexuality and gender and theirs, there were plenty of people around who today we would probably identify as gay or lesbian or transgender or nonbinary or asexual (etc). There were also people of colour around, due to early Medieval conquests of Spain from Islamic Africa, late Medieval conquests of eastern Europe by the Mongols, and the less violent forms of international trade and commerce. China has also always been a pretty diverse place, given its size and ethnic/racial diversity! And the same goes in both cases for people with disabilities.

Again, not saying that a Medeival or Xianxia setting should look like 2026 Los Angeles, or that pre-modern Europe was some kind of Queer BIPOC Promised Land or something. But a lot of the people who cry foul about queer or non-white people being a lack of authenticity in a Medieval setting are either not experts on the time period or are pushing their own distinctly racist and sexist agenda. (Not trying to accuse you of anything with this, just so that is clear! You seem to be genuinely interested in how to portray things respectfully and authentically. But a lot of the people who complain about this online are concern trolls.)

Some cool resources you might check out:

Race and Medieval Studies: A Partial Bibliography

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Put much more simply and without all my academic baggage (:laughing:) for me personally the answer to “is inclusivity a must?” is “Life is inclusive.”

That definitely doesn’t mean “check off every identity,” as @AletheiaKnights says! Although I guess now I have to delete my newest WIP which was tentatively titled Hanging Out In Self-Consciously Diverse Groups to Buy Extremely Specific Lengths of Cloth for No Particular Reason. :frowning:

But the question you ask at the end of your post, to me, already shows that anything you write would be inclusive in a general sense–because it shows that you are open to experiences and perspectives outside of your own. :slight_smile:

(ETA: Also? It’s useful to keep in mind that diverse games sell more widely, because they naturally have bigger audiences! So from my perspective it’s less about “do I have to?” than “how can I?”–both philosophically and financially lol)

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Having spent my childhood filling out the details of word problems in my mind, and sometimes even making up word problems to go with regular old math problems*, I would actually play the heck out of this.

*Some of them were extremely morbid. Like, “Five people set out to cross the street, two got hit by cars, how many made it across the street?” Never underestimate a bored six-year-old’s proclivity for imaginary mayhem.

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Sidebar to this conversation but have you read Aimee Picchi’s “Advanced Word Problems in Portal Math”? (1000-word story that was a 2021 Nebula finalist!)

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I haven’t, but I just bookmarked it!

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holy crap, these are awesome!! i’m gonna be reading them all weekend i already know. thank you for sharing! def agree with all the points mentioned up to now, too.

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I just went and put your game on my reading list entirely on the basis of this post. Thank you.

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You won’t regret it! I’m a big fan of his work!

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Thanks! I hope you enjoy Hanging Out In Self-Consciously Diverse Groups to Buy Extremely Specific Lengths of Cloth for No Particular Reason–er, wait, what were we talking about again? :sweat_smile:

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I think this is an interesting topic, because i usually search for things that have the non-binary inclusive tag, not because i always need that option but just because i imagine any work with that tag is going to have a more considered approach to gender in whatever social/relational context is in the writing.

But its not actually a need i have to always play as a nb character/s and there are plenty of interesting things to be gained from a story without extra options in regards to whatever element of identity the story is about. I dont actually need any characters that look like me for the story to be interesting, i just like to see the aspects of me that are so often supressed by the staus quo to show up when appropriate. And i greatly appreicate seeing the same things for identities i dont share. Anything real and meaningful has potential.

I think there is a ton of unexplored potential in how people could write stuff beyond the more standard self insert-y lots of relationship option kind of thing most people love. (No disrespect intended)

Hope this makes sense LOL

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Well frankly I preferred your work from several decades earlier: Hanging Out in Groups That Will In Retrospect Seem Uncomfortably Un-Diverse to Buy Extremely Specific Lengths of Cloth for No Particular Reason.

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…I’m suddenly craving unspecified lengths of cloth.

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“Joe and Jack are confirmed bachelors. If each buys five bolts of cloth, how many floor-length curtains can they make?”

“Judy and Susan are just roommates. If each spends five hundred dollars on a ring, how many years will they live together?”

“Timothy spends a portion of his paycheck each month on feminine hygiene products, and yet he lives alone! I forgot to put numbers in this one so I guess it’s a bad example of a math question.”

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Ill give you a bit of a different perspective. Diversity and inclusion means accepting a range of diverse opinions and including those with whom you may not agree, yes?

Is inclusion a must? No. It is off-putting at times? Yes. Problematic with certain themes? Very much so. Does it occasionally get in the way of good writing? Oh for sure. Can it be done well? I suppose.

Im not inclined to champion “inclusivity” because quite frankly I don’t care. All that matters is the narrative. It is a book not a manuscript from an activist group. If it jeopardizes the narrative then it doesn’t belong. There are stories where it fits and enhances the narrative and others where it is a detriment.

Don’t let it take over. While some people want to feel ideologically coddled, most do not. There have been many stories from CoG and Hosted which gained the approval of the activist branch of the forum but then failed to deliver a coherent story because of efforts to make an ‘inclusive’ game. It is the same way I feel about gender-locked games. As a man I don’t particularly want to play as a woman as it doesnt fit my lived experience… but neither does playing as a samurai, werewolf, cyborg, or medieval merchant so I do so anyway. A gender-locked or non-inclusive game can still deliver a great narrative and that is what is most important.

Narrative matters, and while dissent is rarely encouraged here when it comes to this topic, focus on the art first. If inclusion fits then include it. If it doesn’t then do not. Put the story first.

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It’s not about ideological coddling. CoG was founded with the goal not only of telling great stories, but also allowing all kinds of people to see someone like them as the hero of a story. I’m guessing that’s never been a problem for you, but when it’s something you’ve never had - when maybe you didn’t even know that there were other people like you, let alone people like you with exciting, dynamic lives - it means a lot.

Can you give me an example of a game that failed to deliver a coherent story because of efforts at inclusivity? What do you think should have been done instead to make the story work?

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