Here’s another thing. Why are there next to no mixed race heroes in fiction? There’s Alyx Vance, and what? Matt King from The Descendants? Well, most stories set in Hawaii that no one anywhere else reads. I’m talking about characters who are stated as specifically being mixed race. So Vin Diesel’s characters don’t count.
Here’s a little problem with the English language which I want to expand a little on. (Sorry to take the thunder from you Shoelip, but I think this needs a bit of a through addressing.) No set system for defining words, or keeping their definitions consistent, exists for the English language. English is a purely ad hoc construction. The word ‘discrimination’ is a casualty of that fact. Lets look at the Merriam-Webster definition of ‘discrimination’:
1a : the act of discriminating
1b : the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently
2: the quality or power of finely distinguishing
3a : the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually
3b : prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment
Looking at the primary definition (specifically 1b and 2), we can see that the original meaning of ‘discrimination’ is very much a positive one. However, the current mentality to the word (specifically definition 3b, although 3a hints at this mentality) is extremely negative. This can makes talking talking about such things difficult, as people become quick to label anything that ‘discriminates’ (in the context of definition 1b/2) as something bad (which ironically fits very well into the concept of discrimination itself, in the context of definition 3b).
We can’t rid the word of it’s original meaning, and it’s difficult to divorce the newer ideas tacked onto it at things point, and give them a new word, so when you’re using the word ‘discriminate’, be careful to realize how many facets there are to the word.
It’s something that needs to be considered when talking about such subjects. (Ironically, when you think about it, the problem with the latter definitions of discrimination, the reason they are ‘bad’, is because they don’t discriminate enough. And people wonder why English is such a difficult language. e.e)
@Nocturnal_Stillness As long as such a subject is handled well, I don’t see why it has to be a negative thing. Let’s take, for example Choice of the Vampire. Play through as a Choctaw, and pay attention to the differences when you meet Withers from the other play-throughs. It’s a good touch in my opinion. A good way to handle discrimination.
@Shoelip About what you asked about people assuming you’re angry. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but you have a hard ‘tone’ when you ‘speak’. Specifically you’re straightforward, and spend little time in ‘playing nice’ when forming your thoughts and asking questions. You also have a tendency to make a bit of an assumption that the logical conclusions are the natural conclusions (which I think is the biggest thing that people ‘see’ when you talk). It makes you ‘sound’ angry. Everyone has their own ‘tone’, their choice of words, their formation of sentences, how likely they are to tell jokes or go off on tangents, and how likely those jokes/tangents are to be silly or dark. It forms this mental picture of people in your head, and if that picture is ‘severe’, people assume you’re angry.
I, for one, usually talk down to people. I got so used to talking in a certain way (explaining everything from the ground up), that it has carried over to everything I say and write. It makes me sound like I’m trying to be ‘intellectual’ and that I assumed other people were dumb. For me, it was never that. I assumed that other people didn’t know things only because I had learned that to be the ‘polite’ way. When you assume other people know what you’re talking about, and don’t explain things that might be understood differently by two people, you’re inviting confusion and more arguments, therefore it’s best to cover everything that you might see as possibly causing confusion when speaking. Therefore I have to hold back on explaining everything all the time, until I think the person I’m talking to wants, or at the least is willing to accept, the information.
(I might come back on topic at a later post, but for now, I have to wash the dog (Holy crud I almost added an ‘n’ into that last word. That could have been really bad >.< ) RL calls.)
Gender only bother me if in historical setting, because it would dishonest to era and to said gender to not allow them to over come that prejuice of the time period. Any any other some setting beside being in historical place I will not care.
@Reaperoa
COTV is a good example of what I would like to have in my game. I occasionally pick to be female with the germanic background as I like the backstory and like the fact it does affect the story (this is most noticeable with Withers as she has heard of you before you meet her and is actually interested in you during the tour)
This discussion seems unnecessary, even bizarre, in the greater context of fiction. No one goes around complaining, “Oh, I couldn’t get into Catcher in the Rye because it only lets me read as an upper-class white male,” or, “I refuse to read The Joy Luck Club unless it removes all the blatant racism and sexism.”
Readers identify strongly with these protagonists – even with unselectable gender and race, and written in first or third person – more strongly than with any CoG protagonist to date. I will never be an 18th-century Chinese woman, but I feel closer to an Amy Tan protagonist than the generic cypher protagonists of CoG games, regardless of pages of customization and alternate scenes.
In trying to be all things to all (wo)men, second-person every(wo)man protagonists become nothing. The protagonist can’t have a very distinctive voice, as it will contradict what some readers would say. The protagonist can’t react strongly, or introspect deeply, as it will contradict what some readers will feel. You’re left with an uninteresting, undistinguished, and unsympathetic protagonist, perhaps the worst crime a writer can commit.
If the protagonist is written distinctively (easiest in first and third person), we can identify and sympathize with the character, but still maintain a separate identity. I share Bryan Mill’s sense of justice in hunting down and killing his daughter’s abductors in Taken, even though I don’t have a daughter or a gun, and would find him guilty of murder in a real-life trial.
I don’t have green skin or a 200-word vocabulary, but I identify with Grunk’s desire to appear competent even when out of my league, and I enjoy the unique voice and first-person characterization of Grunk (almost impossible in second person). Read the super-short interactive Grunk and Cheese at http://grunk.org/writing/gac.html, and the much more developed IF Lost Pig at http://jayisgames.com/games/ifiction/game/lostpig
The Play has a very specific protagonist, but is still written in second person. It’s a compelling interactive short that deals intelligently with sexism and harassment, while still being funny: http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay/ If it had a generic or customizable protagonist, the examination of sexism and harassment would be impossible. It is only because we are locked into the character that we can explore the realities of discrimination and our reactions to them.
If the goal is to address inequalities and educate against prejudice, the inequalities and prejudices have to be experienced by interesting protagonists, not eliminated in a fictitious vacuum. If there are too many crappy white male fantasy games, write good Polynesian female literary games. Write specific minority protagonists we care about in situations we’d never taken the time to think about. Write specific majority characters who realize that one disgusting form of prejudice is just as wrong as another they’d never considered. Just make sure the story is about the characters, not a sermon.
TL;DR
A lack of customization and gender-swapping isn’t necessarily discrimination, nor should it affect reader identification with the protagonist. On the contrary, who cares if I can change the race, gender, or height of the protagonist if s/he is written so accommodatingly that s/he lacks any specific facets and flaws that might make me care about his/her plight?
@Shoelip 1. Yes you are right in saying that putting the “black is evil while white is goodness” into skincolor is the mainbasis on racism. However, when I see something like that in fiction (while it is not evidently meant to be racist), I see no racism. I dont want to live in a black&white world and thus avoid thinking about skincolor. You can never assume that by describing black as being bad to be racist if there is no other indications that it is meant to be that way.
And I also agree with your second point you pointed out. If you do want to make a game with neutral views (without any discrimination) you need to be very careful. In my point of view I dont even see that there would be a way to create such a game without setting it into a fictious world and by coding every possible culture, race, religion and so forth into it. Impossible.
And no, I am not considering you as angry. Everyone is entitled to have&express their views. Only if you start to shove your ideas down someone else’s throat it becomes angry.
@Nocturnal_stillness as an answer to your question (would it be discrimating to allow different story paths to women and men). I would say its not. Here’s why I think so: for the same reason that Shoelip pointed out in the example of woman becoming pregnant and so on. There is a difference between women and men, and there are differences in the world for both sexes. Man cannot go to womens toilets and vice versa (there are also quite many other examples). If you take care in writing those scenes (making them so that there is a valid reason for different cases being offered), there is no discrimination. On the other hand, if the player wants to discover the cases that are different, he/she can always play through the game with other gender, no problem there.
I’m personally getting tired of this “this is discriminating against this and that…”. Granted, writers should take care on how they express their stories to avoid too much discrimination, BUT it doesnt mean that others should put up a huge debate on how this is discriminating and this is not. Does those big game companies in the world (trying not to name names again 
) avoid discrimination? No they dont (I can think of hundreds of games where the main character is a man and there is no option to play as a woman or as asian, caucasian, malesian…). I’m not saying that its right (it would be nice if there would be a chance to customize your character) but it is not in any way discriminating to not allow those changes. People can see discrimination everywhere if they so want to (as some can see secret messages in the bible or satanic messages in songs that are meant to be christian). No one should be too strict on these things.
Again this is my view and everyone can disagree if they so want to
@HoraceTorys I’m not sure but it sounds like you’re either suggesting that all choice script games should abandon the concept of a customizable protagonist to fall more like line with non-interactive fiction and/or puzzle based text parser IFs, or trying to start a completely different and not entirely related argument about the merits of those two different types of protagonist. If either of those are the case though, I don’t think you’re really getting what this thread is about.
Using big name game corps as an example doesn’t really work very well. They only care about the bottom line. Everything else is secondary to how much money they think they can make. If they think it’ll be profitable (which is usually based on whether it was profitable before) and they can get away with it legally, they’ll do it. EA saw that using the real world name for the other team in multiplayer for Medal of Honor was causing a huge uproar, and they worried it would hurt their profits, so they changed it to “Insurgents”. Or maybe they never intended to use the word Taliban in the first place and only pretended they were going to for the free publicity the outrage they knew it would cause would give them. Point is, Big Name corps can’t really be compared to people developing games they want to share for free.
Also I want to make it clear that I don’t think every game should let you play whatever character you want to, but when you make a game set in a real world location and time period where sexism and racism were integral parts of society, and then simply remove the sexism alone because you “don’t want to offend people” you’ve already failed to avoid offending by ignoring all the other oppressed groups whose oppression was an integral part of society at the time, and you’ve made your world a lot less interesting in the process. Not to mention insulting the memory of all the real women who suffered from the rampant institutionalized sexism during that time.
@Shoelip That is true that bigger companies only care about money, but the point still stands. The uproar rises everytime you do something that doesnt suit peoples opinions. The same point stands in this case also.
The main point that I defend however is that would there be racism or discrimination if people wouldnt be so strict on seeing racism/discrimination everywhere (and yes, in the case of racism there would be if you look at people who intentionally are racist). If everyone would start to live in a world where they dont see racism/discrimantion everywhere and in everything it wouldnt exist. That’s where I’m aiming at.
People are just so good at seeing things they want to see, not what really exists or is intended to be seen. In short I guess that I’m saying that you shouldnt judge everything you see by the color. Think about it some more before saying that this is discrimination against women or this is racist just because black is used to describe bad/evil. Everything in this world is not so black and white.
Game makers should take care in writing games to make them neutral in every way, but when these things start to get in the way of a good story, judges are (most probably) going too far.
yeah, I’ve made my point and wont argue anymore
@imf151 I don’t… know what to say… That doesn’t make any sense to me.
@Shoelip Dont blame you, now that I read it again it does seem to be a bit confucing 
The point I intented to point out was that people see what they want not what’s really infront of their eyes
(Mental note to self: dont try to write while listening a lecture about management accounting )
I think the main point that imf151 was getting at is the writer should just make a good story first and then worry about trying to put in diversity if it fits the story and doesn’t get in the way of it.
I guess a related example would be Bioware where they started putting in more gay people in their games because some of their gay fanbase started complaining. One ongoing argument was it didn’t make sense that male Shepard could be gay in Mass Effect 3 since there was no indication in the first two games that he was (Since no male gay romance had been put in). Others of course just said to pretend that Shepard just came out of the closet and that you didn’t need to play him gay anyway.
From a business stand point it’s a good idea to try to appease most of your fan-base by putting and since they have a bunch of people working on their games its easier for them.
But in the case of the writers of CYOAs, they’re usually working on one game by themselves, so it can get overwhelming to write for every race/gender/orientation. Even just gender flipping is tedious, in fact it might even be worse, since you’re just copy/pasting with a few minor changes in pronouns and you aren’t really doing anything new with the protagonist other than giving him or her a sex change so there is little point in giving yourself the extra work. Plus despite the extra work it still seems like a bit of a lazy way in trying to be diverse. Again using Bioware as an example, to appease everyone they just made all the romance options in Dragon Age 2 bisexual instead of taking the time to write them as one or the other. (Though I’d argue if they’d cut out the romance stuff altogether, they could have paid more attention to more important stuff like the actual gameplay. Lol).
Unless you’re making a “dating sim”, I’d say if you’re going to put in diversity, do it because you really want to or because it is important to the story and actually makes different in parts of it. Choice of the Vampire is a good example, Choice of Broadsides with its superficial gender flip is not. Now if Choice of Broadsides had made it so you had to disguise yourself as a man while playing as a female character, that would’ve made that side a whole new game and added the element of danger of getting discovered, etc.
@JimD the wheelchair is a weapon in dead rising games on x-box 360 so I think it would work plus he/she could add weapons to it
The only thing I don’t like in the games is not having the chioice to name my person I am playing as in the game
@Stpeter182 The main character of Dead Rising has perfectly working legs though, and only uses the wheelchair as one of the dozens of gimmick weapons in the game.
@EndMaster I would have had a much less charitable interpretation of imf151’s post so I suppose that it’s good I didn’t say anything. Personally I don’t think the inclusion or exclusion of diverse protagonist customization is such a big deal. I’m for it where it makes sense, but I rather not have it than have it be completely illogical and inconsistent. Your games for instance are all from a male perspective, and that’s fine because that’s what you’re going for. You don’t allow the player in play a “female” just for the sake of “diversity” and then make it exactly the same as playing a male. Course it’d really be interesting to see what you would do with a female protagonist. Hint hint.
@HoraceTorys Regarding The Play, I have mentioned your response to the creator, Deirdra Kai, and they agree that they like specific characters better than blank slates like you do. However, they prefer that these characters not be straight white cismen and I think you can guess why. Hint: there’s an ocean.
That said, Deirdra does not think of customisable characters as inferior and specific characters are simply a personal stylistic choice.
Not sure how much this adds to the topic but I thought it might be something you’re interested in. And I don’t really have the energy to write an essay right now so I’m making this short.
I probably overstated my views. I’m not against customization per se. Certainly customizable-but-generic games have their place in the genre and readers’ hearts. And specific protagonists can still be customized as necessary.
I just don’t get why people who don’t blink when reading normal fiction and games with a fixed gender are suddenly in an uproar when an author allows them to customize other things, but not gender.
I do understand being tired of playing an all-American white male in every single game, though.
Is a completely customizable protagonist that creates mostly superficial changes to the story the “solution?” If you just want to be addressed with the correct pronouns while fighting pirates or zombies or gangsters, well, I suppose that’s worth something.
But stereotypes and prejudice work off of generalizations, and any story that covers all permutations of race, gender, etc. will have to be so generalized, it will only reinforce that way of looking at the world. If the goal is to challenge and change the status quo, we need stories that deal in specifics, that show that the difference between women and men is more than a pronoun. Glossing over historical gender, racial, and other prejudices is hardly the way to awaken concern over today’s bigotry.
Of course, a dedicated writer or team could write what would essentially be dozens of stories set in the same universe to cover each permutation of the protagonist’s gender, race, etc. and still do justice to them as a real person.
On various threads, I’ve seen people comment negatively about the perceived CoG approach to gender, where your choices of sex and/or which gender(s) you’re attracted to don’t have plot consequences, just pronoun consequences. Above, Shoelip has said it “serves no purpose,” Horace has called it “superficial,” and Nocturnal has said it reduces replay value.
Similarly, some people don’t like to use the fake_choice. But I’d suggest that fake_choices can be a great tool to sharpen the image of the character in the reader/player’s mind. It recognizes that especially in this genre, the protagonist isn’t limited to the author’s vision (including stats), but is built up by author and reader together. In the end, the reader’s vision of the character is more important than what the author has written.
For example, in my own story, I don’t have (or need) a stat for whether the protagonist is (a) a stickler for rules or (b) happy to make exceptions – but when the story moved in that direction, I’ve thrown in a choice or two that revolve around that distinction. It doesn’t affect anything else in the text, but it affects how the reader imagines the protagonist.
Gender and attraction obviously have a huge impact on how many readers imagine their characters in CoG games – so even if it’s essentially a fake_choice, I’d suggest it’s worth including for that reason.
1 Like
@HoraceTorys – really enjoyed reading your thoughts on IF in the broader picture of literature. But besides wondering how many of us are really aiming for Catcher in the Rye as opposed to, say, our favorite pulp novels or TV shows… I wonder if you too quickly skim past the greater role the reader plays in constructing the protagonist of an IF. Leaving the main character a bit of a every(wo)man may not be the mortal sin that it is in a traditional, more author-driven medium.
In IF stories there’s much more of a trade-off between the choices the author makes and the choices the reader is able to make. That doesn’t let us authors off the hook in creating memorable characters – a total cipher is still bad writing, and the more an author is able to flesh out the protagonist in response to reader choices, the better. And absolutely, there are some great IFs out there where the author has already made a lot of the choices on the history and personality of the protagonist, leaving less to the reader. But I think it’s also a justifiable option in IF for authors to write an every(wo)man protagonist and invite the reader to co-create the details.
I think most of the gender-sensitive writers and players around here would agree with you that it’s good to write stories that directly and thoughtfully address discrimination in its messy real-world details. As you say, those are ultimately the best stories to “challenge and change the status quo”. But I think you also greatly underestimate the extent to which the status quo is challenged by telling stories that do treat the difference between men and women as simply (or primarily) one of pronouns! It certainly makes a meaningful difference to a lot of female readers out there.
FWIW, @Shoelip, I haven’t been reading you as angry.
Reduced replay value is purely my own opinion. As I’m male offered the choice where gender has no obvious difference I will choose to be a male character however if a game offers a different playthrough if I choose to be female I will always play it as female at least once just to see how it varies.
This is just my thoughts on games in general.
I just don’t care about gender… I enjoy the game for the game, and if i have to be male or female i just accept it. Me being a male, having to play a female would not bother me it’d add a new dimension to the game.