I am planning on writing a interactive fiction story. My story has most of the characters being the same gender due to being on a sports team together.
I saw some people saying that having ROs with selectable genders often makes them feel incomplete and makes them often feel like one gender is the ‘right’ choice. Obviously I would like to avoid this while ideally keeping player freedoms.
Am I overthinking in wondering if I should genderlock the MC and therefore most of the ROs?
Thank you for reading and considering my question!
I think what’s ultimately most important is that you stick true to your own vision. There’s nothing wrong with listening to advice and constructive criticism, but your work must be uncompromisingly yours. If important plot points and themes of your work can only be preserved with selectable genders, go for that. Same for the other way around. Just whatever you do, wherever you decide to go, make sure that it’s above all else, still your vision.
There’s a Tennis wip where most of the RO are genderlocked to be the same as the player due to the sports team thing, but genderlocking anything is always going to turn some people away for one reason or another- for an example, I myself just don’t feel comfortable playing female MCs and there’s some people who will find the RO ratio skewed in terms of choices if most are the same gender as them if they are heterosexual.
You should probably just stick to what your vision for the project is, as already mentioned, but if it’s something you think you can write without sacrificing character/plot depth then you can give it a shot.
Honestly, I think most IFs have gender selectable ROs just because they’re following the trend of times. You should genderlock them to maximize the amount of character depth you can write about them. Trust me, although you should write a character without their gender stereotype as their personality, there are indeed some vital differences through both physical and societal contexts.
For my advice, you should make the ROs gender-locked, but provide enough ROs of multiple genders so that no one is left out, rather than making them gender selectable as that typically results in a one gender cast, something I find quite jarring for immersion.
I understand that there probably will be a niche amount of interest in my IF as it’s kinda weird. There will be other ROs that are not genderlocked but there wouldn’t be a comparable amount of them due to the situation the IF revolves around (a plane crash).
One thing you will learn very quickly if you want to participate in this community as a writer is that you can’t please everyone and there is no One Best Way to Do Things.
Tell the story you want to tell. Be open to suggestions, but understand that whatever you do, someone will wish you’d done something else, and that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.
I wrote about selectable or non selectable romanceable characters on my IF advice blog here if you’re interested. There’s also a lot of discussion in past threads on this subject including here.
Ultimately there are positives for both ways of doing it for romanceable characters, so you should do whatever feels great for you.
For the PC, it’s worth being aware that for the most part genderlocked MCs are less popular overall. But again, go for the setup that feels best for you and the story. These projects tend to take a long time so writing something you’re passionate and excited about is important for motivation.
I’ve been thinking on it and I think I am going to have it be one where you can select the MCs gender. The limit of the ROs mostly being the same gender as the MC will not change, however I was gonna have some select ROs be a set gender but I might have them be the opposite gender to the MC so that everyone has an option to romance.
I am planning on having this be a series of two books. The first is where the ROs are primarily the same gender as the MC but depending on the choices the MC makes, some ROs and NPCs might die. Might not be a popular choice but I think it sets real stakes. In the second book, which is more slice of life compared to the thriller setting of the first book, will have more ROs that would account for more genders as the MC heals from what they go through in the first book. (The surviving ROs from the first book will still exist).
Much as I like the idea of a full cast of gay ROs, killing off half of them to make way for straight ROs feels a little bit… iffy? I would definitely recommend making it reasonably easy to save at least the player’s chosen RO, and probably to make it possible to save all of them.
I’m also not entirely sure that the audience for a gay-leaning thriller would be the same as the audience for a more gender-balanced slice of life story; would it make sense to separate the two stories completely?
I’m not going to be killing half of them, only a few of them would die along with non romanacble NPCs. As I see it right now, the ROs who do die would die because of your choices.
Slice-of-life might not have been the best descriptor? The second story is about recovering from the trauma of the first book as well as dealing with new trauma because of the first book. It probably won’t be as long as the first book, more of a optional epilogue.
I think if you truly want to offer choices, you definitely need to put extra thought into making them feel like themselves, regardless of player choice. Each RO would technically have 2 versions and need to be equally loved. I find most authors have a singular vision for each RO, which simply doesn’t translate across genders. When I pick a male RO that the author intended to be female, they become bland and vice verse. I similarly feel that some ROs are kind of thrown at the MC which makes them (regardless of gender) feel like the “correct” choice. I personally don’t play gender-locked works, it feels stifling and contrary to interactive fiction.
Furthermore, I dislike the main character tropes where they are “plain” and typically “undesirable” but everyone is so obsessed with them. To me it speaks to the authors’ insecurities rather than being creative or interesting. For that reason, I prefer to be able to customize my MC’s and their perceptions of themselves, and for those reasons I prefer at least having options for the characters that they surroind themselves with that align with the vision I have of who the MC is. I feel that this also increases playability, but that can also simply be done by making an incredible story and telling it well.
That said, as the author, you should do what you feel comfortable with. You have a vision for your story, and if you aren’t comfortable with your ability to stay true to that vision and provide these options, limiting the player options is preferable. You can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t feel like you have to. It’s a huge undertaking, and if you’re worried at all about your ability to deliver the game you want, I suggest you save yourself the stress. You can always write more later. I feel like most of us at this point just want to see the works we enjoy just be finished.
All this to say that; You know what you’re capable of. If you have a story worth telling, and you tell it to the best of your ability, it will be worth reading regardless of genderlocking.
Little update, but I have decided to genderlock the MC (and most of ROs). The story is personal to me and with it being my first project, I’ve decided why not? If I want to create another story with a gender selectable MC, I can do that in the future.
First of all I want to say that just because some people are very vocal about strongly preferring gender locked ROs to gender selectable ones and making claims about gender selectable ROs feeling more incomplete and/or feeling like they’re written with a specific gender in mind, you shouldn’t passively accept those claims as true.
I hope it’s okay that I take this opportunity to go a bit further into my general opinions on gender selectable ROs versus gender locked ROs, even though it seems like your mind is made up about how to approach this in your IF, OP. I for one, have never felt that ROs who are gender selectable feels any less real, complete or fleshed out than gender locked ROs. Sure, I’ve played/read IFs with blandly forgettable gender selectable ROs, but I’ve played/read just as many IFs with blandly forgettable gender locked ROs. And I haven’t noticed any significant differences in the proportion of ROs who feel complete and properly fleshed out between the ROs who are gender locked and those who are gender selectable. And if you look in the forums here and on other spaces for fans of HGs and COGs, I think you’ll find that there are plenty of gender selectable ROs who people feel really passionate about and who feel real to them.
I think people claiming that people claming that gender selectable ROs tend to be more complete and fleshed out than gender locked ones , tells you much more about their preconceptions than whether that can be a serious issue in itself, tbh. I also think it’s often a case of self fulfilling prophecy, where the people in question are so sceptical to gender selectable ROs in the first place that they either carry that attitude with them when trying the IF in question, so that they inevitable end up being disappointed in them or that they actually enjoyed those gender selectable ROs, but forget about that when making their opinions known later. Maybe, I’m being overly harsh with the fans of gender locked ROs here, but I do get quite annoyed with them (at least seeming to be) claiming gender selectable ROs being less real and fleshed out than gender locked out as if that’s a kind of objective truth, where it’s very much a case of YMMV. There are obviously some people who feel this and I’m certainly not claiming their feelings are invalid, but neither are the feelings of all of those of us who have no issues with gender selectable ROs and who certainly don’t feel that they are any less real or fleshed out than gender locked ones(and who often also very much prefer gender selectable ROs to gender locked ROs, at least in actual practice).
I also deeply dislike and disapprove of many of them claiming that some gender locked ROs feel male or female and so should have been made that particular gender. To me that smacks too much of a certain kind of gender essentialism where if a persons personality, interests, presentation and/or general behavior aren’t within certain parameters, they aren’t considered to be really female or male and I think it’s really important to get away from that and make room for people to be male and female people however they want, instead of how some people think that they “should” be. And certainly this should be the case for stories as well, including interactive ones.
I’m not opposed to gender locked ROs, but these kinds of arguments are part of what makes me in actual practice be somewhat sceptical to them, because a person who assigns a particular gender to a character because they think they “feel” more female or male in the first place, is more likely to create ROs who are typical or even stereotypical representatives of their gender. This is fortunately far from always being the case (and I won’t deny that my top 10 list of favorite ROs also include some genderlocked to female ones), but as someone who likes female ROs who are at least somewhat atypical, it has happened enough times that I remain a bit wary of gender locked ROs.
As someone else has already mentioned(IIRC), having gender selectable ROs also makes it easier to have a good and varied selection of ROs for those who are not bi or pan(or maybe attracted to the same gender as the writer) and prefers MCs with the same gender and sexual orientation as their real life selves. This in turn means that you won’t risk any people feeling that they missed out because a RO who might otherwise have been up their ally was made a gender incompatible with their sexual orientation. It also means you need less ROs for everyone to feel like there are enough.
OK, now I’ll step off my soap box. Like most other people here have said, I do think it’s important that you stick with what you feel makes sense for you and what works for you, while also keeping in mind that it doesn’t have to be the one or the other. Making some ROs gender selectable and some gender locked, is perfectly okay, there’s no “RO police” that’s going to arrest you if you mix those two approaches. And while I don’t buy the argument of gender locked ROs being more complete and fleshed out than gender selectable ones(and certainly not the argument that they feel too much like one gender), there are certain situations where I can see that it makes more sense to make at least most of them gender locked, unless you’re willing to make significant changes to the setting or the story. And for a story where most of the ROs are part of the same sports team as the MC, it certainly seems to be difficult to make them gender selectable unless you changed the world/universe into a sort of alternate one where mixed teams were normal or unless you changed the story to make more characters outside of the team more important.
So, I think in instances like this, it’s important to ask yourself whether and, if so, to what extent, you are willing to change the vision for your story, so to speak. If you want to keep the story the way you originally envisioned it, with it being set in the real world, or at least similar to the real world in all relevant aspects, and with most of the focus on the story on your MC’s life and adventures with the team, then this seems hard to combine with all the ROs being gender selectable, if you want the story to make sense, as I think you should. However if you are willing to make some changes in your original vision, either by changing the world/universe into one that is more different from our own, where things like mixed sports teams are normal or by changing the story so that there’s less focus on the MC’s life and adventures with the team, then an all-gender selectable cast of ROs can definitely work. But that would definitely mean more work for you and also require you change the story and concept of the story that you’re not willing to, so I completely understand if you’re not willing to do that. But whatever you decide to do, I hope that you do it because that’s what you yourself want to do, not because someone else tells you that it’s the right thing to do, and that includes both me and the proponents of gender-locked ROs.
The IFs that I’ve seen getting the most complaints about this,AFAICR, are the most popular cultivation wuxia WIPs. However from what I understand, in both of those WIPs, all or at least most of the ROs were gender locked( and all of them had their sexual orientation locked), while the MC was gender selectable. You could of course argue that the MC in such IFs should be gender locked, but that’s another discussion that is kind of off-topic Also, from what I understand, a lot of this had to do with both of them(though to varying degrees, I guess) reusing many of the sexist tropes apparently common in a lot of of cultivation works. I’d argue that, if anything, making the ROs in those WIPs gender selectable might actually make them feel more inclusive and less like they were made for straight male MCs, since this would allow you to flip at least some of the usual cultivation story gender dynamics used in those WIPs
I think this is a really important point and it’s interesting to hear from a writers perspective, but I think it doesn’t only apply to writers, I think this is an important part of the issues some readers/players have with gender selectable ROs as well. The meta knowledge that a character can be a different gender based on your choices and preferences can make them feel too fluid for your liking if you are the kind of reader/player who prefers characters who are, as you said/wrote, more pinned down. And even more so if you do playthroughs with both/all of the possible genders of the ROs in question. Others of us have little to no problem with that as long as we get to romance the kind of ROs we like. So I think it’s a lot do with the mindset of the reader/player in question, but not in the sense that it can be easily changed, if it can be changed at all. While some of us can easily imagine ROs as whatever gender we want them to be and that they can be, other people seem to have a much harder time doing that if they’re not pinned down to one particular gender beforehand. I think this, rather than whether gender selectable ROs are actually less fleshed out than gender locked ones, is at the root of them claiming gender selectable ROs are/feel less fleshed out and real than gender locked ones.
Sometimes, for a story to work, characters (including the MC and Lis) need to be gender-locked, otherwise the story simply does not make sense and feels forced. A game about Oscar Wilde and his trial would never work if the MC was an Octavia or something similar because of the legalities of the time. Same as Roman Vestal Virgins had to be girls. I know that in many games we can select the gender of our MC and friends and Lis, but quite often its possible to tell that the author really meant the MC and a few others to be a certain gender because the choices and the dialogue simply don’t make sense for what you have chosen.
You need to write what you know, and create the story as you want it. If writing as a woman, or a man, is difficult, gender-lock that character. Its going to save an awful lot of time when it comes to the coding, and will make telling your story that much easier if you can use your own voice, unrestrained by catering to those who will not play because its gender-locked.
Ok, from an author stand point, I much prefer to lock my characters. This is because I prefer to know exactly who they are. If I know what their name is, what they look like, how they like to be addressed etc, it helps me to make them feel more solid and real and I think that comes through in the writing. Are flippable gender RO’s bad then? No. I’ve actually got two where they are, and the reason for that is that they are essential to the storyline so I’d like everyone to have a chance to romance them if they wish. But I also feel it takes more work for me to keep it on track and try not to skew the actions and dialogue into more gendered territory… which brings me to:
This is totally a thing. There are a number of games where you can really feel that the game was written with a certain dynamic in mind. The only one I’m going to point out at this stage because I think it’s fairly obvious and isn’t going to offend anyone is choice of romance. This was 100% based on Henry 8th and Anne Boleyn with a fantasy tilt and the writing has shown this accordingly although they’ve attempted to do a gender flip with the ROs and MC. There are however certain games where I’ve even actually felt kinda uncomfortable because it has very much felt like a straight male game. I actually would have been far less uncomfortable just being told that’s the deal rather than having immersion breaking moments thrown in at intervals which jar with the character I’ve been allowed to play.
Anyway, I think this comes down to individual author’s headspaces. Some can very easily slip into a neutral mindset for characters, others like to have them pinned down and specific and when they try to shift it to a gender selectable space it may not completely come through as intended. It’s not someone trying to do the right or wrong thing by a character, it’s just the way it is.
Definitely this. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to the writer’s competency and vision for the story.
Personally, I think the claim that gender-locked ROs are more fleshed out than gender-selectable ones might come from the fact that occasionally writers with gender-selectable ROs neglect to write ROs with a non-romantic/friendship dynamic with the MC, since it’s assumed that the player will assign the ROs with the gender they are attracted to.
But again, I think that goes back around to the writer’s actual skill at writing characters, and not any objective shortcomings with making ROs gender-selectable. Especially since that can happen with gender-locked characters as well.
As you said when most writers make ROs with changeable genders, it raises the chance of the character becoming shallow or misunderstood. All because you have to make different branches for the same character with different gender and also different reactions to the same situation. This is time consuming and somewhere along the way, the author starts losing that drive to write a full fledged scene for each branch. Additionally, making gender selectable ROs equals to a higher chance of pronoun switch up. For example, if I chose my RO to be a woman, her pronouns should be she/her, right? But somewhere along the way, her pronouns might become he/him, and for some readers it breaks the immersion.
Making ROs gender locked lowers the chance of such errors, yet depending on the reader makes the game a bit limited. For example, if a reader reads the summary and character description of your game and wants to try out your game due to one likable RO, he or she will most likely be disappointed that the said RO is not of the gender the reader would like it to be. For people like me, I will most likely stop playing the game due to disappointment. There are exceptions of course and people might keep playing the game if other characters are very eye catching.
There are many more other factors that might influence your decision to make gender locked or gender selectable ROs. The main question is whether you are ready to diligently keep writing in depth - growing with your characters, making small changes like how each gender might react to the same situation, or how their gender or clothes might affect the world around them? Would you be consistent and passionate enough to truly keep your readers engaged with your ROs?
What I’m trying to say is that everything depends on you. Your drive, your writing style and your characters.
I would like to point out that having character growth while venturing into some gendered territory and having gender-selectable RO’s is not necessarily mutually exclusive. To date I think the Evertree Saga does this best with the small but real differences based on gender between Dandy/Daisy, there. So once again props to @ThomB . It is undeniably more writing and possibly research work for the author however.
I would definitely recommend making it reasonably easy to save at least the player’s chosen RO, and probably to make it possible to save all of them.