That would be way easier. But even if I don’t feel much for this MC I think I would feel less connected to the game. (But now I think this is bit offtopic here)
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I also like it when a game leaves it up the player if they want to be the more dominant one in a romance or if they prefer it other way. As I noticed it ZE isn’t the only game which lets you do it. I’m pretty sure it happens in TLH trilogy and in Superlatives too if I recall correctly.
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Yes I believe TLH does do that. Superlatives I wouldn’t be able to say because I haven’t had the chance to get through it even once, lol.
But yeah! I’d like that feature to become a little more standard in games, sure, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, sadly.
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I don’t think you understood my meaning. Even without doing any romance subplots, the assumption that your character is interesed in females usually is still there and there are signs pointing at it. (The aforementioned cleavage-leering, blushing when being flirted with, jealousy when not being paid enough attention by a resident Smurfette - that kind of thing).
That makes me feel very thankful for games like Lords of Aswik and Choice by Gaslight… SoH aknowledges it too (even with Momoko’s assets still being right there in your face at every opportunity 
).
I think I get it now. Sorry for the previous misunderstanding. When the game tries to decide who should be attractive for my character… I tend to get annoyed too when that happens especially if I previously made it clear that my MC is a lesbian and then she still practically drools when she sees an attractive man.
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Whoa, this thread has exploded again since I posted 
and six replies to my post alone!
I also ran out of likes, so… um, there’s a lot of posts I would be liking here that I can’t right now 
I suppose I would be rather terrified if you did try to play me 
Oh, yeah… I’m right between the average male and female heights (in the US), so while I’m taller than most women, women who are taller than me are still pretty common.
With height customization, I also just find it makes it easier when writing interactions to know if it’s like “NPC looks up at you” or “NPC looks down at you,” though that may say more about what I describe in these scenes than anything else 
I think I mind mostly when it’s characters who should actually know the MC (if we’re old friends, say, they should’ve picked up on my talking about guys 
unless this is a historical 19th century setting or something). That, and when everybody is always assuming I must be into women and nobody is thinking I might be into men. I’m okay with the comments if they’re more even (I think this was the case in your own Totem Force?), or if they’re actually based on the MC’s sexual orientation. But I get sick enough in real life of people who don’t know me assuming I must be into women that that’s really something I don’t want to go through in my entertainment.
A related example would be in Sixth Grade Detective, which I mostly like very much, and is one of my favorite CoGs… but it has this bit where AJ—whose gender is player-chosen—AJ’s uncle will make some sort of awkward-embarrassing comment about the MC being AJ’s boy/girlfriend… but only if they’re opposite genders. At least if you’re going down a romance route with AJ, I think that line should be there for everyone; it feels alienating to be left out from that kind of thing. Equal opportunity embarrassing comments!
Preach. And I think that also helps answer @Natman1025’s following comments about how it shouldn’t matter to the reader… one reason it does matter is because it’s preferable to feel like you’ve been put into consideration, rather than being an afterthought or not included at all.
Well, and this is where I’d say that games where gender choice is just a matter of pronouns and word choice are useful. They do the work of swapping the pronouns around for the reader. It’ll generally be easier to have that handled on that end rather than making the reader do it themself. And, since it shouldn’t matter to the central story in most cases, it might as well be implemented, and make people who generally feel excluded feel more included.
I did try something sort of similar once when playing Alter Ego, which has a male version and a female version, but they’re both automatically heterosexual, so I preferred to try the female version… I decided to imagine my character was a trans man. It was an interesting playthrough, but there was often a bit of a disconnect where the narration was actually making gendered assumptions about how the main character felt or acted.
(Actually, just looking at the differences between male and female versions of the same scenes in that game, there are so many stereotypes applied not just to other characters but to the main character themself that it really just became an exercise in frustration 
)
I’d say the second person point of view is part of it, really 
Even when I read noninteractive stuff that’s in second person (unless it’s written in a letter format!) I can get pretty distracted when the character seems like a sort of “generic everyman” which just happens to always equate with a straight man, generally with a fairly specific literary character sort of personality, too…
I haven’t read more than the opening of Guinevere yet (though I do plan to eventually… there’s too many things to read compared to the amount of time!) but I feel like it being in first person helps, as well.
But then, those games can end up more attractive to boys than girls because they’re gender-locked. It perpetuates itself.
You know, it’s interesting you mention dragons specifically, because Choice of the Dragon is the CoG where my main character is female. I think this is because I feel a bit more of a disconnect when playing someone so far from humanoid (albeit, still a vertebrate; when do we get an invertebrate protagonist? 
), so it didn’t feel as important. And I just felt like it’d be cool for the awesome dragon to get to be female
Another factor would also just be, I mean, I like guys, I like seeing guys romancing guys, so I’m attached to and also just really enjoy having my male humanoid protagonists, but that factor completely goes away when playing a dragon, so…
Friendly female terrorizing dragon! 
When it comes to race, I do feel like it’s best not to assume the protagonist’s race (maybe with exceptions like Choice of the Petal Throne?). I suppose it is easier to write a game that doesn’t reference the MC’s race than one that doesn’t reference their gender, though, what with pronouns and gendered language, so I suppose this may be why it’s much less often an explicit choice.
Yep, that is why I’m even here; these also have the advantage that they lend themselves to stories with gay protagonists that aren’t entirely about being gay 
I do feel like it would’ve been valuable to me growing up… the fact that I didn’t really see gay characters in stories much led to me not really thinking of it as an option, despite not having had a homophobic upbringing… actually, I’d say getting to play around on the sims and realizing “hey, I can make male sims kiss each other” and “hey, I like making male sims kiss each other” were pretty instrumental in realizing I liked guys… so getting to romance guys in interactive fiction I’m sure could fill a similar role…
It’s mainly that I have incredibly fast-growing stubble (which is also quite dark).
But I tend to like the stubbly look on other guys too, so… chacon a son gout? 
Oh, yeah, my leg problem tends to be that even skinny jeans tend to end up kinda baggy on me, and “normal” fits are just… yeah.
I’ve been lifted by women considerably shorter than me
I guess part of the thing with that is that people will vary a lot as far as what they consider cute/attractive, so if there’s a guy being described as super-attractive who just doesn’t sound like my type, that could sometimes be a bit offputting as well (though not nearly as much as if the gender’s wrong, yes).
A bit, yeah. Not quite as much, I think, but it’s in there.
My understanding was that that label will include gender- and sexuality-locks, but that they’ll be aiming for a diverse range of those
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If I recall, I had one person ship you with your male best friend, and another with your female best friend, regardless of your own gender.
Choice of Arachnids! 
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Nope nope nope nope nope!!
…maybe? 
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… Huh.
I wish I could say that this isn’t something I’ve ever seen before, but… LOL.
I think you mean LOL th !
…
I’ll show myself out…
Oh yeah, and with regards to male-locking due to gender roles of like men as warriors and hunters… I just want to leave a link to this blog post about various different real-world cultures featuring women hunters. Definite food for thought when designing your own worlds.
! You’re the best!
Though I might also enjoy a cephalopod protagonist… 
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The Internet is a strange place so… yeah.
(To be fair Spider…People don’t really interest me like that anyway. Unless they’re some of the lovely Marvel Ladies.)
http://nerdreactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Spider-Women_Alpha_Lee_Variant-thumb.jpg
Please don’t make me look…
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How’d we get from male-locked to spiders and cephalopods? LOL
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Innerwebmagic! 
See? Web? It is aaaaaall connected! 
Except the two computers on my home LAN… 
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That is terrifyingly sexy, im in awe.
We might have gotten a wee bit off topic… 
And turned slightly silly. 
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I think cephalopods are super-interesting creatures, that’s all 
I didn’t mean it like that… they’re some of my favorite animals… 
This is what happens when I make throwaway side comments, I guess about how even if we’re playing a dragon, we’re still a vertebrate…
A dragon is the least human protagonist we have so far, right? …Wait, no, if we count Hosted Games, you can play as an iron atom. Okay, that one’s hard to beat.
(You are still assumed to be an atom who’s attracted to atoms with female pronouns in the opening scene, though which I found especially jarring given that… I… am… an atom… 
)
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next time keep reading before replying, i already pointed why, but let me say it again, there are types of games or genres that are far more appealing to one gender, be it male or female,
for example (and i mean the majority ) there are more girls that like romance novels rather than warfare ones while males will prefer more warfare novels rather than romance novels.
(i have 5 sisters… and not even 1 likes to watch war movies or read war centered books, they prefer comedy or romance movies, in books and games is exactly the same the majority prefer a certain type of genres.)
Well to be fair if I got to have a COG game where I can play as a giant kraken and be awesome I would down with that. Just this is me after foolishly googling ‘cephalopod girls’…
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