This thread, as the countless ones like this before, can, once again, be summarized as
‘Men don’t understand why people that aren’t cis, male, hetero, white etc can’t just ‘enjoy the game for its story’, while simultaneously saying they can’t understand the appeal of games with MCs that aren’t cis, male, hetero, white etc’
Someone with more spoons please check if we can already tick off the ‘if you don’t like it make your own’ bingo-square.
It sounds like you are saying the reply “Why not make it yourself” is a bad thing? Surely it gives someone else something to write they’d enjoy? Isn’t more people writing IF a good thing?
The way ‘why don’t you make it yourself’ is unfortunately far to commonly used in cases like this is to discourage people from stuff.
Like, the on saying that expects them to admit they can’t, or to just not do anything because they dunno how. Usually the same people will ‘promise’ to totally support the person should they make their own thing, again expecting to have nothing come of it. (A certain author lately did that on their twitter in response to people telling them their Mental-Illness representation is a (dangerous) disaster, for example, their entire tweet reeking of trying to put people down while at the same time portraying themself as the great benefactor who’s a victim of unfair criticism).
Or, when they go and make their own thing, the one who said that before might even go and push it back down.
Fair enough. That makes sense. Thank you for explaining.
I mean, I can imagine it’s frustrating for those who don’t really like writing or can’t do it as well as a professional writer can. They’d like their preferences and loves to come to life too. I was able to make my own because I love writing and I’ve been practicing it since I was little. But it’s like, if you told me to do a complicated math equation on my own, I’d just sit there blank in confusion.
But at the same time, I’d hate to tell a writer they have to do it a certain way. I would just stop writing entirely if I was told I had to write a story with only traditional gender roles.
It’s a shame, because of course there should be more stories, not just for CoG/HG. But it’s often either the above mess, or people bing intimidated by the code (it looks much more complex than it is lbh)
I know what you mean. It’s very easy to go OTT with the code. The more you do it the more tricks you learn to streamline the code.
And the more you learn to have the code do tricks.
But back to the topic.
I’ve always likened it to a kid’s clubhouse. It’s awesome, it’s got all the best games that everyone keeps talking about, tasty snacks, etc. It is the coolest place around. And there’s a giant sized neon sign saying “Boys are Welcome!!!” At no point does it say that everyone else can’t come play, but it’s not exactly welcoming.
People have been using the “gamers are primarily men” argument for a long time, but it’s honestly not true unless your definition of what a constitutes a game is very limited. Women play tons of mobile games. Why? Do they like puzzles more? Or is it just that those games are more targeted at them? As far as I know, we simply lack the information needed to sort all this out just yet, which seems like it should make all of us cautious about making assumptions.
It really only bothers me when gender didn’t matter in the first place. When you can be everything and anything you want, when the sheer volume of choices are lauded… but the one choice you can’t make is to play as anything other than a male. That said, I don’t expect anyone to write stories that cater to me. I’d really really like you to, but you gotta tell your story in your way and I don’t blame anyone for it. I almost certainly won’t play it, but that’s okay too.
I think it’s very important to bring this up from time to time. Not because anyone should necessarily change what they’re writing, but because it’s worth considering why men have more games and stories. It’s worth asking if historical accuracy is an excuse and why it couldn’t have been done another way. It’s worth it just to remind everyone that there really is a significant portion of the audience that isn’t straight or male that is absolutely starving for content that features us. Where we aren’t just some afterthought.
So I guess my answer to the original question is that men are considered the default. Genderlocking to male is seen as a safe move while (I’m guessing) people are worried that a female/nb/trans-locked game wouldn’t sell as well which is fair because it’s honestly hard to be sure. For all that many guys like to say that player character gender doesn’t matter to them, just as many pop out of the woodwork to complain when games are genderlocked female (in other genres). Maybe it would be fun and novel to them… but maybe not.
It’s worth thinking about.
The host games only I think a small amount of gender lock mail and the ones of genuine quality over our even smaller. I am all for gender lock of any gender as long as it can I had a depth to the game play or different perspective.
I recently read an interesting article on How To Fight Write about female characters, ‘realism’, and historical fiction. The article discusses women’s fencing in the Victorian era (which yes, was a thing), addressing a question from a writer who had complaints of historical inaccuracy despite extensive research on the subject.
Then they branch out, discussing how to reflect women’s diverse roles in history more accurately, how to handle it when research collides with readers’ assumptions, and how to portray women fighters (or women doing any other culturally-unexpected thing) as reasonable and expected in societies where it, in fact, actually was.
One suggestion was the use of a ‘robust mixed cast’ to demonstrate normalisation, bypassing the sometimes-automatic reader reaction of ‘but women didn’t—’ or ‘but women can’t—’. I found it an interesting article, well worth a read.
Took me awhile to read through everyone’s comments. Firstly, kudos to everyone mostly not attacking each other. Secondly, I get the desire to want to be able to more clearly imagine yourself being the protagonist, and it’s an extremely important part of IF. I would even say it’s the most important thing that fuels all of CoG/HG.
However, no author is responsible or beholden to any sort of obligation to make characters a certain way. They write characters they think are interesting, and hope the fan base does also. We cannot demand them to change anything without putting a linchpin into their creative process/ability. It seems nobody is a fan of the “write a story YOU want to see with characters YOU enjoy more”, but I really don’t see a way around it. The current authors write things they feel a passionate way about, and the best answer seems to me to have (more) authors who are passionate about representation write more of these games. The quick version of what I wanted to say was. We can’t force, demand, or generally attack authors own decisions. I think it’s also important to say that I don’t think any of the authors making genderlock roles “default male” is ever made out of some vindictive place.
You’re right, but I don’t see anyone here trying to make a rule about it. We don’t want to force authors to make fewer male-genderlocked games. And I doubt most of the people here are considering that the authors are vindictive or hostile to women. Most exclusivity in IF and regular fiction doesn’t come from hostility, though. It comes from ignorance or passiveness.
They don’t seem to care as much about the enjoyment of the games by players who aren’t male. Or they don’t understand why excluding women is hurtful. Neither of these things are hostile, but they are still negative, and still cause genders other than male to lose out.
Let’s take the oft-defended Sabres of Infinity for an example. I love this universe. Cataphrak has done an amazing job with it, and should be proud of his world. However he as an author chose to put women to the wayside in order to tell the story he wants to tell. That story covers topics such as what the male nobility is like, early wave feminism in noble society, and war. It’s understandable why he felt that a noble male protagonist was necessary. Those topics are entirely different from the lens of a woman, or from the lens of somebody not noble. But that doesn’t change the fact that the story he tells excludes women who want to play the game, by making us play a game where we are called ‘sir’, or a man. Making us see and do everything from the male perspective.
He made a decision, one which I respect, but one that I’m going to criticize. Just like I criticize A Study of Steampunk for the same reason. It tells women who want to play and fully enjoy the game that we just weren’t worth the extra time and effort, or that the story is much more difficult (near impossible) to write from the perspective of a woman and the perspective of a man.
Can I play devils advocate here :). I haven’t read Sabres yet, but the world in which it is set isn’t gender equal as you say, so customisation has been reduced in order for the author to tell the story he wants with the amount of character and worldbuilding he wants. I believe that there’s actually another story from him in in works coming from a female perspective. If it’s works well, it could actually be a chance to have a series that is looking at the world through different viewpoints rather than excluding one gender or another and seeing more how that world ticks so to say.
When it’s announced and production begins I might agree, but until then the only product (not words, though Cataphrak’s words are words I tend to trust) I have to judge is the Infinity Series.
Normally I wouldn’t post on these thread, but I noticed that CoG’s hosted games are the only interactive fiction I know of that only EITHER genderlocks to male, or doesn’t genderlock at all.
Other organisations I’ve seen either include female genderlocks, don’t allow customisation, or don’t have male genderlocks at all, or only genderlock to female.
Well, it’s probably because HG writers are not VN writers. 
Female-locked VN romance games are a huge market but they tend to have much higher production values than most HGs.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Hosted Games is not a singular organisation and the only reason female genderlocked games aren’t included is because no one has written one yet.
It’s not just about the “extra time and effort”. In the case of the Infinity series, the entire story would have to be rewritten to allow you to play as a woman. That’s a ridiculous demand. And yes, that particular story, at that point in time, in that society, playing as a noble officer, is literally impossible to told from the perspective of a woman.
It’s fair enough if you don’t want to play games genderlocked as a male. I don’t want to play Guenevere either. But I understand why Guenevere is female-genderlocked, so I’m not going to barge in and demand it cater to my preferences. You can criticise a story where there’s a genderlock that isn’t needed (I think Steampunk is arguable for example), but it doesn’t make sense to criticise a game solely because of the existence of a genderlock. Some stories have to be told from the perspective of a certain gender or character, and Hosted Games is all about allowing people to write those stories.
That’s not quite true. Seraphinite has done 3 visual novels where the protag was genderlocked to female, but her Wayhaven Chronicles game is very inclusive. So I’m not sure how being a VN writer leads to genderlocking? Or maybe I am mistaking your point? 
This is one important point where you and I disagree. The very fact that you understand why a game is genderlocked should be an important reason to allow you to criticise it. An informed critique is much more valid and useful than an uninformed critique.
Again, we disagree. This is your opinion and while being respectful, others can disagree with it.
Neither @LanaRose or I am barging in and demanding anything from Cataphrak when we critique … on the other hand by saying:
you are explicitly proving the statement made by Lotus
You are saying that the story is impossible to write from a woman’s perspective. I don’t believe this to be true nor do others. I respect the fact that you believe this but I’m not going to agree with something that is wrong, no matter how “ridiculous” you think it is to disagree with you.
“[H]ave to be told” is an opinion, one which many of us in this community disagree with. HG allows a lot and that is usually a good thing; sometimes allowing something normalizes it and that is where it stops being a good thing and turns into a harmful thing.
Luckily, the community has not allowed the normalization of such trends through threads like this one and criticism of even the best genderlocked games.