Just want to dispel the assumption that male locked games are not getting complaints in the reviews.
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Adding to what Jacic said. Here’s a few more reviews complaining about games being genderlocked to male. Obviously, female genderlocked games probably get the same type of reviews. But it’s not exclusive to them.
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In all honesty, It seems like both Genderlocked male and Genderlocked female games both get the same amount of hate. I think we should strife for more games to be gender option than gender locked male or female. Although I know in some games that’s not possible.
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I’m actually surprised most people bought it without even reading the very clear message that you can’t play as female and then complained about it.
Try the demo before you buy, people! Otherwise you may regret your purchase.
Lol.
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I agree with the first part, but the 2nd part is what I fundamentally disagree with(This rant is NOT mainly aimed towards you btw, Nathaniel).
I disagree that “we” should strive for more gender choice in what others write, or anything else for that matter. What these(mostly) very talented people with such a vast imagination that they are able to put in to words, and ultimately make in to a choice game, a work of fiction, whether good or bad, is not up to anyone else to dictate, or frankly even have an opinion on how they should or shouldn’t do it(unless they specifically ask). You can criticize what you don’t like all you want, you can disagree with anything you want, you can choose to not read/buy what is offered, you can have all the opinions you want ABOUT their fictional work.
But what you can’t do is tell them how they should or shouldn’t do it for X, Y or Z reason. Creative freedom isn’t a joke, and people trying to influence that by claiming WHATEVER reason for it, have no right to do so.
And some people may laugh or scoff at this. And I know there aren’t any rules here about this specifically, but ultimately what creates change isn’t rules, it’s social and cultural pressure, for better or worse.
Again this is not targeted towards anyone in particular, but just generally people who intend to influence what people should and shouldn’t do with their own fictional work. In short people who don’t seem to understand the fundamental idea of creative freedom. That is IT.
It is absolutely NOT my intention to shut anyone down or try to stop any discussion. I just think maybe people should be more careful about eroding(intentional or not) the absolute freedom that these talented fiction writers have, and rightly so.
Rants aren’t always fun but I feel like this needed to be said, whether you think it’s entirely relevant to this particular “discussion”, or not.
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well I agree we should strife with less gender locked stuff in general…and more open to everyone . it limit creativity and I’m all for The sky is the limit .
How long after release were those written, mnn?
No offense but why is that relevant? How is a review written on the day of release more or less relevant than one a week later? Reviews are written as people see/read them. I have cogs/HGs sitting on my phone for months I haven’t had a chance to read yet, if I review them a few months later, is my opinion less relevant?
To answer your question, honestly I don’t know. I’d have to go back and look since I deliberately cut people’s names out of the cut/pastes of reviews and the date is above that.
All I’m saying is gender locking is complained about on both sides of the divide and it shouldn’t be made out to be a purely sexist problem, its more a “some people don’t like their character creation being restricted” kind of problem.
If sexism is occurring, have at it with my blessing, but if it’s not, it weakens the strength of arguments when there is a big problem occuring. The main issue is the disparity between male to female locked games. Hopefully we’re seeing a change in that with 2 releases and a few more wips on the way 
Edit: My bad, I did that quickly this morning and the dates are in there, for some reason I was thinking they were at the top of the review. Would have to check the release dates of the games in question and compare, but tbh I’m not going to as my point still stands about its relevance.
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Oh, c’mon. It’s genderlocked but you can’t say it’s infinitely worse to X. Just like @GoldenSilver said, it’s mentioned at the start of the game.
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Will,
Have at it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with stereotypes/cliches, as they’re cliche for a reason. They can work. It’s all about how you handle it.
Myself, before I decided to pack it in here, I was going to have a male character’s wife and child murdered at the start, kickstarting the story after a slow start with the revenge aspect driving the story onwards to a conclusion.
In fact, amusing story. Well, it is to me anyway. When I first went on a writing forum to hone my craft about . . . thirteen years ago, I saw someone reference the ‘looking at themselves in the mirror’ trope. My reaction was to try and include it in my writing in a manner that worked. No, I wasn’t successful. 
It produced laughs.
So yeah, don’t be afraid of writing about things that have been done before.
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Let’s see, pulling data at essentially random (GPS 1 star ratings because it’s easy for me to skim via the dev console):
Sabers of Infinity number of one star reviews mentioning gender: 0% (0/5)
Great Tournament number of one star reviews mentioning gender: 0% (0/176)
versus
Courting of Miss Bennet number of one star reviews mentioning gender: 50% (4/8)
Slayer of Evil number of one star reviews mentioning gender: 33% (1/3)
You know, if you want to actually talk about facts and numbers.
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True, but 43% (if I’ve added it up right?) of 4-5* reviews that mention female locking as the (or one of the primary) reasons for giving a score that high, where as I haven’t seen the equivalent happening for the male locked games I looked at. So locking has worked both ways review wise for that particular game. That seems to have not occured for Slayer of Evil, so maybe future female locked games will not continue to get that boost though to offset poor reviews which is a shame.
I’m sure there are some people out there giving overly poor reviews because they’re unhappy they can’t be a man in the story of their choice, but it seems to me reading the reviews as if it’s the gender locking itself that is an issue for both male and female readers. I don’t know why it seems there’s a higher chance for 1* female reviews apparently, maybe males mark harsher against it than females, or perhaps the other games were good enough that they were given a pass above 1* despite the locking. (I have a feeling if you are 1* rating level against playing a woman, you’re probably also not going to enjoy pride and prejudice at all just going by who the target audience of that book was, and slayer of evil was not just gender locked but character locked as well.)
Anyway, I guess the point I was trying to make was that that taking stars off for genderlocking doesn’t seem to be a male domain. think it’s really rough when any locked game whether male or female are marked that harshly this way. I actually do like some (but not all) games that have a degree of character locking if it makes the story more focused in a particular way as a personal preference, and it makes me kind of sad that we may not get them because it seems as if there is such a review backlash regarding them. (It’s not just gender I’m talking about either, even NPT had poor reviews due to having both a male and female character to choose from but each was locked to a particular character. So yep, this is where part of my opinion has come from about some players disliking any kind of character creation restriction 
)
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@Jacic the timing is relevant.
There is a difference between a Review to be read thus:
“I played through this and see no reason why this ‘needed’ to be locked to male, so im giving this a low rating”
Vs
“I see that this has no male option. I have not played it, but that alone makes this a one star game”
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The one at the top of my list did actually do that :). They opened it up, saw the male lock and left a poor review.
Anyway, dipping out of this conversation now. I just wanted to bring attention to the fact there does seem to be a general backlash against any kind of character restriction in some players, whether that’s gender and/or character locking. I have nothing against either female or male locked games personally, quite the opposite. I am also not a fan of the major male locked games that have been mentioned, not because I’m female, but because the genre hasn’t appealed to me, the same as the female locked game Miss Bennett because I personally have a dislike of P&P. On the other hand I will buy Donor and Gwen as soon as they hit the shelves as I think they are fantastic games all round.
But also from what @RETowers has said, there appears to be a disparity between the severity of the star removal between the games she looked at. I don’t have any answers as to the exact reason for that, but it is potentially a problem in the way the reader base is viewing such things. I find it a shame that people are marking games with any kind of restriction in character creation down for it, but different people like different things and that’s the way of the world I guess. I have a suspicion that the 1* reviewers are probably not on this forum given it is generally a pretty accepting place.
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How do you relate creative freedom to general freedom of expression? Because if you see the former as a case of the latter, then there’s a pretty strong irony in your post. You’re writing to vehemently express the opinion that writers (of reviews and forum posts) shouldn’t express vehement opinions about what writers (of games) should express…
Myself, I believe in freedom of expression, emphatically including the right of people to say whatever they want about games.
I also think there’s plainly a surfeit of male-locked games, and would welcome an increase in nb-locked and female-locked games as well as pick-your-gender games. I enjoy Infinite Sea and Study in Steampunk immensely, and have said many times that they’d be even better with a Broadsides style genderflip. I don’t think I’m outside my rights to say that, or that by doing so I diminish Paul or Heather’s creative freedom one whit.
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The reason? entitlement. The same entitlement that brought us G*merg *ate and other ‘gems’.
Some dudebros hating on the fact people not them getting stuff.
I, personally, would not be surprised if Miss Bennet is another example of that. It’s an almost word-to-word copy of P&P, written by a guy. Who might, maybe, have been reasoning only women would even be interested in this.
Most women (cis, trans, presenting) I know would have given at least a male option in this, cause they’d wager if not know there’s enough thirst for Mr Darcy amongst guys too.
It’s absurd, the same guys that’d give a bad rating to such a game without playing it, solely cause it’s locked are often times the same that will insist only women would play such games.
/shrug
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Thanks Havenstone, you’ve got out what I think I’ve tried and failed to a few times in this thread. You are open to allowing author freedom and would like to see more variety. Although you would like to see genderflipping, you have phrased it in a way that does not accuse the author of doing something they probably never intended in their work. Phrased that way, I’d say authors would be more likely to take this kind of thing on board instead of becoming defensive.
Possible. I generally try not to jump to conclusions. I guess I try to give humanity the benefit of the doubt rightly or wrongly sometimes.
I really think we need to take a step back and not put words into the author’s mouth like that and assume to know his reasoning for writing Miss Bennett. I think that’s getting unfair to character assasinate like that and I don’t even know the guy.
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i’ll edit things
edit: edited, apologies to the author if that wasn’t his reasoning
Yes. I don’t know if you saw it earlier in the thread, but I asked one or two questions. What I was wanting to do was not liked or rather, it wasn’t for them. I had no issue with it, as they were respectful and weren’t trying to tell me what to do. The moment someone ‘tells’ me what I have to do or tries to force me, there’s a problem. I know that because of something said earlier in the thread, though it’s also a combination of other things, I’ve personally become very resistant to writing for here anyway. So much of it is down to how the reader chooses to phrase their feedback and how they come across.
Basically, there’s a difference between Havenstone, for instance, saying they’d like to see more gender-flipping and saying you have to have more gender-flipping. There is no logical reason why a writer should have an issue with the former and it is perfectly reasonable. Myself, on the other hand, I have a differing view. I think more set characters (regardless of sex) and less power fantasy would be good, but we can agree to disagree and there’s absolutely no issue. Neither of us are trying to force things on others, and we’re simply trying to write our stories the way we want to and think is best. We’re just different writers and people at the end of the day.
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