All those surveys where the ratio has been as small as 50:50 or 55:45 have included mobile app games such as like Candy Crush Saga etc, so it depends on what ones definition of a ‘gamer’ is.
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Sorry but you are wrong here; Paul has even talked about a “hidden female” soldier who is a part of the series as written … so since its a plot with a woman soldier already in it, you can have such.
Take the last category - there are very few sports titles written with women players - this past year was the first ever for a basketball sports title from a major company - there are many reasons why genre comparisons are not only poor to use but most likely misleading.
This also is wrong - these games are usually pay-as-you-go and have ingame revenue streams. As a matter of fact, CandyCrush earned Activision/Blizard more revenue then all the others in their library - 4 billion dollars this past year, if I remember the earnings call from yesterday…
but to your point, see above.
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Yeah, I expect if you get into breakdowns the split will start varying, but when you just take “gaming” period the split was 54% female the rest male/undeclared.
The Obsidian Entertainment one was like 90% male or something. I’ll dig up the link again if desired but the results were totally out of left field.
Edit: have a link anyway https://forums.obsidian.net/blog/9/entry-206-the-results-of-our-recent-dlc-survey/
I don’t think you’re sorry at all
Yeah, that’s a good point. 
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My only question to this point is why
Why does it matter if the mc is a dude or girl, it’s your imagination you can do whatever you want.
And for video games I can see it a bit more since you are directly looking at a charecter but still is a game.
why is it so important
Well, Candy Crush is a game, isn’t it? An extremely successful one, at that. I know people who dedicate hours a day to those sorts of games, investing quite a bit of money, and I hardly think the value of the games are diminished simply because they’re “apps.” The people who play these games are no less a gamer than someone who puts in the same amount of time and effort into an FPS.
And this isn’t even getting into how thoroughly unwelcoming most male-centric games are for women in literally every possible way, which vastly skews the data. That’s a whole post on its own.
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I have to agree with this reasoning. From my experience, it really depends on the perspective of the reader. This situation would irked some readers while some (including me) will learn to adapt and accept. SoH’s author did mention that the Ronin has somewhat a personality of their own with a mixed of customization for the MC to control.
All in all, it’s pretty hard to cater to everyone’s need since we are all diverse. This is a major challenge for CoG and HG writers out there. Heck… Even in other media, you cannot please everybody.
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Alrighty, so, I’ll start this off by saying that I really almost never understand why games have to be genderlocked. The “realism” argument to me has always been shaky at best unless you’re portraying a very specific character. (Examples others have brought up include Guinevere, and Study in Steampunk- though admittedly the latter does also seem a bit more shaky than the former to me since so much is changed from the original Sherlock Holmes and Watson forumla and while it’s very clearly taken inspiration from that it’s not exactly a direct portrayal of it but more an interpretation which does make me wonder slightly about the lack of possibility for a female MC… and I say this as someone who still holds this game as my all-time favorite text based game, period. Granted because I do hold it in such high regard it really also doesn’t bother me that much in that case. But that is, also, an outlier case of extremely positive bias.)
And then, of course, there’s “realism” in fantasy, which always blows my mind whenever people argue that it wouldn’t be realistic to have a female or nonbinary soldier in a world filled with elves and dragons, or people who can bend the elements to their will.
Now, as for genderlocking based on the idea that the author doesn’t feel as if they’d be comfortable writing a gender different from their own. I think @Fawkes and @malinryden summed it up best but I’m going to add in my tiny two cents as well (and make this post most likely needlessly longer then however needlessly long it already is, ahaha.)
And my two cents wrapped up and summarized is, essentially: What’s the difference?
There was a conversation a while ago on this forum about gendered language here:
And I said my piece on that bit over there which I’ll just link to here so I don’t repeat myself.
And I guess the gist of that argument and this is, again, that question: What’s the difference?
I’d use the same words to describe a cocky, confident female character’s voice and movements the same way I’d describe a cocky, confident male character’s voice and movements, or a cocky, confident nonbinary character’s voice and movements. (Heck, I mean, I do already, that’s exactly what I do with a cocky, confident genderflippable character in my WiP. The words don’t change just because their gender does.)
So I guess I always wonder what it is that makes a character sound more masculine or more feminine, because honestly I don’t understand. I simply don’t get why it is writing a man is so different from writing a woman. They’re people. What matters most, I think, is whether you can write them as a good character- as a realistic person.
I really don’t see what big differences in personality or action come from gender in most of the situations that these stories center around.
Of course, all of this is coming from someone who hasn’t ever entirely understood the logic behind most of the arguments for genderlocking. So take this as you may, I suppose.
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So I’ve seen this topic come up before, and I’d like to share my feelings in this one as well: The realism argument is a bunch of garbage.
Very few interactive novels on this site follow realism religiously in exchange for making the game more fun for their audiences. Most aren’t going to study in depth the energy it takes to swing a flail, or punish the player for fighting in heavy armor in the middle of summer. Those things were challenges people in the past faced, and keeping those challenges in games is what’s most realistic.
But those aren’t in most interactive fiction games on this site. They might be in one or two, but I’m not even sure if that’s the case. Why not, you may ask? Because it simply isn’t fun. It isn’t fun for most people to be realistic to the point of limiting the abilities of the MC to the abilities of general soldiers through history. An ace pilot would almost certainly get shot down in combat unless they were extremely clever and patient. A strong soldier could still be killed by a stray arrow. The mob boss holding a gun to your head may shoot you no matter how good your charisma is.
But those endings, just immediate and uncontrollable death that your stats and past have no effect on, aren’t fun. They might be true to how someone in your position would die in history, but they aren’t fun. Convincing a pissed off mob boss not to kill you with nothing but words is fun. Being an ace pilot who wins constantly through just their abilities and a little luck is fun. Being a soldier who is unaffected by things like stray arrows is fun.
True realism isn’t fun. True realism is bloody, broken, and quick. You don’t relish in victories, you get taken down by someone better than you (there’s always someone better than you), your reputation is shattered by a superior who feels threatened by your rise. You get shot in the head by Stalin because he’s paranoid that you have betrayed him. Few are lucky enough to make it further.
So stop arguing about wanting to be realistic because that argument falls on its face compared to fun, which interactive fiction is meant to be. It’s because the author thinks it makes a better story, or because they don’t want to do the extra work of making a female main character is a male dominated world. And that’s fine, really. You don’t want to do that extra work, that’s all well and good.
But be honest with us. We’re your potential audience, the people you are deciding aren’t worth the extra effort to make us feel welcome. At least tell us the full truth of the matter.
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On the topic of writers feeling unsure about portraying an MC of a different gender than their own, I have struggled with that as well, but only ever when writing a main character for an interactive piece of fiction.
In a Choicescript game, the main character is supposed to be customizable and readers want to see them vary according to their choices. What I have personally found myself struggling with is that I do tend to write from the perspective of a woman mostly interested in other women.
So sometimes when reviewing something I’ve written, I start to wonder ‘does this make sense for a straight guy or a gay guy or even a straight woman…etc to think/say/act like?’
I do wonder if that is based on me being unable to shake off some stereotypes or a certain way of thinking, but there are also some much simpler issues like…height difference. If this NPC is much taller than the MC in my head (and the MC in my head is most likely gonna be a woman), would it be weird for them to be much taller than a male MC as well? Would male players be put off by this NPC doing something that female players might not find so uncommon?
As a specific example: You have a rather tall and muscular female NPC. NPC at one point goes ahead and picks the MC up to carry them out of danger. Doesn’t seem strange to me, but it gets me thinking about whether it would feel strange for people playing male MCs, especially if they imagined their MC as the big burly type.
So sometimes it’s not even necessarily ‘how do I accurately write from a man’s PoV’, but simple semantics.
It’s even more difficult if the NPCs, and especially the ROs, flip genders as well.
And with how complicated it can all potentially get if you want in-depth scenes and descriptions, I honestly can’t say I blame anyone for prefering to just lock their game to a specific gender. It certainly makes things easier.
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This could also be true for a female or nonbinary player though—for instance, take a friend of mine, a professional bodyguard who is female, and also happens to be about 190cm/6’2’’ and built very, very solidly, plus exercise routines and what.
Same for a male or nonbinary character—could be any height, weight, temperament, build, if you haven’t specified. (I still remember the weird stream of complaints I had when I had a male NPC who was 150cm/4’9’'. They exist too.)
This is one of the reasons I actually like the games where you’re never forced to state your gender. I feel like some of the rules and assumptions that frustrate me personally can be taken out that way—whether or not they’re replaced by a better method is (literally) another story, of course.
And I’ve ranted about it before, but gender assumptions are often so very cultural. With an international audience, some of the assumptions might not even make sense to some of the readers, especially depending on the setting/premise—and that affects immersion too.
And I know I do it as well…In general, I try to play through my own games with the specific purpose of examining assumptions for my PC: as a tough, burly, cranky enby; or a middling-height, clever, curvy woman or a slender, petite, sarcastic bloke, and see if it works. And if I think it does not, then I try to take a look at why not—is it that it can’t work? Or that I just think it ‘shouldn’t’—and if so, why?
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I think that cultural bias and perspectives are a key element in determining a role of a character and the appropriate gender(s) applied.
Though it gets worse when someone tries to imagine a culture they are not familiar with. We see it in fiction in general every day, I’d say. Where we know the author (likely) did not intend to be, lbr, racist, but thy failed research the whole nine yards.
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Well if anyone makes a gender locked female game let me know. But only if I can play a lesbian.
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Well there’s Guenevere, and I think you can technically play as a lesbian, since even though you’ve got to marry a dude you don’t have to be attracted to him. And there’s a female romantic interest.
Going to look into that. Heh sounds like the plot of an role-play I’m in. A Noble’s daughter is pledged to a knight Even though the Knight is into his childhood female friend and my character is in love with her hand maiden. Turns out the Knight isn’t a bad guy so now we all get what we want ( in secret)
For people who say they cannot imagine writing from a female perspective, why are they confortable in doing female NPCs then?
For MC it seems easier, since you can let the player imagine some details of the character, while for NPCs the author has to completely define everything them, including their “perspective”.
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Little tidbit: Personally I found it easier to just say screw it and give a flying F about genderlocking content in my thing.
The only ‘locked’ thing in my game is at the beginning when you talk about who of your relatives hates your guts and why, where ‘carrying out an unplanned pregnancy’ is only available to cis women, trans men and Gf/enby folks.
Everything else (including that ridiculous dress that makes you look like a bedazzled salmon) is available to everyone.
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I never noticed that the gender in Undercover Agent was never mentioned. People referred to you directly and professionally so it was seamless.