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[SelfTitled]

So I'm currently making a game where the player can customise their character, this includes clothing. My original thought was to allow the user to pick their gender too but after starting some art I come to realise I'm may have to double the art work to support both a female and a male body shape. Added to this resource space is limited as the game is targeted at mobile.

As I see it my options are:

- Includes both, but make the body shape the same. In this case, is there any point in allowing a gender? Would the generic shape just be seen as defacto male anyway?
- include both, each with gender specific shapes and half the items available. Less items will mean less scope to the game. Will the gendered shapes still be seen as "tropes"?
- Only allow a single gender i.e. you can only be one gender. Less artwork is needed, but could alienate players of the opposite gender. How would I decide which gender to go with?
- No explicit genders. Make a generic body shape. Less artwork needed. May detract from character. Will the gender just be assumed to be male anyway?

 I was wondering what others have done in this situation? And any thoughts people may have on this issue?

[valrus]

If I were allowing customization at all, I'd allow gender customization too.  Otherwise it's a bit jarring, like "Be whoever you want to be! No, not like that! Boys only. Be whatever boy you want to be."  In that case I'd rather have a fixed character of your invention.

I would just put the secondary sexual characteristics in the clothes rather than the body, treating it as padding, and have only a few options for shirt & pants, then put more of the clothing customization into clothing where the padding isn't (shoes, belts, etc.) and have lots of unisex options. (Haircuts that are valid for both sexes, weird hats, robot arms, etc.)

[affine]

- Includes both, but make the body shape the same. In this case, is there any point in allowing a gender? Would the generic shape just be seen as defacto male anyway?

This is an awful choice. Humans have been programmed over the course of millions of years to identify each other, among other things, by gender. Introducing ambiguity in gender is nearly (but not quite) as uncomfortable for us (see Saturday Night Live's "Pat") as facial ambiguity (see The Uncanny Valley).

The only and sole exception to this rule is having a highly stylized and impressionistic art style that implies emphasis on the face, and in particular facial features that are found in both men and women. A game like this would invariably end up looking like an XBL avatar or something from Zynga. No boobs, zero muscle mass, narrow shoulders, flat butt, etc. You have exactly zero way of making your character look unquestionably heroic, such as with muscles or a strong jawline, or attractive with highly feminine facial features (I'm using facial features and not body parts here on purpose to prove a point.)

- include both, each with gender specific shapes and half the items available. Less items will mean less scope to the game. Will the gendered shapes still be seen as "tropes"?

Who cares about tropes? And if you have both, it becomes an issue of execution (i.e. making enough content) and not of ethics. Is this an ethical issue, or is it an execution issue? My guess is by hosting this discussion, you're attempting to make this ethical.

- Only allow a single gender i.e. you can only be one gender. Less artwork is needed, but could alienate players of the opposite gender. How would I decide which gender to go with?

You do not, per se, alienate players by requiring the character they play to be of the opposite sex. That's absolutely ridiculous. Look at Tomb Raider, Elder Scrolls, Metroid, Alien, etc. To say you even slightly alienate your target audience is ridiculous.
As a general rule, guys do not care who they play as, and girl gamers tend to care less too as long as the game is good. How do we know this? Because if girl gamers didn't enjoy playing games where they had to play men, they'd be heavily concentrated in the RPG scene, where character customization is a big part of the narrative. We know this isn't true, though, and girl gamers can of course be seen playing the same games that guys do.

If your target audience is "girls in general", or even "people in general", then you might want to rethink your genre. Casual games are for normal people. They don't want to have to think about who they are playing when they have five minutes to waste on the subway. Make your narrative as dumb as you have to if this is your goal (see Flappy Bird, or any iOS game that has zero narrative.)

- No explicit genders. Make a generic body shape. Less artwork needed. May detract from character. Will the gender just be assumed to be male anyway?

Refer to #1.

[clockwrk_routine]

generating assets cheaply

I've been really getting into modular animation for 2d assets, but the idea still applies to 3d models.  The advantage is outputting a lot for a little of up front work.  With 2d I have skins, that include the various body parts of my model, head, body, arms, legs various accessories as well.  Then I have a set of 20 animation files that reference files that contains various heads, bodies, arms, legs, and accessories.  I tick which layer I want to use, save the file, and it updates on all the animation files.  I then render each file to a spritesheet and have a full set of animations for any given character whether they're female or male or lizard it doesn't matter.  spriter's (free version) is great for this, you can also use photoshop and smart layers which is what I do.

Now for 3d, I looked into this a while a go for unity, so I might have the details messed up.  But models can share animations and skeletons, you just have to come up with the model, so you only have to model once.  Now if you want to have players swap heads and bodies, you can have again various models of separate body parts, and then parent the bones of the skeleton to these body parts.

so hypothetically if I had a limited budget, and producing an 3d rpg, I'd have one base(naked) set of male features and one base set of female features.  Per body part I'd have a set of "accessories" I could toggle visible of, such as rings, bracelets, elbow pads, shoulder pads for an arm.  I'd have shirts, necklaces, armor pieces for a body.  Hair, eyes, noses, blemishes, scars, mouths for a face.  To get even more variety I'd have the source files for textures lying around so I can adjust colors and then output it to the referenced texture.

Then my world's townspeople would be comprised the same way, probably randomly generated, maybe picking from a set per region, town that they are from or something.

for 2d you can also compile your players characters at runtime, possibly exporting their spritesheets after they've made their choices, or just precompiling to memory.  you'd have to have a animation data for how each part rotates. another way is driving the parts with the animation data at runtime, which you can apply physics to as well if you wanna do that.

[Alec S.]

If I were allowing customization at all, I'd allow gender customization too.  Otherwise it's a bit jarring, like "Be whoever you want to be! No, not like that! Boys only. Be whatever boy you want to be."  In that case I'd rather have a fixed character of your invention.

This.  Character Customization systems are so that you can play as whoever you want, and often so that you can play as yourself, or someone who looks like you, or looks like how you want to look.  Not allowing ~50% of the population that ability defeats the purpose of a character customization system, and makes them feel like the game was not really made for them, or with them in mind.

You do not, per se, alienate players by requiring the character they play to be of the opposite sex. That's absolutely ridiculous. Look at Tomb Raider, Elder Scrolls, Metroid, Alien, etc. To say you even slightly alienate your target audience is ridiculous.

Of all those things you mentioned, only one of them has customize characters and, what do ya know, it also has the option to play as both men and women.

Basically, the question is is your character a fixed character, or are they an avatar for the player.  In the first case, there should be little to no customization (except maybe costume.  For example Bayonetta or No More Heroes).  In the later case, you should be able to choose your gender.

Anyway, back to the original point, either going with one, androgynous body-type would work (if the style is simple or stylized enough that the lack of distinguishing sexual features won't be odd).  In this case, the player could read whatever gender they want on to the character (men are not the default).  Other than that, just making two sets of art with different body types.  This isn't a trope, there is actual sexual dimorphism in humans.  Men tend to have broader shoulders, women tend to have breasts and wider hips, ect...  As long as you don't make the differences too exaggerated you should be fine.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

I want to stop in here to +1 alec, +1 keo, -1 affine. There are a lot of easy/cheap/good ways to do gender cust and if the goal of your character customization is to be ~open~ there is no excuse not to include gender neutral or chars or both gender.

Idea: Why even make the player specify a gender?

[affine]

You do not, per se, alienate players by requiring the character they play to be of the opposite sex. That's absolutely ridiculous. Look at Tomb Raider, Elder Scrolls, Metroid, Alien, etc. To say you even slightly alienate your target audience is ridiculous.

Of all those things you mentioned, only one of them has customize characters and, what do ya know, it also has the option to play as both men and women.

The point was you have the ability to play as a woman, either through customization or by playing the game at all.

I want to stop in here to +1 alec, +1 keo, -1 affine. There are a lot of easy/cheap/good ways to do gender cust and if the goal of your character customization is to be ~open~ there is no excuse not to include gender neutral or chars or both gender.

Idea: Why even make the player specify a gender?

Great, so you get to put forth the effort of discrediting my opinion without telling me what is wrong with it? I don't care if you have several orders more of posts on this forum than I do, that is not okay.

I'm simply stating either the truth or what is most likely the truth based upon logic. I offered a rather extensive analysis that I'm willing to defend on a topic that really, really, really could use more objective discussion and less subjective.

[s0]

Idea: Why even make the player specify a gender?

i was mulling over this for a long time with rogue's souls. at first i didn't have a gender choice and the idea was that people could just imagine what their character's gender was (if they had one at all). i decided to keep starting class descriptions gender neutral too.

but then when i switched from ASCII to a proper tileset the player sprite my artist at the time made for me did look pretty male and i came to the conclusion that the idea of a "male default" player character is kinda pervasive in videogames. i started to feel like the "no gender" thing was maybe a bit of a copout. so i decided to put a gender choice into the game and ask my artist to create a female player sprite.

(ofc if your game has fairly extensive visual character customization you can probably leave the gender choice out)

[Sik]

Idea: Why even make the player specify a gender?

It's addressed in the first post, it's likely that then players will just assume the character is male. This would be probably OK if the character was fixed, but if you're customizing a character this would be seen as an issue.

[valrus]

Regarding what players do and don't think about gendered avatars, this booklet summarizes and cites some of the research that's been done: http://gel.msu.edu/investigaming.pdf .  Some works cited might be opinion pieces, but much seems to be experimental.  (Sadly, some of the cited research is behind paywalls if you're not at a university.)  Note the dates on the cites, though, since our online lives have changed rather dramatically since (say) 1998.

One summary jumped out regarding your question: "When given an androgynous avatar most children will identify it as a male character, but girls are more willing to see them as female."  But these are children, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a child avatar (much easier to make androgenous).

Another summary mentioned that "Females and males preferred exaggerated sexual bodies for their personal avatar over normal bodies" but "Both females and males avoided choosing avatars that “showed too much skin,” preferring a “fully dressed” avatar to a scantily clad one".  (Note that it's about choosing a female avatar.)  The original article for that is available online (http://soda.swedish-ict.se/2369/1/SICS-T--2005-06--SE.pdf); I read it because I found it a bit surprising.  The funny part is what men and women thought the OTHER gender would pick -- the women thought the men would overwhelmingly choose the "bimbo" one and the men thought the women never would, but largely they made the same choices.  (NB: This study design has several flaws, but the subjects' choices are interesting nonetheless.)

[baconman]

^ It's Sweden, no wonder. Sexuality is considerably more demystified there, culturally speaking. You're the weirdo if you HAVEN'T been seen naked there!

[biomechanic]

I'd say include a gender choice, but mostly for the pronouns. Include a third choice, "custom", and let the player specify them.
If you include multiple body shapes, let the player choose whichever they want, independent of the gender. Do that for hair, facial features, etc., as well.

And if you put a chainmail shirt on a character, make it display as chainmail shirt regardless of gender/body choice. Same with chainmail bikini.


https://twitter.com/AndroidArts/status/477790721161068545/photo/1

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

I want to stop in here to +1 alec, +1 keo, -1 affine. There are a lot of easy/cheap/good ways to do gender cust and if the goal of your character customization is to be ~open~ there is no excuse not to include gender neutral or chars or both gender.

Idea: Why even make the player specify a gender?

Great, so you get to put forth the effort of discrediting my opinion without telling me what is wrong with it? I don't care if you have several orders more of posts on this forum than I do, that is not okay.

I'm simply stating either the truth or what is most likely the truth based upon logic. I offered a rather extensive analysis that I'm willing to defend on a topic that really, really, really could use more objective discussion and less subjective.

Yo, I want to clear this up: I'm not attacking you or your worldview personally. I'm not trying to discredit you, I'm just stating that I disagree with you.

I have no interest in debating why, this isn't an "explain gender & character design" thread.

(ps: post counts are dumb, and if anyone weigh my opinion based on my postcount I would like them to stop.)

C.A. Silbereisen:

Good post. Things I personally like: Sex sliders, or an option to pick "masculine/feminine bodytype" that doesn't specify gender. I'd love to see male/female signs replaced with some other abstract shape. The "usability" advantages of those symbols is silly.

[Sik]

Ideally we wouldn't even need a gender setting, but the problem is that as humans we have gotten accustomed to assign a gender to absolutely everything that seems living, so the "make it genderless" idea simply doesn't work at all in practice. I mean, take a look at this (sorry, no scaled up version):



There isn't absolutely anything about that character that implies gender. 100% sure that most (if not almost all) people will assume it's male, due to a lack of female signifiers. If something as simplified as that gets assumed as male, imagine what would be the situation with more complex looking characters.

[baconman]

^ If those are hands, it's male. If they're boobs, it's female. It can really go either way.

[Alevice]

use animals that are not anthropomorphic enough to have gender distinguishing features.

[Muz]

Ideally we wouldn't even need a gender setting, but the problem is that as humans we have gotten accustomed to assign a gender to absolutely everything that seems living, so the "make it genderless" idea simply doesn't work at all in practice. I mean, take a look at this (sorry, no scaled up version):



There isn't absolutely anything about that character that implies gender. 100% sure that most (if not almost all) people will assume it's male, due to a lack of female signifiers. If something as simplified as that gets assumed as male, imagine what would be the situation with more complex looking characters.

I actually assumed it as genderless because it's naked and doesn't have a penis.

You could probably hide it a bit by doing something like heavy armor (the metroid way), but if you have customization, you probably have a lot of features.

I'd just make the character female. Guys like looking at females. Girls like having a non-male protagonist for once.

[zombieonion]

Journey works without the characters in it being explicitly gendered.
So does Minecraft.
Do what you can pull off best, OP.

[wccrawford]

Journey works without the characters in it being explicitly gendered.
So does Minecraft.
Do what you can pull off best, OP.

I agree with Journey.  I never felt "gender" at any time when playing that, and that was perfectly fine.

Minecraft, however, has skins for the characters, and multiplayer, and most definitely has gender.  You can specify it as whatever you want through skin customization, but it's definitely there.  And the default is male.

[jolene]

skate 2 had a gender option that was clearly using the male model but i actually liked it cos, well i read into everything as trans :p

my game, lizzi (the lizard character pictured in my avatar) has a pronoun choice (she/he/they) or an exposed text file that lets them put invented pronouns if ppl wanna b fancy

also something that made me mad, depression quest doesn't seem to assign a gender to the player character but every steam review i read about it assumed male because the character has a girlfriend.