Inclusivity in games

[Fairy Godfeather]

I think it's okay to create blue games. It's okay to create pink games. If those are the sort of games you love creating, keep creating them.

However some indie game designers are lazy, they just create blue games because they've never even thought of the possibility of creating a game that's green or any other colour. So they have stock stories pasted on wherein between levels you get told of how you're a hero off to save your girlfriend/sister/mother/princess, or some such thing.

[Auro-Cyanide]

What if I like blue or pink? What if I want to see something specifically blue or pink? What then?

I mean, it is a valid point. Where do you draw the line?

Let me put it this way, and I'm going to do it a different way to the guy who wrote the article because I kind of disagree. Everyone has the entire spectrum of the rainbow to choose from, and yet some people use 2 colours to paint absolutely everything, totally regardless of whether it's the best choice or not. They might as well be seeing the world in black and white. It's lazy, it's boring and it doesn't even come close to being a good reflection of the world. Pink and blue are awesome colours. So are all the other colours. Use them all.

[Fairy Godfeather]

What if I like blue or pink? What if I want to see something specifically blue or pink? What then?

I mean, it is a valid point. Where do you draw the line?

Let me put it this way, and I'm going to do it a different way to the guy who wrote the article because I kind of disagree. Everyone has the entire spectrum of the rainbow to choose from, and yet some people use 2 colours to paint absolutely everything, totally regardless of whether it's the best choice or not. They might as well be seeing the world in black and white. It's lazy, it's boring and it doesn't even come close to being a good reflection of the world. Pink and blue are awesome colours. So are all the other colours. Use them all.

Oh that's so much more better phrased. I love the way you've stated that.

[Blutkristall]

Personally, I believe that being inclusive is nice, but it shouldn't be the end-all objective when designing something.
Once you have a concept, wouldn't it be foolish to bend and twist it around till it becomes as palatable to the masses as possible?
Just my two cents. Maybe I'm biased. Most humans are.

[Auro-Cyanide]

Personally, I believe that being inclusive is nice, but it shouldn't be the end-all objective when designing something.
Once you have a concept, wouldn't it be foolish to bend and twist it around till it becomes as palatable to the masses as possible?
Just my two cents. Maybe I'm biased. Most humans are.

I think a good way to look at it is trying to be more inclusive is a polite and decent human thing to do because it shows you are respecting those around you. It's like holding a door open for someone. You don't have to hold it open, you are going out of your way to do it and the other person could open the door in their own way, but it's considered the polite thing to do. You are free to just walk through yourself and not worry about anyone else, but then you really have no-one to blame when everyone else thinks you're a bit of an arse.

For us it's not always possible or easy to be more inclusive, especially in issues of accessibility that Fairy God Feather mentioned, which are pretty relevant to us. Accessibility is a rather complicated issue and revolves around a lot of design that people are still working out. Solutions are often complicated to work out. Since most people have trouble finishing their games as is, it's not surprising that it's not at the forefront of everyone's minds. However, thinking about it, being aware of it, implementing it when you can and understanding why it's important? The world certainly won't be a worse place if we do that. It's all about having a bit of goodwill for others, because no man is an island and all that.

[TrickWithAKnife]

Personally I think this is something that needs to be balanced carefully. There's nothing wrong with focussing on a target audience, and there's nothing wrong with trying to have broad appeal either.

The attitudes I think could benefit from adjusting at the ones where people say "I'm making the game I want, and I don't care what anyone else thinks." That's a really immature attitude, even from indie devs.

[Greeny]

As a dev, I'm more than happy to try and not exclude anyone in particular. While designing my currently in-progress puzzle game, I had a whole inner monologue about whether or not it would be okay to do a puzzle involving colours, thereby excluding colorblind people (even though I wouldn't even know about any visibility issues with in-place, not colour-related puzzle imagery).

But as a consumer, I'm more than willing to enjoy something that panders to my demographic, and I do enjoy them.

So the question is, what are we saying here? Are we just encouraging "green", or are we saying "blue" or "pink" is inherently wrong?

[TrickWithAKnife]

I can't speak for anyone else, but what I'm trying to say is that it's possible to make game more appealing to a broader audience without making it less appealing to your target demographic.

Sure, it takes a lot of creativity, but creativity seems to be the lifeblood of this community. Hell, this is where indie developers have an advantage over the colossal publishers.

Example: Having adult scenes in your game will make it more appealing to some people, and less appealing to others. Having those scenes off by default, but being able to turn them back on through the options menu makes it more appealing to more people.

[Fairy Godfeather]

I've actually wrestled with the idea of inclusivity in my games and appealing to a broader audience.

For me inclusivity would mean removing the queer elements of my games though. It would mean allowing someone to play the game without being made to feel awkward about all of the queer characters. I've thought about it long and hard. To allow for people to turn a blind eye, to avoid the queer content would widen my audience base, but at the same time I'd no longer be telling the sort of games I want to tell. So I'm not going for inclusive. Now this would be a different issue if I was aiming my games for mass-appeal first or hoping to make a living off of my games.

You can possibly play a straight character, but you'll just have to deal with all of your romantic options being bi. Properly bi, not just bi for the main character and a history of only straight relationships.

I think firstly people should just tell the sort of stories they want to. That while green, and purple, and all of the other rainbow colours should be encouraged, there's nothing wrong with blue and pink, as long as they're not the only colours there ever are.

As for inclusivity for disabled players, I think with the low budgets of most visual novels, it's a nice idea, but probably impractical. Symbols on coloured symbols can make a game colour-blind friendly though. A skip button for mini-games. Allowing keys to be redefined. Voice-acting. Subtitles. No purely sound based puzzles, or if there are allow a skip button.

And disabled people can be characters too, so sometimes it would be nice to see some, especially if they're fully fleshed out characters with personalities beyond their disability, as opposed to woe is me, pity me oh look I'm now magically healed.

[Mistik]

I try to be inclusive in my games as far as the marginally oppressed go. I try to add queer characters in, even if I have to sneak them in. I try to add characters of different skin tones, and for the last two small Vn’s I put out, I made the main character’s gender up to the player’s perception.

I did not think about colorblindness though. I should find out what colors are colorblind friendly and try to keep that in mind when coloring test.

I do think there is a balance between desire to overcome one’s own and society’s bigoted perceptions and creating a story. To me story comes first, even if it’s offensive.

[Blue Lemma]

The attitudes I think could benefit from adjusting at the ones where people say "I'm making the game I want, and I don't care what anyone else thinks." That's a really immature attitude, even from indie devs.

I think if you're making a game as a hobby, you really need some of that attitude. Some. It never hurts to consider other perspectives as mentioned here, but if you start getting too wrapped up in every possible bit of social issue, every possible offense, and every way you might be missing an opportunity to include this character or that character type, you'll go crazy. Suddenly you've stopped making games for the simple enjoyment and have started letting society and everyone else's social agendas dictate your creativity.

I mean, watch out for Tetris - that 1 x 4 block that everyone loves that makes a "tetris" is pretty darn phallic, and sticking it in an open slot is awfully suggestive...

I agree with Auro's door analogy to an extent, but I think it's more like the game creator's hands are loaded with all the tasks of creating a complete product. This makes it a lot harder to hold the door open, though still an option

[Victoria Jennings]

I haven't read the other posts yet, so I don't know if this was already mentioned, but if you make too much of an effort to include everything and everyone, you'll just end up devaluing all of them.

For example, collective's main cast (excluding the PC) consists of a gay male, a bisexual overweight half-Brazilian female, a straight male (that is "open-minded"), and an aromantic something-sexual Japanese female (she isn't entirely sure what she's attracted to). They just sort of came out that way, and none of these things have anything to do with the plot. Additionally, I have no transgender, black, hispanic, pansexual, asexual, lesbian, disabled, elderly, or poor main characters. I'm not going to add any of those kinds of characters, because it would not serve the plot in any way to do so. If I were to make a game with LGBTQ or racial issues as the subject matter, then it would make sense, but that's not what I'm doing. collective is a game and vehicle for plot first and foremost.

Now, what would be cool is if more people realized that you don't have to make something focusing on minorities just to include a minority character. A story doesn't have to be gay just because it has a gay character, or about race because it has a black character. Sometimes, people are just gay, or black, or female, etc., and that's that.

Aaand now I'm going to read the other responses.

EDIT: Okay, I pretty much agree with all y'all. I never considered disabled accessibility before, so I'm glad to hear about it now before I actually, y'know, finish any games. Thankfully, collective isn't the sort of game that requires hearing or color to play, so I'm good on that front.

[TrickWithAKnife]

I think it's fairly commonly agreed that trying to be more inclusive doesn'tean trying to cater for every possible person who plays VNs. It's all about balance.

[SHiNKiROU]

For color blindness, make sure your game is compatible with accessibility tools in your OS, but I don't think it's a big problem. You can understand most games in grayscale.

If you want to be inclusive, don't make one game that includes all minority types, instead, build an inclusive identity as a game studio by creating one game that includes racial minorities, one that includes LGBTQ, and so on.

Actually, my current works Telemon: Homeworlds and Half Earth are not as inclusive as I see. The human cultures included in there are based only on developed countries in the northern hemisphere. Even worse, there are Chinese and Japanese, but no Koreans and Indians.

If your story is an 10000-episode epic with 1000 characters, then the story and cast should follow statistics like one in ten gays and such then you can consider including a minority in each of the episodes.

See also: http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.p ... th_america

[o v e n]

I've actually wrestled with the idea of inclusivity in my games and appealing to a broader audience.

For me inclusivity would mean removing the queer elements of my games though. It would mean allowing someone to play the game without being made to feel awkward about all of the queer characters. I've thought about it long and hard. To allow for people to turn a blind eye, to avoid the queer content would widen my audience base, but at the same time I'd no longer be telling the sort of games I want to tell. So I'm not going for inclusive. Now this would be a different issue if I was aiming my games for mass-appeal first or hoping to make a living off of my games.

You can possibly play a straight character, but you'll just have to deal with all of your romantic options being bi. Properly bi, not just bi for the main character and a history of only straight relationships.

I think firstly people should just tell the sort of stories they want to. That while green, and purple, and all of the other rainbow colours should be encouraged, there's nothing wrong with blue and pink, as long as they're not the only colours there ever are.

I'm not sure if the difference between exclusivity and inclusivity is being clearly defined in that worry. The difference is including, not excluding - not kicking any character out or altering your development choices so as not to offend. It's not a matter of pandering to the masses so much as feeling open enough in your game design choices to take 'risks' in appealing to a different audience - doesn't mean the general masses will find it any less appealing for the change of pace.

(I thought the blue/pink metaphor was for highly gendered games - and that green just meant... uh, a game that doesn't do that. Tropes can be wielded to a storyteller's advantage, sure, but there's a point where they can actually be harmful if too heavily leaned on / learned from.)