Inclusivity in games

[PyTom]

What about different races? Nationalities? Religions? Abilities? Gender Identity? Classes? Language level? Accessibility? Technology level? See, there are lots of things to consider.

I kind of think that this is almost exactly wrong.

The thing about those things you mention is that each of them drive a wedge between the player and the pov character. Without complicating the game logic, the character can be at most one nationality, one religion, one gender identity, and so on. And for each of those things, if you make a big deal about it, you risk isolating some players from your characters.

I'll argue - in a ha, ha, only serious manner - that the most inclusive character is the faceless hentai game protagonist. There's a certain inclusivity in being generic - we don't know if this guy is tall or sort, fat or thin. In the old-school bishoujo games, the POV character was often supposed to be Japanese, but rarely in a way that mattered much - so it was easy to ignore race and such.

To some extent, I think the way to become inclusive is with an economy of detail - only fill in details, especially about the POV character, if they're going to be important to the plot. Unnecessary details only serve to make the character less like us, without advancing the story - and so there's no real need for them.

For instance, Ren'Py being able to export to all three OSs is an issue of inclusivity. By making that a function, PyTom has allowed more people to be included in Visual Novels. I'm pretty sure we can all agree that is a good thing. Actually PyTom has done a great deal for inclusivity from making Ren'Py freely available to making it open source. By making these choices, he has made a massive difference to the people who could make visual novels. He could have done none of these things. Ren'Py could have been commercial, it could be closed, it could be too technical, it could not exist at all. But he chose to include as many people as possible and I think our community is better for it. Inclusivity is a good thing.

The thing is - inclusivity was never a goal of mine - I've never gone out of my way to try to make the community more inclusive, in the sense of promoting gender/race/orientation/etc diversity. I mean, many of the decisions you mention above are technical ones, rather than ones that have to do with any sort of social policy. (And the social goals - like license choice - had to do with my own enlightened selfishness more than anything.)

But the thing is, it's my experience that as long as you don't go out of your way to exclude people, inclusivity just kind of happens.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I disagree, but I guess it's a point of difference. For me, details mean everything. I don't technically want people to see themselves in characters as such, especially main characters. I don't do faceless since I think it's good for people to see other perspectives other than their own. But being able to see people like you is important in media, whether it's your gender, race, sexuality, body shape, age, because it makes you feel like you belong. Looking at a lot of media I consume, you would swear 90% of the world was white, which is a load of bull. I know that every time I go outside. So I don't see any harm in mixing it up with your cast of characters so more people can feel like they belong.

And whether inclusivity was your intention or not, it's exactly what happened. You purposely made the barrier low, which included pretty much the maximum amount of people you could. How different would it be if you had say, not lowered the programming barrier so people had to know Python before they could do anything? Or what about if you made it commercial? Those things are about inclusivity, and because of your choices, more people are here making games. Hell, even you being here giving support is a way of increasing inclusivity because you are facilitating people being involved. That's a good thing. People doing things like that is what makes the world a good place to be. It's not just about gender and race and whatnot, it's about people being included in general. Race and gender are just to rather obvious issues.

[Blutkristall]

Depends. Does thinking and caring about others make you and your work worse?

Not at all, that's why I actually was taken aback by the person's dogmatic approach in the first place, you see?
To me it feels like caring about the points listed poses the danger of thinking more about that author's personal sensibilities than the ones of my future players.
I wanted to write more, but brevity is wit, as they say.
It doesn't really apply to the two games we're making due to already deviating from the norm quite a bit so I suppose it doesn't really concern me that much.

It was certainly interesting reading this thread and learn more about the aspirations and political affiliations of the people frequenting LSF.

[LeonGuisti]

I don't technically want people to see themselves in characters as such, especially main characters. I don't do faceless since I think it's good for people to see other perspectives other than their own. But being able to see people like you is important in media, whether it's your gender, race, sexuality, body shape, age, because it makes you feel like you belong.

Wholeheartedly agree. Unless having a white male character is absolutely critical in the story you're telling, would it even hurt to change the formula just a little?

Additionally, I think faceless/mute characters are a cheap way to avoid persecution for a weak protagonist / sloppy writing and not because the game designers are trying to be more inclusive. Hentai games notwithstanding since the fantasy is that the protagonist is supposed to be you.

[o v e n]

What are you guys means by inclusivity? Is it something like this?

- male and female protagonist
- 3 date-able boys, 3 date-able girls, all of them are bisexual.

Technically, that WOULD appeal to a larger crowd. It'd be more complicated to code and write, and I'm not saying a game with so many options is any better than one that is strictly BxG or GxB or GxG or what else, it's just bound to appeal to more people in offering so many options. Take Harvest Moon, for example - Harvest Moon DS and Harvest moon DS cute are two separate games, but are still the exact same game. It's just that girls who want to farm and get married can now identify with the DS Cute version, opening up a larger target market without compromising the integrity of the Harvest Moon series at all!

That's all that I mean by inclusivity - opening a POSSIBILITY at no harm to the storyline or gameplay - whether a gender, race, origin, what-have-you, for both dating sims and games that simply offer romancing and dating as a side-appeal.

[Fairy Godfeather]

I play games over on Choice of Games. Most of the main characters there are faceless, without any personality other than that which the player inserts themselves. That's the nature of choice based games though. The pronoun of choice tends you be "you" and they offer quite a degree of customisability for the main character, including gender and sexuality. I think that in their case the ability to self-insert does make for greater inclusivity. Done right it can be a powerful and interesting storytelling technique and I don't consider it cheap at all in that regards.

[LeonGuisti]

I play games over on Choice of Games. Most of the main characters there are faceless, without any personality other than that which the player inserts themselves. [...] Done right it can be a powerful and interesting storytelling technique and I don't consider it cheap at all in that regards.

Hmm...definitely overgeneralized for sure. Let me retract...

I meant to give more of an example as say... Link or Mario. Where the characters don't speak and are (save for a few catchphrases and cries in pain) mute. Many a forum posts have been made about why exactly Link is still mute so I won't really analyze it now. But the official response from Nintendo (at least to my recollection) is because they want everybody to feel like they're Link. I think that's cheap.

I sort of like what they did with Samus in Other M. Even though I didn't like that they made her less like Ripley and more like... a screaming scared mess... it was still nice to have her fleshed out a bit.

[Fairy Godfeather]

Yeah that is a poor response from Nintendo. Hence the "if don't right" qualifier in my own post.

Done wrong you end up with yet another bland, boring protagonist. It's as if white straight cismale is the default setting that everyone should be able to identify with. He's the hero of so many games, he's the hero of so many movies, he's the everyman, the one we should all aspire to be. Change him just a little and there's complaints about alienating the audience.

Meh I say!

The mention of Link and Mario brought to mind this for me
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/i ... ex-change/
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/d ... line-hack/

[Carassaurat]

I'm with Greeny on this one in that it matters a huge deal whether you're making a game or a story. If you have a pure game, like Chess or Tetris, there is no character and you're just playing. If you have a story, you have all kinds of interesting characters. If you try to have both a game and a story, you're going to have to settle for something in between, a Generic Blanderson so that the player can identify with the character he or she sometimes has to play.

That being said, even when you write a story, there's still the idea of write-what-you-know. I think I can write a story about a woman or a homosexual person, but I can't write about womanhood or homosexuality. Whether you can seperate the person and the issue that clearly, is another question.

[Greeny]

That's all that I mean by inclusivity - opening a POSSIBILITY at no harm to the storyline or gameplay - whether a gender, race, origin, what-have-you, for both dating sims and games that simply offer romancing and dating as a side-appeal.

This is, essentially, a potentially great method for having inclusivity, with very little risk, but for indie devs, there's a very glaring problem with it - money.
Alternate sprites for your protagonist, extra love interests of more genders/nationalities, that kind of stuff, it all rapidly inflates your production cost, as well as time. Unless you're producing your own art, you have to make sizeable cutbacks in how much characters/locations/cg's you plan for, and even that is according to local "relaxed" rates for artists.

Unless you're rich, of course.

Not to mention Chekov's gun rule: You shouldn't include anything if it isn't relevant to the plot. Well, when you already have a character, you may as well consider changing their sexuality or race (just for example) instead of defaulting to obvious choices, but you shouldn't go around just tacking on characters that have no relation to the plot or the other characters.

Of course, this applies mostly to literature and plays, and VN's haven't really been around long enough for anyone to conclusively decide how far the same rules apply. As for how it applies to games... well, sotrytelling and games... it's complicated.

It depends on the size of your plot, of course. A long, and complicated plot probably uses many characters already, and it should be easy to go around sprinkling variety like an inclusivity fairy. Unless of course your setting is historical, in which case a lack of "inclusivity" was often setting-relevant because people simply weren't open to certain races/sexualities in certain time periods. In those cases, highlighting those issues can be considered as an alternative.

[noeinan]

After reading the posts so far (skimmed a bit on the last page) I wanted to point out that people are coming at inclusiveness from two different angles.

The "being inclusive means I need to appeal to everyone."

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.

And "being inclusive means including variation in my characters."

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.

Personally, I consider the second example to be the kind of inclusiveness that is needed in games. I give a slight concession in that technical aspects of a game should make said game available to as many people as possible (Operating System, disabilities, not requiring a constant internet connection etc.)

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.

One thing I want to point out here is that if you say you won't include certain characteristics because it does not serve the plot to do so, it kind of assumes that the opposite characteristic is the default. I definitely feel like, in the gaming community, the white/straight/cisgendered/male is the "default" character and that a lot of people would never consider going against that unless there was a specific plot reason. What plot-important element demands that the character is white/straight/cis/male?

The truth is, except for very specific circumstances, a characters gender, ethnicity, orientation, identity etc. is aesthetics. You can take the same personality and paint it a different color, change the gender of its love interest, and change the name of its god and you can still have basically the same character. The plot does not irrevocably alter itself. You can add little extras depending on the difference, or you can change the whole plot (Dragon Age?) but you don't have to.

Which is why I think it's important to think about how much of your cast is X or Y-- why not expand your cast a bit? Why make the "default" main character and supporting cast when you can expand your horizons and reach out to people who aren't used to seeing characters like them in stories?

What about different races? Nationalities? Religions? Abilities? Gender Identity? Classes? Language level? Accessibility? Technology level? See, there are lots of things to consider.

I kind of think that this is almost exactly wrong.

The thing about those things you mention is that each of them drive a wedge between the player and the pov character. Without complicating the game logic, the character can be at most one nationality, one religion, one gender identity, and so on. And for each of those things, if you make a big deal about it, you risk isolating some players from your characters.

But the thing is, it's my experience that as long as you don't go out of your way to exclude people, inclusivity just kind of happens.

In response to this, I don't think that having a different race/nationality/religion etc. automatically drives a wedge between the player and the pov character. I grew up reading stories that were written for men and boys, playing games from the perspective of straight/cis/males-- all things which I am not-- and I never had a problem relating to the characters. I think anyone who does not fit into the "default" demographic has the ability to relate to characters not like them, and I believe that straight/white/cis/males also have that ability.

If you make a big deal out of it to the point where it's awkward, it's awkward for everyone. If you add in that diversity and just go with the flow, there is no problem with those who fit in with the "default" and those who don't will be pleasantly surprised that they have representation in your game!

Lastly, the reason why inclusivity "just kind of happens" when you don't exclude people is because people who go out of their way to make inclusivity happen are attracted to that kind of atmosphere. But until inclusivity is the norm, it takes people going out of their way to make it happen.

[o v e n]

That's all that I mean by inclusivity - opening a POSSIBILITY at no harm to the storyline or gameplay - whether a gender, race, origin, what-have-you, for both dating sims and games that simply offer romancing and dating as a side-appeal.

This is, essentially, a potentially great method for having inclusivity, with very little risk, but for indie devs, there's a very glaring problem with it - money.
Alternate sprites for your protagonist, extra love interests of more genders/nationalities, that kind of stuff, it all rapidly inflates your production cost, as well as time. Unless you're producing your own art, you have to make sizeable cutbacks in how much characters/locations/cg's you plan for, and even that is according to local "relaxed" rates for artists.

Unless you're rich, of course.

Not to mention Chekov's gun rule: You shouldn't include anything if it isn't relevant to the plot. Well, when you already have a character, you may as well consider changing their sexuality or race (just for example) instead of defaulting to obvious choices, but you shouldn't go around just tacking on characters that have no relation to the plot or the other characters.

Of course, this applies mostly to literature and plays, and VN's haven't really been around long enough for anyone to conclusively decide how far the same rules apply. As for how it applies to games... well, sotrytelling and games... it's complicated.

It depends on the size of your plot, of course. A long, and complicated plot probably uses many characters already, and it should be easy to go around sprinkling variety like an inclusivity fairy. Unless of course your setting is historical, in which case a lack of "inclusivity" was often setting-relevant because people simply weren't open to certain races/sexualities in certain time periods. In those cases, highlighting those issues can be considered as an alternative.

Basically, what daikiraikimi said:

One thing I want to point out here is that if you say you won't include certain characteristics because it does not serve the plot to do so, it kind of assumes that the opposite characteristic is the default. I definitely feel like, in the gaming community, the white/straight/cisgendered/male is the "default" character and that a lot of people would never consider going against that unless there was a specific plot reason. What plot-important element demands that the character is white/straight/cis/male?

The truth is, except for very specific circumstances, a characters gender, ethnicity, orientation, identity etc. is aesthetics. You can take the same personality and paint it a different color, change the gender of its love interest, and change the name of its god and you can still have basically the same character. The plot does not irrevocably alter itself. You can add little extras depending on the difference, or you can change the whole plot (Dragon Age?) but you don't have to.

Which is why I think it's important to think about how much of your cast is X or Y-- why not expand your cast a bit? Why make the "default" main character and supporting cast when you can expand your horizons and reach out to people who aren't used to seeing characters like them in stories?

Pretty much just that exactly.

[EroBotan]

What are you guys means by inclusivity? Is it something like this?

- male and female protagonist
- 3 date-able boys, 3 date-able girls, all of them are bisexual.

Technically, that WOULD appeal to a larger crowd. It'd be more complicated to code and write, and I'm not saying a game with so many options is any better than one that is strictly BxG or GxB or GxG or what else, it's just bound to appeal to more people in offering so many options. Take Harvest Moon, for example - Harvest Moon DS and Harvest moon DS cute are two separate games, but are still the exact same game. It's just that girls who want to farm and get married can now identify with the DS Cute version, opening up a larger target market without compromising the integrity of the Harvest Moon series at all!

That's all that I mean by inclusivity - opening a POSSIBILITY at no harm to the storyline or gameplay - whether a gender, race, origin, what-have-you, for both dating sims and games that simply offer romancing and dating as a side-appeal.

My conclusion from your post is that inclusivity is good but it's almost impossible to implement. You can refer to Greeny's post for the reasons: Money, time, and other stuff.

Harvest Moon is not a fair example, it is an AAA release and it's not VN which also gives it a super huge advantage because it doesn't need to feature complex story for it's character and no CG. I dunno about the DS version, but if you compare the PSOne and GBA version, there is almost no difference beetween the boy and the girl version graphic and gameplay wise. All they do is adding a girl character, flower seeds, and make the game ends when the girl marriage. For a famous company like Natsume, I'll say almost no extra work needed during the making of the girl version.

If you apply this to VN, you will harm the game itself, it probably will never be fnished.

The other reason is: if you want to make otome game and not annoy the guys who most likely will never even consider to play your game, then you have to remove the jerk guy with a heart of gold character which is the most popular type among the girls. I don't think this trade off is worth it.

I meant to give more of an example as say... Link or Mario. Where the characters don't speak and are (save for a few catchphrases and cries in pain) mute. Many a forum posts have been made about why exactly Link is still mute so I won't really analyze it now. But the official response from Nintendo (at least to my recollection) is because they want everybody to feel like they're Link. I think that's cheap.

I think it's about the target market. Some people loves self insert with faceless/mute protagonist, the other loves protagonist with original character and personality. You simply can't have both. If you choose protagonist with personality & character then that means you exclude the self insert fans. The opposite also applies.

If you really want to have both, you can compromise by doing what Magical Diary do with customisable character. You can't have CGs anymore though .... which probably means that your game exclude the CG collectors

[LeonGuisti]

I think it's about the target market. Some people loves self insert with faceless/mute protagonist, the other loves protagonist with original character and personality. You simply can't have both. If you choose protagonist with personality & character then that means you exclude the self insert fans. The opposite also applies.

There's a few games that benefit from a silent/mute protagonist. PyTom mentioned hentai games as a joke, but he really is right. These games are very clearly meant to be lived out as a fantasy. It's undeniably the best direction. Also games like Skyrim or the first Dragon Age where the protagonist is very clearly supposed to be the embodiment of "you."

[papillon]

Personally I think this thread would strongly benefit from dropping the use of the word 'inclusive', which is being used to mean AT LEAST three wildly different things. And nobody wants to get into a fight with someone over whether X is bad when they're not even talking about the same X, right?

One of the problems with the "generic protagonist" is that in so many cases, the protagonist isn't generic at all... the sex, race, and various personality elements actually are set, intentionally or not, and quite often based on the writing team's assumptions of what "normal" is.

The first Dragon Age game, though, went out of its way to give you a variety of options for the protagonist's background and personality, which is a very different feeling than playing a game which is supposed to be "you" and suddenly discovering that "you" like football because that's perceived to be normal.