Does the default gender for characters with multiple gender options matter to you?

[RadicalDreamer]

Was going to vote "no", then thought about it for a second and realized that when my young daughters grow up, this kind of thing might matter more for them (which means it matters to me).

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This, this, 1000x this. Even if it doesn't matter to you personally, think about how other people may be affected. Thank you for being considerate of others, especially the future generation.

My opinion:

Seems like a very low impact change, I'm not sure of the actual repercussions down the line for representation if devs start switching the default. But since its a very low effort change, they could definitely try. Personally, It doesn't currently bother me as I always try to make myself in games so don't really care about the default.

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Sure, it is a little change. But big change doesn't happen in one huge push, it takes a lot of collective small efforts to shape the way a society or group functions, thinks, and operates over time. The idea here is to eventually make it normal to not default to a male character during character creation, which gives players a blank canvas in which they can use to create the vessel in which they will interact with the game's world.

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It's okay for us all to have our own view on this, and it's okay to always prefer the default or male character. What's not okay is to dismiss the notion that being forced into a male role, even if for a few seconds, reinforces male dominance and gender inequality in our culture, and could make some gamers uncomfortable (if only for those few seconds). We just want to level the playing field so that more people can enjoy playing games, and I think that considerations like this are a great place to start making changes.

 

[Zero-ELEC]

why the heck does male corrin even exist, nobody likes you go away

 

[NSESN]

Tbh I find pretty weird that everyone trashes male corrin for his character but female corrin is ok

 

[GurrenSwagann]

...No, not really. It's not something I've ever once thought of. If I get the choice to pick either way, it has little effect on my enjoyment in the game.

But that's just to me personally, though. greater representation would probably be more beneficial though. Maybe have the game open with both genders on screen, which then leads into an option to pick skin colour afterwards? I dunno.

 

[chrominance]

Depends. Some games show two options at the start and have one pre-selected by default; that seems pretty innocuous. Showing only one gender at the start is less optimal. I think Pokemon shows two options and purposely doesn't select one by default, asking the user to make an active choice; that's an ideal solution for a two-gender system.

I'm not sure how to incorporate non-traditional gender expression into all this and would love to hear from people better versed on that subject. One potential option would be to eliminate the concept of gender completely and simply have any gender identity be the by-product of how you've styled your avatar. At that point you could have a bunch of default avatars and show one/several of them at random.

In terms of how much this affects my experience? Very little. I think anything we can do here to improve the experience is valuable, and it likely matters to some people a lot more than it does to me personally. But the avatar that gets shown to me by default usually doesn't influence my decision of who to play as.

 

[Viale]

I guess I'd rather there not be a default really, but I've never though what's default matters. Always go with female Corrine despite it not being default. I go with base inkling, but both reasons are I just like the designs for those one better, and the fact that one's an alt doesn't really change anything.

I suppose it'd be better if minorities were given a bit more representation through the default designs, but I don't immediately think less of the designs because they're an alt, I guess?

 

[AudioEppa]

Nope.

 

[Morrigan]

Maybe I'm different than most here, but when I play a game I don't like envisioning myself as the protagonist. I want the protagonist to be what the developer intended it to be, and whatever gender that is I'm fine with that. I mean you look at movies and there's no protagonist gender options before the movie starts 🤷🏼‍♂️
That's just how I view it

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On most devices the shrug emoji defaults to female: 🤷
Did you alter the default to switch it to male? Do you not want the emoji to be what the emoji designer intended it to be?

Spoiler

j/k <3

 

[Linde]

In the case of fire emblem and smash, all my friends (female) have confused Corrin and some even Marth for a girl so there's a bit of gender ambiguity with them even if they have female alts.
Plus there's the fujoshi crowd lol

Defaults not a big deal, but smash does it well I'm, using the more iconic designs or the defaults in their origin games

 

[.exe]

What the default is definitely matters, but I always change it anyway.

 

[Woylie]

To be honest I'd like to see more games give nonbinary options that aren't clearly male or female. Make it more of an aesthetic choice than a gendered choice.

Surprisingly some Nintendo games like Pokemon and Fire Emblem have taken baby steps in this direction, with Sun/Moon asking what you look like and the recent Three Houses trailer asking you to "choose your form" instead of asking plainly if you are a boy or a girl, even if the options appear quite clearly binary-gendered.

I think we'll see more moves in this direction in the future. I wouldn't mind seeing four options becoming more of the standard for games without a full character creator - something like, binary male, binary female, and two more gender neutral options that look a bit in between. Gender is a spectrum, after all, and hopefully games will start to represent that further.

 

[Breqesk]

it's easy to get through the whole character creation process in the first mass effect without even realising you can play as a woman.

so yeah, it matters.

 

[QisTopTier]

When it's multiple choice stuff it should just default to a random choice as the first thing. Hell it will give lazy people different characters to play as so everyone's default experience isnt the same. Everyone "wins" this way there is no default human.

 

[Mesoian]

I appreciate variety, choice and inclusion.

 

[Neoxon]

Maybe I'm different than most here, but when I play a game I don't like envisioning myself as the protagonist. I want the protagonist to be what the developer intended it to be, and whatever gender that is I'm fine with that. I mean you look at movies and there's no protagonist gender options before the movie starts 🤷🏼‍♂️
That's just how I view it

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Within the context of the game, I can see that. Where it may become an issue is when said avatar character is used outside of the context of their source game, which would rely more heavily on the default designs (& names) given in said source games (hence the Robin & Corrin examples).

 

[ASaiyan]

I don't think it actually matters, at least so long as the option to change is clearly presented rather than buried. I think people mostly have a pretty clear preference for a gender (usually their own) in computer games, and will follow that. If you promoted Mass Effect with exclusively Fem Shep, I'm confident you'd still end with 3/4 of people playing with Man Shep, just because its a military sci-fi shooter and the market for that sort of thing is mostly male

Maybe it has more of an impact if the characters are more defined and different (like in Resident Evil), rather than being more or less self-inserts?

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I think it definitely depends. There are, as I see it, two main approaches to character creation in RPGs (well, three if you include people who deliberately build "joke characters", lol). There are people like me, who prefer to make immersive, "self-insert" characters that look like they do in real life (which, in my case, means some lame scrawny white dude with Mediterranean facial features). And there are people who prefer to create a totally new and unique character to fit the game's world, or even go out of their way to try and play as someone who is very different than they are in real life (i.e., "role-playing").

I don't have any scientific polling numbers or anything, but anecdotally I've encountered enough people of both types that I can't really say the one is any more popular than the other.

Tbh I find pretty weird that everyone trashes male corrin for his character but female corrin is ok

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As a massive fan of Fire Emblem Fates I am perfectly willing to defend both of them :). Lol.

 

[Theta]

Yes. I would generally prefer playing as a female character. That's about it, just a preference. Normally there are those who would argue how male characters lack emotions or feelings, but given the trend in recent games, that's hardly the case. I have no issue playing as a male character, but if given the option, I would always choose female.

 

[Mr. Fantastic]

I haven't bought a physical game in eons but lemme guess which one of the two was the default cover and the other relegated to the reversible side:

If my assumption is correct, this is yet another example why the default option matters, women shouldn't be the reversible option by default.

I'm honestly astounded the poll is going the way it is, considering I thought this was supposed to be very socially progressive website and I'm far from being one of those peeps that like to get into dick-measuring woke-points contests.

 

[GarrettInk]

I'm pleased with the poll results.

 

[QisTopTier]

Because honestly deciding if one specific thing should be the default isn't truly progressive and when people are given choices that care they will pick the choice that matters to them. No one wants to hear people nag at them for "Picking the wrong whatever" in games that have multiple character choices.

Like that assassins creed cover for instance, both of those are both right and wrong and the way that cover would have represented the game better would have been a split 50/50 picture

 

[Unknownlight]

Worth noting, Female Corrin is apparently the canon one. Which makes Smash's choice to default to Male Corrin all the weirder...

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Corrin is in a dumb position because she wasn't female by default until after she was added to Smash 4, and Smash fighters are nearly always stuck with their initial appearance.

Same reason why Ganondorf is still a Captain Falcon clone.

 

[Platy]

I'm honestly astounded the poll is going the way it is, considering I thought this was supposed to be very socially progressive website and I'm far from being one of those peeps that like to get into dick-measuring woke-points contests.

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It is still a place that mentions "give link an option to choose a boy or a girl" when we express the NEED for a girl link after 32 boy links

 

[Mr. Fantastic]

It is still a place that mentions "give link an option to choose a boy or a girl" when we express the NEED for a girl link after 32 boy links

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imma stop you right there though

if a zelda game is going to have a female protagonist just have zelda herself be it, she deserves it

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

Default gender is the one that's canon; and the one that gets all the marketing.

Nobody cares about Inkling Boy, or Female Robin, or Femshep (the fact that fans even had to come up with that ridiculous portmanteau tells you everything really).

The default image is the one that represents the game and the one that isn't far the most important.

 

[Yarbskoo]

It really doesn't matter to me, as long as they're both implemented well.

 

[TheBeardedOne]

I generally prefer when games are written around a strong character that the developers have created, though sometimes it's fun to create my own. I also identify more with male characters than female, but don't generally care, worry or think a lot about gender.

Established characters should remain the same gender.

 

[Mechaplum]

No, I am willing to press a button to change to the gender I want ,or flip back an forth and check out which is more to my liking.

 

[Dingens]

I wish games with character creation/customization tools had a randomizer-button because I couldn't care less and it just keeps me from playing the game...

 

[Deleted member 3093]

Definitely. And not calling anyone out, but I feel that a lot of people who think that it doesn't matter think that because the default works for them.

 

[BassForever]

If it's there cool, if it's not there I don't lose sleep over it. If it's an option I'll pick based upon the design I prefer.

 

[KushalaDaora]

I'm guilty ofalways picking default Male Hawke and default Male Shepard :(

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

Poll needs more options. It doesn't really matter to me personally and I'm not sure how much it matters in the long run, but I also think it's a cool thing for devs to think about and it's not a bad thing for the gaming world to consider.

 

[Zhukov]

I care about defaults in character creators about as much as I care whether the game is set on fullscreen, windowed or borderless by default.

Which is to say, not in the slightest.

If you don't like the default then the character creator is right there.

 

[SuperBlank]

No more so than the default name.

 

[Theta]

I haven't bought a physical game in eons but lemme guess which one of the two was the default cover and the other relegated to the reversible side:

If my assumption is correct, this is yet another example why the default option matters, women shouldn't be the reversible option by default.

I'm honestly astounded the poll is going the way it is, considering I thought this was supposed to be very socially progressive website and I'm far from being one of those peeps that like to get into dick-measuring woke-points contests.

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That's more dependant on the game. For example Mount and Blade: Warband, Jagged Alliance 2 and Dishonored 2, all featured a female character on their cover (for both the digital and physical releases) even when there was the option to choose your gender. So not all games are like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

 

[Neoxon]

Corrin is in a dumb position because she wasn't female by default until after she was added to Smash 4, and Smash fighters are nearly always stuck with their initial appearance.

Same reason why Ganondorf is still a Captain Falcon clone.

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There's a difference between changing what's the default design & changing one's moveset. Sakurai pointlessly stood against the tide on this one when changing the default could have been done before the marketing materials were made.

 

[Morrigan]

When it's multiple choice stuff it should just default to a random choice as the first thing. Hell it will give lazy people different characters to play as so everyone's default experience isnt the same. Everyone "wins" this way there is no default human.

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That's a solid idea. Not sure how to handle marketing with that, though.

 

[Neoxon]

That's a solid idea. Not sure how to handle marketing with that, though.

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Exactly, my main argument as to why defaults matter is due to stuff like marketing & (in the case of the characters in the OP) crossovers.

 

[Chaotic-Strike]

I don't mind, but I rather the playable characters be completely separate characters from one another. That way one doesn't have to be the default and the less popular one doesn't gets thrown to the wayside. Not enough RPGs do that however.

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

I want the option.
Always make a female after so many years of not having the choice

 

[Antrax]

It matters. Take ME1; it's pretty clear that DudeShep got a lot more care than any other option (EG he has detailed scarring that you can see in his scruff. Can't get that with FemShep or any created character). If they had to consider FemShep a bit more, they might've done a more equitable job (which they did a bit by the time ME3 came around. Still not as good, but better).

 

[Pargon]

Maybe I'm different than most here, but when I play a game I don't like envisioning myself as the protagonist. I want the protagonist to be what the developer intended it to be, and whatever gender that is I'm fine with that. I mean you look at movies and there's no protagonist gender options before the movie starts 🤷🏼‍♂️
That's just how I view it

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This attitude is exactly why developers need to stop having a white male as the default option; because many people assume that the default is how the developer intended the game to be played.

 

[Tunahead]

While I'm actually playing the game? No. It's not a huge inconvenience for me to take one look at the wrong Commander Shepard and ask that he kindly move out of the way so I can see the real protagonist.

But then I go on the social medias and it's all "abloobloo why sjw devs put playable vagina-haver in video game" and maybe that would cease if we didn't have all these default male protagonists as though being a woman is something you have to justify.

 

[Professor Beef]

doesn't matter to me at all, but i'm glad people have choices

 

[Snowfruit]

It's not something that bothers me much but I do notice and appreciate it when it happens.

Like what Battlefield has been doing with their box arts lately:

 

[dreamstation]

Not an issue for me. It has to default to one or the other. Can't have it both ways.

 

[Raspyberry]

It is still a place that mentions "give link an option to choose a boy or a girl" when we express the NEED for a girl link after 32 boy links

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No. We just need Zelda to hold a game down. I'd love a game where I could play as Zelda from Twilight princess or breath of the wild. I couldn't be more bored of a gender swap Link. It is just a lazy idea.

 

[AbandonedTrolley]

No and if it does worry you, then you've got a pretty good life if that's all that bothers you.

 

[Pyro]

I don't think it matters.

 

[Saori]

Not an issue for me. It has to default to one or the other. Can't have it both ways.

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Well, for the character creator it can be random, which is what it should be, I don't care that much myself, but people like me that don't care, wouldn't mind that it is random and people that care would probably be happy that the default one isn't the same all the time. I don't have a solution for box arts though.