I agree with this for the player. My point is that it’ more work to do it and that the devs of an indie strategy game likely did not put their main focus on that complexity. I don’t even know how the game actually works since I haven’t played it, but if it has mission briefings, chances are they are just written gender neutral because it was easier.
It’s the same as with Stardew Valley and gender-agnostic dating. Caring about gender would have added work to the game so the dev didn’t do it and put that time into other things.
Caring about gender would have added work to the game so the dev didn’t do it and put that time into other things.
I hate this deeply, actually specifically about Stardew and its ilk. Stardew’s nobody-is-anything approach I am no fan of. It’s not even like you can play it genderless style, so it’s not even really “not caring about gender”, it’s just writing every bachelor and bachelorette questline broadly enough that they can fit both binary genders! Big sigh.
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I believe that straight men should be locked out of romance in video games and in other places.
“Why aren’t there any dating apps for straight men!?” “Because straight men aren’t allowed to access dating apps, duh.”
“Why is there no such thing as straight porn!?” “Obviously because only gay people are responsible enough to have access to porn, just like with guns.”
Valid point. I can forgive it for games like Stardew that were literally made by one person, though (at least at the time that decision was made, obviously there is a team now that the game had it’s enormous success). You have to make a lot of decisions about what to cut and what to keep when you are working on such a project on your own.
Actually I’m gonna push back on this too. Since there are only the two binary genders, I refuse to believe that altering this would have made Stardew impossible to make. Everyone in the valley being textually bisexual might really enhance the game, too, if you went that direction. I think the bigger issue is that that’s not the game Concernedape wanted to make, and so you have this extremely lifeless set of romance quests that is at times less enjoyable than literally swapping the protagonist gender on Friends of Mineral Town.
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I think the writing in the game is fine. Like, not stellar, sure, but fine.
So how much work would it be? The way it’s now, all the game cares about is that there is a bunch of NPCs. The male/Female selector is something only the player character would have, but they do have it because of character creation. So the flag exists. Let’s assume you haven’t made any of it yet and want to add as little as possible extra content:
You need to decide the dating preferences of 10 people. More now, but 10 at game release. This would not be difficult or time-consuming, you just add a check. How many characters should have which orientation? Up to you, but I’d say make one set of gays and one set of bi/pans would feel realistic for that small a community. For the Bi/Pans they work like now, for everyone else you check the gender flag of the player and go from there. The gay and bi character of the same gender could then be default partners for each other if the player doesn’t go for them.
Check and display who is eligible in the NPC overview. Trivial to do, but I want to mention everything.
You’d need to write some amount of differing blurbs depending on player gender for at least these 8 bachelors, since they need to convey their preference in some way. Like Alex telling the male PC that he has a great ass from farm work or what have you. This is not a lot of work, but it is some work.
you need distinct friendship cutscenes for any character that potentially won’t go out with the player. So you need to make these distinct scenes for 8 of the bachelors. Minimally, you would need to change the 8 heart events only for this, if you rewrite the first set to be more ambiguous about if you’re dating etc., but I’d say you realistically need to rewrite them from 4 or 6 hearts onwards for at least some of them. good news is though, you don’t need an extra 10 heart scene, because you can only get there if they would date you anyway. Let’s say that’s 2.5 scenes per bachelor, so 20 new cutscenes to make.
That is kinda it. How long does it take to make one of those scenes? I dunno but some of them have a fair bit of unique assets. But that’s for the dates, which are supposed to be big moments. You can get by setting your friendship cutscenes in town and without many custom assets.
I dunno, sounds like a week or two of full-time work to me. So not something that would have made the game not come out, but an appreciable chunk of labor to do.
Lastly, when I played the game when it came out…was that in 2014? Fuck I am old. I remember the ‘everyone dates everyone’ feel of it fondly and not as a negative. Certainly better then having to play male Shepard to date Tali in Mass Effect.
You’d need to write some amount of differing blurbs depending on player gender
Extremely loud incorrect buzzer noise. The easy solution would just be to make everyone gay, which really would sort it out. For what it’s worth you can also write bi or even pansexual characters, but they have to be believable about it. Pans better actually reflect attraction regardless of gender, is all, instead of this numb lifeless thing that bends to the player.
you need distinct friendship cutscenes for any character that potentially won’t go out with the player.
I mean, do you? The idea of platonic “social links” is not a bad one but the Harvest Moon games never had it to my knowledge, so you could always just cut this. Plus, if you’re feeling brave you’d have the ability to keep it platonicstyle with characters of compatible gender, to avoid amatonomrativity. That would be even more work, though, because actually fully reflecting gender and romance and shit is pretty hard, which is probably why Stardew just takes the least-resistance approach of “minimum flexibility required for whatever the player wants”.
I remember the ‘everyone dates everyone’ feel of it fondly and not as a negative. Certainly better then having to play male Shepard to date Tali in Mass Effect.
I mean, have you ever heard anyone gripe about this before now? I’m a weird little freak and I hate joy. First off, I did not even know you could bed Tali, that’s hilarious. Also though… Why not just play ManShep if that’s your bag…? She’s a straight lady, do you wanna date a straight lady?
Fwiw Mass Effect does actually gate romance path by gender, which goes to show that you have to do more than just that to be good. I also sailed through my first ME playthroughs without even the implication of romance from any of the characters, which was weird and kinda funny.
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I agree with this for the player. My point is that it’ more work to do it and that the devs of an indie strategy game likely did not put their main focus on that complexity. I don’t even know how the game actually works since I haven’t played it, but if it has mission briefings, chances are they are just written gender neutral because it was easier.
It’s the same as with Stardew Valley and gender-agnostic dating. Caring about gender would have added work to the game so the dev didn’t do it and put that time into other things.
I hate this deeply, actually specifically about Stardew and its ilk. Stardew’s nobody-is-anything approach I am no fan of. It’s not even like you can play it genderless style, so it’s not even really “not caring about gender”, it’s just writing every bachelor and bachelorette questline broadly enough that they can fit both binary genders! Big sigh.
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I hate when NPCs are Playersexual, so lame. Just make all the characters gay, because then everyone that matters will be happy.
playersexual writing can cause some laziness on details but you shouldn’t worry about inaccessible alternate universes
I believe that straight men should be locked out of romance in video games and in other places.
“Why aren’t there any dating apps for straight men!?” “Because straight men aren’t allowed to access dating apps, duh.”
“Why is there no such thing as straight porn!?” “Obviously because only gay people are responsible enough to have access to porn, just like with guns.”
Just play as the gender a given character is attracted to if you wanna access alternate universes, lmao.
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Valid point. I can forgive it for games like Stardew that were literally made by one person, though (at least at the time that decision was made, obviously there is a team now that the game had it’s enormous success). You have to make a lot of decisions about what to cut and what to keep when you are working on such a project on your own.
Now if triple A does it though…fuck that.
Actually I’m gonna push back on this too. Since there are only the two binary genders, I refuse to believe that altering this would have made Stardew impossible to make. Everyone in the valley being textually bisexual might really enhance the game, too, if you went that direction. I think the bigger issue is that that’s not the game Concernedape wanted to make, and so you have this extremely lifeless set of romance quests that is at times less enjoyable than literally swapping the protagonist gender on Friends of Mineral Town.
ⓘ Remember to enable JPEG-XL support in your browser, even on your phone!
I think the writing in the game is fine. Like, not stellar, sure, but fine.
So how much work would it be? The way it’s now, all the game cares about is that there is a bunch of NPCs. The male/Female selector is something only the player character would have, but they do have it because of character creation. So the flag exists. Let’s assume you haven’t made any of it yet and want to add as little as possible extra content:
You need to decide the dating preferences of 10 people. More now, but 10 at game release. This would not be difficult or time-consuming, you just add a check. How many characters should have which orientation? Up to you, but I’d say make one set of gays and one set of bi/pans would feel realistic for that small a community. For the Bi/Pans they work like now, for everyone else you check the gender flag of the player and go from there. The gay and bi character of the same gender could then be default partners for each other if the player doesn’t go for them.
Check and display who is eligible in the NPC overview. Trivial to do, but I want to mention everything.
You’d need to write some amount of differing blurbs depending on player gender for at least these 8 bachelors, since they need to convey their preference in some way. Like Alex telling the male PC that he has a great ass from farm work or what have you. This is not a lot of work, but it is some work.
you need distinct friendship cutscenes for any character that potentially won’t go out with the player. So you need to make these distinct scenes for 8 of the bachelors. Minimally, you would need to change the 8 heart events only for this, if you rewrite the first set to be more ambiguous about if you’re dating etc., but I’d say you realistically need to rewrite them from 4 or 6 hearts onwards for at least some of them. good news is though, you don’t need an extra 10 heart scene, because you can only get there if they would date you anyway. Let’s say that’s 2.5 scenes per bachelor, so 20 new cutscenes to make.
That is kinda it. How long does it take to make one of those scenes? I dunno but some of them have a fair bit of unique assets. But that’s for the dates, which are supposed to be big moments. You can get by setting your friendship cutscenes in town and without many custom assets.
I dunno, sounds like a week or two of full-time work to me. So not something that would have made the game not come out, but an appreciable chunk of labor to do.
Lastly, when I played the game when it came out…was that in 2014? Fuck I am old. I remember the ‘everyone dates everyone’ feel of it fondly and not as a negative. Certainly better then having to play male Shepard to date Tali in Mass Effect.
Extremely loud incorrect buzzer noise. The easy solution would just be to make everyone gay, which really would sort it out. For what it’s worth you can also write bi or even pansexual characters, but they have to be believable about it. Pans better actually reflect attraction regardless of gender, is all, instead of this numb lifeless thing that bends to the player.
I mean, do you? The idea of platonic “social links” is not a bad one but the Harvest Moon games never had it to my knowledge, so you could always just cut this. Plus, if you’re feeling brave you’d have the ability to keep it platonicstyle with characters of compatible gender, to avoid amatonomrativity. That would be even more work, though, because actually fully reflecting gender and romance and shit is pretty hard, which is probably why Stardew just takes the least-resistance approach of “minimum flexibility required for whatever the player wants”.
I mean, have you ever heard anyone gripe about this before now? I’m a weird little freak and I hate joy. First off, I did not even know you could bed Tali, that’s hilarious. Also though… Why not just play ManShep if that’s your bag…? She’s a straight lady, do you wanna date a straight lady?
Fwiw Mass Effect does actually gate romance path by gender, which goes to show that you have to do more than just that to be good. I also sailed through my first ME playthroughs without even the implication of romance from any of the characters, which was weird and kinda funny.
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The people in Stardew were the worst part for me personally.