Hi all!
I am writing a Choicescript game and the start of it is the character creation. I want to make sure I am being inclusive or genders/pronouns so everyone can feel represented. But, at what point does that become too much? is offering a Her/She, He/Him, They/Them enough? Should there be an option for a player to enter their own?
I so desperately don’t want to alienated or exclude anyone but is there a point when it becomes too much?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Is this intended to be released by Choice of Games or Hosted Games? If so, the CoG forums are going to give a much better idea of what players expect. It’s probably an FAQ somewhere.
As someone who generally doesn’t care about playing myself in an IF, and usually picks whatever set of pronouns is most fun, I feel like the set of he/him, she/her, and they/them, along with letting the player input custom pronouns, would suffice. The last option is crucial for people who use neopronouns.
I really don’t think you can be too inclusive when adding player pronouns, though. So if you want to add more commonly used neopronouns like it/its, xe/xem, and the like, there will be people who appreciate that or at least try them out of curiosity. I really don’t care for people who are bothered by the idea of having extra options for pronouns.
This community doesn’t write a lot of ChoiceScript games, so in terms of what is expected of them, we’re not the best source and the CoG forums that zarf mentioned are likely better. A quick search shows this topic, which might be helpful to you for implementing custom pronouns. I think Lurker’s suggestion should be enough. However, if you do give the option for custom pronouns, make sure you have all five(?) types.
If you’re writing a standard game with character creation offering a choice of he/his-she/her-they/their pronouns is probably the basic minimum.
CoG gravitates toward being inclusive as possible with gender/pronoun choices required for hosted games, and in general it’s always favored that companions or romance options can also be named and gendered, or not.
Outside of CoG, there are game types where you want to define characters specifically, and many people prefer to or have no problem playing a “prerolled” PC instead of making those choices. It’s always nice to include a mix of NPC types and genders if appropriate to support inclusion in a game without character creation.
where the Brotherhood of Steel (even as the oppressive tech warlords they are) doesn’t just include male-presenting characters in the “brotherhood” - there are definitely female Knight-aspirants in the crew, and an important side character Dane is non-binary, played by a trans-male actor, and is referred to with they/them pronouns in the show without commentary or that being a plot point. This actually supports the world building that there are much more important things to worry about in the Wastelands besides inclusivity, and factions need every able body they can get. It’s implied that the brotherhood are all essentially celibate in general as they are all treated equally (albeit somewhat harshly in “get by however you can” mode) brought up from a young age in facilities not separated by gender and sexuality is never even really a concern to them.
Here’s a page linked in the discussion Hanon posted with more on pronoun grammar and gender-neutral/neo-pronouns:
Thank you all so so so much! I really appreciate it. I’m going to check out all of those links ASAP. I really appreciate the input from you all 
This sample code by Harris Powell-Smith might be of interest as it enables players to input custom pronouns!
Yeah, my two cents are that the only real costs of including neopronouns are making it harder to code, and making the interface busier. But if you already have a gender-select page with three options, a fourth option isn’t much of a difference; and in ChoiceScript (as opposed to something like Inform), supporting custom pronouns is no harder code-wise than supporting only he and she (either way you’re probably setting a variable for each inflection and interpolating those variables into all of your text).
So if you’ve already set up your game to support he/she/they—and if it’s not going to undermine your artistic vision (an exploration of the social realities of womanhood in the late Roman Republic will probably require the player character to be she/her)—there’s not much reason not to go the extra yard. The number of players who will use that option is probably fairly small, but the extra effort to support it is also fairly small, and those players will probably appreciate it a lot!
Wow, this is pretty hardcore from that Choice of Games post:
At minimum, if the PC’s gender is stated, then the PC must be playable as male or female. If there is romance in the story, the PC must be playable as gay or straight. Games which do not offer this do not simply receive a score of 0 for inclusivity, they aren’t eligible to be published as Choice of Games titles.
I find it a very strange stance to take, to be honest. Disallowing games where the protagonist’s gender or sexual orientation are important to the story does not sound like a way to be maximally inclusive! It sounds like a recipe for treating gender and sexuality as unimportant.
I think it’s important to note that these are restrictions for games published under the official Choice of Games label and as far as I know don’t apply to their Hosted Games, so it’s at least partially a matter of branding. The CoG main line seems to be to built on allowing players a lot of freedom to roleplay as they wish (which is frankly very not my speed, but seems to appeal to a lot of other people).
The linked blog post is from 2017 and is poorly phrased + conflates the general concept of inclusivity with judging criteria within a contest they were running at the time, I think? As far as I can tell the current policy can be found in their “About Us” page:
Choice of Games is a progressive, feminist, anti-racist, trans-inclusive, sex-positive company. All CoG games allow you to choose your character’s gender and sexual orientation.
I don’t disagree—but Choice of Games is famous for their extremely specific house style, and that house style has lots of fans, so clearly there’s a market for it! From the same post:
Choice of Games titles give the player a first-person perspective within the story. The PC always takes action as “I,” and the narration always addresses the PC as “you.” It’s what makes our stories feel so immediate and immersive: what’s happening to the PC is happening to you.
It does mean that gender and sexuality are generally not key to the story, but it also means that people can build their specific OCs in the game they’re playing. They know what their established audience wants, and they provide it, in the same way that a romance-focused publisher probably won’t option Lord of the Rings even if it’s a very well-written book.
Thanks so much everyone! Your input has been amazing.
This is what I’ve gone with. Variety selection of pronouns with the option to write in a text box as well. Romanceable NPCs are either male or female, chosen by the player using cis pronouns.
Player can also choose their name and prefix.
Hopefully that’s a good selection and is inclusive enough.
Would it be awful to not include a they/them option for the NPCs?
What’s the logic behind implementing customizable NPCs but limiting the gender options? Non-customizable NPCs seem like less of a can of worms to me, in terms of the message they send.
To give people the option to have male or female NPCs with gender specific names. So, each one has a male and female name. I could do a third name that is they/them potentially. In a way it’s just a little less coding but it’s also not very hard to implement.
Any possibility of using gender-neutral names across the board? I hadn’t thought of changing NPC names based on the gender. That does sound potentially tricky.
It’s a bit of extra coding but I guess I just wanted to.
At the moment this is what the coding would look like so I’d just do an additional option per NPC and add in the they/them pronouns. I’m not against it.
As a nonbinary player, I would definitely prefer the option for the love interests to be nonbinary as well. Otherwise, having nonbinary gender as an option for the PC just feels like a concession in a story and world that is otherwise firmly adhering to the gender binary.
Yeah, I think if the NPC’s gender is purely cosmetic (it doesn’t change anything else about the character), it’s nice to have a nonbinary/gender-neutral option; on the other hand, if the male and female love interest NPCs are different people with different stories and personalities, it’s reasonable to not write an entire third one (since that would be a lot of work!).
That’s totally fair to say! I think I’ll building in a nonbinary option for the NPCs as well. It’s not all that much more to do
