X/M recap

[nyarth]

Just checked it! very very good. Never played Pokemon - I used to watch the anime though - so this is the best introduction possible

[javajava]

Let me add my voice to the chorus of players who would like to see more /m games and suggest developers make a much greater effort to be gender neutral in this (ie provide players with both options and put effort into making both options good, and more than that, make most games an equal mix of /f and /m. The XR/VR game I am working on will be mixed and have equal amounts of /f and /m

[stickthatbuttout]

Originally Posted by javajava

Let me add my voice to the chorus of players who would like to see more /m games and suggest developers make a much greater effort to be gender neutral in this (ie provide players with both options and put effort into making both options good, and more than that, make most games an equal mix of /f and /m. The XR/VR game I am working on will be mixed and have equal amounts of /f and /m

As someone who has done both, there are pros and cons to gender neutrality. The main pro is that your game is inclusive to a broader variety of tastes, but the con is that it can come at the cost of your characters having their own unique identity. Having characters with fully fleshed out development and back stories can be hard to do without assigning them a gender, since that's often a huge part of who they are. But at the same time, the "blank slate" approach can work well in some contexts.

For Pokemon, I went with the gender neutral approach because the focus was always more on the adventure and the world than the characters. But for my narrative-heavy games, I just can't make gender neutrality work well while still having interesting characters.

[aka]

Originally Posted by stickthatbuttout

As someone who has done both, there are pros and cons to gender neutrality. The main pro is that your game is inclusive to a broader variety of tastes, but the con is that it can come at the cost of your characters having their own unique identity. Having characters with fully fleshed out development and back stories can be hard to do without assigning them a gender, since that's often a huge part of who they are.

This was my experience as well when I tried to make the NPC's have customizable gender when I first started The Scandalous Scarlet Moon. The PC was already (mostly) a blank slate, so I could get away with making them customizable. But for everyone else, I found myself viewing them as slightly different characters depending on if they were male or female. I really didn't have the bandwidth to have two slightly different versions of Alex or Natalie or what have you, and trying to focus on just the "genderless" parts of their characters was difficult.

[nyarth]

To be honest, gender neutrality is not something I would appreciate in a game - from the player pov - neither. I prefer character-heavy games, with personal characteristics and development, and distinct ways to interact with other characters, and even gendered dynamics.



It just is what it is: X/M pairings are, for whatever reason, not popular. I understand that if a creator is doing something for fun, they will go with what they personally like first, and what a broader public can enjoy second, because after all its their time and its not compensated.



Oftentimes I wondered if a team effort could help create *the* spanking game: someone could do just the art, and work in all pairings; others could do the coding based on a script from writer/s, and make sure it includes plenty of options, an customization, and X/M and X/F, and X/MMM and X/FFF, and all kinds of permutations. Something like that could perhaps be monetized and sold on itch or through a patreon. But then I realize even if that was possible, it will require tons of time, coordination and resources, so its also fantasyland.



Ultimately, I guess, the only thing we can do as players without skills in drawing or coding is... just support those who do have this skills and decide to share their work, and say that if someday someone does more - be it X/M or just a more complex game - I, at least, will be willing to put money into it through a monthly subscription if needed, and I hope other X/M fans would too.