A discussion on LGBT+ inclusion in game dev and how game devs view the topic themselves.

I appreciate the gay, nonbinary and trans inclusion in gaming, but never forget: just because it was added to the game, doesn’t mean the people who worked on it were in for it. I’ve been working in video games for about 3 years in Quality. A friend from past job shared their office had to fire an employee, because he stopped a trans person in bathroom doors, demanded to see their genitals before letting them in and would complain about pride flags in the office on employer’s desks.

Also, Cyberpunk 2077 lacking a fleshed out bisexual romance option comes off as bit biphobic to me. The weirdest thing is, the gay male option character literally has a daughter. I’m not saying gay men never pretended to be straight and had children, but afaik Kerry had a daughter with a woman and homophobia isn’t a thing in 2077.

I also personally find adding pronouns a less-than half measure. You’re still only allowed to choose between either a very masculine male body or a very feminine female body. Not to mention, unless I’ve missed something, you cannot even opt-out of the voice selection (again, either a feminine female or a masculine male voice). I played games with body sliders as a child and could make my character to my liking. I don’t understand why character body customization feels less and less like a thing. The armors absolutely do not look and behave better to warrant this as an excuse.

I wish they’d add the option to choose between a feminine and masculine body, but then make body hair and breasts a separate option, and then also allow to have no voice selection so your character makes no noises (Dragon Age Origin allowed that, if I recall correctly, and I remember other RPGs where I was able to opt out of noises, I think even Larian’s games). I feel like these would be rather low effort, while having a high amount of inclusion towards nonbinary, intersex and possibly other people. I personally don’t care about my pronouns at all, but really wish I was able to represent myself body-wise.

YarrMatey,

I too like having sliders in my games but it takes extra time and effort to make these sliders work. You have to change the shape of the body without adding or removing polygons. And you have to get rid of the jank that appears (parts poking out weirdly/overlapping) when using the slider. It’s not as easy as you think. For something like the Sims, it means making each outfit three times for the three body types and a high and low version for every slider option. Not every game has time/money for this type of development. Swapping out body hair is much more doable. But swapping out breasts is not doable unless they make each outfit have a version with breasts and a version without.

I don’t think the games are doing stuff like this out of malice, I think they just didn’t feel a need to spend extra resources or doubling their work to cater to a smaller population that really likes sliders. It’s funny though when you see Baldur’s Gate allow female bodies to have a penis but not allow sliders for the boobs and butt.

Sprite,

The games are still very much an overlapping, janky, weirdly formed mess so I genuinely don’t take this as an argument, because it’s not avoided. I see tons of clipping and metal armors stretching like fabric in games with locked or no body type selection. Hair clipping through everything or your character being made very visibly bald to avoid the clipping. Honestly, I genuinely saw less of that in games with sliders growing up than in games without sliders now in my mid 20s.

YarrMatey,

It would be a lot worse if they tried doing what you want and make armor not bend/deform but have the arms bend with the skeleton anyway. I take it you haven’t done much gamedev when it comes to 3D modeling/animating? You should really get into it and try for yourself. You can even mod a game so you don’t have to make everything yourself from scratch. You’ve made up your mind that it is inexcusable without trying it for yourself.

Hair clips because it doesn’t have physics on it usually, preventing the clipping would mean calculating the hair colliding with whatever else which can be taxing on the engine. Video games need to have the least amount of taxing resources in order to run smoothly, especially on older hardware. Many games choose to make hair static instead because of this.

What games are you talking about btw? I’m in my 30s and I remember games always being like this. You might be having some rose colored glasses going on, I very much remember how jank early games were haha

Sprite,

Could you please explain how the inclusion of breast size sliders and body hair would affect arms? Because that was my proposal.

I grew up playing MMOs such as Perfect World, but also games such as The Sims. I believe Saints Row also includes sliders, but I may be wrong. Anyhow, I proposed a simplified approach of only slider for chest and then body hair options.

YarrMatey,

I was talking about the metal arms stretching, it stretches because it would clip horribly and wouldn’t follow the arm movement properly.

But for breast size, you have to make two versions of the armor with breasts and without breasts (flat like a man’s chest) that are basically swapping parts of the outfit out as a “slider” (these have to be remade completely). Then people like me will want breast sliders that are small breasts to larger breasts (these would be morphs so you can’t add or remove geometry to make them, instead you would try to mold them) and so you’re making quite a few different versions of the outfit just to make sliders work and high/low weights for them. The second set of sliders would be more popular but some games don’t even give us that lol. It takes development time for this stuff and making AAA video games is all about cutting corners, crunching, trying to do everything with as little money spent as possible, etc. Making sliders can easily double to triple the work required. Ever look at the baldurs gate 3 mod section searching for a larger breast version? You’re gonna run into clipping galore since every outfit has to be redone and the mods don’t redo every outfit. The Sims is the only game series I know that care enough about giving people sliders for everything.

I’ve played every major Sims game and they all had the clipping issue for hair and clothes. To make things like belts and pockets work they paint them on in the textures. Same way underwear is made. Saints Row had sliders but there was still clipping with it, for instance necklaces were floating on top of the outfits whether you had a shirt on or not (this also happened on Sims) just to try to minimize clipping. Another tactic used in games is to not have long hair, keep it above the shoulders as much as possible.

Body hair has to be remade for both character models, but that would probably be less work than sliders. Work still has to be done, it’s not as simple as copy + paste.

Anyway, that’s just my rambling. It takes a lot of development time to make sliders work which is why it gets omitted a lot. I hope more games allow more sliders, but I understand why a game wouldn’t do it.

xilliah,

It even still applies to representing women in games, which is just a sad state.

I worked on a game not long ago where we had lots of different characters. The men had three body types, but the women all had the same one. During a feedback round I mentioned it - all the women were totally behind me and vocal about it, but I’ll never forget the ‘rest of the studio’ just blankly staring at me. Of course it was totally ignored. I could’ve just as well have made a terrible joke.

I mean take characters like Brienna of Tarth or Bobbie Draper, they’re awesome!

These games are meant to be played by millions to be able to see any ROI, so I think it’s important to realize our responsibility in shaping culture.

glarf,

I wonder if the lack of these options might often be due to a lack of representation within the development and product organizations at these companies.

Sure you can say there’s malice here and there and I’m certain it does happen, but by and large, if the developers and product people don’t have exposure or experience it might be difficult to nail it for all audiences.

Inclusion is good for all!

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