Blog - Pronouns and the Female Protagonist
Sunday, March 2, 2008I met Sheri Graner Ray, author of Gender Inclusive Game Design, at the first game development conference I ever attended. I figure as I am pursuing a career in design, checking out her book was a must.
One point mentioned in it is that most men are willing to play as a female avatar, but most women are not inclined to play as a male one. Therefore, to potentially get more women playing your game, it should feature a female protagonist if not the option to chose either gender.
Knowing that for one of my projects this quarter that I'd have to make a very story-heavy (and therefore fairly character-focused) game, I knew I wanted to try and put these ideas into practice, and experiment with using a female protagonist.
First of all, this created a really unexpected and refreshing main character for my game which was praised by people who have been privy to the game's development. People knew I was doing a game set in the Paleolithic era, but when I revealed my protagonist wasn't at all the stereotypical "cave-man" they were expecting, but instead a thirteen year old girl... well, it got some recognition from my peers.
However in having this female protagonist, I've found it solves another problem in creating games designed to be open to a larger female market: it makes me more likely to consider pronoun use in the docs! When designers default to male pronouns in the design documents (i.e. "If the player does X he may then..." etc.) it may make one lose sight of potential female players. It could also turn away any women who'd happen to read the doc, as it subconsciously signals "this game isn't for me" to them.
Well, having a female protagonist makes it that much more natural to write in female pronouns, because that's what the character is.
Of course, whenever possible I also try to refer to the character as "the player", in order to ensure I'm always thinking about the player and what they can/want to do.
Labels: design, women in games, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:11 PM
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