Comments on: Gender Politics Taste Like Chicken (or, Help Us Flavor the Next Choice of Game)

By: John

John — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:17:39 +0000

I would love to see some western(old west), choice books …

By: Historische romance heeft onderdanige vrouwen nodig « De Zesde Clan

Historische romance heeft onderdanige vrouwen nodig « De Zesde Clan — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:41:36 +0000

[...] een wereld waar de seksen gelijkwaardig zijn, maakt een historische romance bijna onmogelijk. De auteurs: Which meant we had just deprived ourselves of all the usual building blocks of a Tudoresque court [...]

By: William

William — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:28:29 +0000

Yeah, Jayn, I suppose that’s what the whole thing’s about: whether you prefer historical accuracy or gender neutrality. You just fit into the latter camp.

Well, I suppose that since Broadsides is set in FakeEngland rather than England “historical accuracy” isn’t really the correct term to use. I suppose what we (read: I) would like is a game where the choice of gender won’t automatically shift the gender you choose into being the dominant one in the setting, effectively resulting in an identical (disregarding pronouns) experience when you replay as the other. And since that’s what we’re going to be getting in CotV, I’m the happiest man ever to have lived.

PS if anything I’ve said here is retarded/just not true then forgive me. I’m not good at things.

By: Jayn

Jayn — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:31:39 +0000

One thing Matt said jumped out at me, that being that choice of gender changing how the game is played. Frankly, it strikes me as missing hte point of feminism–choices. I don’t WANT my games to change based on which gender I choose, and I don’t want to be corralled into certain playstyles if I prefer to play as one gender over another. It reminds me of a joke from the human females in WoW–”Why does everyone assume i know cooking and tailoring?” I don’t want to have to play as male to be able to play in the way I choose.

(As to Luke–how about having characters randomly assigned gay/straight/bi attributes? Would make the ‘seduce’ option a bit more interesting )

Finally, to the point–I really like the King’s/Queen’s Consort option, or just plain Consort.

By: EllieMurasaki

EllieMurasaki — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:11:45 +0000

Why distinguish between king and queen at all? Why not something like Ruler and Ruler’s Consort? Except that sounds stupid, but I’m sure there’s a good gender-neutral word out there…somewhere…

By: Kate14

Kate14 — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:33:32 +0000

Flippin eck whats with all the Deep meaninhful debates just make me a game where i can breathe dire n eat peasants.

By: Two linkspams, who talk to each other, about something other than a man (26th July, 2010) | Geek Feminism Blog

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:37:39 +0000

[...] Albano writes about setting up a court-intrigue/romance game plotline in a gender-equal gaming [...]

By: Sabrina Dent

Sabrina Dent — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:39:29 +0000

Technically, the correct appellation would be “Queen Mary and His Royal Highness The Prince Consort” or “King John and Her Royal Highness The Princess Consort.” Spouses of monarchs would then be referred to less formally in the narrative as Prince Bob and Princess Julia. This seems like a very workable solution to me.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_consort

By: Anise Strong-Morse

Anise Strong-Morse — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:35:27 +0000

Devija, I totally understand the mixed feelings, and share them to a large extent. The problem I’ve been having is that I think Broadsides was able to gender-switch successfully because it focused on a fairly narrow slice of society. Adam and Heather didn’t have to worry about lack of effective contraception or the physical strength needed to run a pump in a coal mine or other such issues. In Consort, meanwhile, which I suspect you’ll very much enjoy, the entire focus is on court life and romance. But Choice of the Roman is explicitly trying to capture as many facets as possible of elite Roman life, and I’m not sure how to gender-switch that without writing two entirely separate games. I can promise you, however, that there are some very strong and influential female characters (somewhat the reverse of Broadsides, where people have complained that everyone interesting was the same gender as the protagonist.)

By: Deviija

Deviija — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:38:05 +0000

I think the theory of an authentic setting that really does explore and examine sexuality sounds brilliant, Anise. Rome is one of my favorite settings with so much political climate, intrigue, promiscuity and chastity, laws and policy, and how different many views about many things were then that are taboo/prejudiced against now.

However, at the same time, I am not personally interested in playing restrictive gender-based games. It is in large part a fault of mainstream gaming over the course of my life and becoming cynical and alienated far too many times by the industry (and what they view as a game, catering to one very specific demographic). But that said, I would play such a game mainly because of the same-sex relations from a male POV. Being able to have M/M romance and sexuality in my games is a high freedom and interaction that I rarely get to enjoy in commercial games. Something I prefer to see/read when weaving my characters’ stories.

My mixed feelings, but there it is.