This discourse was going around twitter today apparently and im curious takes from here.
Which is it for you?
For me i prefer playersexuality. I want to be able to romance any romance option regardless of my charachters gender. I dont want to be stuck with only Arcade Gannon if i want to do m/m
I agree that sexuality can be important to a charachter. But if you wanna do that, seems like the charachter can just not be a romance option.
That said. In RPGs devs can do what they want. You want a charachter to be monosexual and a romance option, have at it. (Unless theyre all straight, then fuck you).
I do kinda hate what The Sims did by adding monosexuality. Felt like such a virtue signal that made the game less fun. All Sims being pansexual was always more fun for me. Especially since i usually play that game as a pansexual slut. Unless i decide my player Sim is mono, but thats on the player's end.
Monosexual townies in the Sims should at least be optional (is it? Idk havent played Sims 4 since this update).
Thats not what i meant. I meant that i prefer romance options be playersexual for player choice reasons, so if you want an NPC or party member to be monosexual for some narrative you want to explore, then just dont have them be a romance option regardless of the PC's gender. Have them romance another NPC and have a sidequest where the PC sets it up for example.
Obviously an NPC can be not interested in the PC for any reason yeah. Nor every charachter needs to be romanceable anyway, obv.
And all of this only applies to open ended WRPGs anyway. And games like Stardew. Linear games like Final Fantasy are a totally different story.
I know. I’m only referring to those who are options.
~~> Thats not what i meant. I meant that i prefer romance options be playersexual for player choice reasons, so if you want an NPC or party member to be monosexual for some narrative you want to explore, then just dont have them be a romance option regardless of the PC's gender.~~
~~Isn’t this the same as removing a character from the dating pool just because they don’t like you? Choosing your gender is a player choice.~~
I guess we should step back a little. I’m confused by OOP’s referring to “characters” and not specifying which, and this part of your post
When you say “playersexual preference”, are you just referring to your character or everyone else? Because if you’re saying your PC should be a self insert with whatever sexuality you decide at any moment and that other characters with the respective sexuality should be an option, I absolutely agree (most of the time, unless it’s not an RPG).
If you’re suggesting that every romance option be available to your character and have no preferences to your gender, then I disagree.
For example, it’s appropriate that you cannot choose Nathan Drake’s or Celeste’s gender and sexuality. But it would be strange if Baulder’s Gate restricts your player character to one sexuality. Is this what you’re thinking?
Yeah no obviously the PC is whatever you decide. But "playersexual" NPCs means games where none of the romance options care what gender you are. Like in Skyrim and BG3. (And the Sims before the sexuality update).
I agree that choosing your gender is a player choice. And thats a good point. But it does suck if youre a gay man who wants to play a gay charachter in FNV, but you dont like Arcade Gannon.
And yeah, mods are an option. Thats a good point too.
Personally i think playersexuality makes better sense for WRPGs. But i dont begrude devs who want to do differently.
In that case, i would revert back to my original argument. I think that the romance options not being interested is entirely fine if the game allows you to choose your gender. It just means you have to find someone else who shares the same/overlapping sexuality as you, like real life. And yes I know we’re talking about video games here, but your point here
looks like developer shortsightedness instead of a flaw for monosexuality. The proper way to address this is to just add more characters with different sexualities. Or change existing characters’ sexuality (obviously before release because it would just be fucked up o change it as a patch lol)
I don’t know. I guess I think it would be kind of amusing and reflective of reality if you chat up a girl throughout a quest, and when she realizes you’re romantically interested she reveals she’s a lesbian. And you just gotta put up with it and move on. But if your character is a girl, then she might continue seeking you out or something. Every RPG game I’ve played just lets me romance whoever, and I view that as uninteresting as games allowing you to accumulate millions of dollars from the get go and the story still continues about you being poor and struggling like nothing changed (ahem, RDR2 and Persona 5)
Ideally yeah. But it does take a fair amount of dev resources to add in depth romance sidequests. Like if its a Skyrim situation where they dont bother with that and you just do one minor thing for them and theyre ready to marry you, then fine. But if its a situation like Bioware games then you gotta make sure to have enough options of every combo that situations like what i describe comes up. Every charachter being "mechanically pansexual" was probably actually easier for the BG3 devs than that would have been.
Funny enough, as much as I complained about The Sims example. Its probably actually the best fit for what you describe. Ifs a life sim, so dealing with the reality that your Sims's first crush doesnt have a compatible sexuality makes sense for that. And since theres not prewritten romance sidequests, and its entirely player generated, then theres not the extra resources. Just the code they added to make the system work for every Sim.
But, then again, The Sims is a sandbox game, so it should still be optional if you want to deal with that. As someone who likes to play out my pansexual slut fantasies in that game i would turn it off lol.
Yeah I wasn’t accounting developer resources when writing out my posts. With the amount of workplace abuse and overworking and crunch, playersexual NPCs are just the best choice for labor, and trying to add unique sexualities to each character while under extreme pressure will likely result in terrible story and characterization.
I agree that games like Sims should have optional settings for just about everything since you control (or choose to be passive) the story from start to finish.
playersexual is the efficient dev choice. even if money wasn't a consideration, it takes a fuckload of time to make anything so you're not going to make these dragon agey games with a dozen extra missable side characters unless that thing you're doing is core to your concept.
narratively there's no such thing as playersexual because the diegesis doesn't know the alternate version exists.
to your last idea i propose anti-playersexual characters that always turn you down.
It is a flaw for monosexuality. How are you going to account for non-binary players or characters? Do you just make all characters playersexual regardless of the player’s presentation, if the player is non-binary, but not if they’re a binary gender? Do you give them weird hyper specific preferences? There isn’t a proper way to implement it, and if we’re going to acknowledge that the gender binary is stupid (like we SHOULD) this calls into question the idea of making monosexual romance options in the first place when you have games with characters that can be any gender identity. If you need to explore these different themes, it might be more dev time efficient and less risky to just make a game about that specifically?
Edit: meh don’t think I agree with my own comment here anymore, I’m tired. Game design is a big field and there are plenty of solutions and probably dozens of models between playersexuality and set sexuality we haven’t discovered yet.