I think it's honestly better to view it through the lens of it being a game design tool moreso than a philosophical debate. If you want to emphasize player choice and freedom, playersexual. If you want to emphasize characterization and worldbuilding, set sexuality.

If you're going to incorporate dating sim components into your game, it's generally better to lean towards playersexual. Otherwise, you run into a sort of zugzwang where you can
a) lock romance options to het (e.g. Persona) and alienate queer people, even worse when you don't have a gender option which also alienates 50% of said hets, or
b) have set sexuality and allow some queer relationships with certain characters (e.g. Fire Emblem: Three Houses) but have people annoyed about the arbitrariness of it, especially when there are no characters that cannot be romanced in a heterosexual way but limited queer options.

I think there's space for set sexuality, especially in linear, narrative-driven RPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy, Undertale, Zelda). Set sexuality really works when you want to emphasize relationships between characters that the protagonist/player character is not party to (e.g. ) Furthermore, set sexuality, when there is a romance mechanic, best works when you establish a boundary between player and character.

Ultimately, it's a choice of what you want to grant to the player, as well as the distance between the player and the protagonist. If you want to let the player choose between characters to romance in the game, and that's an aspect that is a design component within the game, you're usually better off sticking to playersexual, unless you want to take a hyperrealistic angle to it. If you don't want to incorporate that aspect into your game, there's genuinely no need, stick to set sexuality. If you want to establish the protagonist as a character that exists outside of the player embodying them, lean towards set sexuality.

I honestly am just tired of romance being attached as a weird afterthought to certain RPGs. It's sterile when it's not handled with a modicum of care, and it definitely cements the whole unease-inducing 'escapist power fantasy' vibe you get in RPGs that take this approach alongside emphasizing openness. If you're gonna let me date, let me date. If not, why bother?

Now I feel weird because the discussions here are great, in depth, and nuanced, but the way I feel about this is kinda boring and uncomplicated? Am I missing something?

If I'm playing a customized character that I made, I prefer characters to be playersexual, allowing custom relationships to match my custom character.

If I'm playing as a written character and experiencing a set story, it is better for all characters to be written well, and have realistic sexualities, as part of the story presented.

As far as representation goes, I think both can have problems, but neither are inextricably problematic.

basically i want good queer characters whose queerness isn't ignorable and is a notable facet of their lives. i think playersexual characters are often a copout, where they write a heterosexual character and then let them date the mc, but if they're textually bi or pan or ace or something than it's fine by me. just make sure they aren't consistently het except for the mc i hate that shit

like i see people talking fire emblem. dorothea is into women! it's very simple to make the playersexual thing work, just have good writing

I just want to be gay with Garrus and lesbian with Tali

In Wrath of the Righteous, the one female love interest only available to male PCs is a flesh-eating serial killer, which should be the standard for romancable heterosexual characters.

BG3 but every character has a lil bi flag badge

Surely I'm not the only one who finds "romance" options in games to be profoundly weird, though? I feel like the game-y mechanics do not rub up well against what is meant to be a relationship...

Every character should be Bi-winning if you play a woman and gay if you play a man. Just to really piss off the Gamers.

I like both for different reasons. If it's important to a character's design and story or if the devs want to represent a specific identity, fixed is obviously the way. If it's not, then playersexual is fine I guess. In the case of a playersexual character though, people should feel free to project their identities—after all, they're working with what is pretty much an open canvas. A character might be playersexual in the broad sense, but that doesn't mean I can't interpret them as a lesbian, for example.

I also think that if what you're aiming for is realism, NPC identities should reflect that in various ways. Getting rejected by Panam (straight) in Cyberpunk 2077 only to recover and go on to date Judy (lesbian) added a lot of depth to my Vi.

In a perfect world where more game writers weren't annoying dipshits who see writing gay or even bi characters as beneath them, romance options with defined sexualities would be no issue.

In this world I have been burned one too many times playing a game with romance options where the heterosexual romance options are with the characters who are plot relevant and have the most content and the gay and bi options are the side characters who have less content, sometimes explicitly because they're the ones who can get killed off for fun (THIS IS ABOUT YOU BIOWARE I AM SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT HACK FRAUDS FUCK YOU)

yeah no, just give me playersexual characters every time, even in ths cases where the devs make it clear they were written with straight relationships as the implied default (Stardew Valley....)

I agree that characters with deliberate and well-written sexualities would be ideal, but on the other hand “bisexual chaos world” also sounds pretty rad. Is it possible to have both?

I think this problem exists primarily in the shadow of games historically being written mostly by and for straight men. Games that break this trend, like Baldur's Gate 3, are right now remarkable for it, but once this is the norm the problems of both choices mostly disappear.

But while we are stuck in the present with everyone being bi, I wouldn't mind the characters actually saying "I am bisexual" once in a while.

Either can be good, I did like how in DA:I you can flirt with Cassandra as a woman and she awkwardly takes you aside after a while to tell you that she is in fact straight (and crushed my heart forever ) the same with Dorian, though he's the aggressive flirt in that case.

Then in Mass Effect it just doesnt really even make sense, honestly. Like you're completely different species, in some cases you cant even kiss properly for fear of allergic reactions and you're still stuck on some arbitrary gender binary romances? Live a little, goddamn.

In games where PC has a well defined personality and is distinct from the player it makes sense to have their sexuality fixed as part of the story, but in open ended RPGs that try to give the player as much choice as possible and blur the distinction between the player and the character, a set sexuality just comes across as lazy writing. I can set myself up as a fire-breathing lizard person with the highest cheekbones in history but the male characters are totally claws-off? That's dumb.

It depends on the goal of the game and the narrative it is trying to portray. It the character in the game is supposed to be a representation of the player in the game world, then it's only fair for the player to decide their own sexuality. If the character is a set character in the game with their own narrative/backstory, they should have their own sexuality and the player should not be able to change it. This requires competent writing though, which is rare in video games.

As for the NPCs which the player can romance, again that depends on how in depth and good the writing is. If the writing and lore is shallow, just let the NPCs be bisexual or pansexual and let the player romance who they want. If there is in depth narrative, good writing and worldbuilding with regards to NPCs, they should have a set sexuality that the player must respect.

Hot Take maybe; Player-sexuality as the norm is probably inevitable as more of these games tend towards adding mixed and diverse gender options. No developer wants to be the one deciding what combinations of body types, genders, pronouns, voices etc etc falls under 'available to lesbian romance option' or 'available to straight male flirting'.

That said, my preference is still set sexuality. Especially the more grounded a setting. Judy from Cyberpunk (recency bias am I right) for example likely wouldn't feel as real a character to me without the history of messy lesbian situation-ships thing she has going on.

I remember making a thread about this a year ago.

Honestly, even with the common pitfalls, I would still take specific sexualities over playersexual characters. Playersexual absolutely never feels authentic at all, it feels hollow and like I am just headcanoning the relationship. For me to feel like queer representation is done right, I honestly want it to reflect what actual lived experiences of queer people are, and that does include the fact that not everyone that I could be romantically attracted to will ever be able to reciprocate that feeling. It feels that much better when you actually do find someone who can. Why have I found VNs where gay people clearly outnumber the straights at least two-to-one (and where somehow homophobia still exists despite that???), that somehow still represent that experience better than the average video game? I can understand people wanting escapism and do somewhat enjoy having the extra selection from playersexual setups (I would be devastated if Halsin was strictly straight), but like, sometimes I just want an experience that is more relatable and cathartic. I'm also quite certain that most cishet game writers would probably assume playersexual is the default preference or the safer option so I feel comfortable pushing for characters having defined sexualities in hopes of getting a few games that do it well.

I haven't played a lot of really newer games so maybe things have changed, but in my experience playersexual romance options end up feeling like a straight person with a straight romance that's been genericized so any gender can be subbed in. Maybe the ideal would be having the dialogue and the way things play out depend on the player's gender? Although at that point I guess that crosses over into making all romance options explicitly bi/pan.

Tali was cute and gating her romance path behind the inferior male Shepard was not okay.

I don't like playersexuality, because I prefer my gay and bi characters to actually have experience with (and reference their experiences with) homophobia, which is something that every gay and bi person ive ever met has had in common. A love story between gay characters that has absolutely nothing to do with homophobia is just a straight love story with one of the characters' genders swapped

I personally think it's essential to have sexuality as a hard feature because it's a necessary component of writing properly developed characters.

I'm sorry but if everyone is a bisexual you are limiting yourself to the type of characters that you can write, because there are certain characters that just will not be bisexual. Or if you did make the white conservative cis male orthodox christian bisexual you are damn well going to have to write a lot of complexity into that character to square the circle. You are including many conflicting ideologies in that character and explaining them or representing the character's own torment with their conflicting sexuality vs ideology becomes a necessary part of the writing.

Features of characters force you into writing directions because a character having x but also y means either a, b or c but definitely not d. If you understand what I mean.

Your world and writing depth takes a necessary hit if you do this. What you end up with is a game that is unashamedly lgbt, I'm not complaining about that because I do love me some games that are just blatantly full of gay, but it's not all I want all the time.

If we’re going to be dunking on playersexual, I do think we have to come to terms with the fact that character creation in general is kind of a trade off for writing quality, and that having a more generic experience is kind of the price you pay for a truly customizable character

I’m tempted to say it’s kind of a toss up of which is better when the character is customizable. Set sexuality is probably better there when it can be done without too much effort, but playersexual just makes sense and can probably be done well. When the character is preset, of course it should be a set sexuality, because the player character itself is already set. There’s no reason not to plan for it at that point.

On top of all the very good points everyone else made in the thread, i want to throw my additional 2 cents in:

One of the reasons that playersexuality is so common is that straight players can pick their preference and then never see any of those icky queer people in their game at all (because in most games the amount of romance-able men is usually 1 and they won't hit on you if you don't go looking for it), whereas everyone else gets to "press the gay button to enable gay content".

The idea that making everyone bi is how BG3 cracked the code is misleading, BG3 allowed you to romance a crapload of men, and a lot of them hit on you incessantly, which is what gamers (that otherwise love playersexual games) hated. That was not playersexuality being good, that was just Larian giving you choice. In most playersexual games you still get stuck with the one sad gay male option and the five lesbian options that are just repurposed straight romances. Because 1) oh, gay men, ew, and 2) wow, lesbians, awooga. So, if what you care about is gay men, then in practice either option kinda sucks, and in principle playersexuality as done by non-cowards is mostly ok, i guess, because nobody can bring themselves to write more than the one gay man.

This is one of the few times when the gamers are right and we should just make it playersexual. I play games to do an escapism. I don't want to have every gay romance be an in-depth exploration of trauma and oppression in a hetero-dominant world. I want to go on gay adventures with my polycule of wacky characters, not be constantly reminded why my own life sucks as well.

You can remove the exploration of sexuality in their routes but then you have literally no reason for them to have set sexualities in the first place. It doesn't really come up in the story or have a reason beyond making you choose a different gender next go-around.

Of course if the game is designed to be an exploration of sexuality then that's different.

Set sexuality is my initial preference. Games that handle this topic like Skyrim and Baldur’s Gate 3 don’t really have a lot to say about specific sexualities queer experiences, because they don’t want to alienate/make the player feel left out. One of the tweets mentions dragon age which is where I felt seen and heard for the first time. Another comment mentions it but in a game with well defined characters who have queer identities I can understand and want there to be restrictions. To say otherwise would be inauthentic to the story you’re trying to tell.

Whatever we decide here you are all clearly gamers and you should be ashamed

The answer is it depends on the game IMO. A game where you play a defined, scripted character like The Witcher ? I guess the criticism could make sense (even then I don't think it matters much).

A game like BG3 / most cRPGs where you create the character from scratch entirely ? anything goes IMO, it's your character, you decide its sexuality.

i don't want to see what male g*mers (or devs) would do with canonically lesbain characters. theres no way that ends well in anything non-indie

As a queer polyam person, I want the game to be playersexual, and I want the game to allow me to romance everyone in the same playthrough. Doesn't matter what character I'm playing let me romance everyone all of the time thank you.

No romance options because romance in games is cringe