Today’s game developers grew up with gender diversity in early RPGs

I was treated by my parents to a bowl of soup and ice cream. The Lion King after I told them who I was, so it meant a lot to me a few years later when Game Freak’s Pokémon Crystal respected my answer of “Girl” after asking my gender for my playthrough on my atomic purple Game Boy Color.

Pokémon CrystalThis was the first series in which players could choose their gender. It is a tradition that continues in mainline role-playing titles, as well as in the most recent entries. Pokémon ScarletAnd Violet.

If Crystal was released worldwide in 2001, a lot of my friends paid little attention to the addition of Kris, the canonical name for the game’s female protagonist, but it was a really big deal to me. And in the time since I came out and accepted myself, I’ve learned from many other women that Pokémon Crystal and Kris impacted them greatly too, allowing us to finally see ourselves in a video game and on our very own Pokémon adventure.

It is comforting to observe game studios striving for greater representation, even 21 years after the fact. Inspiration from Kris’s memories. Pokémon CrystalI interviewed four people in the industry who spoke about their experience designing gender inclusive games and their thoughts on how they approach their work.

Quina Quen, one of the playable character in Final Fantasy IX, displays a playful tongue-out expression in the game’s official artwork — Quina Quina, one of many playable characters *Final Fantasy IX.*

Iasmin Ata and others are involved in comics, games, sound effects, 2D animation, audio, and other aspects of gaming. most incredible Sonic art I have ever seen. They are the inventors of Mis(h)adra, a graphic novel that “vividly depicts the daily life of an Arab-American epileptic named Isaac.”

Iasmin, who typically goes by their handle Delta, shared that they “didn’t really see a lot of nonbinary or non-gender expression” in media and pop culture, especially during the most formative times of their life.

It wasn’t until 2000’s Final Fantasy IXThey were finally allowed to view a non-gendered Quina Quen character in a videogame. Iasmin, like many transgender people, described it as an amazing experience to see themselves onscreen.

“Some people laughed about it at the time,” Delta shared before adding, “but after a few years, people looked back on it and started going, ‘Oh, that’s actually really cool.’

“The character’s name and pronouns aren’t spoken, and this is also before ‘they’ and ‘them’ were really commonly in use as nonbinary terms. The character’s name [in the game] is just listed as ‘S/He,’ and I loved that.

“Even just having a character where you don’t have to have pronouns can just really make a difference,” they added, before saying that these days, the change seems to mostly be coming from the independent side of the game industry.

A scene depicting an arcade full of people in 2064: Read Only Memories

2064: Read Only MemoriesIt was the first game Delta ever played in which they could choose their pronouns.

“It blew my mind. It made me realize, ‘Oh, this is a thing people can do. People just choose not to.’”

Games can often be a medium where players can explore themselves and their gender expression, particularly in titles where you’re able to create your own character, but this can also be true when creating and engaging with written work as well, as Delta learned with their graphic novel.

The cover art for Mis(h)adra has a black background with a colorful outline of hands reaching upwards, surrounded by white orbs on a string

“When I was creating Mis(h)adraI made the decision to create a character that was different than me. I was able to test these new things and still put it out there. It was just so rewarding.”

Delta and their colleagues have learned many lessons over the past years. Next year they will be publishing a graphic book called Nayra und the Djinn where their editor left them an encouraging note about making a second Djinn character as nonbinary: “Why don’t you just do that for the second character? You don’t have to stop at one.”

“I learned you don’t have to ask for permission first to represent yourself,” Delta shared with me, before continuing, “Now I just leave the character as no-gender, nonbinary, and sent it in.”

The talk ended with geeking out about the future. BOSSGAME: My Heart Is The Last BossThe game featured two lesbian witches and had greatly affected me as transgender lesbian because it included that experience. Delta surprised me again by telling me that they helped with some of the work, which included an illustration for Anna and Dawn (with fireworks!). In the final credits.

A dialogue screen from BOSSGAME during which the character Anna says: “sophie” “have you been fighting other women without me” “i’m not mad but you really should’ve said something”

One of the combat encounters in BOSSGAME, during which the two witch protagonists fight two rat enemies

Lily Valeen (the developer of) was my next contact. BOSSGAMEI was shocked to learn that her criticism of Fire Emblem is the same as mine. Fire Emblem: Three HomesParticularly.

“Fire Emblem is a notoriously straight franchise,” she said. “I want to pick a woman to play as, but I also want to hook my character up with the hot butch — but I can’t do that.”

After playing, I spoke for the first time with Valeen. BOSSGAMEShe told her about how it felt to be in a video game. In our interview for this article, she assured me: “There’s no version of BOSSGAME where Anna and Sophie aren’t lesbians. It’s just so tied to the story.”

Create BOSSGAMEValeen stated that it was really liberating to create a game for an audience she knows is small.

“I’m going to make this obnoxiously, embarrassingly queer story,” she said. “I’m going to make this whole game about a trans woman going on adventures with her witch girlfriend.”

Also, she spoke about her guilt in taking up space and the fact that women often feel inferior or less. This was a key theme in the book. BOSSGAME: “I as a person am allowed to take up space in this world, and so I wanted to deal with the guilt of what it feels like taking up too much space […] and the guilt that comes with expressing your needs.”

Maura Peterson is the Serenity Forge art director. She spoke with me about Kris and our common love. Pokémon Crystal. WYou can also visit e grew up playing a lot of the same games, thanks to her older brothers passing down their copies of titles like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, and Cool Boarders. But then, one day, she cleared a save file on PokéMon Crystal and chose a different character sprite than any of her brothers. Like me and many other girls, she chose Kris.

Peterson’s education has included art history, which has also informed her approach and how she sees other art. This included the difference in something being classified as nude or pornographic.

“There’s always some kind of interjected projection of the male gaze on things. And I think, where you can — especially in games, because, you know, it is an art medium — you can still have a sexualized female character. But you need to say something. It needs to mean something.”

What does that look like, according to Peterson? She explained with an example: a painting called Olympia by Édouard Manet.

Édouard Manet’s painting Olympia depicts a nude woman, reclined in bed, staring into the eye of the beholder; behind her, a woman in a pink dress offers her a bouquet of flowers

“So there’s a painting by by Manet called Olympia, which depicts a sex worker. She’s kind of laying on her side and stuff. And she’s wearing high heels and has a pearl necklace on. But it was very challenging at the time, because it kind of parodied a lot of old Renaissance paintings that were pornographic. [The paintings] that old dudes hung up in their bedchambers. […] But [in Manet’s Olympia], she’s looking you right in the eye. She’s, like, challenging you. And I think that’s the difference between, you know, sexualizing a character and then having a character who’s sexual but empowered and saying something.”

Maura continued by saying the thing that’s on every woman’s mind when we finally get to be a playable female character and the hero: “Those are the types of things that I find really inspiring as a woman, because I can put myself into those shoes and play as this awesome character. It’s almost like the counterpart of — I don’t know, like how the men always got their over-masculine war heroes. And now I can fuck up a bunch of monstersPlease see the following: it’s grYou can also visit eat.”

Three characters from the game A Taste of the Past: on the left, one character sits in a chair looking exhausted; at the center, a character with long black hair is backlit by moonlight; at the right, a white-haired character with a hair bun stares forward solemnly

“Gender has always informed my approach to gaming” is how Emily Pitcher, director at Sondering Studio, started our conversation. And it was clear throughout.

In her time streaming on Twitch in college, she experienced racism, sexism, And other invalidating responses — an experience that many women, and women of color especially, can no doubt relate to.

Pitcher encountered many challenges while she worked on AAA videogames, including being demotivated from participation, denied promotions or having to speak up in the room.

That’s why she decided to focus her energy into the indie side of the industry, where she could make an even bigger difference, while pushing for bigger and better diversity and gender inclusion. She’s grateful for resources like Code Coven, which has empowered her and which she believes can do the same for other women and marginalized people seeking to make their way into the industry.

Pitcher is really active on TikTok, using the Sondering Studio account to provide resources and inspiration for the next generation of developers and leaders in the industry: “TikTok has really empowered me to share my experience and connect. At the end of the day, I’m a girl in her bedroom making weird games.”

One of the characters from Homestead Arcana stands in front of an orange landscape marked by stone formations and a leafless tree. The character wears a full face mask and a tattered gown

An image of a lush, green landscape in Homestead Arcana, foregrounded by a tiny black cat gazing into the eyes of the viewer

The protagonist of Homestead Arcana, wearing a purple brimmed hat, blue shirt, and brown shawl, gazes out at a landscape of mysterious purple outcroppings

The Past: A Taste of the PastSondering Studio’s first game. The game stars a Chinese girl, which already set it apart from most other games, but Pitcher has even bigger plans for her studio’s follow-up, Homestead Arcana. It will also feature a Chinese girl and, in Pitcher’s words, “flawed but strong female characters.” She says that we can have more flawed characters if we let more diversity in the room.

It’s easier for characters to seem human if they can be flawed, but who wants to make the only queer character evil, foolish, or even just clumsy on their feet? Each character feels more authentic and human when there is more diversity in their creations and representation of other identities in media.

Pitcher and I also spoke about how there’s often less money to be made in creating art for the sake of authenticity, but how it’s worth it for the message, the meaning, and the art itself.

“It can be conflicting making emotional, heartfelt games,” said Pitcher, “but we’re not compromising on our creative vision, even if chasing trends is a more guaranteed success.”

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