Often Discouraged, Never Refused? How Character Creator Interfaces Afford Non-Binary Gender Expression

Paper Title

Often Discouraged, Never Refused? How Character Creator Interfaces Afford Non-Binary Gender Expression

Publication Info

• Topic area: Gender expression in video game character creation interfaces (CCIs).
• Keywords: Non-binary gender, character creator interfaces, affordances, queer HCI, video games, pronoun pickers, gender-neutral design, speculative design, player agency, trans representation.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Current character creator interfaces (CCIs) in video games often fail to adequately support non-binary (NB) gender expression, subtly reinforcing cisnormative and essentialist views on gender.
• Significance: Video games are important spaces for trans and NB individuals to explore and express gender identity. Designing inclusive CCIs can alleviate stress and provide affirming experiences for marginalized players.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research highlights the constrained gender options in CCIs, the strategies players use to subvert these limitations, and the ways social conditions influence gender play. However, existing frameworks like the Avatar Affordance Framework (AAF) inadequately capture the relational and situated nature of affordances in CCIs, necessitating a new analytical approach.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Application of Jenny L. Davis’ mechanisms and conditions framework (MCF) to analyze how CCIs afford NB gender expression.
• Novelty:
  1. Adaptation of MCF to investigate how CCIs constrict and construct NB identity-making.
  2. Combination of queering methods and MCF to analyze interfaces that refuse queer identities.
  3. Proposal for more free-form, player-driven gendered features to encourage inclusive gender play.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Multi-method approach combining walkthroughs, feature analysis, and queering (too-close play).
  • Analysis of 19 single-player games with varying levels of NB gender options.
  • Categorization of CCI features into "pronoun pickers" and "bodies, beards, and private parts."
  • Speculative design to envision future solutions for inclusive CCIs.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Pronoun pickers often discourage NB expression by defaulting pronouns to body types or hiding NB options.
  • Gender-neutral signifiers like "body type" frequently obscure rather than eliminate gender binaries.
  • Games with no explicit NB options can still afford NB expression through queering paths such as "The Monstrous," "The Sanitized Cyborg," and "Sexy Misgendering."
• Advantage over baselines: MCF provides a nuanced understanding of how CCIs afford or stymie NB gender expression, surpassing feature-counting methods like AAF by incorporating player agency and interpretive power.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Corpus of 19 games analyzed through walkthroughs and queering methods.
  • Documentation of CCI features, player interactions, and game-world responses.
  • Comparative analysis of games with explicit NB options versus those requiring interpretive play.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Corpus limited to single-player PC games; future work could include multiplayer, console, and mobile games.
  • MCF definitions may require refinement for broader applicability.
  • Empirical studies needed to assess player experiences with CCIs across diverse demographics.

Summary

This paper applies the mechanisms and conditions framework (MCF) to analyze how video game character creator interfaces (CCIs) afford non-binary (NB) gender expression. Through feature analysis and queering methods, the authors reveal how CCIs often discourage NB expression by reinforcing cisnormative defaults, while also identifying paths for queer play in games without explicit NB options. The study highlights the potential of MCF to surface nuanced affordances and proposes speculative design solutions, such as visual coding tools, to create more liberatory and inclusive CCIs. Future work could expand the corpus to include multiplayer and mobile games, refine MCF definitions, and empirically investigate player experiences.