So I’m on the design team for a fantasy tabletop game getting released later this year. A few of my spells, items, and other game mechanics have made it in to the game, but most of my work has been on creative, lore, and world building.
One of the pieces I’ve been doing some exploratory design work on is the different playable fantasy races that characters will be able to choose from in the future.
(In the Beta version that’s coming out next month, all players will be human. But the goal is to get playable races ready for the first commercial printing, which will happen later this year.)
I was having a lunch meeting with the game creator last week, and I shared my feedback and suggestions for changes to the current races. One of my main criticisms was that five of the ten playable races were “just pretty people with different skin colors and extra magic.” I suggested combining all five of them into one race, and then adding four more races that were still humanoid, but much less human-looking.
To his credit, the game creator listened to me patiently and let me explain my point of view. (I should probably also point out that we’ve known each other for over thirty years.) After I was done on my soap box, he hit me with a truth bomb that my brain is still digesting.
See, he’s been developing this game on and off for eleven years, while I’m a relative newcomer to the design team. (I started about a year ago.) And he takes game design seriously. So he’s got years of research, playtesting, and discovery behind the current design. Another thing he’s taken seriously over the years is his market research.
Because part of his vision is that his game isn’t just another fantasy role-playing game for white nerdy guys. It’s meant to be a fantasy role-playing game “for everyone.” Which means he’s focused hard over the years to make sure that his playtesting and market research groups have included people of diverse backgrounds, genders, ages, and other demographics. And he particularly pays attention to the feedback that he gets from women, who are often under-served in fantasy games.
OK, so what does this all have to do with my feedback about the playable fantasy races? Well it turns out that those five fantasy races I was so critical of for being “just pretty people with different skin colors and extra magic” were also the five races that tended to get the most positive responses from women in market research and playtesting groups. I was confused.
“Look,” he said, “you know that Lani has been on the design team for years, and a lot of her friends have done playtesting and market research for us. Many of her friends are women, non-binary, people of color, different sexualities, and a wide range of body types. And a LOT of people who have given us feedback in Lani’s playgroups have said how much they love that this game gives them so many options for highly feminine characters. Because a lot of them want to play as a ‘pretty person with colorful skin and extra magic’ and are tired of elf being the only option for a pretty character race.”
He then pointed out to me that of the other four playable races I had recommended, two of them played more into masculine fantasies, and all of them looked decidedly inhuman.
I was speechless, and he was 100% right. For as much as I try to be a feminist and be aware of my own gender bias, here it was again, staring me in the face because I was designing and giving feedback with a huge blind spot. And my blind spot was so significant that I wasn’t just dismissive of it, I was completely unaware of it.
So I guess my personal takeaway is this: Internalized sexism bites. And it’s not just a problem for jerks or people who willfully ignore it. It’s a problem for all of us, and learning to overcome it is a never-ending process. Fortunately, if we’re really trying and we listen to the people willing to help us, we can also improve a little more every day.
This is a really good story and a really important lesson for people to learn. Even as a person who identifies as female myself the lack of races that appeal to people who want their character to look/present as feminine never occurred to me. Now that it’s been pointed out to me it does seem rather obvious though.
That said, I feel like posting this story here is probably going to garner one major bit of feedback, and I know I won’t be the only person to say this, but for every girl that wants to play the pretty feminine race, there is a girl who wants to play the monsterous humanoid or the butch orc warrior woman. We very much need both types of races. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m a girl, and the main reason the problem you mentioned never occurred to me is because I love playing as dwarves, goblins, gnomes, half-orcs, dragonborn and other races like that.
So tell your friend that I’m glad he’s keeping female gamers in mind and giving people options to play races that can present as more traditionally feminine that aren’t just elves. But please, don’t entirely write off the potential for races where even the females don’t present as traditionally feminine. Because there are girls who also like these types of races.
Thanks @zeldafan42!! That is excellent feedback, and I will definitely pass that along to the rest of the design team.
In fact, we’ve made a Tumblr blog for the game, and later this weekend (hopefully later today) I’ll be posting a link to it and reblogging some posts of the worldbuilding content we’re working on.
And the #1 goal of that blog is to get feedback from awesome people like you on what you think and what you’d like to see!! So I hope you’ll come prepared to join in the discussion!
Tbh this isn’t typical of my blog content but I’m a fan of @flavoracle and I know my followers are big nerds so I’m blatantly plugging this
Gender Bias Blind Spot
Published
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