Breaking the Binary: Trans in Gaming

Story Time:

I sit, staring at the intro screen to, of all things, Pokemon Y. I’ve been here for maybe 10 minutes, staring at a very simple question that Professor Sycamore asked, that every Professor of Pokemon Studies always asks right at the beginning of the game.

“Are you a girl or boy?”

My look of panic must radiate somehow, because my partner comes over to see what’s wrong. He’s already at the screen to select his starter Pokemon. He looks down at screen, looks up at my face, then pulls out a coin. He flips it, it lands heads.

“Jynx, you’re a girl in this one.”

—

Story Time:

I’m at a cocktail party, trying not to feel out of place in my button down shirt and dress pants. Every other female-bodied person is wearing a dress or skirt. I’m out to everyone in the room, yet I still feel like I should be conforming in some way.

The topic switches to Dungeons and Dragons, a familiarity and I latch onto it like a lifeline. We had just started sharing stories from campaigns when one of the attendees turns on me. He’d been getting louder and more belligerent the more alcohol he’d consumed.

“What’s your normal build?” He questioned.

“Elf mage, with the ranger skillset,” I replied.

“Alignment?” he fired.

“Good, somewhere. Normally Neutral,” I answered still, wondering what the point of this all was. He hadn’t asked anyone else these questions.

“Male or female?” He asked, his face suddenly smug. I now realized why I was the only one being asked these questions. But I felt no reason to lie.

“Female.”

“Ha!” he shouted, pointed at me. “See, I told you. Female!” The others in the conversation looked confused, worried, or embarrassed. Because, to this guy, me playing a female character made me female. Obviously.

My partner broke the awkward, pained silence by returning with drinks and pointing out the ridiculousness of the man’s argument:

“I play a Tengu druid…when do I get my feathers and my banjo-playing bear?”

—

Some background, I guess. I’m gender neutral (I use this term interchangeably with non-binary); this means that I do not identify as either male or female, but something in the middle…or not at all. My preferred pronouns are they/them/theirs. That puts me under the Transgender umbrella in the LGBTQ+ acronym. I’m cool saying that out loud because I’m very out, and I deal with problems as they arise due to that part of my identity. I’m female-bodied, though, so I try to dress more masculine to mask my secondary sex characteristics. Not all non-binaries present this way, but it’s what sometimes works for me. 

I also play games. I’m going to refrain from using the label that I’m a “gamer,” though, because I don’t feel like having to defend myself right now. Being female-bodied in the gaming community is bad enough.

So yes, I’m transgender and I game. And I like gaming. Even if I don’t ever get to see people like me in games.

Okay, wait, I’ll back up. Because I’ve made that statement before and was reminded that 1) I am white and 2) female-bodied. So yes, there are a lot of video game characters that look like me. And that I should stop complaining, because a lot of people have it worse than me. Be happy with what I got.

And those who told me that were right. Sort of. There are female-bodied white characters, I am not denying that. And while those representations often are problematic too, it’s nowhere near the stereotyping or non-representation people of color get. Especially queer people of color. I am not saying that isn’t true.

I’m just saying it’d be really nice to see transpeople in games.

The Few. The Problems. The Canonical Trans

(Beware. There be spoilers ahead. Probably. )

Off the top of my head, I can actually only point to one canon transperson represented in a video game. That is, of course, our paragon Krem, from Bioware’s Dragon Age: Inquisition. You get to learn his experiences during his transitioning, under a structured and gendered society, and the band of people  you meet him with accept him totally and completely (Thank you, Iron Bull). Krem is what we want to see—a transperson finally getting to be themselves and being accepted, despite the hardship they faced.

But it’s 2016 and that’s it. We have Krem. He’s not even a main character, but an interesting NPC that you meet a few times.

Well, okay, I’m wrong. I can think of a few other transpeople. But they’re not officially transgender. In fact, one of them was erased by their game company.

I’m speaking of Naoto Shirogane in Persona 4.

I’m going to say this up front: To me, Naoto is a nonbinary, like me. And no amount of information released after the game saying “no no! She’s totally a girl and happy that way!” will ever convince me otherwise.

Persona 4 is a game about facing your inner demons and becoming your true self. You do this by fighting your “shadow,” or a manifestation of all the things that haunt you: be it your weaknesses or parts of you that you can’t admit.  Whatever it is, it’s waiting for you, and only by facing it can you get stronger.

Naoto’s story is not the main story, but they are one of the many high school students you end up recruiting in your band of people investigating a serial killer.

It…makes more sense if you play the game.

Anyway. When you first meet Naoto, they are introduced to you as a “he.” In fact, they are called the “Detective Prince” and have come to solve the case of this serial killer on their own. And you have no reason to doubt this outright. Event their voice actor is surprisingly neutral.

After Naoto gets kidnapped and the main band goes to save them, you learn that Naoto is female-bodied. They have been hiding their appearance because they way that society deems women subordinate to men, and because they wish to carry on their family name. They experience extreme dysphoria because of this. Naturally, their Shadow brings this up, and calls Naoto childish for not accepting themselves.

Upon beating Naoto’s Shadow-self, Naoto comes to accept themselves and their potential. And here is where the game developers and I different in opinion. I am aware that Naoto states, in the game, that “I am a woman.” This is a wonderful point for them, because this shows where they will begin to realize their dreams regardless of their gender.

It’s the point where we could have had a perfect gender neutral character, or at least a really good one. And really, Naoto remains very neutral throughout the game, despite the various dialogue options that have to reinforce that they are “a woman”.

It’s nice to have a female character that wishes to succeed in a male-dominated field and do so despite being female. But it would have been really nice to have a female-bodied character that chooses to embrace that the really identify as neither male nor female, and will succeed regardless.

But I can dream.

And I know I’m probably missing the indie games that have transpeople as main characters. Or main plot people. But I’m notorious for not playing every game out there, so it’d be nice for an AAA Title or two to take that risk.

Be Who You Want. Sorta

Character creation has helped transpeople make themselves in games.  Being able to customize your character in Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Pokemon X/Y allows for not only male and female players to get the avatar they want, but for transpeople to see the person they want to be. At least within the context of the universe. Character models in Dark Souls and Bloodborne are surprisingly neutral: from the back you’d be hard pressed to gender anyone in those games. In Inquisition, you can go so far as to put an Adam’s apple on an otherwise “female” character at game start.  

It took a while to get to there, though, and these games still face problems. For example, in Pokemon, the clothing is remarkably gendered. Male characters cannot wear skirts or dresses, and if you play a female avatar, the most “neutral” outfits are the most expensive. If you’re trying to play a female-bodied masculine leaning neutral like me, have fun saving up almost 100,000 yen for each part of the suit set. Other than that, it’s ruffles for you.

New Leaf presents another batch of “gendered” clothing. Male avatars can’t wear dresses or skirts, and while female avatars can wear things from the “boys” line, people are going to comment on it. Mostly things along the line of “are you sure you want to wear that? It’s not for you.”

These games—and many other games with character creation—fall under the idea that “women can wear men’s clothing, but men can’t wear women’s clothing.” Of course, it’s just clothing, why’s it got to be gendered in the first place? But that’s beside the point.

Character creation games don’t let you pick your pronouns either. You’re either “he” with a male body or “she” with a female body. You can’t be “he” with a female body or “she” with a male, and certainly you’re never going to get a “they” or “ze.”

Keep Moving Forward

I’ve experienced an interesting form of gatekeeping through my game avatars. Like the man at the cocktail party believed, because I chose a female avatar, that made me—in real life— female, not neutral. Granted, that argument only seemed to hold water against a transperson, because there are plenty of cisgender people on the internet who play a character with a gender that does not match their own.

Obviously, who you are in a game does not have to be who you are in reality. Else I’d be the Hero of Time by now. Or a Catfolk. Which would be weird.

How do we bring transfolk into games, then? I guess it would depend on the narrative in the game and the character’s role. NPCs can have their stories unfold as you get to know them throughout the game. Character creation modes could start to include pronouns in the selection screen.

What about main characters? The ones that you don’t get to choose. What if Master Chief or Link was transgender? How should we go about breaching that? There are many ways to do it: tell a story, change the pronouns, have a main character be called “they” the whole time. (Dark Souls calls you the title of Chosen Undead the whole time. No pronouns are ever used, meaning no one can stop me from saying Porclyne is neutral).

It’s actually surprisingly easy. And, for many reasons, it’s time for the change to occur.

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Jynx Boyne is an undergraduate studying Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University, and is aiming for a minor in English Literature. They hope to specialize in medical care for disenfranchised and underrepresented  populations. They favor JRPGs/ RPGs (video game or pen and paper style)  but appreciates a good couch co-op then and now. Jynx is the happy parent to one cat,  Siegmeyer of Catarina, named after a favorite character from Dark Souls.