In analogy to graphics engines and physics engines, gender engines are a possible future building block of game design that would simulate gender perception of a chararcter (or player) by another character, thus facilitating building gender-diverse games.
Gendered Narration is a prototypical rewriting system allowing to render a web page using a specific (possibly custom) set of pronouns and thus notion of gender. For a demo, see this prototype.
Implemented as a Twine story format, Snowperson, built on Chris Klimas’s Snowman, will allow to easily build text-based games where characters (or the narrator) can choose or ‘learn’ new pronouns or pronoun sets.
A playable mini game (without much of a plot, but, it is hoped, demonstrating the concept), can be found here.
Some key snippets of the source code of that game are the following (called passages in Twine terminology; slightly edited for clarity):
Introducing a new non-playable character:
<{Character A goes by the name of Andy.}>
<{Character A goes by they pronouns.}>
Narration involving that non-playable character; note how pronoun–verb agreement with respect to number is implemented by {{Prn|A}} {{verb|look|reg=-1}}, which may render as, for example, “They look” or “Xe looks”:
You run into {{name|A}}. {{Prn|A}} {{verb|look|reg=-1}} like a nice person, and you wonder if {{prn|A}} {{verb|think|reg=-1}} of {{prn-refl|A}} as a cutie, like you do.
(Narrated) interaction with the character, and the narrator adopting the character’s preferred pronouns:
{{Prn-nom|A}} {{verb|say|reg=-1}}, “I’ll read it later. For now you can call me *he*.”
<{Character A goes by he pronouns.}>
Different player choice leads to different interaction, causing the narrator to learn a new pronoun:
“I go by *fay* pronouns among people who know how to use them.”
―“How do you use them?”
―“fay, fem, fir, firs, femself”
<{Learn pronoun fay, objective fem, possessive fir, independent possessive firs, reflexive femself.}>
―“Well, that’s easy enough to remember (’cause my gender engine will do that for me).”
<{Character A goes by fay pronouns.}>
In the demo game, the player can always return to the first scene, which will be re-rendered reflecting the narrator’s latest pronoun choices (in this game based on characters’ stated preferences).
A very early build of the Snowperson story format can be found here.
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