games where the player can trans their gender

video games
1

curious how many games we can think up where

  • - there is a character creator with some kind of gender presentation slider or some other

  • - you can re enter that character creator (diagetically ideally) and change that gender

    • thats it

    i am not interested in games with trans characters, thats a different topic entirely. leave out the Naoto Shiroganes or Madeline Celestes of games for this talk.
    games that i am currently aware have features like this:

    The Saints Row Series: the first game only lets you play as a man but from the second game onward you can be either making all women player characters in the original saints row series trans. incredible! also the game lets you get plastic surgery at a hospital whenever to go back into the character creator. based!!

    Dark Souls (2?): havent actually played this one but i have been told there is a coffin you can go into to trans your gender. awesome i love it more of this please

    thats all i got right now so PLEASE hit this thread with games in which the player can trans their gender
    double points if characters will comment on it too!!

    2

    Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor has frequent gender switching as a game mechanic, prompting community questions like “What's the purpose of gender?” which rules. I also remember the genders being called stuff like “I harvest my gender from the sun,” and while that could be misconstrued as one of those 4chan “jokes” about how anything beyond the binary is made up nonsense (bleh), I‘m 99% certain it’s more a reflection on how transient and individually personal these understandings of the self are. Plus maybe some theoretical world building stuff about how the concept of gender could differ among other life forms in outer space. Anyways, the game is cool!

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/436500/Diaries_of_a_Spaceport_Janitor/

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    >

    @“NewGenderPlus”#p109881 you can re enter that character creator (diagetically ideally) and change that gender

    You can do this in *Xenoblade Chronicles X* by completing a couple mid/late-game sidequests. ||The ending and the lore in general fuck with this in ways that the game never really addresses, though.||

    That is the only example I know about.

    4

    Making my first post here in a long while as this thread speaks to me.

    Off the top of my head, I can offer the Wizard's basement in Stardew Valley : once your friendship with him is high enough, you can change your gender that you pick at the start of the game if so inclined.

    5

    Sims 4 has a lot of gender options, you can customize things like pronouns on top of customizing the physical frame, voice, sexual preferences, way they use the toilet, etc. You can edit your sim at any time, but for diegetic transitioning, the modders got it covered.

    https://assets2.rockpapershotgun.com/the-sims-4-custom-pronoun-free-text-boxes.jpg/BROK/resize/690%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/the-sims-4-custom-pronoun-free-text-boxes.jpg

    6

    FF14 has a way to change your gender with an item called Fantasia. The written description for the item says: “Legend states that any who drink this mysterious liquid before lying down for the evening will awaken a new man (or woman).” Unfortunately, you only get one of these for free, and you have to spend Real Money to get any more. A monetary barrier to transition, how about that.

    Their language around gender is, unfortunately, still binary.

    However, what I really like about ff14 is the _gender expression_ available to the player. There is a great deal of freedom with what your character wears and looks like at any time. Not changing your gender exactly, but if one day I want to be butch, and one day I want to be femme, and one day I want to be inbetween or [No.], it's very simple for me to do that.

    Oh, and a lot of this is done diagetically. You go to the (extremely queer coded) hair stylist to change your hair. You purchase and dye clothes. You can learn to make your own clothes if you want. You use a magic item called a "Glamour" to change how your equipment looks, so you can be dressed correctly and still do your adventuring day job.

    There are other places it still falls though. You can't be fat; body types available in general are pretty straight. There are still hairstyles that are restricted by gender. There aren't very many, but some clothes are restricted by gender (or have one version for one gender and another version for another). Oh, and in very rare cases clothes are restricted by "race".

    But overall, it really feels like a game where you can play with your gender. Not "change", but drift, slide, tumble, backflip around. I hope that fits within the purview of the thread.

    Sorry for the long post; I like 14 a lot and have lots of thoughts about it.

    7

    Saints Row is, bafflingly, still far and away the most trans friendly AAA game I've seen. Which is….not great!

    8

    Might and Magic 1 is the earliest example of this I know of. At one point there is a location where gender matters but the game lets you change your gender in advance of it and change back (or not) afterwards. Curious to know if anyone knows of a pre 1986 example.

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    9

    this doesn’t quite fulfill the first criteria, but I remember the viking assassins creed letting you swap (binary) genders at will, and also offering a mode where you could let the game switch your gender up at particular story moments. i should look into what that was about a little more.

    10

    @“Funbil”#p109883 how could i have forgotten about the only queer game with a gender stat!! thanks for covering my blindspots

    @"Video Game King"#p109884 another reason they need to save XCX from the sinking Wii U

    @"citrusity"#p109889 my husband is disappointed with me. hes told me this several times and has told me theres some evidence the wizard has done it to themself!

    @"Tradegood"#p109895 yes! the sims 4 options are incredible and the fact you can change whenever is beautiful

    @"Mnemogenic"#p109903 i always love when people explain ffxiv!!! i cannot convince friends to play and am too scared to take the plunge alone but im so curious so thanks for sharing

    @"TracyDMcGrath"#p109908 saints row leading the front is hilarious but for sure disappointing. finding the possible earliest example of this is awesome though! id love to find more of anything like that

    @"esper"#p109918 yes!! i knew of this and forgot. someone explained it to me like this a long time ago >!ok so the lore is,
    the mc is female, but is a reincarnation kinda sorta of odin, who was a dude from like the ancient people before humans, and odin sorta lives in the mcs head for a while and also u can trip balls and get norse mythology visions where u play as dude odin, but also the game takes place in a dna based simulation cuz its asscreed, and the machine gets confused cuz theres multiple dna's in one person

    u can pick freely making both mc and odin male or female or just let it choose and it will make u mostly female in 'real life' and male in the vision trip shit

    tldr in ac lore sober gender and high gender are different!<

    i have some more examples from previous investigations into this

    first example isnt really what I'm looking for but is cute enough, this guy from darkstalkers has an attack that will trans the opponents gender
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux_TzeaEAPk&ab_channel=Darkstalkers

    this next example is lifted from the tv tropes page for video game gender benders
    _

    >

    The Temple of Shadows has the "Wheel of Misfortune", which kills human sacrifices through random means. Among its possibilities are electrocution, impalement, beheading and "Gender Change."
    > The player has a chance to use a sex changing potion after buying Castle Fairfax. This potion is one-time use and irreversible (the game saves immediately after you use it), unless you play Co-Op online and use someone else's potion. The change is generally acknowledged by the NPCs, but your spouse couldn't care less (unless the situation becomes incompatible and your child readily starts calling you 'mum' or 'dad')._

    ive combed through the page again and, not many good examples i found but feel free to prove me wrong!

    11

    Nintendo has substituted gender for “style” these days. Still a binary, tho… You can change it as often as you like after creating a character in AC or Splatoon, but you CANNOT change your name in AC once you've started, which is unfortunate for players who have trans-ed their gender IRL — as this means their lovely little haven of animal friends becomes an island of dead-naming jerks…

    [URL=https://i.imgur.com/DFDlDmr.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/DFDlDmr.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
    [URL=https://i.imgur.com/6sfA4Bl.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/6sfA4Bl.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

    Despite the initial mandated binary selection, AC keeps things fluid with no restrictions over clothing/hair/styling after your "style" choice. I'm not sure if the initial choice has any bearing on gameplay.

    12

    my kid has been playing the peppa pig game and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the character creator/editor just has every cosmetic item in there in no particular order.

    HOWEVER her favourite hat is the police helmet, so one step forward two steps back I guess.

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    >

    @“safety_lite”#p109943 which is unfortunate for players who have trans-ed their gender IRL — as this means their lovely little haven of animal friends becomes an island of dead-naming jerks…

    this happened to me and i killed those deadnaming jerks (deleted the island)

    14

    Shovel knight has a feature where you can choose the body type and pronouns for most of the main cast. Just binary fem and masc presentations, but you can choose whatever pronouns for either presentation. I believe you can adjust this at any point, but I seem to remember it was only in the original shovel knight and not the 3 expansions.

    15

    Fable 2 has one gender changing potion in the game that immediately overwrites your save file when you take it so there’s no going back. I thought that was pretty funny at the time but now… I dunno, gonna have to wait for the jury on this one

    16

    @“safety_lite”#p109943

    I have found Nintendo's recent pivot to "style" that's usually toggle-able over unchangeable "gender" to be quite refreshing. Not sure of any specifically outside of Splatoon and ACNH.

    With Animal Crossing, I was surprised at how the earlier games in the series approached gender compared to ACNH. Playing New Leaf, specifically, I was surprised at how often the fact that my character was a girl came up : sporty villagers call you "ladybro", Mabel and Sable comment on how "girl's can wear [a top hat or something] too!", and Kapp'n never misses a chance to call you "cute" (which I greatly prefer to his more overtly flirtatious manner if you're a girl in _Let's Go To The City_ - which I guess is in line with how Kappas act in mythology?). Anyway, I was strongly considering writing about the trans time I had in ACNH, in a world with no barriers to fashion or presentation. I'm not even sure what style changes for your villager, but I've never tried the boy mode.

    All the same, I wish one could simply change their name in New Horizons; it thankfully wasn't a problem for me by the time I came to the game, but would have been a problem if I'd played it at launch.

    17

    https://transparencyboo.tumblr.com/post/711995028901445632/when-transing-your-gender-once-simply-isnt

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    18

    Gender Wars (1996)

    This game seems like trash but the screen where you choose which faction to identify with goes hard.

    [URL=https://i.imgur.com/gi6tGBJ.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/gi6tGBJ.png[/IMG][/URL]

    [URL=https://i.imgur.com/XaIqB6W.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/XaIqB6W.png[/IMG][/URL]

    [URL=https://i.imgur.com/BjRbTyk.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/BjRbTyk.png[/IMG][/URL]

    19

    Dark Souls 2 is the best Dark Souls because it is so idiosyncratic, for example

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdeLbzyIsVg

    20

    @“Tradegood”#p152445 Turning the intersex symbol into a crosshair is one heck of a choice