This thesis aimed to explore factors, which players consider when choosing their protagonist's gender and what impact that choice has on gameplay. We used two popular games as reference: “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey“ (Ubisoft Quebec, 2018) and “Baldur's Gate 3” (Larian Studios, 2023). This study was conducted by interviewing participants and sending out surveys among the two games’ communities with a total of 493 participants sharing their answers. The sample group mainly consisted of players from several European countries and the United States of America, with 280 identifying as male, 181 as female, and 32 as non-binary. It was found that the majority of players agreed that visual character customization and gender choice did provide them a greater sense of immersion. Furthermore, the storyline seemed to be a framing factor influencing player choices by offering a setting players carefully considered when designing/choosing their protagonists. These results can be of use to game designers who wish to gain an understanding of players’ gender choices and impacts on their role-playing-game gameplay experience. Additionally, further research is suggested to get a deeper understanding of outlying factors that players might consider when choosing a character.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-532854 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Waked, Dani, Hägg, Marcus, Lüty, Clara, Sych, Danylo |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för speldesign |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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