@madrocketeer: Always a good advice :D

@joshrmeyer: Thanks for the input! ^^

@killered3: Alright, that's a good point. Thanks for the response! :)

Hey!

So I'm in a game dev. team and a while ago we were deciding on what gender should our leading character be. An idea came up to make this character Agender (EDIT: doesn't identify neither as woman nor man; not sure what the right expression is) and this sparkled a very "passionate" debate. The team was pretty much devided in half. Some thought it would be a good idea and others (including myself) seriously opposed it.

The arguments FOR having an Agender protagonist (as presented by part of the team that was cheering for this idea):

- it would make the character more mysterious

- it would set us apart from other games

- it would be very inovative

- it is something that catches attention

- it would appeal to a wider spectrum of gamers

Now for the arguments AGAINST such an idea (those arguments are totally biased and written from my side of the view):

Whilst it's true that it would put more mystery into our character's persona and it would also set us apart from other games, I think it's also true that we have to consider HOW do we set us apart from others. Yes, it would be something inovative and we would stand out, but would this really be portraing what are we trying to do game-wise, or would it portrait us more as a certain political agenda-serving studio that tries to appeal to the PC culture we're living in today? And yes, it does catch the attention, but what kind of attention? It's a very common expression we hear that "even a bad publicity is still a publicity", but I think it's evident in the gaming world, that good reviews and good publicity is what makes you money. And this leads me to the last point: would it really appeal to the "wider spectrum of gamers"? I think not. Again, I think it would only appeal to some of the people, but majority of these people would not be the kind of people that would actually consider buying our game (eg. would not be gamers), but would instead just agree with the agenda we would be representing and move on.

As a marketer I have to look at things from marketing point of view and I always tend to follow the basic saying: Inovations are welcome, as long as they don't produce more bad than they do good.

But I've been wrong before, so I'm really interested in your opinion. Is gender something you even notice? Would you mind if the game's main character would be Agender? What do you have to say?

@ArchoNils2: We're working on 2.5D platformer and we expect to release it in about a year or a year and a half. It's metroidvania based in futuristicish time and it follows a story of a teenage girl that lost her mother to a government research facility and is on her quest to get her payback. We are still in the beginning stages actually, we have some concept art and basic movement scripts done and some lore, but that's about it for now. We were actually first working on a MMORPG - we were actually able to recruit a team of 35 Young enthusiasts that were all working for free and the team was from all over the world (literally all continents were covered). But we soon came to realize that working on a project that big and with no personal contact except Discord server it would be an eutopia to finish it in under 10 years (we wanted to have it done in 4). Also, some members were completely unresponsible and unserious, so we decided to break the project, take 15 of the best people with us and start on a new, much smaller one, so here we are now. We are currently at 18 members covering all areas - programmers, concept artists, one texture guy, one composer, modlers, sculpturers, animators and lore writers (I myself am responsible for the marketing, I wish to make a career in digital marketing in case my History uni degree which I'm working on doesn't pay off, and that's a perfect and free opportunity. I also help with the story, recruiting and project managment). As said, we are all conected through Discord by type chat, but we have a general voice meeting 1 or 2 times per month. We use Google docs to keep the work organized and the team is also using Git. The programmers are writing in C# in Unity. We are not yet at the stage whe're we need testers tho and all the requiered tests for the code are done by programmers. For more info you can add me on Discord, I'll be glad to talk further about the game. ^^ (It's Tilen M.#9751 and NOT TilenM.#9751)

@aki2017: Thanks! Not yet, but we plan to do a kickstarter campaign. :) hehehe no problem, add me on Discord TilenM.#9751 if you want to! :)

@graysmith08: No problem at all! I hope you make it. Best of luck with your career! ^^

@ArchoNils2: Cool! We're coding in c# and we're currently searching for a programmer. If you know anyone who wants to get some experience in game development, could you please direct him/her to me? We're searching for people who are willing to work to gather experience, but we have some pretty advanced programmers, modelers and concept artists that Will supervise them.

@graysmith08: Hey again. So I asked our lead programmer about how could a newbie programmer like you start off and this was his reply:

"If he wants to end up making games, I suggest to start with C. And move on to C# and start using Unity.

There are two main things about Programming. Syntax and Algorithms. Syntax is basically how you write a line of code.

Algorithms is like the soul of programming. If you know how to create algorithms to solve problems, you can do whatever you want to do with the code.

Then there are other things like Object orientated programming. But they come later down the line when he starts using c#. Once he learns that, every language will feel familiar to him.(edited)Alternatively he can start with HTML to get basic idea about programming. It just takes like a hour to learn. Pretty easy stuff.

Theres this site called Khan academy. He can try that. Or enroll in a coursera course (you only pay if you want a certificate).I also bookmarked a comment on Programming I found a few months ago on Reddit. (prepare yourself for wall of text)

Programming isn't just syntax and compilers, it's a whole logical thought process that shares the same process of building a home. You must have a great foundation of what computing is, how pieces work and how to really think abstractly.

Programming is great because there is never the "best" solution to a problem, Yeah you can get that algorithm down to O(1) but you always strive to do it better, faster, larger scale then before even if before was the best.

Programming teaches you how to think differently. It teaches you to think abstractly and more of the how does this work, and the big why does it work this way. Your total thought process becomes a puzzle that you are constantly trying to solve.

Programming also teaches you patience, Programming is one of the most stressful and aggravating things you can ever do. Some people try it once and think what the ****! I can't do this! then give up. Others will excel at the theories behind computer science but during implementation time, they become overwhelmed and let their code "run-away" from them. (Run-away means you lose the complete picture of what you are trying to create and solve)

Example: yeah you need to create that round-robin scheduling algorithm? Okay what is that? You look it up and say okay cool easy to do, a less experienced programmer will Google what it is, then try to implement it, normally they will not end up getting the problem the 1st compile, that's okay! we are suppose to do incremental testing anyway! They try to see what the error or unexpected output is. Yeah, you can figure out where you're missing that } or ;, but what happens when your program gives you 5 instead of the 3 you were looking for?

Most unskilled programmers become frustrated, start doubting yourself then you just become flushed and become scouring google for more examples until you just try to copy and paste code into your program. This is your code getting away from you, you now have no clue what is what, where is this method? This is where most programmers give up, they can't figure it out.

A skilled and experienced programmer knows how to let there mind run free, they don't let problems and code run-away from them. They understand the complete picture and knows the what and how of a FIFO Queue, Stack, Binary Tree, Linked List. How arrays work, what datatypes are best, what looping structures are better.

This is something that comes with experience, not one day of googling and understanding that.

Everyone can become a "programmer". Syntax and algorithms will come with time, but patience and your thirst for success must be something you stride for."

@sonakshi: Hi! What do you need help with? The tools for creating a trailer or an idea on what to focus on?