in that case the man would be making.......
a dick move.....
Movement can be used to express a character's personality but I do feel like people get very stereotypical about it. I do think it works in a cartoonish environment but is not really a universal norm.
This is an example of stereotypical gendered animation and how it looks when the roles are reversed. It shows how people's personality can change by animating them differently. I think a lot of people who exclude female characters for being "too hard" to animate, just makes me think that they lack range and skills and should probebly do more character studies or hire a woman to do some mo-caps.
Edit: I also like to note, that I don't think the woman with her swaying hips from the video should be set as a "norm" for animating women. I think it is a good example of showing maybe a high class feminine woman but I think using it for something like an Action RPG video game about knights just looks weird.
I'd even say it's kind of...
Ballsy.
YYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH
On a serious note @burginlewis trust me, even men are annoyed by other men taking the limited space like that. So I see your point.
Something I’d like to note that walking becomes very diffrent for males and females. As knowing someone who has done a lot of medieval reenactment groups the women often tried to walk and move as men because it was mostly men on the battlefields. It was very interesting to hear that the why the female members realized how to walk as men walk, was to practice waking as if their was a book between their legs as.... you know, men have to deal with dangling bits while they walk.
Same for a lot of my male cross dressing friends. To walk like a women they have to make the same changes in their steps to account for the fact that women don’t have to deal with dangling bits.
Even with the physical diffrence, they can still posture and pretend if they try hard enough, but the fact is without trying it’s much more natural for women to easily walk with a sway as men usually walk with their legs parted.
As for “is it nessasaary to have two distinct gestures for men and women in your game” I REALLY feel like it just depends on the type of game your playing, if it’s a sprite game like Pokémon I wouldn’t see the reason for the extra step. If your making a game like the sims where everything is super customizable, then I’d expect lots of Intresting gestures.
Altho I do admit I hate it when the gestures made for men and women are very.... basic. Like in dragon age 2 I noticed that the females had a much more Danity feel to them then the males. Which was fine when playing a Danity mage.... but not when I wanna play a bulky amazon warrior, just clashes with my vision of my character x3
I wrote out a long post detailing my arguments but... realized some of it was motivations and observations noone asked for. So to keep it short:
Yes, most men naturally walk and sit with their legs apart for anatomical reasons.
No, women do not naturally walk and sit with their legs together for anatomical reasons. They are able to more easily do it since their anatomy doesn't immediately prevent it, but most of them do it as a result of habit caused by societal pressure. Many are unaware of this societal pressure as they just copy the behavior from their mothers like they copy other behaviors at an early age. But being repeatedly told as kids to keep their legs together when they wear skirts sure enforces the behavior too...
If a game depicts a specific country at a specific time in history, it can make sense to use gender specific animations that suit the way things were at the time. Woke-ifying history isn't all that woke, because observing history is an important part of understanding these issues at large. Most progressives wouldn't want to erase history.
But if that isn't the case, then using more gender neutral animations would be a respectable move.
Exactly the first thought I had when reading this topic.
Everyone, I’d assume, here on this forum is a critically thinking creative and should take no offense on how fellow creators express their creativity through their work.
The walk and gestures are different due to different anatomy, for sure.
The issue is that in real life, when average individuals are walking/moving in a natural fashion, these differences are relatively small. Noticable, but not generally enough to look really odd if used by the opposite sex.
In videogame, the differences are generally pushed to the extreme. Much more extreme than real life, even in a society with strong gender roles. I hate that, but let's be realistic, it's not going to change anytime soon.
The ideal solution would be to have multiple animations to be able to fit subgroups of both male and female population with gaits adapted to their profession, social status etc, but THAT would be expensive.
In this case, I suppose that characters have not only different sex, but also very different individuality and behavior lines 
that's why they swapping becomes so funny
In that case and the other one you mentioned though, it's a lot about 2D animation. You have control over every frame wanting or not, and you have to show personality because every second is precious. With 3D, there's a lot of reuse, physics, pre-made stuff, that significantly shorten how much the animation needs to be specific to a character. Again, not nonexistent, but it's so little that it's easier to promise for a future date than try and say it's too hard and never do it.
That still sounds like a bs excuse. 3D can make animation easier than 2d but using as an excuse to not take the extra effort to make it look good is creators being lazy. Plus, 3D has the ability to mo-cap people, which can help aid in animation.
My issue with a lot if 3D animation is that it looks very stiff. Richard William (the guy from the video and head animator for Who Framed Roger Rabbit) mentioned how with some movement, you might have to "break" joints inorder to exaggerate movement. A lot of schools teach to never break joints because "its not realistic" , however they end up with stiff animation.
Lmao, Batman's got a thicc booty. I love these kinds of swaps because they really show how differently male and female characters are sometimes treated in games. Especially the way the camera zooms into women's asses and does that full reveal shot (the one where the camera slowly pans up to show her figure).
A friend of mine loves the Metal Gear series and some of the female characters in those games... Here's a video from MGSV where Quiet and Ocelot are swapped and it shows how, I don't know, unnatural it is to look at a male character that the camera treats like a female. Quiet breathes through her skin so in-game she wears a bikini top, g-strings and pantyhose. She's half-naked because she needs to keep much of her skin free. How else is she gonna breathe? Than we see another one of her kind, an old man, and he wears clothes just fine...
I also can not stand the weird anime girl run trope. Arms up, knees too close together, and sometimes they have no chest support. They look so silly, no one runs like that. Is it suppose to be cute? It just looks so awkward.
Well the most blunt difference is the walking. Women don't walk the same way men do, because of the differences in anatomy playing a role in that. You can't possibly claim that anatomy is a social construct, can you?! Obviously there's gradations in that that can be amplified or negated by either the clothing or the person's decision, but it's still there, you still have either a female pelvis or a male pelvis.
I always was confused by this line of arguing. "It's fictional so you can do whatever" is exactly what it is: an excuse to not do your homework or put in any effort with the implication that "it's all a lie anyway, so who cares".
The base cost for motion capture is $4,000 a day plus $20 a second for data solving + re-targeting. Plus you'd have to edit and fix the mocap data EXTENSIVELY for it to be usable. There's a reason why mocap is being used only in productions with large budgets.
As a person whose work is 3d, it's kinda offensive to hear things like "but animating in 3d is easier than animating 2d!" ^^" It's the same BS as claims like "but you aren't really DRAWING in digital art, the computer does all work for you!"
It's suppose to be cute and girly. One of things I've learned about how Japan does anime and manga is that relies HEAVILY on character type or maybe stereotypes when making characters.
I wasn't implying that mocap replaces animation, I was implying that if a company thinks they cannot animate woman in a 3D environment, they could hire a woman to mocap to get a frame of reference. The same way Disney hired models to get frame of reference for their 2d animation. I know mocap is not realistic resource for small indie companies, but I've heard AAA games make excuses about women not being in their games because they were too hard to animate.
No matter small indie dev or large AAA dev, a female animations still need to be done and they still have to be paid for, since just slapping animations made for male model on female would just plainly look ugly, since they're actually just as exaggerated as the female ones, most of the time. And for the MC of the game that usually meaning basically doubling the animation budget for that character.
They just don't always want to outright state "we won't do that because we don't have necessary money".
I stand corrected. Though, that really depends on how important the character is. If it's a full on story mode you really can't transplant a rig, like the other poster said, but if it's just to populate a world with people doing random actions, everyone is probably going to look unnatural to begin with, so it's a little harder to talk about difficulty there. It keeps going from a general subject and back to that specific company's problem of playable characters, so I think a lot of people in the thread are making arguments that don't always direct to each other even if they're right.
And yeah, not breaking joints ends up looking meh especially in games with a heavier melee focus. Everyone jokes that Bayonetta doesn't move like a normal person with the 8 heads height, but that platinum polish wouldn't be as satisfying if the combos just had her doing normal punches and kicks instead of defying gravity to jab, which is also assisted by very big effects and smashing sounds.
...Oh dear...well, this blew up...
Damn, now I wish I could've been here for this, but I was busy freaking out about school (not working, just freaking out).
However, being late to the party never stopped me before. ;] * cracks knuckles *
...I genuinely don't think you understood a word I said. ._.
But, to answer to your weird question/accusation: YES, I recognize that people are different everywhere. That was literally my point.
Which is why I said that arguing that your female model REQUIRES all these extra animations because "realism" and because "women don't__" doesn't make any sense.
Funny how that works...
One video from one group of people naming their own reasons (which could totally be legit) does not disprove my whole argument.
That's like saying because one person killed in self defense, my criticism of murders should be retracted.
A. We don't?
B. Aaand just like that, this argument has collapsed. '_'
This is just my opinion, but: nah, art can totally be offensive. ^^ The whole point of expressing yourself in art is to reach other people's feelings and affect them with your work.
Well, guess what? Sometimes you affect people negatively. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Whether their particular source of offense is "warranted" or not really depends on the era and culture, but no matter where or when you are, not everyone is gonna look at what you do and go "wow I really hate this but y'know artistic freedom GREAT JOB BUDDY!!1!"
As a critically thinking creative, I took offense to some other creatives' actions and gave the reasons why. I think everyone should have the freedom to do that.
Anatomy is NOT a social construct, but it IS based on averages. And once you've learned basic scientific reading comprehension, you realize that 'average' automatically means 'not everyone'.
Not every woman's pelvis is 'wider' enough to make a dramatic difference in the way they walk. And even if it is, sometimes their body fat distribution makes it hard to tell (thigh gaps are not nearly as prevalent as media would have you believe).
And take this with a grain of salt, but from my personal experience in people-watching, the 'dramatic difference' is really not that dramatic to begin with. Like, if you saw someone walking towards you from 200 ft away, I doubt you could tell if they were male or female simply by the way their body moved. The differences are very subtle, so much so that if you were to just give everyone the same walk cycle I don't think you'd catch hell for it. 9_9
To be honest, I think 90% of what people imagine is "the female walk" is actually just the result of wearing heels, which actually DO change the way you walk dramatically and noticeably. They push your butt out, force you onto your toes, make you lift your knees and swing your hips to compensate, all that. But (a) women don't always wear heels (crazy, I know) and (b) if men wear heels, their gaits should change similarly...just food for thought.
That wasn't my argument. ._. What I was saying was, if you really can't be bothered to do your homework or just flat out don't care, why not just admit it, or even stay silent, rather than make up a bunch of pseudo-intellectual BS to "prove" to everyone that you shouldn't be expected to care.
As a large Brest women I can say that the one accurate thing about that run is the arms up to hold your balloons. They need more support that bras are made for unfortunately. That’s pretty much the only time the anime ballon Physics at least feel accurate. XD
It was from the developers of the game.
A better source than the rep you sampled to inspire this thread.
There's more to this story.
And still the bigger issue is freedom of the creator.
Skip to the good part
There's just one problem with that...I wasn't referring to any specific game. Many of the arguments I saw that inspired this thread were, but I was not. =/
So, yeah. One video from one group of people naming their own reasons does not disprove my whole GENERAL argument.
No one, obviously! It's a hypothetical example of a bogus explanation based on all of the ones that I've seen, the ones that I JUST SAID l used to form this GENERAL argument.
Dude, if you prefer to believe that I'm lying, fine, but I feel I should warn you that you're gonna have a hard time proving it. When I want to call out a specific writer, or the creative team responsible for a specific body of work, I do it. I've done it before, several times.
The reason I didn't do it here is because I simply DO NOT HAVE that information. This is an opinion piece, nothing more. You can accept that, or you can continue looking for things that aren't there.
Yes, that happens to everyone. It is then up to the person affected to either ignore that or throw an attention seeking hissy fit. That depends entirely on the maturity level of each individual.
I mean it does also depend on other things relevant to the situation. If we are talking about a depiction that puts a group of people back in terms of the rights, freedom and respect they earn from people at large, then it's not just a matter of choosing to either ignore it or be "immature".
Let's not forget certain attitudes are straight up dangerous. Women are being harrassed, injured or killed every day for not giving men what they want. Writing and depiction that leaves the image of women being a package of sex, nurture and childbearing on a pair of legs contributes to this because men learn to believe it is what they are owed, and thus believe themselves to be justified in treating women horribly should they reject them.
This doesn't mean independent artists are personally responsible for every bad thing a woman has to withstand!!! But if someone raises the concern over a certain depiction on behalf of all the suffering that it may contribute to, then I wouldn't call that immature.
Whether an artist that cares about the issue should change their approach to female characters or not also depends on a case by case basis, someone being upset or calling things problematic doesn't automatically mean a depiction is bad or problematic. It's worth having a discussion about it if the concern is raised, and there is no one size fits all answer. For example in the cat woman/batman example you could argue that parts of the depiction were justified. Her exaggerated walk does after all resemble the sway and movements of a proud and cunning cat. But if every woman in the game walks like that... well, that's a problem.
Delaney spells it out incredibly well.
Mostly a case of blend-shapes and re-targeting animation.
With todays tools it's not quite the gargantuan task it's been made out to be.
This is a case of the Devs writing up a macho-male power fantasy type game and then trying to justify that instead of just admitting they didn't, or didn't want to write women into the game.
Personality/character specific animation is certainly a thing, Gender specific is most definitely not(or needn't be).
And in the kind of game this discussion stemmed from, it'd make no sense to differentiate.
"Incredibly well" aren't the words I'd use. 
It was an angry holier-than-thou rant that assumed everyone has access to the same resources as whoever she's been working with.
Holier-than-thou maybe, but...
The thread mentions all of the low-cost, readily available alternatives.
(or one of the lrt's does)
So no, she really doesn't. The whole point is the resources are readily available.
(The responses were over-blown, as always on twitter, but the dev statement was poorly-worded. People immediately related it to the Ubisoft crap some years back)
But I've been informed this isn't a Tarkov based topic, so I'm not here to argue the toss.
My thoughts on animating specifically(something I was trained in[3D])
Gendered animation is poopy, however, we're all so pre-disposed to seeing certain movements and mannerisms as masculine or feminine BECAUSE of animation ahah
The old Disney classics, and 2D animation in general, really did a number on us.
Every man was a puffed up dorito, and every woman was always on a cat-walk.
(An exaggeration to be sure, but something that slowly and steadily built up biases)
In recent years the trend has shifted somewhat.
Mo-cap especially, has shown us that men and women move pretty much then same way unless trained to move in a specific manner.
You could re-target simple mocap animations between men and women and not know the difference
Habits and mannerisms should build the walk, not what's between your legs.
Conscious iterations on shape-language and design feed into this as well. We're so programmed by what reads as feminine/masculine that it becomes harder and harder to break that mould
Ah yes, sure, because everything's a political statement nowadays apparently.
I also noticing, not for first or third time, how in these rants those people are always only answering to either those who agree with them or those who make simple objections, but never to people who raise valid counterarguments, like "what if I can't use zbrush and morphs and retargets because my game is hand-drawn 2d animation?".
Thankfully you can sidestep the issue entirely by just simply making your game's player character female as the only available option. For the time being, anyway... I'm sure people will eventually find some other angle of attack to harass developers.
... questioning and critiquing = harrassment now?
I have people question and react to my content on a daily basis. Some have negative feelings about my creative choices, and sometimes someone brings up things I really need to reconsider. Being questioned and learning new things is just part of being a creative producer of any form. If they want to work with it, they need to get used to it.
Now if anyone involved actually has been harrassed (death threats, lies spread, repeated verbal attacks against individuals rather than discussions of their choices....) that's not okay. Harrassing people is never okay, no matter the motive of those doing it. But I'm not sure actual harrassment is relevant here?
Gendered animation might be stupid in many cases but that doesn't negate the need for sexed animation in many (especially realistic) styles.
It's true a lot of people overestimate the sexed difference for mannerism and body language, almost all of those differences are only caused by people following gender stereotypes. But that doesn't negate a different physiology (that goes beyond just skeletal structure) and centre of gravity.
There's also many environment and story settings where adding gender non-conforming characters requires narrative adaption as well. Which means more work for writers and programmers. I personally would love more gnc characters and there's many games I never bought because the game wasn't interesting to me if I couldn't play as a lesbian. So I do get being disappointed by a lack of options, but at the end of the day just buy another game and maybe politely tell the developers why you didn't buy theirs.
(Seriously, more people who care about diversity need to put their money where their mouth is and actually buy the indie games that cater to them)
And not having the time or money to add a diversity option, even sometimes if it just a re-skin and not new models and animation from the ground up, is sometimes a valid excuse. Just because some lucky developers never had to cut features or prioritise away options they were aware some people wanted doesn't mean it never happens.
One thing questioning or critiquing (when it's justified, mind you), but a lot of people are jumping on the "you don't have X in your games\fiction, this means you hate X!" line of thought with frightening eagerness. I remember too well the shitstorm about some Czech developers apparently being racists because their mindbogglingly faithful to being historically accurate game set in a medieval eastern Europe didn't had any African-americans in it.
Regardless, saying "If they say they can't afford implementing a female character then punch them in the head" is neither a questioning nor is it a critique.
Mk so taking a step back from the pop culture wars-
The actual question that should be asked when dealing with new animations is 
https://media3.giphy.com/media/RWDPIYOPlIkUg/giphy.gif
Ultimately- as a game developer you are making a game- and the first and foremost thing when making games is game play and how players are going to be interacting with the game play. Even with visual novels their is still a lot of time and energy put into what the player is doing as they are reading text- is it a murder mystery? Should they be paying attention to the background? Will their be journals for the player or are they expected to write their own notes with a piece of paper?
This is all important to get right even before you get the writing down. >how things are animated is kind of flavor< in comparison to getting game play down- having your story make sense- and making sure the game isn’t broken on release with a bunch of glitches.
Having two different animations for character models is incredibly secondary. Is it nice? Yes. Is it needed? Depends on the game.
Is the game an indie game that only exists because it got a kickstarter and has a bunch of passionate people backing it but still have their own day jobs that they have to do? Is it a role play game? Is it a game where theirs only one character to choose from so you and all NPCs have the same exact animations? Are the models made in 3D or 2D?
You can say “hey these tools are becoming more and more accessible” and you’d be right, but you know what doesn't bend to your will? Time and money management-
Maybe this is the retailer side of me but people have teams- and they have to pay their teams for the time and dedication for these projects. These projects have deadlines and if you want to meet deadlines then you have to make people work longer hours as well start paying overtime which some indie and Kickstarter companies don’t have the time and means to do.
Having multiple animations for characters is great especially in role play games cause then I can customize the shit out of a character. But ultimately I want a game that works and is well made, and sometimes that means cutting aspects of the project to fine tune other parts of it.
Most of the time the idea behind “multiple animations would have cost more” is much more complicated then that. But the company doesn’t have to explain to you -that the reasons are the power went out and they had no air conditioning for two weeks so they cut hours so their team wasn’t suffering working on heat boxes with no air and lost several hours of work because of it-
This is the simplest boil down to it.
And then understand that not EVERY demographic is going to be happy with every game. Economics is a guiding force in all of this...developers don't have an infinite well of time and resources. So if Developer X chooses to channel their efforts towards a certain slice of the market, that's their decision.
Only economics will change what's a profitable demographic to chase.
I never really understood that position as well, to be honest.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character is female.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character is Asian.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character doesn't have ginger hair.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character have moral values that don't align with mine (Although in this case - usually).
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character isn't a human.
Hell, I probably wouldn't even refrain from buying an interesting game if it would carry a disgusting anti-intellectual and offensive message "science is bad" or "we shouldn't go in space".
Those things are all sound so minor in comparison to stuff that usually gets me interested in the game, I can't quite wrap my head around dropping it because of that. It's like "I'll pass this because it doesn't have enough color yellow in it".
Well, it's not like I care about playing as a lesbian in every single game there is (that's a common misunderstanding when this topic is brought up), usually it's either:
a) immersive non-linear rpgs, with a player insert character, where romance is either a huge part of the game and/or there's unlockable content gated behind your character being into someone of the opposite sex.
b) most kinds of dating or romance simulators (although ofc there's exceptions, like parodies such as Hatoful boyfriend and I would consider serious games with great story as well)
c) games with a lot of sexual content, kinda, tbh I'm not sure if should count this since I do enjoy games like Catherine. I guess this one depends a lot on tone and context. And it's probably understandable that some kinds of sexual content is an absolute deal-breaker. Like I will never touch "Ladykiller in a bind" (even if looks hilariously bad to make fun of) because it was promoted as a lesbian game with only consensual sex, despite portraying a man raping a woman to "turn her straight" as "successful" and "sexy".
(Fun fact: I managed to avoid buying the game and seeing the (hidden, unskippable) rape scene, because the art's so bad I didn't realise the characters were supposed to be women)
I probably don't have to explain why some games in the last category are unappealing to me. As for the first two, they're just not fun (most of the time) to me if I have to play as a heterosexual. Maybe it's not fun because of the homophobia I have to deal with in real life (with is not insignificant thanks to queer-activists joining ranks with old-school homophobes in trying to force lesbians to like dick), maybe it's because of personal unpleasant experiences or something else.
I'm not really sure why and I don't think it really matters, because it doesn't change the fact that it's just not fun for me. So it simply doesn't make sense to spend my limited time and money on games were I'm forced to play a straight character in way that hinders my enjoyment of the game.
And in escapism, romance and/or role playing games that are specifically centered around freedom and player choice I think it's reasonable to ask for things like same-sex romance options. Doesn't mean all games need to have to them or that it's okay demand it from developers in rude or inappropriate ways. But I think it's okay to ask for (politely! please stop with twitter harassment and shit -.- ) and then buy the games that choose to cater to my demographic.