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I added an edit to my post, but it was probably too late. I was trying to point out that people don't seem to judge a character being a "treat" as bad on principle (as evidenced by the Jane Jensen interview some time back) - they just don't want the sexualization to be too blatant, and the line is sometimes not very clear. If Lara Croft is a badass hero, is it "objectification" that she is also sexy? Isn't that the intention with most action heroes anyway? How much would you need to change her design to make her acceptable?

The Batman/Catwoman video is funny, but mostly because men and women have different body language, so it looks silly when you swap the models. I can easily imagine a plausible flirty batman/restrained catwoman scene - you'd need to change a few things (starting with the characters' personalities of course), but not that much. Just like with the previous nurse gender swap that you posted, by the way - your version is funny and would look silly in a game, but I can easily imagine my Clooney version in a generic rom-com.

As I said, I don't think it is simply down to "This character looks sexy to me, bad, this character doesn't, ok. Or "The level of sexiness in this character has crossed the vague line!". While looking for the Batman clip earlier, I first came across one of Anita Sarkeesian's old Tropes vs Women videos that illustrates this pretty well:

Since the examples being given here are relating to Lara Croft, it's convenient that she's the subject of much of the video. One could agree that using her sexuality as a weapon is NOT a defining trait of Lara Croft, so when the camera angles and character model and poses and animation re-inforce objectification, it's all the more obvious. I can't keep count of the number of times online I've read someone say the equivalent of "hey, at least I get a good view of her backside throughout the game" regarding female-led 3rd person games. It's VERY hard to find an equivalent for male character models.
Here is some gameplay footage from one of the newer Tomb Raiders
Here is some (equivalent? I guess Rico is confident in his body and full of bravado and has flirted with women in the games) gameplay footage from Just Cause 3

Everyone has preferences, but that in itself doesn't objectify the character more, rather, objectification is about distilling someone down to only the things you find attractive to you to the point you can't see them as a full human being anymore.

You have to remember, players doing this regardless MIGHT be a thing, but the more important and problematic aspect is when the author intends for that to be done.
I remember someone did a Batman and Catwoman swap in one of the Arkham games, but this is the best I can still find. Still, it makes it INCREDIBLY obvious what the developer's intent was, in an incredibly hilarious way. There could be an argument made that Catwoman's character is one where she makes use of her sexuality as a weapon, but whether or not that is true, it's DEFINITELY true  that the game devs wanted to provide a "treat" to certain male players:

Is it known what percentage of players are female by now?
Obviously in the old days it was negligible - I am sure it isn't negligible now, but possibly it's still a small minority 

I believe women now make a slight majority of all gamers (i.e. the populations match overall populations of women and men).
But that dodges the point that the whole "but we don't have an audience for that" argument is rubbish. If you only make games catered towards one specific demographic, that demographic will always be the one overrepresented in your audience. It isn't a one-way cause and effect, the cause is the cause.

Uh! I never played this game, but this scene seems the most audacious in the games industry! 

And obviusly a leather t-string is extremly unconfortable if you have to fight, so it's really gratuit.

_

Leather? It was made of metal! 

 

Although even while making it, I realised that although I never played the game (so I can't tell if the nurse's loveliness was played for laughs or whether it was supposed to be subverted when she later turns into an insectoid alien or something), I don't even need to do the change to feel it is offputting and alienating. I mean, what exactly did the developers think of me?

Although one of the most memorable (for all the bad reasons) was the introduction of one of the characters in the grimdark sequel to the lovely Sands of Time game

I can't remember something that annoyed me more with how little the developers obviously thought of me. She was a major antagonist character (might have joined the protagonist at some point, I didn't play long enough to find out), and she was supposed to be this super bad-ass ( ) warrior rogue woman.

So has anyone here actually used the Bechdel test or any similar rule? What changes did it bring to your story?

Also when you think of a new character, do they come with a fixed gender right away, or do you sometimes change characters' genders later?

I've often thought about doing a jokey little easter egg in one of my games where 2 female background character discuss someone called "Bechdel" or the like, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a game or two do that exact same thing.
The point is, as I think has been mentioned in this thread already, using the Bechdel test to check an individual game for discrimination or handling of female characters in media is not really useful. It's more about using it to see specific trends- an individual game/book/movie/tv show failing the Bechdel test doesn't mean anything. The vast majority of them failing it points to something wrong in the portrayal of women in media.

Personally (not that I've made all that many games), but when I'm writing out a game, I go back after the characters outlines are done and see if there's any reason I chose a specific set of traits for that character, and what would happen if I changed them.

Edit2: I really am not seeing what you are going on about "a limitation of the author". You can't be of the view that the major writers were that interested or even able to be socialites. I already alluded to the rather blatant (because they lived in the same era, and even knew each other) Dickens vs Collins thing: Collins is internationally almost an unknown, while Dickens is probably one of the two most famous writers of the UK.

I don't know if this analogy is better or worse for you, but I liken it to a game where you meet a guard whose two lines of dialogue are "Grumble Grumble, I am hungry, when is my replacement coming?!" and "Oh wow, thank you for the lunch buffet pass, can you keep an eye on my post while I go make use of it?!", compared to a game where you meet a guard character who is just sullen and snappy at you, who has a short angry dialogue with a pizza delivery lady when he can't pay her, who the butcher tells you used to come almost weekly to get a big juicy steak, but is coming less often now, who the banker tells you has an overdraft, and whose wife tells is always whittling horses for his kid.

I'd say if someone wrote the first rather than something like the second, it would be down to a "limitation of the author" (or of time or other resources).

Not directly related, but I remember in one of the Knights of the Old republic games, one of the first missions/levels had you (a bunch of jedis) in an apartment complex on some random planet. At one point, one of the jedi was discussing local rebels who were attacking the apartment or something, and referred to them as "aliens".
I thought that was pretty funny. Humans gonna hume, and even the Jedi can't help being subliminally racist.

Hm, not sure exactly what you mean? Do you want to know how we have replicated a look similar to AGS in Unity or are you wondering about what kind of technical features Unity has allowed us unlike AGS? And if it's the latter, do you mean from a player experience perspective, a developer perspective, or both?

I mean the second, and both! What was the reason you felt you needed to switch to Unity for the remaster?

Very interesting! If it's ok, would you mind sharing what specifically engine-wise you changed, and why? Because what little I can see of the screenshots seems to communicate a game that "apes" the AGS style very well.

Heh, same here. I remember when I first figured out Blondbraid was a woman.
The username really does make you think of a viking beard. Or maybe a viking ponytail. 

Also, I have a question somewhat based on this discussion.
Why do males have to be displayed as masculine and females have to be displayed as feminine, for it to count as those genders being properly represented?
Why can't a man be feminine and a woman be masculine? What even constitutes as being masculine and feminine anyway? Aren't those purely cultural concepts? Aren't we forcing genders into stereotypes by "properly" representing them in this way?

Also, why do people feel the need for a character to share either their gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation for them to be relatable? I can think of countless media where I relate to a character that's nothing like me, either because their personality is similar to mine, their goals, or the situations they've found themselves in. To be honest, I can't think of a single character that I've found relatable simply because he's a straight white male.

Lastly, why do people feel the need to relate to a character in order to enjoy them? Plenty of people seem to enjoy Kirby, yet I highly doubt anyone relates to Kirby. 

A while back, I tricked my brain into assuming everyone online was female unless mentioned otherwise. Only time that's run me afoul is when I interacted with trans men 

As for my relatively uneducated understanding of your questions:
Men don't HAVE to be displayed as masculine, as far as I've seen. You have people like Guybrush, you have people like Conan the Barbarian, you have people like Gordon Freeman, you have people like Ben from Full Throttle, you have Mario, Wario, Luigi and Waluigi.
But when you come to female characters, you have Princess Peach, or Princess Daisy. Or Pauline. Or Elaine. Or Lara Croft. Even in games lauded for having deep and well-rounded female characters, they don't seem to dare deviating from a certain femininity. I haven't played the game (and I doubt I will, I wasn't too fond of the first game's gameplay), but I read about how gamers went apoplectic about a beefy, butch female lead in The Last of Us 2.

And characters don't have to share my gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, but the incredible lack of major characters that step outside of a very specific combination of those traits makes it somewhat notable. I feel it is more something to look up to- for example, sure, everyone can look up to and aspire to be Superman, but the incredible lack of black superheroes made it so that when one did come to the mainstream, it was a cultural touchstone (especially for black communities and black kids).

Try to imagine a world where almost every major character was a queer trans east-asian. Sure, you'd relate to characters in their motivations and their goals and their actions, but when the occasional (insert own combination of those traits) character showed up in mainstream media, especially if it was well done, you'd probably have a bit more of an affinity for that character.

Finally, I've never played a Kirby game for any extended period of time, but the one I have (on the Switch?) make it seem more like I am controlling the character rather than inhabiting it. Now if you ask about speedy blue hedgehogs, woah, yeah...I definitely relate to the need for speed weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh....spinspinspin....ringringring
*Babar hums the Green Hill Zone tune to himself

Speaking of which, does anyone here like adventure games? 

Go back where you came from, verbcoin lover!

Errr...good luck everyone related to this bonkers situation. Most of my non-western friends seem fairly ambivalent and jokey about the situation, at least that's what social media sharing tells me.

As we look forward to the new year, let us all remember, hindsight is 2020!

I don't think 'schools in the US (and elsewhere) ban books written "more than 70 years ago"' is a factual statement- apparent or not, from what little of the article I could read, or the links Khris provided.

Any reason for the almost totally flat front of the head?

Looks pretty cool otherwise, I really want to muck around in MagicaVoxel, and this inspires me even further 

Nevertheless, Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen were prominent adventure game designers at a time when video games were widely regarded as a boy's thing. I would hope that adventure game communities are more welcoming to women, and others who are often deliberately excluded from 'gamer' spaces.

It's kinda funny that when I ask my (not really gamer) sister to name me some game designers (trying to make a point that most people don't know the game designers behind video games), she immediately replied with "Roberta Williams". 

The stats page says that the current male to female ratio is 5.6:1, but that also includes people here who only play games, and doesn't include people who may not enter anything into gender when asked.

And I'm not sure your categorisations and reasonings work. For example, there's nothing inherently more masculine about 3D modelling compared to drawing in 2D: e.g. CassieBSG is a AGS game developer here who does her games using 3D modeling.

I thought the correct response to this subject was "Face/Off"?

I suppose this is going to sound very odd but I couldn't stand Spirited Away I'm not saying that it's a bad movie, because it's obvious that it isn't, but it was imposible to me to enjoy it 

Why was it impossible for you to enjoy it?

It's difficult for me to answer this question. I suposse it was a mix of expectations, my mood when I watched the film and some kind of feeling about I wasn't understand what the film was talking about sometimes. But as I said I feel that it's a very subjective appreciation (and possibly a wrong one) 

I can't really say I ever had strong enough feelings to hate them, but so much of the Studio Ghibli filmography blurs together for me into this unmemorable mass of children having adventures with supernatural creatures in idyllic settings.

[*Flames lit, Sierra vs LucasArts GO!]

What's with the hate for Ron Gilbert?
He always comes across as a really nice man, and LucasArts as a company sounds like it was a real dream job with how everyone describes working there back in the day.

You kinda sounds like how a Sega fanboy sounded back in the 90s whenever Nintendo was brought up.

To be fair, Ron created a persona out of being a "grumpy old man", it seems FormosaFalanster was just leaning into that.
Very few will deny that the LucasArts/LucasFilm games were better designed, and I say this as an avid fan of both.

*Flames lit, Sierra vs LucasArts GO!

The answer to your problem seems to be right there in your question: Either make your character first, or set the size of your character, and then while making your background image for your game, have the character (or a rectangle of the same size) there for reference to always make sure that everything is in the correct size.