SweetieGames

One thing that will almost instantly sell me on a game is in depth character customisation. I don’t want basic stats I can choose, I want hundreds of customisation options from appearance to abilities. I want to spend hours crafting my character to perfection.

I think character customisation scratches an itch in my creative writer brain. In university, I was often told in feedback sessions that readers enjoyed the characters I’d make and the dialogue and relationships between them. Being able to create a character and see them interact in a game, especially being able to choose dialogue that would fit their personalities, has been really fun for me. You can see why I’ve sank so many hours into Baldur’s Gate 3 and downloaded so many mods to add more appearance options. I wish more games had the option for me to make a character myself!

As a girly girl, I do think making a cutesy character to absolutely destroy waves of enemies is fun, but I also like the specific flavour of escapism. As an autistic person, being out in a neurotypical world often requires me to play a role; a toned down version of my real self that’s as palatable as possible for the general population. Don’t get me wrong, I do love games that put me into the shoes of a character and allow you to explore their thoughts and feelings in depth, but I have a special place in my heart for games that allow me to be me. They allow me to interact with the world the way I would, the way I want to in real life but feel that I can’t. They allow me to create fun characters and shape their backstories and their feelings from scratch, giving the chance to leave a little piece of me in each one. I’ve created plenty of characters for games that are autistic themselves! In a world where we still don’t get a lot of disability representation in games, I’m happy with creating my own; especially as I can reflect my personal experience within the game.

I guess character creation allows me to express myself in more ways than you’d typically expect. There are plenty of video game characters I love, but I keep all the characters I’ve made for games close to my heart.