The problem with humanoids

Scott Benson, animator of Night in the Woods, as quoted by Polygon:

I think working with animal characters, which is something I’ve done in animation work for years, you can identify with it a bit better. If we had made Mae a really specific person with a specific ethnicity and weight, and all this different stuff…

I think a lot of people can see themselves in Mae. If we were hyper-specific with our humanoid characters, it becomes more and more exclusive. There is something really inclusive about more abstracted humans.

When people draw fan art of Mae, everyone makes her look different. They make her look like themselves. That’s exactly what we want.

I had a lot of trouble writing Splatoon. I’m still not sure it delivers the intended message, or is any good for that matter.

I started with the nugget that games can simply be games, ignoring the fact that the slight variance in asexual character design could be implied as male or female. This thought led me down a rabbit hole. If gender can be construed, what about skin tone, ethnicity, sexuality, political ideals, spirituality? Where does it stop?Humanoid character design, however slight, is a delicate thing.