But at the same time, there’s always that reccuring image of female as the foundation of society. Think in Gilgamesh the relationship between Enkidu and the priestess. It’s not necessary ” the gentile feminine and the violent masculine ” which are depicted here, but asocial brute strengh and socializing power.
Foundation isn’t the right word. Medium. Females as the choice medium of society. The ambiguity of the word here is just perfect.
What a programming we’ve subjected ourselves to !

Oh, and on a linguistical side-note, in french, and in most languages where masculine/feminine has meaning, you’ll find that masculine is more akin to neutral, while feminine holds feelings (whether it is positive or negative, you’ll find more insults in feminine forms, but also more words implying affection. Russian is another perfect exemple.)
Make of this what you will, but I find it meaningful. Now if only I knew what the meaning was…

Most (single-player) games we’ve seen have set-up the conflict by putting the player in the role of an entity which is outside the system. So far these conflicts have been moslty concerned with violence, but think about it: Mario 2 has the characters descending into a dream world, GTA has the player coming home or escaping from prison or entering a new town to take it over, Doom has the player invading the abatoires of hell, even The Sims is a sort of post-modern take on suburban materialism and “keeping up with the Joneses”. All these games set-up a system and demand the player rise to the challenge of these systems, it makes sense that the extraneous narrative frame the conflict like-wise. As we move into gameplay in which narrative isn’t extraneous, it will make sense to test the boundaries of the gameplay with similar tropes, but extended into the realm of the social symbolic.

Some Western writer once said theres only two basic types of stories, “the hero’s journey” and “stranger comes to town”. I’m not a big fan of structuralist theory, but from a systems building standpoint that appraisal makes sense.

Social challenge is the way of the future for games, its the way games will appeal to women, men, older folks, casual gamers, non-gamers, maybe even figity politicians. A major theme I want to explore in my storybuilding is letting the player play outside the conventions of normal social situations. GTA does this in a shallow way, but I’m thinking more Fear and Loathing than Goodfellas.

I think your ticket to making titles which play with sexuality and gender roles is along similar lines.