Peppa Pig game developer hopes inclusive family character creator sparks "healthy conversations"
When you think of Peppa Pig, you probably don't think of a brand that pushes boundaries. After all, Peppa comes from your typical nuclear family, and her adventures within the show are generally confined to the day to day dealings of their lives together: Peppa and her family taking a trip to the recycling centre, for example, or visiting a theme park, or doing some DIY around the house. You get the idea.
That said, the developers behind the newly-released Peppa Pig: World Adventures video game wanted players to fully immerse themselves into Peppa's world, no matter what their family dynamic, blueprint or fabric looks like. As such, Petoons Studio included a character creator so players can customise their animalistic avatar, from gender and species to fur colour and accessories. Then, once their own character is designed, players can do the same for the rest of their family.
This means if players want to make their character a brown fox with a blue rabbit for a parent, they can. If they want their character to have siblings that are different animals to them, they can. If they want their parents to be the same gender, they can.
«When we were designing this feature, we thought we definitely couldn't just, you know, go for a default, traditional family,» lead producer David Moral tells me during a Zoom call. «For us, it was very obvious we needed this more diverse approach, because I mean, it's 2023, right?»
«You can't get away with just setting a traditional family like 'a father and a mother and a sibling', or whatever. From our point of view, [the ability to customise your family] is not something that's a plus, or simply nice to have. It's just a requirement, honestly.»
After all, as Moral points out, there are
Read more on eurogamer.net
