By the end of 2024, I will have been nonbinary for six years. I first decided to start using “they/them” pronouns alongside “she/her” ones in December 2018. I’ll remember that forever because Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was still in theaters at the time, and watching it probably had a nonzero impact on my decision. Eventually, I found that I enjoyed being referred to as “they” so much that I excised the “she/her” altogether.

I say that I’ve only been nonbinary for six years because, despite feeling this way pretty much my whole life, the concept of existing outside the gender binary wasn’t within my realm of understanding for a long time. I was maybe sixteen when I found out about the nonbinary identity for the first time; it took me two years after that to feel that I was worthy of it. Even then, it took me a while to fully get comfortable with explicitly referring to myself as such — although now, I can’t imagine myself without it.

Nonbinary identity is, by its very nature, nebulous. To every nonbinary person, it means something different. It defies definition. So, what does it look like when you try to represent that identity in a video game? It turns out that it depends on the studio — and, fittingly, there’s no “one size fits all” approach.

The challenge of balancing specificity with ubiquity is not a nonbinary-specific issue; for all groups of people, the concept of “representation” is a muddy one. One single person can never represent an entire demographic, after all. But that doesn’t mean that good representation is not worth pursuing. Seeing nonbinary characters in the mainstream, especially as playable characters in video games, normalizes the concept for a lot of people who might otherwise not have much exposure to it. We’ve seen a rise in nonbinary representation, with titles like Apex Legends, Valorant, Overwatch, and Rainbow Six Siege all introducing nonbinary characters to their lineups, all of which look very different from one another.

Antoinette Chable has been a Narrative Writer on the Valorant team since 2022. This year, Valorant released their first nonbinary Agent — a Scottish Controller named Clove — and Antoinette, who is nonbinary, worked on the character’s personality and VO.

“We partnered with nonbinary consultants internally [and] externally, including regionally specific folk, and, when we could do so responsibly, made use of my own lived experience. As with any representation, you want to avoid relying on a singular lived experience, but also dodge the issue of going too macro and making a walking, talking flag.”

Around the same time, Overwatch was launching its first nonbinary character as well, a damage hero named Venture. Jessie Yang, who is currently a gameplay engineer at Wildlife Entertainment but worked at Blizzard during Venture’s development process, says that for the Overwatch team, a nonbinary character was long overdue.

“There are so many different ways to be nonbinary and how that intersects with trans identities,” said Jessie, who identifies as nonbinary. “I was one of the people who pushed for a quick presentation from an [Activision Blizzard King] employee who was also nonbinary. They gave a talk to the team about how nonbinary people come in all different shapes and sizes, all different gender presentations… even their pronoun usage isn’t uniform. So I was definitely pushing to make sure that people's understanding of non-binariness is that it’s very broad, and that there's a lot of different things that don't have to fit one gender androgynous form. The more specific of a character and story we had in mind for Venture, the better.”

Sunshine Kim, a concept artist who previously worked on Rainbow 6 Siege and created the concept art for Sens, the game’s first nonbinary Operator, says that she let the character’s skillset and background guide her concept, rather than preconceived ideas of what nonbinary people are “supposed” to look like.

“My approach was that this person was being recruited for their skillset, not because of their gender or sexuality,” said Sunshine. “This person had a specific skillset to offer, and just happened to be nonbinary. I didn’t want to mark a checkbox by making them ‘look nonbinary.’ I thought it would only be fair that we treat this group of people the same — they’re not given special treatment because of their gender or sexuality. They’re treated as a soldier.”

It’s an interesting conundrum: how do you represent a demographic with no universally understood markers of their shared identity, while also being able to communicate that that identity is integral to their character? Nonbinary people are all incredibly varied in their gender identities and expressions, but the one thing that connects us all is a shared understanding — when it comes to each other, we just “get it,” without having to ask. There’s a similar sense of liberation in having characters like Sens, who exist without being defined by their gender, and without having to explain it.

Although we’ve established that nonbinary people can look all sorts of ways, there’s still a kind of nonbinary stereotype, insofar as stereotypes can exist for a group that isn’t wholly established yet. When Clove was revealed, they came under some fire for being a thin, white, androgynous AFAB (assigned female at birth) nonbinary person. 

(To be clear, I don't fully agree with the point that this Tweet is making, nor the characters it points to as examples, but I've included it to illustrate the discussion that cropped up around Clove's reveal.)

While there definitely are nonbinary people who look like Clove, when the identity was first being established, this was the pervasive idea of what nonbinary people looked like. Nonbinary people often being grouped with women has also contributed to the idea that most are female-leaning in either birth-assigned gender or appearance (some call this treatment “woman lite”).

Personally, I had a similarly negative reaction to Clove upon seeing them for the first time. Having been inundated with images of petite, vaguely-androgynous-but-still-feminine white people for years, and told that this is what “being nonbinary” looks like, I was sort of over it as a concept. But over time, after seeing how they were implemented into the game and learning more about their personality and backstory, I’ve come around on them. I don’t expect every female character to resonate with every woman in the world, so why should every nonbinary character resonate with me? There are still going to be nonbinary people who see themselves in Clove, as well as people who learn about the concept for the first time from them, and that’s worth a lot.

I still think that Clove looks a bit too much like a Google search for “nonbinary person” for me to fully buy into their visual design, but knowing about the work that went into creating them has made me appreciate their inclusion a lot more. Plus, it helps a lot that they have some of the funniest voice lines in Valorant. For Antoinette, the “stereotype” was something that was important for them to address and consider all through Clove’s development — and even though it ended up landing that way for some people, they take comfort in knowing that this doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all of Riot’s nonbinary representation.

“Gender is merely a single facet of a person, and to emphasize any one facet is to risk making something that doesn’t feel real,” they said. “For Clove, this meant that as we created their life experience from beginning to present, it was a culmination of specific experiences that prompted the question, ‘is Clove nonbinary?’ And after deliberating, we decided it was true. So, when we started this journey, I didn't know Clove would be nonbinary, but as we explored the character more and more, that element of them was revealed to us.

“I brought up that consideration shortly after this — and after deliberating with the team we decided to push forward as planned. As a masc-leaning enby and [person of color], I knew very well the community’s sentiment on the matter and share in their desire to see diverse nonbinary representation. But I found comfort in knowing that this was not a one and done deal. There is no list of boxes to check, so another nonbinary agent is not off of the table.”

Based on my conversations, the general consensus I got was that the character development process takes about nine months from start to finish. In that time, hundreds of people touch the character, from engineers to writers to artists. When there are that many individual voices and perspectives involved, it can be especially difficult to get it “right.” It’s hard to, collectively, define a character whose gender expression is meant to defy definition. The solution to this is different depending on the exact situation, but it’s worth evaluating exactly which voices get listened to. It’s all good and well to speak to outside consultants, but it’s also important to have nonbinary people involved in every step of the process, to help guide all those different moving parts.

“To your point you expressed earlier, nonbinary rep is so new,” Antoinette said. “There are bound to be pitfalls and shortcomings — but we can expedite the growing pains by taking on creative roles in these spaces.”

The answer to the fundamental problem that one character cannot fully represent an entire group of people is, of course, to make sure there isn’t just one character. Diversity among nonbinary characters is especially important, too, precisely because there’s so much variety. If representation helps to normalize things for a general public, then including nonbinary characters of all kinds in video games reinforces the idea that anyone can be nonbinary, regardless of what they look like. As with all kinds of representation, if you’re doing it right, all bad faith comments just sound ridiculous. Such was the case with Venture, whose detractors still can’t agree on the right way to misgender them.

Bloodhound from Apex Legends has been touted as a positive example of a nonbinary character due to a similar ambiguity in their appearance and background — nobody knows what they really look like under their mask, nor what their birth gender is. While Bloodhound is, indisputably, extremely cool, and a great character, the answer isn’t to make all nonbinary characters completely mysterious and unknowable. (Although, that’s probably the dream for many of us.)

“I didn't want this character to be treated differently or look different because they're nonbinary,” Sunshine said of Sens’ development. “They still needed to look like part of Rainbow … Everyone wanted to listen to as many voices as possible. There were obstacles we had to work with, and not everyone had the same priorities, but at the end of the day, everyone wanted to do things right. I’m super happy that I got to be a part of it.”

So, what’s the future of nonbinary characters in video games? It’s hard to say. We’re at an interesting point in history for nonbinary people, in that awareness of the identity is only going to keep on growing from here on out, but it would also be disingenuous to claim that most people understand it, much less accept it. The hope, certainly, is that eventually, when nonbinary and trans characters are added to games, they won’t make headlines purely because of their genders.

To get there, the characters need to feel authentic. They need to feel like real nonbinary people, rather than just teaching tools. So it’s essential that these characters come from a place of genuine care and a desire for nonbinary players to be able to play as a character like them. It’s also essential that nonbinary people are involved in the making of these characters. Despite our differences, nonbinary people share a common understanding — one that can’t really be explained, but can always be felt. You can only capture something like that by experiencing it.

“I don’t think I have the same nonbinary experience as we imagined Venture to have, but it was still really important to me that we represent this character well,” Jessie said. “This character was going to mean a lot to people almost immediately. It meant a lot [to me] because the Overwatch team, on the whole, is a little bit of an older generation of gamemakers, so there were moments where they were like, ‘I’m not entirely sure of how to approach this concept.’ It was nice being able to bring in the resources and personal insight. It was a really nice opportunity to know that I could be here specifically caring about pushing this character in the right direction.”

Even with all these considerations, when it comes to nonbinary representation, it’s hard not to appreciate just how far we’ve come. Ten years ago, I didn’t even know that I could not identify as a girl, much less exist outside the gender binary. My adolescence might have been very different if I had that knowledge. The idea that there are kids out there who might use these popular games as a starting point to learn what it means to be nonbinary is, more than anything, hugely encouraging. It’s one thing to see yourself in a character; it’s another to be able to play as them.

“The sensation of seeing, then controlling a character that shares elements of your lived experience is something everyone deserves to feel,” Antoinette said. “For nonbinary rep, that means giving us older enbies [and] enbies of color, and exploring the full spectrum of gender expression and body types! Most importantly, [it’s] showing folks that being nonbinary is not a badge we wear, but a truth we live.”