Many households know the importance of Peppa Pig, with the bright yet reassuring tones and sounds of that cartoon world a delight to children the world over. Since Peppa Pig is beloved by so many different families, it makes sense that a video game set in its world would allow players to create families of whatever resemblance they’d like.
But this kind of flexibility can still be boundary pushing apparently, especially after the controversy that was stirred following an episode from the cartoon that came out last season. In that particular episode of Peppa Pig, a child in a playgroup was shown as having two mums. The developers of Peppa Pig: World Adventure, however, were keen to allow the full breadth of family creation in their game. Speaking toEurogamer, lead producer on World Adventure, David Moral, explained that for them it was “very obvious” to have this more diverse approach. “Because, I mean, it’s 2023, right?” he said.
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Developer Petoon Studios included a character creator in the game that allows players to customise their avatar from gender and species to fur colour and accessories, with the same level of customisation available for the rest of the in-game family. Their thinking was that players could fully immerse themselves into World Adventure with a family that could be like any that might exist in the real world or the imagination.
“You can’t get away with just setting a traditional family like ‘a father and a mother and a sibling’, or whatever”, Moral told Eurogamer. “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”.
Moral pointed out that there are many families out there who may have only one father or one mother, as a single-parent household, or have same gender parents, or be adopted. “So for us, it was obvious we needed to give them the ability to create any family, which is the family they understand, because it’s their own family”, he said.
Moral is hoping the game’s inclusive character creator will be a conversation starter for “healthy” discussions and positive communication between parents and children, and society at large, since inclusivity and representation are issues that can and do affect everyone. It certainly wasn’t an easy thing to implement as Moral made clear it would’ve been simpler not to have such a fully fleshed out character creator, saying it needed a lot of work to develop. “It was a challenge”, he said. “But, I mean, it was definitely super worth it”.
The producer believes that video games should evolve as society evolves, with games adapting to represent the diversity of it. “We want the kids from today, or our future kids, to see this [representation and inclusion] more often, and that for them, it’s super normalised”, Moral said. “And I think if you normalise it from a very young age, it will make a good impact on their lives and values”.
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