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 an interview over Zoom. “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 many, many, different families out there, each with their own geometry. “I’m sure there are many kids all over the world playing the game right now who have same gender parents or who have just one father, or one mother. Or maybe they are adopted,” Moral says. “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.”

No one at Petoons Studio wanted a default ‘typical’ family model in the game’s creator system, Moral says, as this wouldn’t have felt “natural” for anyone involved. “It would have been very old fashioned and not aligned with our values at all,” he says.

Moral now hopes the game’s inclusive character creator will raise awareness for issues surrounding family makeup still present in society today, and spark positive conversations between parents and children about inclusion and representation in general.

“Unfortunately, when the Peppa Pig episode came out last season where a kid in the playgroup has two mums, I noticed there was a lot of controversy,” Moral says with a sigh. “I thought that was a shame, of course… so I hope [Peppa Pig: World Adventures] creates healthy conversations – that would be great.”

Moral notes it would have been easier overall to have simply stuck with a default family during the game’s development, and eschewed World Adventures’ character creator feature almost entirely. However, as far as everyone at Petoons was concerned, this simply wasn’t an option.

“It was 100 percent obvious we needed to do an inclusive game,” Moral states, while admitting it was a lot of work to implement. “It was a challenge,” he says, smiling. “But, I mean, it was definitely super worth it.”

When I ask Moral if Peppa Pig: World Adventures is the kind of game he would have liked to have seen when he was a child, he replies with an enthusiastic yes.

“When I was younger, let’s say like 20 something years ago, I don’t think there were many games that featured this diversity and inclusion,” Moral reflects. “So, it would have been great, of course, because, you know, a lot of people [at the studio], myself included, are from the LGBT community.

“So, for us, it’s something that’s very important and, you know, the projects that we make, we want to make sure we leave a footprint for diversity and inclusion here. 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. And I think if you normalise it from a very young age, it will make a good impact on their lives and values.”

The World Adventures team now hopes more games will include this sort of family representation, be they big AAA blockbusters or smaller indies.

“Video games should evolve as society evolves, and as society is evolving with inclusion in general, games need to adapt to represent that. And I think they are to a certain extent, and I think they will evolve even more,” Moral closes.

Peppa Pig: World Adventures is available now across Xbox and PlayStation consoles, Nintendo Switch, and PC.