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Author Topic: Can we get a checkbox that lets us choose our gender in character-creation?  (Read 4047 times)

Yendorc

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I suggest that we get a simple choice of Male, Female and Other pronouns at character creation.

Primary reason would be because many (like 10% or 15%) of the pictures have helmets on anyways and it's a bit jarring calling your character "Mr. Manly McMasterchief", only to realize that the pic you chose (of basically nothing but a green suite with a helmet on) has the "female" tag.

Secondary reason would be to have a bit more fun with mods later on, when you play a badly disguised AI core that somehow fools everybody.


Edit:/

I do not ask for gender-specific pronouns to be added to the game
The game already uses gender-specific pronouns. Rarely, but it does.
All I ask is that we actaully can choose (hell, if only for the helmeted blokes) what we want to be called in those rare situations.

Examples for gender-specific things that are already ingame
a) a certain Manta has just been salvaged:
Spoiler

[close]
b) you want to talk to Baird:
« Last Edit: April 05, 2021, 08:58:37 AM by Yendorc »
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Sharp

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I would vote against this (not that it's a democracy). Players can choose what portrait to have and what name to use, they can decide whatever gender they want to be. In game you are normally just referred to as captain and that just makes it easier to handle everything else, otherwise you start needing to add checks for pronouns everywhere in missions/story, whereas with Captain you have a pronoun that fits everywhere.

Misunderstood initial intention, agree with idea, although also happy if we scrap SirorMadam and just stick with Captain.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2021, 02:00:29 PM by Sharp »
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Yendorc

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I would vote against this (not that it's a democracy). Players can choose what portrait to have and what name to use, they can decide whatever gender they want to be. In game you are normally just referred to as captain and that just makes it easier to handle everything else, otherwise you start needing to add checks for pronouns everywhere in missions/story, whereas with Captain you have a pronoun that fits everywhere.

there *are* parts in the story where you are called by your pronouns tho.
and those checks already *are* in there, because the portraits *have* genders attached to them


Else I'd never have known that the green-helmeted portrait is considered female in the game.

All I literally ask for is to not use the pronouns that the portrait has associated with them, but pronouns that you can choose at the start of character creation.
the only addition would be the gender-neutral pronoun. The rest literally is ingame already
« Last Edit: April 03, 2021, 09:58:02 AM by Yendorc »
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Golde

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Well that's um..
Spoiler
[close]

There're a couple of mods that adds new portraits, you should look into how they work because it's all specified directly in the file they append.
« Last Edit: April 03, 2021, 10:12:52 AM by Golde »
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Yendorc

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Well that's um..
Spoiler
[close]

There're a couple of mods that adds new portraits, you should look into how they work because it's all specified directly in the file they append.

I know that it's in the files directly, I don't ask how I would change it on my part.
I suggest that the gender is just not linked to the picture *at all*
since... Again...

a helmeted person is just a helmeted person.
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Twilight Sentinel

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This is an entirely reasonable request that can end up rubbing people the wrong way even when it's phrased well.
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Alex

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I can definitely see adding this, yeah. Just... never really spent much time on that aspect of it, but the larger number of helmeted portraits does make it more of an issue for sure. Let me make a note!

(Just FYI, portraits are currently sorted in alternating rows, male/female/male/female etc. So for the moment, you can figure out what the presumed gender of the helmeted ones is by that.)
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SCC

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At least marking the sex behind the helmet would be fine, too.

Sharp

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I would vote against this (not that it's a democracy). Players can choose what portrait to have and what name to use, they can decide whatever gender they want to be. In game you are normally just referred to as captain and that just makes it easier to handle everything else, otherwise you start needing to add checks for pronouns everywhere in missions/story, whereas with Captain you have a pronoun that fits everywhere.

there *are* parts in the story where you are called by your pronouns tho.
and those checks already *are* in there, because the portraits *have* genders attached to them


Else I'd never have known that the green-helmeted portrait is considered female in the game.

All I literally ask for is to not use the pronouns that the portrait has associated with them, but pronouns that you can choose at the start of character creation.
the only addition would be the gender-neutral pronoun. The rest literally is ingame already

Wow, sorry had no idea, must have missed the pronouns when they appeared. Yeah ok I completely take back what I said then and I misunderstood your point.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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This is an entirely reasonable request that can end up rubbing people the wrong way even when it's phrased well.

C'est la vie.  But yeah, gender pronoun use in video games can definitely lead to some weird issues today, and I'm not just referring to coding issues.  Case in point:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rimworld-code-analysis

https://www.polygon.com/2016/11/4/13509622/rimworld-sexuality-problem-rock-paper-shotgun-tynan-sylvester


Might just be easier to have said added option limit portrait choice unless the "other" option is chosen, or just add a barbershop in game to allow someone to change portraits... but prolly any choice gonna end up controversial, even by accident.
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Thaago

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This seems like a fairly straightforward addition that would make things better.

Starting to get off topic with this here so in spoiler, but the Rimworld thing goes a bit beyond just letting the player pick a pronoun for under their helmet:
Spoiler

I wouldn't call the issues weird tbh - culture and cultural norms are important to people. In the case of both of those articles, they are pointing out how the alpha version of the game had code that defined how men and women behaved with regards to attractiveness. The norms they decided on are a pretty good representation of how a 90's/early 2000's western male teenager who doesn't talk to girls views things (some of the choices were pretty hilarious on the surface). People who would like to see a model for human interactions other than that worldview wanted to see something else in the games they buy. (And money talks!)

But the reason people started to get upset was that there were also darker things popping up... because Rimworld is such a good engine for emergent phenomenon based on simple rules, taking some of those simple rules to their 'logical extreme' and realizing that those same things happen in real life... well lets just say things suddenly get a whole lot less funny.

Its not really fair to single out just Rimworld for this, because its a problem in many 'people simulator' videogames in general: in the game Surviving Mars (which I've been playing recently, and its really cool - I highly recommend if people like city planning type games), senior citizens don't work, but do consume food, air, and living space. If the game is going badly and suddenly a whole lot less people are working, the whole resource chain can break down and threaten the whole colony! A popular solution to this problem which is widely recommended on the reddit community is to make one of the domes "Seniors only" in its settings to get all the seniors to move there. And then turn off the air to exterminate them. There is a mild penalty for this - 2 less applicants will want to go to mars for each unnatural death - but a self sufficient colony doesn't care about that. The concept of eliminating undesirables by locking them up and gassing them... now an in game solution to a logistics problem, that comes with no serious consequences, mirrors how relatives of mine were killed. That upsets me (hopefully for understandable reasons), even though the events happened decades before I was born. Now I still like the game very much because I don't think the game devs intended to do that. Like they weren't malicious. But I did send them a note through the issue tracker asking if it could be resolved (I suggested the player being tried for mass murder - maybe more of an expansion pack than a minor tweak).

Back to rimworld! Apparently a common problem was an attractive gay woman arriving at the colony (and this is where the rules can lead to problems: men hit on woman 8 times more than woman hit on men, so an attractive gay man arriving doesn't cause the same problem). The men would hit on her, she would reject them, they would suffer a morale penalty, and since she wasn't partnering up they would keep on hitting on her and keep on getting more morale penalties. A proposed solution that would help in the game: put her on the night shift so that men don't have to see her. Ruh roh. Thats happened to a friend of mine: in that case it was her supervisor proposing that to her as a solution to men harassing her. It hurt her physical and mental health, and hurt her career. On the one hand, its just a game. On the other hand, "move the woman out of the way so that men are more comfortable" happens in real life, and women would really like for the harassers to be dealt with instead. Another proposed solution that would work in game: mutilate the woman (in a way that doesn't lower her job productivity) so that the men don't find her attractive anymore. Happens in real life, though thankfully not to anyone I know.

There's also minecraft and human trafficking/forced relocation of natives. There are some good youtube videos on that. Did microsoft intend for that to happen? Nah, they care about money money money! No controversies for them please! But its still not great, as its a thing that's happening right now in the world ruining lives.

... Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[close]
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Realm

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I'd quite love this suggestion as someone who almost exclusively uses the helmeted portraits. A present workaround is just changing the portrait's sex in the player faction file, but this would be a lot cleaner than needing a mod or fiddling with core files (though this specific fiddling shouldn't cause any problems if you're thinking of doing it yourself, you just need to redo it with every hotfix).
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Yendorc

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Wow, sorry had no idea, must have missed the pronouns when they appeared. Yeah ok I completely take back what I said then and I misunderstood your point.

they *are* rather rare, mainly a "sir" if you have a male portrait (which may be how you missed it) or a "Ma'am" when your portrait is female.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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This seems like a fairly straightforward addition that would make things better.

Starting to get off topic with this here so in spoiler, but the Rimworld thing goes a bit beyond just letting the player pick a pronoun for under their helmet

...

... Thanks for coming to my TED talk.


I was mostly just using the Rimworld debacle as an example of how coding as it relates to gender (whether ai side or just call/response prose choice) can lead to unwanted negative publicity, whether intentional or not.  Arguably from a business perspective one could state that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but these days that maxim seems to be at a low point in its life cycle.  For a (very!) small game developer, negative publicity is as likely to drive sales as it is to kill the developer, arguably a dilemma best avoided.

But some of those examples from other games are legitimately interesting/terrible, even if off-topic.  Frostpunk is an example of a game at least directly confronts some of these morality issues (though not really specifically gender), but such discussions are definitely a tangent obviously not worth exploring.

In any case, curious to see how this is handled, even if personally not really an issue for me.
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Punkinguy

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This seems like a fairly straightforward addition that would make things better.

Starting to get off topic with this here so in spoiler, but the Rimworld thing goes a bit beyond just letting the player pick a pronoun for under their helmet:
Spoiler

I wouldn't call the issues weird tbh - culture and cultural norms are important to people. In the case of both of those articles, they are pointing out how the alpha version of the game had code that defined how men and women behaved with regards to attractiveness. The norms they decided on are a pretty good representation of how a 90's/early 2000's western male teenager who doesn't talk to girls views things (some of the choices were pretty hilarious on the surface). People who would like to see a model for human interactions other than that worldview wanted to see something else in the games they buy. (And money talks!)

But the reason people started to get upset was that there were also darker things popping up... because Rimworld is such a good engine for emergent phenomenon based on simple rules, taking some of those simple rules to their 'logical extreme' and realizing that those same things happen in real life... well lets just say things suddenly get a whole lot less funny.

Its not really fair to single out just Rimworld for this, because its a problem in many 'people simulator' videogames in general: in the game Surviving Mars (which I've been playing recently, and its really cool - I highly recommend if people like city planning type games), senior citizens don't work, but do consume food, air, and living space. If the game is going badly and suddenly a whole lot less people are working, the whole resource chain can break down and threaten the whole colony! A popular solution to this problem which is widely recommended on the reddit community is to make one of the domes "Seniors only" in its settings to get all the seniors to move there. And then turn off the air to exterminate them. There is a mild penalty for this - 2 less applicants will want to go to mars for each unnatural death - but a self sufficient colony doesn't care about that. The concept of eliminating undesirables by locking them up and gassing them... now an in game solution to a logistics problem, that comes with no serious consequences, mirrors how relatives of mine were killed. That upsets me (hopefully for understandable reasons), even though the events happened decades before I was born. Now I still like the game very much because I don't think the game devs intended to do that. Like they weren't malicious. But I did send them a note through the issue tracker asking if it could be resolved (I suggested the player being tried for mass murder - maybe more of an expansion pack than a minor tweak).

Back to rimworld! Apparently a common problem was an attractive gay woman arriving at the colony (and this is where the rules can lead to problems: men hit on woman 8 times more than woman hit on men, so an attractive gay man arriving doesn't cause the same problem). The men would hit on her, she would reject them, they would suffer a morale penalty, and since she wasn't partnering up they would keep on hitting on her and keep on getting more morale penalties. A proposed solution that would help in the game: put her on the night shift so that men don't have to see her. Ruh roh. Thats happened to a friend of mine: in that case it was her supervisor proposing that to her as a solution to men harassing her. It hurt her physical and mental health, and hurt her career. On the one hand, its just a game. On the other hand, "move the woman out of the way so that men are more comfortable" happens in real life, and women would really like for the harassers to be dealt with instead. Another proposed solution that would work in game: mutilate the woman (in a way that doesn't lower her job productivity) so that the men don't find her attractive anymore. Happens in real life, though thankfully not to anyone I know.

There's also minecraft and human trafficking/forced relocation of natives. There are some good youtube videos on that. Did microsoft intend for that to happen? Nah, they care about money money money! No controversies for them please! But its still not great, as its a thing that's happening right now in the world ruining lives.

... Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[close]
did you have to go on this massive tangent, just give us a pronoun selector for the spacesuit portraits (for my tangent, morality in games is BORING, efficiency must be increased at all costs)
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Doom-Class Cruisers are my Bloodtype
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