how would you feel a about a genderless race

[Nihility]

what would be the point?

the only way to make a "genderless" race is to make it basically be all male or all female with some stupid reproduction lore
or make it an undefined, featureless nothing. Like quina whose race has genders and is mostly just a "What is that thing?" as a sort of an ongoing joke

the topic may as well be no male viera please

[Keife191]

genderless is a very subjective term, as gender itself is a product of the mind, so for argument sake ill assume you meant sex. and while sex matters to alot of people, in terms of identification sex is meaningless in a videogame. most female characters are played by men, theres a very well known quote on the matter. "there are no women on the internet."

the viera could be considered genderless since they only have a single gender. and while you might assume the quina are genderless, the one you recruit in 9 is obviously more suited to female pronouns. what matters to most players isnt the gender or sex of their character, but how cool they look. since the only thing that matters with sex in a videogame is deciding what clothes that character is allowed to wear, a sexless character would bring more customize options as theyd be able to wear male or female clothes. but ultimately i think this would be at a detriment to the game.

[Iscah]

genderless is a very subjective term, as gender itself is a product of the mind, so for argument sake ill assume you meant sex. and while sex matters to alot of people, in terms of identification sex is meaningless in a videogame. most female characters are played by men, theres a very well known quote on the matter. "there are no women on the internet."

"A well-known quote" that is usually tongue-in-cheek or sarcastic - or otherwise just plain wrong. There are plenty of women on the Internet, and playing characters of both genders. (And yes, genders - when you're not trying to differentiate between mental gender and physical sex, then it is perfectly fine to use "gender" in a physical sense as well.)


You're correct in that you can't connect "character's gender" to "player's gender" (which may or may not correspond to "player's physical sex"), and certainly can't draw any universal meaning out of it - did they pick their character because they identify with them? Are attracted to them? Just thought it was a cool character design?

But that doesn't make "[male/female] meaningless in a videogame". The characters are still male or female, plus gender identity, within the "real world" of the story. It's a part of who they are and how they act.

Yes, at a technical level they're all genderless clusters of polygons being instructed to move around a virtual space.... but that's not what most people are talking about here.

The question here is about making an actual character or race within the story that is genderless, or sexless if you want to be technical - something that physically can't be identified as one or the other.



In another story, it's entirely possible. Here, it would raise too many programming issues - script pronouns as I mentioned earlier, and costumes as other people have raised since. Right now there's essentially a switch in the programming that determines a character to be male or female, and that controls what gear they equip, or what form some gear pieces take. It's like a light switch - it can't be left in the middle, it has to be on one setting or the other.

[hynaku]

Guess they could have humanoid slime race. Something like the anime that time I got reincarnated as a slime. Or like slime from monster musume.

[Iscah]

Also worth pointing out that sylphs are not quite genderless, but are well away from human male/female definitions - their own pronouns are entirely gender neutral ("this one", "those ones") and their two genders, despite being referred to by other races with male and female pronouns are more like hermaphrodite and male. (The 'male' sylphs produce both seeds and pollen, analogous to eggs and sperm in plant biology, while the 'females' only produce pollen.)

Also, the two sylph characters that we've seen take on Hyuran forms, Noraxia and Silbexio, each use the "wrong" gendered Hyur for their pronoun-gender - though Noraxia looks very ambiguous.

[Astrus]

As with all player races it would come down to the design. If it looks like something I'd want to play as I'll do, irrespective of what, if any, gender the race represents.

[Keife191]

It's like a light switch - it can't be left in the middle, it has to be on one setting or the other.

so just like real life then?

[Iscah]

so just like real life then?

Theoretically, yes.

Realistically, the switch is prone to getting stuck partway - sometimes visibly, more often something in the internal mechanism that doesn't align with where the switch appears to be set.

[NessaWyvern]

You could make a race like the Amalj'aa, where they are male or female, but even themselves cannot tell (besides when it's mating season and they release pheromones). They would appear to be a genderless race, while actually having a "secret" gender, which would make the coding play nice.

[Nyvara]

Guess they could have humanoid slime race. Something like the anime that time I got reincarnated as a slime. Or like slime from monster musume.

OK now this would be cool especially if you had the Mimic skill to change your form into male, female or monsters!