Non-binary option for characters, please?

[Lastelli]

Japanese has, and uses very frequently, a lot of gender neutral terms. You are probably thinking of あたし、僕 and 俺 as terms to refere others or the different ways to call your siblings, but in the end Japanese is very gender neutral.

I disagree. I find japanese to be one of the languages with the lowest degree of gender neutrality, to the point where certain words or expressions are directly associated to a specific gender. A japanese man using かしら or わ at the end of their sentence will be considered rather feminine. A girl using 僕 will be considered masculine, but this doesn't really stop here. The japanese language deeply reflects the japanese culture, and japanese culture is one where social differences and social standing are very important, including the difference in gender as interpreted by the general society.

The problem here is that "gender" has a precise meaning from a biological standpoint, so you can't really treat gender as a state of mind like many self-proclaimed gender neutral induviduals imply it is. You can try to "cheat" and change your gender via surgery and hormonal therapies, this doesn't change the fact that you were either born a she/he. And if you don't feel like you belong to your biological gender I will respect that, but please don't ask the world to change what the word "gender" means just because of your personal ideology or, even worse, to assume that such a biological distinction doesn't exist and is not part of the social relationships of 99,99% of the population.

[TheCount]

I particularly love the smug little part where you note how in a hundred years people will facepalm at how wrong people were for not caring/not siding with you over this "issue" lol

This isn't an easy thing to do, and even if it were it's catering to a minority of a minority at best. Use your imagination if it bothers you that much

[Niwashi]

I would go so far as to add a gender neutral toggle in character creation (or perhaps a separate character creation option to select your pronoun).

In a game whose developers can't even give equal treatment to the two main genders which it does support, because making gear to fit both is apparently just too much effort to be worthwhile, I'm pretty sure we're not going to see a third character model option for each tribe of each race. People are still going to have to pick which gender's character model they're going to use, and they're still going to be limited to the gear, hairstyles, poses, and emotes available to that character model.

At most, if this suggestion were implemented, it would be limited to dialog and titles.

I'm wondering what words you want used instead of "he" and "she". "They" could be used but ...

The request wasn't for non-gendered NPCs to be in the story. It was for the ability to make our own player character be non-binary. When NPCs are talking to the player character, the pronoun used for that player character is neither "he" nor "she". It's "you". That word isn't gendered in any of the game's four supported languages, so pronouns are really not the main issue here (though of course they often are in real life, which is probably why they're what came to mind and spawned a whole sub-discussion here about pronouns).

The gendered terms the game would need to adapt are things like lad / lass / ?, and lady / lord / ?, and probably a couple dozen or so other pairs that would need to be turned into trios of terms and phrases.

Regarding 'they' being confusing, it really isn't; there are occasions in normal conversation where you will use it, probably without thinking or noticing.

While a bit of a tangent to the suggestion (which as I said above, doesn't really involve pronouns), I did want to mention something about this. Certainly the word "they" can be and quite often is used clearly and unambiguously to refer to one person, but that's different than being able to just substitute it in wherever "he" or "she" is used.

At a rough approximation, I'd guess around 3/4 of the places a singular third person pronoun is used, the word "they" can be simply substituted without changing the meaning of the sentence. Another 20% or so can be reworded enough to make it clear. And then there's the other 5% of the time that it can be really difficult to come up with a clear non gendered way of phrasing what you want to say without the phrasing getting really awkward just to avoid gendered pronouns. Nobody is claiming that it can never work, just that it isn't a global panacea to the problem.

In order for pronouns to make sense, it needs to be clear who or what they're referring to. The gender of the pronoun often gives a clue to what its antecedent is, and in some cases even changes whether there needs to be an antecedent or not. A sentence like "they should do <xyz>" is quite often just a way of saying "<xyz> should be done", with the term "they" just representing a vague sense of "whoever does such things" rather than representing a particular person or people who were under discussion. "He" and "she" are not only different by being singular. They're also different by being clearly specific.



(EDIT: Wow, this thread got long fast. I'd read through the first page (at a 40 post per page setting) to then see this response end up on page 6. I probably won't read all the intervening posts, though I may skim through a bit.)

[Ilan]

Why does a fantasy game have to be like the real life?

Sorry, rights and so on are important but this gender insanity has to stop when it comes to GAMES.

[Selova]

I can already anticipate how “controversial” and “SJW” this post will be received by some as (God, when society in about 100 years from now looks back on this and how the word “SJW” is used as a slur for people who ask for more options of self expression, they’ll facepalm so hard.)

Yeah, and I'm totally sure they wouldn't facepalm just as much If not harder for someone wanting a game developer to cater to a made-up gender by implementing them into a Fantasy online game. Are Sunday's the new norm for low quality bait threads or something? Yes you knew what you were doing when you decided to post something like this, prefacing it with a disclaimer about how you expect it to turn out doesn't magically make this not a bait thread. Stick to RPing your characters as whatever 90+ fictional genders you want, but leave actual development resources out of it.

[Magic-Mal]

Personally... I don't consider myself as female. I actually identify as Vaelin. And I disagree with you Vaelin. I try fantasias to look like you but when I change, I realize I like my Miqo'te. It's absurd that I can't be a Vaelin Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te and that there's no option to refer to me as "vae" but only as "her"

[Tempest222]

I couldn’t care less if someone wanted to identify as a blade of grass. Not my life, not my problem. But peopke really are getting a bit out of hand these days with expecting every single little nuance about them to be recognized and celebrated by everyone. This is a game developed with finite resources, they literally cannot account for and cater to ever niche little demographic that feels they deserve representation. Not having a game developer insert options to cater towards 100+ genders peopke just invented in the last 5 years is hardly discrimination, and it’s baffling how anyone could compare it to actual racism and the ways in which people’s lives have been so egatively impacted by it. Having someone use a pronoun you don’t like is hardly on par.

[Vaelin]

I don't see what's being judgemental or ignorant about resisting implementation of 30+ different genders (depending on which country/area we're talking about) and having to keep track of respective pronouns. Not to mention people creating new genders and respective pronouns on a whim.

In case you missed the title of this thread, I was suggesting adding just the 1 new option as a catch-all for people who don’t identify as fully male or female, not 30. Gender neutral terms makes things a lot less like real life for many of us, where no matter how hard we can try, we can never really escape it. This is a fantasy game, so why can’t we live the fantasy we want to if it’s possible to implement? Not 30 genders, no “Attack-helicopters”, just *something* more than the “two genders” that helps represent us people who aren’t rigidly either.

[Vaelin]

I couldn’t care less if someone wanted to identify as a blade of grass. Not my life, not my problem. But peopke really are getting a bit out of hand these days with expecting every single little nuance about them to be recognized and celebrated by everyone. This is a game developed with finite resources, they literally cannot account for and cater to ever niche little demographic that feels they deserve representation. Not having a game developer insert options to cater towards 100+ genders peopke just invented in the last 5 years is hardly discrimination, and it’s baffling how anyone could compare it to actual racism and the ways in which people’s lives have been so egatively impacted by it. Having someone use a pronoun you don’t like is hardly on par.

Just invented in the last 5 years? Many cultures and societies have more than just male and female and that’s been since the creation of civilisation itself. Native American culture had 4 genders, and many tribes and pagan religions believed there was more to us than just male and female. So why do you feel entitled to spout empty words that have no base or meaning, and just act as a fog light to show your lack of understanding? It’s good you don’t care if people identify as a blade of grass, I doubt anyone actually does, but that’s good. Why not just stop there, and live and let live? Don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about with regards to peoples lives and the representation we deserve to ask for. As you said, “not my life, not my problem”, so if you don’t have an actual valid argument as to why ONE gender-neutral option isn’t feasible for the game, then why are you here?

[Selova]

Just invented in the last 5 years? Many cultures and societies have more than just male and female and that’s been since the creation of civilisation itself. Native American culture had 4 genders, and many tribes and pagan religions believed there was more to us than just male and female. So why do you feel entitled to spout empty words that have no base or meaning, and just act as a fog light to show your lack of understanding? It’s good you don’t care if people identify as a blade of grass, I doubt anyone actually does, but that’s good. Why not just stop there, and live and let live? Don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about with regards to peoples lives and the representation we deserve to ask for. As you said, “not my life, not my problem”, so if you don’t have an actual valid argument as to why ONE gender-neutral option isn’t feasible for the game, then why are you here?

Because you started this nonsensical topic and the person you responded to is responding to it with their opinion, that's how a discussion works. Their opinion is a valid one, Even if the developers were to acknowledge this ridiculous idea and implement it, what's going to stop people from wanting other made-up genders catered to as well? There is no place in this game for this nonsense and I'd bet SE won't be willing to open up the floodgates of identity politics in their game by implementing or adding onto races with your fictional genders. I also love how you bring up Native american tribes and religious beliefs and trying to use their beliefs and lifestyles as some kind of actual evidence of there being more than 2 genders. There is no Scientific or Biological data that backs the claim that there are more than 2 genders, sorry. Identity politics have no place in real life let alone a fantasy video game.