this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 53 points 4 months ago (4 children)

On the request itself: based on extracted XNB files, I think that the game currently handles the MC gender in a really, really simple way: pick one text string if the character is male, else pick another string. Adding pronouns sounds like a deceptively large amount of work, and odds are that it would require at least some rework on how the game interprets text strings, in a way that might even affect languages where this is not an issue (like Turkish and Hungarian).

So if I were in CA's shoes, I'd probably compromise by letting the player pick a non-binary character, and use "they" for that character; that would affect mostly English, perhaps Mandarin*.

On the doxxing and harassment: do I need to say that this is fucking awful for those people???

On CA's silence: CA is notably silent and non-combative even on things that affect him directly; such as when the Android players were harassing him because of the delayed 1.5 version. Don't get me wrong, I do think that he should publicly condemn the current events (it's the morally right thing to do), but this might take a while.


*among the languages supported by the game, I believe that this is mostly an issue only in Mandarin and English - because neither has grammatical gender, but both have gendered pronouns "hot-wiring" to the social gender. This is certainly not an issue in Hungarian or Turkish (no grammatical gender + gender-agnostic pronouns), and odds are that it isn't a big deal in Japanese (where people generally drop the pronoun).

I am not sure on what I'm going to say, but I feel like in the Romance languages and Russian, due to the existence of grammatical gender, there's an "intuitive" understanding that the word forms that you use do not need to match your gender identity, both are separated things. I'm saying this because both non-binary Portuguese speakers whom I know simply... well, they use the feminine and done? So it's probably not a big issue. I'd like input from non-binary speakers of those languages though; since I'm not non-binary myself it's possible that my view is incorrect. Also, if pronouns are added to the game, I'm interested on how it would handle gender agreement.

[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

As far as I know (not kuch actually) there are some tries to slightly reform German (DoktorInnen and alike), and maybe even Spanish where in a group with mixed males& females you'd target them with male pronoun and seemingly that makes some people sad.

It's indeed not an issue with Hungarian, although I've seen a party invitation online that decided that it needs to be inclusive, so the spoken language should be English, and THEN they complained about pronouns. Weird.

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[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 33 points 4 months ago (12 children)

WTF man, Stardew Valley of all things?

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[–] EtherealMoon@lemmy.world 29 points 4 months ago (3 children)

"I truly do not care if ConcernedApe speaks on pronouns in the game any more,” one user said. “I want [him] to condemn the transphobia and violence against the trans members of the community.”

How in the hell is this his responsibility? We have to prove our allegiances now? If I ever become a game dev I'm keeping my head down.

[–] spikederailed@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If I ever become a game dev I'm keeping my head down.

Which is apparently not enough unfortunately. Damned it you do, damned if you don't.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 9 points 4 months ago

I'll choose damned by transphobes, if I've got to make someone mad at me lol. It's not a hard choice, and it's not like we're talking about some rinky dink little solo dev anymore

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

Remember when people were sending literal death threats to CDProjektRed when they delayed Cyberpunk? This doesn't surprise me in the least.

Or remember any controversy surrounding literally any game (Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, just to name a couple recent ones)?

Gamers fucking suck. And I say that as a gamer myself.

[–] IzzyScissor@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's not "allegiances". A literal child asked for a game feature and transphobes started leaking that child's personal information online.

It's not Eric's fault, but it still is his responsibility to make sure there's a safe way to request features without getting doxxed.

[–] EtherealMoon@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

It is not a creator's responsibility to handle shitheads on a completely unrelated website. That's absurd.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 28 points 4 months ago (13 children)

A totally proportional reaction to the request to add a few words to the game...

However, I still find that the petition exaggerates

There is a huge problem with the game though. When starting a new farm you are tasked with creating a character, but there are only two gender options to choose from. [..] For many trans and non-binary players, the gendered language in the game can feel incredibly disheartening, and invalidating, causing feelings of dysphoria when misgendered while they are playing.

That's quite dramatic.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 31 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm sorry but this is the most mentally fragile shit I've heard in a long time. If I was the developer I'd add it in still because it really shouldn't be that hard, but if people told me they felt gender dysphoria playing my game I'd be inclined to give them a refund and recommend some game dev tutorials.

[–] PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Since the discussion is about bullying and threatening people because they don't think people should have autonomy over their gender expression, at worst it's the second most fragile shit you've heard.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

"Not being called the gender I feel like makes me feel like less than a person..."

Vs

"Calling that person a gender other than the one I think they are makes me feel seething, homicidal rage!"

[–] TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 17 points 4 months ago

It’s extremely dramatic

[–] Beaver@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Easy to say when you’re not being affected personally.

[–] LwL@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The whole thing is phrased the way I phrase acquisition requests at work, everything is true but it's very much written in a way that exaggerates the severity. No major reasons not to add it since it should be quite simple, but that phrasing is bound to tick people off a little. (Edit bc i just remembered this is about doxxing: no of fucking course that's not even remotely an appropriate response and I see 0 justification for it, and I feel like it probably wouldve happened even with different phrasing, this isn't meant to be victim blaming)

Wouldn't be hard to instead say "hey, i have an issue with the lack of a gender neutral pronoun option, it causes feelings of dysphoria for myself and many others which makes me not want to play the game, would be great if that could be added." Or even just leave out the dramaticizing adjectives, that might do it on its own.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

You've pretty much summed up my take on this. Trying to exaggerate the number of people affected doesn't help when you game things out. At best, it doesn't negatively affect your chances, and at worse you can peev off people that would otherwise be willing to help.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Apart from the non-binary players, I don't see a reason why the trans players can't just play as their chosen gender. The only thing I can think of to break the immersion is having kids, and even then the game doesn't do much to differentiate adopted vs birth children

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[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm getting flashbacks to Hogwarts Legacy when trans people were upset about the character creation in that game for some reason.

My very first character in that game was a witch with a masculine body type (I like pants) with bright-ass turquoise hair. The game has issues, but the character creation was the least of them.

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[–] Kolli@sopuli.xyz 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

I find it wild that people expect the dev to step up. He makes games and it's unfair to expect him to be/do any more.

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[–] Renegade_roosteR@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)
[–] WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 3 points 4 months ago

Sounds more like a way to make almost everyone annoyed. All the text would be more awkward for every player, so people who don't care about NB pronouns would justifiably be annoyed: it would actually be a case of identity politics making a product clearly worse (granted, it would be conservative identity politics that caused it), unlike all the times conservatives get mad because minorities exist in media sometimes. And NBs would know the dev put in more work to change all lines of text to remove all personal pronouns just to avoid adding another option for them. It would be a much more direct "fuck you" than doing nothing at all.

I wish English did not overuse pronouns (personal or otherwise) because of the ambiguity and misunderstandings caused by pronouns, but if its gonna change its going to have to start with people changing how they use the language, not some 8 year old game to try to shoehorn in.

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