God I’d love to redistribute the fat from my belly to my hips and tits

I basically mean, who intentionally picks an overly masculine character unambigiously male character with female pronouns? Because that’s really only a thing in transphobic far right political cartoons.

I could see people picking the “female” character with he/him pronouns if they wanted to play a femboy and there wasn’t really an option to make the male character look “pretty”, but the “male” character with she/her, I dunno about that one chief.

Hold up…

Runescape has a mod scene?

To be fair he didn’t know Samus was a woman, Kid Icarus’ name was actually Pit, or that Metroid was the name of the alien not the planet, so yes… he was definitely a joke to me.

Brb, making a sequel to Sonic & The Black Knight and officially licensing it.

What? Sega can’t copyright Camelot!

Huh… well how about that

So max femme makes you look overly and cartoonishly feminine? I’m sorry I’m not understanding the problem. I’d imagine any slider pushed to one extreme end would give you an extreme result.

Actually if you read what I said, I’d say part of my problem is that having two character models one that is “Unambiguously Male” and one that is “Unambiguously Female” while claiming “Oh you can just choose your pronouns, and we didn’t actually say Male or Female! So it’s fine” is a lazy solution that does more to annoy than to assist.

And that if they were actually serious about being more respectful to the wider gender spectrum that exists in real life, they’d have more than just those two options. But the concern dev studios have is not in helping gender non-conforming individuals be more immersed in games, it’s to say “I’m with the current trendy thing, upvotes to the left.”

We need to be critical of what’s called “Rainbow Capitalism/Pink Capitalism” or we’ll be stuck without any real meaningful change.

No, but we still see models that largely either have bulges or camel toes.

Seeing a buff, hairy, bulge-having individual labeled “she/her” is typically only done in transphobic alt-right political cartoons and it feels a little tone deaf that game companies actually expect transpeople to unironically go with that…

This, but unironically.

If they were labeled something like masculine or feminine, buff or curvy, or anything that doesn’t imply a hierarchy that would have been an improvement.

“Dude and Chick” aren’t terms I’m saying they should use instead, I’m saying Body Type A and B come across as disingenuous and better terminology could be used. “Masculine” and “Feminine” would work, as you can be masculine without being male. I’m a short-haired tomboy who strongly prefers she/her pronouns, I’d be considered “Masculine, but not male” even if I was cis!

Heck I myself am in a relationship with a cisgender male who presents feminine with many of his behaviors, but that doesn’t make him less of a man aynmore than being masculine makes me less of a woman. We’re all adults here we know that pink can be for boys and blue can be for girls, this isn’t kindgergarten in the 80’s anymore.

In fact let’s take a look at how Old School Runescape handles it. This image is… not great…

Why is the term “Body Type A” and “Body Type B” present at all when there are clear pictures of the two options that speak for themselves? It feels like just going out of the way to include “the corporate approved buzzwords intended for maximum synergy with the brand!”

That’s not the only problem with the UI as we’re still seeing rigid reinforcement of the gender binary.

The example picture of the more masculine build has a beard and the example picture of the more feminine build has a skirt, as if to reinforce gendered stereotypes while trying to avoid using the word gender, which is a mixed message at best… And to really draw the point, she/her is located just under the feminine option, and he/him is under the masculine option as if to imply these are the “correct” options.

The message this gives off is “Look, we call these A and B, but you and I know what’s really going on here eh fellow cisheteronormative? Gotta check off that box for corporate”

When the message they should be giving off is “He, she, they… whatever, it’s all good. All we have is that you have fun playing our game and try not to let anyone else tell you who you’re supposed to be!”

I agree we should be more inclusive, but we should do so in a way that feels less insulting and backhanded.

Exactly.

I’m not saying that women are inferior or that anyone with tits is a woman… I’m saying that by labeling the feminine option as the “B-Grade” option instead of just the “Feminine” option there is an uncomfortably misogynistic implication that needs addressing.

Don’t they already have scripts to re-size cosmetics based on height/weight for basically every game with a height/weight option?

I’ve heard that for Monster Hunter Rise “Type A/Type B” was decided upon by the localization and that in Japan (the country of origin for MHR) they just use Male/Female. Meaning it’s not the dev being lazy, it’s localization earning themselves a “You Tried” ribbon.

At least, that’s what I’ve heard.

See, I don’t really care that the player is referred to as “They/Them” in Deltarune, because it’s established that you are playing as Kris and those are their pronouns.

(and in Undertale, the monsters simply had no idea what Frisk’s gender was due to an unfamiliarity with humans so it’s kept intentionally vague… with they/them simply being the most gender neutral thing to call them and the fanbase having their own headcanons on what Frisk actually is. Personally my head canon is Frisk is male and Chara is female, which seemed to be the most common interpretation in the fanbase back then… my headcanon for Kris is that they’re intersex with they/them pronouns as I see them as being representative of both Frisk and Chara, but however you see the situation is just as valid unless the creator comes out and says “No it’s this specific way, everything else is wrong!” and to my knowledge Toby Fox has not done that)

Sidenote: First non-binary person I ever met used ey/eir pronouns, this was so long ago that ey called eirself “Genderless” instead of Non-Binary as the latter wasn’t a word. Ey was femme presenting, but very much not female. Sadly we’ve drifted apart and wherever ey is I wish eir well.

I always wished ey/eir had caught on instead of “singular they”, because personally I thought “ey” sounded cooler and was more straightforward than “singular they”. But hey I’m not non-binary myself so it’s not really any of my business.

On a similar note, I used to see shi/hir pronouns more often than I do now as well, though that was more for intersex individuals than non-binary. I still see some usage of shi/hir, though the people I see with those pronouns tend to self-identify as “hermaphrodite”, a phrase that is considered highly insulting by most. I guess what I’m saying here is that there are all kinds and it’s probably best not to make assumptions or assume gender to be a one-size fits all phenomenon.

Outside of a very offensive thing to call a heterosexual FTM individual, I legitimately do not.

Again, I feel like it would be if this wasn’t just “Gender Binary with feel-good buzzwords to fake inclusivity where little is present”

I just believe that you need more than “If we just don’t say the M-Word/F-Word then we’ve solved transphobia forever” for this to be a proper step in the right direction, as it stands it just feels like “Don’t say Latina/Latino! Say Latinx!” all over again, and we now how well THAT went.

You simply need more than a couple of rainbow pins on your jacket to make meaningful change.

I’m actually all for this as well, unless the game is some open-ended roleplaying experience just give me a character to play as and design the game around who this person is (I think the original Dead Rising did a good job of this with Frank West, the remake… well unless previews are from an earlier build than what we’re getting in September not so much)

And I mean a REAL open-ended roleplaying experience, not something like Fallout 4 that was blatantly designed for me to play as Nate, a lawful good heterosexual cisgender male military vet with predefined goals… with gay romance options and the ability to play as his wife Nora existing solely to give the illusion of choice… An Illusion I still appreciate because when I play I always wind up being Nora with Curie as my wifey.

(I feel like FO4 would be far less divisive if it was a spinoff about Nate’s journey rather than a sequel to a series that is known for player agency, and even then the Brotherhood of Steel suddenly being a bunch of Nazis is still stupid as hell)

I definitely have to say, Body Type A/Body Type B definitely feels like a groan-worthy growing pain that will be ironed out sooner or later. It’s just disappointing that we have to resort to such awkward terms that mislead players about how much variety across the gender spectrum is actually being offered. It almost feels like a vegan menu that still heavily uses animal byprdouct.

This almost makes me want to buy Starfield to support a proper way to revamp gender selection, but it’s going to need the same amount of work that FO76 getting it from how it was at launch to the awesome experience it is now for me to dip my toes in that…

I’m not saying keep it cis-only, I apologize if that’s implied, pronoun selection is fine and I don’t have a problem with that. My issue is if we’re not going to offer more options than simply two body types, both based on super idealized and gender stereotyped versions of the male and female form… Can we have a less awkward thing to call it than “Body Type A/Body Type B”?