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.
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.
That German “capital I” is close to what I’m asking about, but not quite - I’m focusing on agreement, when the form of a word (typically an adjective) is dictated by either grammatical gender of another word or social gender. Specially when dealing with a single individual.
This might be easier to show with an example. From the PT dialogue files:
- [Abigail, if the player is male] “Você não se sente sozinho na fazenda?”
- [Abigail, if the player is female] “Você não se sente sozinha na fazenda?”
- [Translation, for both] “Don’t you feel lonely in the farm?”
Note how the form of the word changes from “sozinho” to “sozinha”. Other Romance languages and Russian are the same deal in this; German too, with some caveats (if it’s a predicative you use the base form).
In this situation, and casual conversation, what do non-binary people feel comfortable using? The two whom I know simply use -a, but that’s a sample size of two and heavily biased (both speak the same dialect of the same language in the same city).
I’m asking this in this context because:
- The game addresses the MC directly, as an individual. As such, groups aren’t a concern here.
- For nouns (like Doktor/Doktorin/DoktorIn), it’s somewhat easy to plop a new string with the gender-neutral version. Agreement however is dynamic.
- At least from what I have seen (remember: small and biased sample), those written conventions like -x* or -@ are mostly only used when the person is trying to bring this topic up, nor on everyday language. And only when writing (while SV’s dialogues are supposed to represent speech).
*the other user there did mention -x, but if I had to take a guess it’s just some Anglo trying to pull out a “chrust me”. I’m saying this based on their example - “Latinx” with a capital L (an English spelling convention) and using an adjective that is 90% of the time used by Anglos to lump “all those Latin Americans” together regardless of their local identities. (It sounds as silly as some Brit or Surinamese identifying oneself “as a Germanic”, you know?)
[Sorry for the long reply. Also, thank you for your input! :D]
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.
I’m only a native Romance language speaker (Spanish) who is both an ally and an amateur wordsmith.
Due to this, I’ll not pretend to go into any depth of why you’re wrong per the zeitgeist of Spanish youth today, but will instead give you the more or less settled informal solution (The RAE isn’t likely to add it officially):
Latinx.
I’m only a native Romance language speaker (Spanish) who is both an ally…
Full stop here. I’m asking them, not you.
Even if you wear their shirt you can’t wear their skin, I’m asking about this shit for people who feel it in the skin, you’re being patronising and erasing their voice for the sake of your “GIMME GOOD BOY POINTS! I’M AN ALLY, SEE?” slacktivism.
Yes. You have successfully read my mind. This is entirely in line with me as a person and how I have presented myself online.
I hope you’re proud of yourself for your insight, it was my pleasure to be your Judas this morning.
I see why you need to ask on here instead of outside in your community.
Edit: Forgot to add, no need to engage further. Consider me silenced, enjoy your discourse.
WTF man, Stardew Valley of all things?
If you pay attention to a lot of the undertones in Stardew valley it’s clear (IMO) that Concerned Ape is conservative.
I like the game but I’m always surprised that people think Stardew is a leftist/liberal paradise because it allows same sex relationships.
This is a wild take. The politics of the game - to the extent that it exists at all - are skeptical about office desk jobs and large supermarket chains. It is even hard to even take those elements too seriously because they entire presentation is so whimsical.
Do all games need to be overtly leftist in order to not be conservative?
Conservative? What in the fuck? The game is a soulful, anti-capitalist love letter to the earth, growth, love, hardship, seasons, animals, and personal relationships. The only thing conservative about it is a reverence for small community and a simpler way of life. I’m left-wing as hell and even I long for those things. It’d be different if the villagers were xenophobic or something, or if the main plot was to keep a Sikh family from settling down into the valley…
Conservative undertones? I’m curious why you think that. Could you elaborate?
There’s strong tones of anti-corporatism and a clear favour towards communal living. And the obvious “care-for-the-Earth” stuff. But I don’t think those are necessarily conservative. I could see the argument for Christian undertones, but more in the traditional “love thy neighbour” and “custodianship” sense.
Well for starters it’s completely capitalistic and supports the idea of work = reward. Big business is bad but small business is good.
But socially, it stereotypes issues and what little different cultures there are.
There are no Asian people. There is one black character whose first quest is to farm a melon. Seriously.
The person experiencing homelessness is the noble savage who doesn’t mind not having a home, it’s his choice.
The alcoholic is saveable and finds the error in their ways.
The abandoned child gets adopted and it’s a happy ending.
There’s no crime.
The teacher is a young white woman.
The mayor is an old white man.
The doctor is white man.
The shop owners are a white man and two white women.
The blacksmith is white.
The town failure who lives in a trailer is saved by the player by getting a house which solves their problems. They are also a euphemism for white trash because putting a ghetto in Stardew would have been a bit too on the nose.
It’s a middle class white person who works in IT idealised society (I.e. concerned apes) where there are simple cause and effect solutions to complex problems. I.e. a conservative ideology.
I like Stardew as much as the next person but I am not going to be shocked when Concerned Ape rebuffs attempts at him to declare his position on trans issues.
I’m off the pronoun thing. Just stop. Be whoever, whatever you want. Your pronoun does not define you. You can’t make English nonsensical. ‘They took a bath.’
They has been a singular pronoun for centuries. It’s only nonsensical if you’re a brainlet sucking on the teat of outrage media
This is only true if the referent is unknown. The new thing about singular they is that it is now being used for known referents. Which is perfectly fine of course, but not centuries old.
How dare thou use “you” as a singular for Sawzall. He/she/xi/fae/ze/whatever clearly identify with 1000-year old English. What would someone do with verbs after singularly “you”? Put plural verbs like “are” there? Would be ridiculous.
Yeah dude, that Shakespeare guy didn’t know English at all when he used the singular they! We should go tell him! Oh, that was over 400 years ago, and wasn’t even the originator of it? Oh no. The language has been ruined for so long!
Complains about nonsense English, provides perfectly normal English sentence as an example. 🤔
language changes. we don’t speak like people did last century. gay used to mean happy. we can make english “nonsensical”. we have, and we are, and we will. and you can’t fucking stop it any more than you can stop kids from making slang. as much as you hate it, you know how the singular they works, and have no reason to be a little bitch about it. its in the dictionary. suck it up and stop whining.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Depends how you read the “and”, it is only a statement about those who are “trans AND nonbinary”, not “trans OR nonbinary”. Would be a weird choice of wording though. Not sure how many people would consider themselves in the group of non-binary and not trans, but certainly lots of agender people consider themselves not trans, but those same people I think typically don’t consider themselves non-binary either and typically wouldn’t care that much about pronouns to begin with. Also doubt there are many binary trans people who use pronouns that aren’t the default for their binary gender (ie: women who use he/him or neopronouns. Maybe xenopronouns among furries? But like I feel like a lot of those people mostly do it as a criticism of the institution of gender and don’t actually take them serious?).
Anyways, agreed they just seem to be trying to be over-the-top with the wording, but understandable that someone making a petition would feel pressured to write like that. Would be nice to see body-type and pronouns (in games that use them) be separate settings as default in all games. We’ve been able to name our rival “Dickface” since '96. Doesn’t seem like much to ask for similar control of our own character’s pronouns.
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.
The reason for the backlash is that it all felt performative when the creator is online calling all trans women rapists, pedophiles and groomers.
The game was just saying, “Don’t think about that- give us money anyways! Just don’t think about where the money is going!”
Rowling didn’t create the game, dude. She just gets a cut of the money. You think everyone in the dev team feels that way? Are we just supposed to not get a game set in a beloved universe because the person who owns the IP is a piece of shit?
At this stage it might even be too crazy to say that she’s so rich that the money she’s getting from this game is a drop in the bucket and has no practical negative impact on society. She will have the same influence with or without it, so might as well buy the game.
Does a male gynecologist need to experience a period to understand that they are uncomfortable? Does a psychologist need to experience mental illness to treat a patient? Does a person need to be world renowned author to identify exaggeration? Do I need to be Trump to know he’s talking shit?
So is that a no? It’s a discussion of empathy and you immediately turn it into a debate. Are teenagers often extremely dramatic? Of course! But I don’t understand why we need to immediately discount their feelings or experiences because of it. I’m sure plenty of people who’ve gone on to end their own lives were described as dramatic as well. I just think we need to default to empathy over defending ourselves a little more in the modern world.
No. But you at least need the ability to conceptualize the possibility of empathy existing if you can’t feel it directly, in order to excel in any of those things (petulant assholery included).
It’s also a requirement to have truly nuanced discussion; I fear you are wasting your time in this discussion and if it’s not clear why, it’s because of a failure of imagination on your part.
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.
Okay but if my pronoun of choice isn’t put into every system I interact with under every circumstance, I will have an emotional breakdown
