Let’s talk about diversity, and why it’s so important to us.
At the end of 2019, the German “Game Verband” created a pledge to support diversity in games and the games industry. We’re one of many, many German studios who signed the pledge – among the big international ones like our friends at Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and other big industry names.
We’re meaning it, too. Roleplaying games especially encourage the player to create a character to embody while venturing on a journey, and with our highly flexible skill system you can already create whatever character you want. A battlemage wielding fire and blades? A necromancer butchering corpses with an axe? An animancer wearing heavy armor and letting their creations fight for them while cowering in a corner? All of these are already possible choices in the upcoming demo (oh yes, there’ll be more information on that soon, too), and many, many more.
Races are not a binary thing. Very few roleplaying games would differentiate between “human” and “not human” as choices. And if there’s already a nonbinary choice for races, we might as well include this for gender as well.
A female human wields a dagger. An adventuress following Nesera, specializing on stealth and scavenging. She knows a bit of ice magic, too, when she gets cornered by monsters and no shadow to hide in in sight.
A neuter Ratling warrior also specializing in short blades. They’re deadly in its skilled hands. While it knows a bit of thievery, locked doors are still a challenge for the Ratling. Maybe one of the other creatures roaming these caverns has a key for it.
This elven mage is non-binary. They do not wish to define themselves as a particular gender, but rather celebrate their fluidity by freeing other creatures from their binary prisons by turning them into fiery magma.
Did you notice something there in the text? There’s three different genders already. And in English, this is fine and easy. We have He, She, It and They/Them (or tHeY/tHeM in case of tentacle-gendered adventurers). English is a wonderful language easily adaptable to modern gendering.
Since we’re sitting on the our first localization, let me tell you all that German is very much the opposite. In fact, the licensed grammar engine had to be updated massively to handle this – apparently we’re the first German game offering more than male, female and neutral as gender options. This causes a bit more work than expected, but it is work we’re quietly proud of.
We considered, very briefly, to take the easy way out and get rid of genders entirely and just let the players pick a face, physiology and hair-style they’re happy with. But that felt too much like giving up, and we do not shy away from design and programming challenges just because they’re complex. It helps that we’re working together with some of the best translators in the games industry.
And our slogan has always been that you can play the game the way you want – and that includes creating the character you want to play in all the possible choices you can think of.
Because biology and genetcis are just words… hollow words. Same as gravity. Only meaningless word. This “feature” feels lika a waste of resources at best. Loved ADOM but i dont feel like supporting this project because of this.
Insane response
There is only TWO genders. Science only matters when it fits liberal agendas, also their favorite “Covid”.
I agree with Martin. 50% of the player base, perhaps more, thinks that “non binary genders” are stupid political nonsense that doesn’t belong in video games. Let games just be games. Or should we include BLM as a faction?
Well put, anon
… So why is it not political to have cisgender man as a character creation option? Why is it only political when there are women or non-heternormative options? Why is it that you feel BLM is similar to gender? Why is it that you are implying gender is a “faction”?
This is a fantasy game where there are orcs and elves and wizards and monsters… but it’s the genders that are too much diversity, too much “weirdness” for you to handle?
But more than that, you felt the need to share your vitriolic hate with the world? You couldn’t be content to just accept that other people like things you don’t like?
I don’t have difficulty to “handle” anything. I’d just rather play games which are don’t push politics I don’t like. Would you like to play a game which celebrated traditional families? Neither would I! I don’t want politics in games at all.
“Vitriolic hate”, sure. People who disagree with you are hateful unpersons.
Didn’t you Germans do that once before?
Kind of weird to be arguing with biology, genetics and gravity, in a game of FANTASY? So which law of physics would you use to explain a fireball? Or even a healing spell? This is typical cis-talk. You have always found yourself represented in games (me mostly as well, but that’s not the point) and you just seem to miss the meaning of representation for people who are not used to it. Also: it really doesn’t take anything away from the gameplay for you, choose male and be done with it, but leave the options open for other people.
I think we just don’t like politics in computer games? And aren’t looking for computer game programmers, or internet commentors, to inform us about values and politics.
Maybe that’s all we are saying?
If you don’t want politics in videogames stop trying to force your politics onto this. People of other genders exist and they don’t have to put up with you whining and trying to censor everything because you’re upset because someone mentioned that they exist. This is like whining about how the game allows you to play a long-haired man or something lmao
By that same logic you shouldn’t force AlL GeNdErS MaTeR Bullshit everywhere.
More genders isn’t politics. Nuff said.
I’m pretty sure you’re buying this game even tough there’s this non binary stuff. Stop with this bullshit, you’ll buy it.
Errr, no, I have loved ADOM for many years, but me (and 50% of people) are not buying a game where you choose between 5 genders for gods sake. Would you buy a game where you get to choose between two religions “catholic” and “more catholic”.
So silly.
Good news! It’s six genders.
You and the other 50% of people can now purchase the game again. <3
I don’t think you’ve played ADOM in your life. If you throw this much of a piss out of an option in a character creator you obviously never cared very much about the game.
>feels like a waste of resources at best
I wouldn’t worry about it. When you’re writing dialogue in a game where the character in question might be of either gender you use variables instead of the nouns itself, and the game will replace them with the correct nouns in real time. The time you “waste” is virtually the same as having two genders.
” I love this game but it did one thing I don’t like therefore I hate it”. Nobody cares about this more than you do.
Sorry but I think you’re badly missing the mark here.
Critically, you have confused gender with anatomy! A person’s physical attributes have no direct connection to their gender identity.
I know you’re trying to make your game more inclusive but you’re making clumsy mistakes that are in danger of enforcing lazy and problematic stereotypes.
Please take advice on how you implement this stuff from the trans community.
I’m sure it is coming from the right place, but you’re making some very problematic mistakes here that are in danger of doing more to alienate people than include them.
Firstly, you are confusing “gender” with “physiology”. A person’s gender may not correlate with their anatomical sex at all.
To list “neuter” as a gender (or a sex) is extremely strange. If you had to have your testicles removed would you not still consider yourself a male?
And “tentacled”? Really? Including this seems like you’re just making a joke of the whole thing rather than trying to make the game inclusive.
If you want to do this, I would urge you to seek advice from the trans community rather than just implementing this stuff based on your existing preconceptions and misunderstandings.
Thanks for the feedback!
We are actually working with someone from the trans community, because grammar is hard when it comes to non-binary gender, especially with localization. The help of an expert authoress was absolutely necessary here.
We understand how it’s possible to take offence on “neuter” and “tentacled” – but according to Ancardian lore, there are quite a few races which do not have any genitalia and breed in a different way. Being born without identifiable sex is something that can happen, especially in the more ChAoS-infused areas. Tentacled refers to a corrupted, shambling mass transcending the concept of gender entirely, or at least the origins of one.
While we wish to allow people to play whatever they wish, we are still offering a fantasy rogue-like game where it will be possible to play interesting and unusual characters.
Please don’t waste valuable time on this. I can’t imagine that there aren’t better things to focus on first.
I’m all for providing diverse options for people but you are conflating gender with physiology – that’s the (main) issue.
If you want to give people weird sex organs (or no sex organs) then that’s all well and good, but it needs to be separated from “gender”.
People should be able to identify as a man, a woman, or non binary (gender) and that should be entirely distinct from whether they have a penis, tentacles, or nothing at all in their pants (sex/anatomy).
In terms of gameplay and aesthetics, “gender” shouldn’t affect anything but their pronouns. If you want to have differing appearances, and characteristics those should *all* be based on the sex/anatomy and not the gender. You shouldn’t be able to tell the gender of a character by looking at them (so please don’t force trans characters into androgynous haircuts as you have in your picture above).
Pleasse, just add checkbox to turn on and off that feature and all will be happy. I really don’t think that is fair to put controversial feature just because without turnoff functional. Thanks.
Nothing prevents you from creating a character of any race or gender you wish. The choice is yours entirely.
Simply not selecting any options you do not wish to select is as easy as… well, not selecting the options you do not wish to select. 😉
I think he means a checkbox “no political garbage in my video game please”, and then we click that and don’t have to think about it.
Yeah thats fair but isn’t this gender thing affect other npc i interact with? What if i don’t want to see pronouns and gender things in game because i don’t support it (im ok with it just don’t want to see real world things in magic world, that clearly didn’t fit for it). Is there any way to disable it?
I understand you want to support pride and LGBTQ+ community but you should understand that a lot of gamers (especially old school roguelike fans) who can be really disappointed about that annoying real world things you add in game world things just for supporting someone. Isn’t that unfair if players forced to use that feature even if they dont want to use it? I know i have 0 impact for your decisions but i hope you will at least hear another opinion. Really, we got enough argues about real world gender theory. Some peoples support it, some not. But clearly adom fans should have option to deside if they want that feature to be in game or not.
Checkbox or even non-gender version of game can be a solution to made all fans happy, isn’t it?
Waste of time. Please focus on improving gameplay, make more monsters, classes and races. That is more important for rougulike fans.
As a rougelike fan I disagree. I’m rather excited to try tentacle!
My tabletop character was genderless, capable of shapeshifting to mimic either at their discretion, and their race bred through genetic sampling and parthenogenesis.
And, yes, this was before Mass Effect popularized it with the Asari.
Plenty of history in RPGs for alternate genders, even alternate biological sex, if it’s not handled in a forced (YOU WILL BE NICE TO THE TOKEN LGBTQ+ CHARACTER!) manner what is the issue?
Only time it’s ticked me off was when I was playing and my evil sociopath ran into their “diversity” checkbox. I had spent the whole game being a world class bastard to everyone, but suddenly I only had nice things to say to this person. My good guy would have chosen those, but not my evil monster, and being forced to be nice made the inclusion feel like preaching at us rather than a naturally developed NPC.
i agree with rich, eventho the tentacled gender may make scense in the lore it ends up feeling like you arent taking these people seriusly, i’m sure this came from the right place but this may offend people who arent as interested in the lore of the game
The fact that everybody is getting offended over the “Tentacled” option is ridiculous. ADOM Team is opening their minds to new experimentations that bring LGBTQ+ players an opportunity to relate to their characters, while simultaneously taking the chance to experiment with it in relation to their world’s lore. The fact that people are finding “Tentacled” offensive just shows how uninterested they are in relating to the actual game’s dynamic. They went out of their way to address something they find important, and you guys get offended over anything that’s not explicitly your specific view on the matter and/or loudly political? I for one, think it’s amazing that they’ve created a way to connect gender identity with something that makes sense in the twisted world of ADOM without it sounding like forced inclusion.
Why is everybody missing the point here?
Tentacled is genius.
Gross, was excited for this game but honestly I’m not looking to support yet another game that bends over backwards to kowtow to the the trans community. Tired of this garbage seeping into every good game
This is fine. Thank you for having been excited for the game at some point.
We’re also catering to the Elven, Dwarven and Ratling communities.
As well as those of every sensible and decent human being.
People can be ‘sensible and decent’, and yet think that an obsession with transgenderism – an obsession which began only 5 or so years ago – is foolish ideological nonsense. The Soviets found out that when you try and make art political, you destroy the art itself. Those of us (sensible and decent people) who are on the conservative side of the political spectrum, don’t want you to make games about “traditional family values”. We want you to make games without any politics in them at all!
I know this is very difficult to understand, because transgenderism/climate change/’the rest of it’, are held to be ethical principles, which sit at the top of the truth hierarchy: it is a religious epistemology. Please bear in mind, however, that just as many people are not believe in the divinity of christian scripture – so too many people do not believe in the divinity of transsexuals, people of color, homosexuals and the disabled. We instead think they are just like us. (if perhaps a little bit unusual).
Did you really just call nonwhite people unusual? You’re a psychopath.
The difference is that with a race or profession, there is a concrete set of advantages or disadvantages you’re giving the character. A fighter is going to have more strength and toughness. An elf is going to be better at magic. What gameplay improvements are you going for with more genders?
In most games, gender is irrelevant – you can pick male or female, but the game plays exactly the same. ADOM is largely similar, with a couple of very minor, very specific exceptions (different stats determines shop prices, etc.) What do you gain by spending development time on gender, other than the smug and patronizing sense of being a “sensible and decent human being”? Are you going to introduce a social and relationship system, complete with some potential lovers only interested in tentacled players, some only interested in non-binary ones, and so on? Are there going to be monsters with different genders that change their interaction with the player (like how a wedding ring on a male player can protect from the female Banshee’s wail)? Are certain quests and regions going to be available or barred to players based on gender? Or is this just a box to tick to make people who don’t play your game happy with how “progressive” you are?
Keep in mind too that the whole obsession with three dozen different genders is that everyone is unique and no one can or should be lumped into categories and stereotypes they don’t feel they fit into. Unless gender will be wholly irrelevant to gameplay, you’ll have to do exactly that with the genders you’ve chosen – all neuter characters have a particular advantage or disadvantage, all tentacled characters have this or that going for them, and so on. You’d be doing the exact sort of stereotyping these countless genders are supposed to be avoiding.
You refer to ignoring gender as “giving up,” when the opposite is true – ignoring gender shows you’re leaving it wholly in the hands of the player to determine who they are and how they feel about it. You’re saying the most tolerant and accepting thing possible, that it doesn’t matter what your plumbing is like; what matters is the person you are and how you act. Unfortunately, you seem to have chosen to force players to adhere to your rigid definitions of what you think gender is or isn’t, and that’s harmful, not helpful.
That’s fine, you don’t have to play. Plenty of other people will play though.
Nobody said you’d need to use them, dude.
I love the gender changes and complexity personally. Thank you for all the hard work
That reminds me Star Citizen news – update in bartender AI, new landing visualization, another waste of resources, but not focusing on gameplay.
The only reason why you put this gender/sex/diversity in the game (that is not about such topics) – is because of fear, that if you will not do it – someone will blame you. Fear is a bad motivation, it only makes things worse.
No, we’re putting this in for three reasons:
1) It’s the right thing to do and we genuinely believe that people should play as whatever they wish;
2) Most of our player-base appreciates having more choices when it comes to character generation. More choices are a good thing. You do not have to play your own gender, biological or not.
3) We like making our artist sweat by having him create androgynous-looking ratlings.
So there are only 4 races and 4 professions to choose from but we have 6 options for genders lol. God to know what are your priorities here. I’ll pass this one.
I like how out of all of the atrocities that you can commit in ADOM, LGBTQ+ inclusion is where people draw the line. You guys aren’t real fans. I feel like you guys heard about this somewhere and left a comment to feel good about yourselves. Grow up.
All the “I loved ADOM but you put a gender in I don’t like so I therefore hate it and will never touch it” people are so obviously just people who heard the game was doing this and came over for a whinge. Nobody who likes ADOM is going to reject this game over that unless they’re a massive child, and in that case good riddance.
Why are so many people triggered here ? No one is forcing you to play a non-binary character, it’s a possibility.
You literally don’t lose anything by this option being in the game and by making demands to remove this you just sound like an asshole.
Yeah, just add a checkbox to turn off that feature and problem will be solved.
The checkbox is called the character creator
ADOM is the best game i ever played.
*Devs ride in on tall white horses and shining armor*
-Hear ye plebs! Please notice how good we are! We are so great, won’t you please praise us?
I’m all for open mindedness and free sexualities but inventing genders is just baffling to me.
There are only two genders. I really wish people would stop assigning “special” tags to themselves to stand out and demand other people use said tags.
You can be of the female gender and have a personality which is stereotypically of the male gender and like women. This does not mean you have to
identify as a man or invent a new non biological gender.
I believe the ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ+-*:^\”# community is harmful to open mindedness.
You don’t need a tag to define you. Regardless of what you have between your legs, what you wear, what type you like, we are all PEOPLE.
Christ, is there a game the lgbtQQ people aren’t trying to infect with their ‘my 1% global representation trumps your 99%’ bullshit? Majority rules, you’re not the developer, and you spend more time crying on twitter and the like than you do making any realistic progress in your ludicrous endeavors. Just because you have to be legally acknowledged in your existence now does not mean the rest of us don’t still think you’re ridiculous at one end… target practice at the other. Go play attack helicopter with your own kind…. or is the problem that you can’t seem to find any of those to play with because MOST people are sane in their rationale?
Except for the fact that you’re not the developer and you’re the one QQing trying to crybully your way in to making developers do what you want.
Cope
>tentacled
lol, you have good sense of humor.
I read the explanation. Unfortunately, I can’t accept this explanation that someone signed a “pledge to support diversity in games”, perhaps not to look like a racist or a homophobe. I refuse to push similar ideas into games for people and children. Although I like the game and I was looking forward to it, I will not buy the game if it contains these decadent things. I am all the more sorry that European studies also promote multi-gender in this way, — it is not tolerance, but promotion. Next time, you can promote pedophiles, and I don’t agree with that.
No, you misunderstood I am afraid.
We signed the pledge to support diversity in games not to “not look racist or homophobe”.
We also don’t steal purposes to “not look like rogues”.
Your comparison with pedophilia is utterly disgraceful, though, but at least we’re glad you don’t agree with that.
Try 5. Perhaps if I trim out details about the creator of this nonsense and his… abuses.
Gender is at its core a sexist concept which codifies the sexist notion that women must behave a certain way. The ‘extra’ genders are then an escape hatch on this trap, saying that if you do not want to ‘behave like a woman’, you can pick one of these other options.
I utterly reject and abhor the central concept of gender. Women and men can behave as they like, and the notion that they are not actually women but some other gender because they do not behave ‘correctly’ is cancerous and damaging to the sense of self and belonging in ones own body. We are seeing this in the young girls of today, with many future lesbians deciding that their attraction to other women and discomfort with the expectations of being a woman must mean they are actually men.
Nothing has done more damage to feminism than this concept gaining ground. We’ve backslid as a society and are now in a place where biological men can be paragons of womanhood, crowding into spaces that were created in direct response to the very real oppression women receive from men solely for their biology.
The trimmed part:
Gender was created by ‘sexologist’ John Money, who mutilated a male child without consent, and then forced him to act out sexual relations with his brother. This was done to test his ‘theories’ about gender as distinct from sex. The foundation of the concept of gender is the output of an evil pedophile mind. Both brothers killed themselves later in adulthood.
There isn’t even a german word for ‘gender’ because it’s a nonsensical and irrelevant construct originating in it’s modern meaning in the US and being weaponized by the identitarian left. As a german I strictly distance myself from this racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-science ideology trying to force itself into the gaming community with buzzwords like diversity. Neither this german developer nor the ‘Game Verband’ represents the majority of german gamers and developers. And since they decided they want to be political activist, they will be treated as such.Let’s hope the subsidies for the ‘Game Verband’ will get cut in the wakes of the wuhan flu and for the
Assemble Entertainment GmbH to go broke.
Yes there is.
https://dict.leo.org/german-english/gender
Haha, I knew this would be a sticking point for many people as soon as I saw it.
Everything aside, I’d agree with Richard Stallman as he advocates for “Per” and “Pers” instead of “They/Them” as pronouns for gender-neutral people. “They/Them” don’t flow well in the English language and can lead to confusion.
-https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
All of this is irrelevant if the game isn’t good, and if the game is good few will care. A little bit of empathy and understand go a long way, even if you don’t agree with it.
There are no gender-neutral people. Anywhere.
I identify as bananas, and I’m deeply hurt that you didn’t include us bananas in the game. My lawyer will be contacting you for the emotional damage you’ve caused us bananonians.
Yawn
I’ve been called an attack helicopter myself. But that’s just bigoted, tbh.
It’s sad to see that you don’t know your base players, this will unfortunately influence your sales
We can assure you that all the base players who don’t feel the need to post weird statements anonymously on topics that are a year old will not influence our sales.
Thank you for your concern though.
waste of resources and pandering to sjw won’t get you any more sales… get woke go broke 😉
many potential players/customers will lose their interest as soon as they realize that “diversity” is a focus of development instead of creating an actual playable game with a reasonable amount of content or replayability. Not even worth pirating.
“And if there’s already a nonbinary choice for races, we might as well include this for gender as well.”
what a stupid attempt at an argument.
Congrats with the Binary stuff!
Now I’m not buying your game.
That. Simple.
I don’t like being told. I also don’t like being educated in politics by programmers, of all people.
I like playing games, not playing your political BS.
The end. Get Woke, Go Broke.
You’ll never see my money again.