There is no reason to push her towards gender stereotypes. If she likes the look of a game then why don’t you just let her play one of the many “boy’s games” you mention are available.
If you’re still looking for a suggestion then Stardew Valley is on mobile and a great game (although it is about farming and crafting rather than caring for a doll)
This community, !gaming, and !games are the most active for general discussion, although both the /c/games communities are heavier on news than discussion.
That game’s old enough for discussion on !patientgamers, which is semi-active and much more discussion-oriented.
but they do have all the money in the world, no external pressure, no publisher to shit on them, it’s just their developers and artists and a vision.
I think that’s part of the issue. Supposedly they do have multiple games in development and a large percentage of their employees are working on them. But they are content to let the creative and technical processes play out, without announcing too-ambitious release dates which inevitably get pushed back and still have a buggy game released. And sometimes they even cut their losses if a long term project just isn’t working out.
You can start the discussions on this community if you’d like. I believe it’s the most active one. If you’re looking for the amount of content Reddit has…Lemmy isn’t there yet. You starting these discussions may help more and more people to contribute and add in. Which then creates more content.
Crazy talk, and you’re onto something… that’s been solved already.
First part: you hate that a 10+ years old game is only getting cosmetic changes instead of a rehaul of the whole character model. That’s crazy, nobody’s going to do that, not the ones expecting a profit, and not the modding community doing it for free. If you feel it’s a silly change, you’re right, but realize that it’s the only change they could do.
You’re onto something: body feature sliders. Male, female, giraffe, and turtle bodies, have some structural differences, that however mostly match to the same bones having different shapes. The solution is a body shape slider, or 50. It’s something that existed, in some games, since at least the 2000s. Others were lazy and didn’t do it.
For reference of how far this could go, the following all have the same bones, only change in shape, size, and muscle placemen:
They will turn off the live service and make it work offline?
I don’t understand. Industry bootlickers told me it was impossible and would cost billions to implement, hurting small indie studios the most. Yet, Nintendo does it voluntarily with seemingly no difficulties.
I would argue Nintendo does do a lot of pro-consumer stuff. Like making actually good games. It’s just their anti-consumer stuff is either so bad or just plain weird that we just scratch our heads and think Nintendo is going off the deep end. Still trying to avoid buying much Nintendo going forward.
Making a good game is the minimum expectation. Making an open platform to force competition to also endorse open platforms would be going above and beyond to be pro consumer.
You really have no idea how intellectual property works do you? The reason they’ve gone after emulation and rom hosting sites is pretty obvious, they have to protect their IP.
Why they’ve waited so long only to do it now? I honestly don’t have an answer for you on that one, but if I were to guess it’s because retro gaming has been going through somewhat of a renaissance as of late due to shitty AAA games and indie devs gaining so much popularity.
The bottom line is Nintendo lost the emulation battle once, and they don’t want to lose a second time. They’re more experienced and understand the risks of letting emulation replace services like Nintendo switch online, and so do publishers that own intellectual property from retro consoles. It sucks, but that’s corporate life, and you can’t really get around it without jumping through hoops or doing something illegal.
Your comment is very out of place as a response to mine, but since you brought all this up:
I don’t begrudge Nintendo for getting ROM sites shut down. I begrudge them for shutting them down without also making their games legally available for purchase where their customers want to play them. Those old games aren’t even legally available for purchase at all, because they want to just rent them to you forever, which is an enormous dick move. Then they further that with the dick move of trying to remove the place where we get those games the way we’d like to enjoy them, and getting them that way is a better experience than using their official solution.
So assuming you didn’t get lost and you actually meant to respond to my comment, I can’t consider them pro consumer when they’re not doing what’s in the consumer’s best interests.
Nintendo might be seeing the writing on the wall and looking to see how much profit they can make with this. If it goes well, we might see more of it. Corporations hate regulation and sometimes try and head it off long before it is coming.
Hi, industry bootlicker here! Nintendo is listening to their consumers. I was told corporations are evil and won’t listen to consumers and must be forced to do things by law. I much prefer consumers remain vocal about their wants because corporations do indeed listen. No government intervention required. I worry government rules could cause unintended problems that don’t benefit anybody.
Oh no! Not Microsoft Bingo! That’s a list of D list games nobody has ever heard of that all shutdown years ago. I don’t think the world would be a better place if the devs of Radical Heights, a free to play arena shooter that was launched and shutdown a month later in 2018 were forced to give their game out to everyone for free after.
Of course not every game is a certified banger, but there’s more than enough notable games on that list that made an impact on the industry and should’ve been preserved for that fact alone.
You didn’t create those games. Games are products people work to produce. Radical Heights was a free to play game that was shutdown in a month. What would you force them to do? Release their server code for free so anybody can run a Radical Heights server that people can connect to and play? So a whole bunch of people who never gave the developers a cent have the right to demand the game be given to them simply because it existed for 1 month?
If a game asks for money in any kind of way: Yes. That should be the cost of (trying to do) business.
Alternatively, a full refund for everyone involved, even Kickstarter backers, would also be acceptable.
That’s just blatantly false. People bought the founders pack were never refunded for example. Those people being entitled to the server software or a refund is anything but greedy, even if that only applies to a single person.
If they can play against bots, which already exist in the game, or band enough people together with access to the game to play on a server one player is able to host, then yes. That’s what I’d expect at a minimum.
If they want to keep some form of DRM then that’s not my job to figure out. This wasn’t a problem back in the day when server software being distributed was the norm, so it shouldn’t be a problem now.
Though personally I’d be in favor of abolishing online DRM entirely, but that’s another story.
So you want people to follow a law without knowing how it should be followed? You signed a petition and now it’s someone else’s problem if they get in legal trouble or not? This makes the world a better place because it protects theoretical people?
At least try to make an effort to understand what I write.
I said it’s their job to figure out how to do DRM -if- they want DRM. If they can’t figure out how to do that then the answer shouldn’t need to be spelled out explicitly: No DRM. Simple as that.
If you’d rather see games you spent money on being taken away from you based on the whims of corporations, just to make sure others who might not have payed for it also can’t play it, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Control of the server is the DRM. Radical Heights sold hats for $15. How do they ensure only players who paid for hats get them and that non-paying players couldn’t just mod them in? They control that information on the server. Which accounts have cosmetics is controlled by the server. That’s the DRM. If they had to release the server when shutting down then they’d have no way to ensure only paying customers play the game since the person who runs the sever can modify it however they want. Everyone could get the $15 hats for free! Or maybe they charge $2 for the hats. There’s no DRM that could prevent this because control of the server is itself the DRM.
So a dev is being required by law to give out their game without any DRM meaning anyone can play it for free and even give themselves the cosmetics the original devs were using to pay the salaries of the dev team. I worry very much that this would cause companies to stop producing free to play games or charge a subscription for these types of games instead (since subscription based games would be exempt). I wonder why people would risk this to “save” games like Radical Heights which, in all likelihood, would have no community. A game doesn’t shutdown after 1 month because it has a thriving community
Yes, you’re just explaining regular piracy here. I do not care. It’s a thing that’s already been possible for almost every single-player game in existence, and yet, there’s a constant stream of new single-player games releasing every day. Weird, right?
I have no authority over anything, so yes, they can. What I’d like to see is an option to buy an offline copy of the game and any add-ons I bought, but no one does that. What Stop Killing Games is looking for is for the server to be made available after the game’s end of life so that you can continue to use anything you paid for.
Looks like some of those are games that were cancelled, some were online multiplayer games that had the servers shutdown, some were simply removed from the Microsoft Store and some were single player games with always online DRM for which they shut the servers down. So it’s not all super scummy nonsense
If it’s a game like an MMO (which several on that list are) they’d have to publish the server software in order to avoid fully killing the game. And to publish the server software that was only ever expected to run in their own datacenters they’d then have to publish documentation, dependencies, etc. and this is all assuming that it can be contained in a single installer for a single machine without relying on additional services they host, and assuming it has reasonable system requirements for average users to self host.
That’s also assuming playing an MMO alone/with only 1-2 people doesn’t suck. Play some 2009scape single player without adventure bots. It feels lonely as all heck
Plus there’s all of the legal and PR hurdles to ensure you’re not exposing yourself to undue risk.
Basically a million reasons for a company to not spend a thousand work hours ensuring their crappy MMO (I’ve tried out a couple of the listed MMOs, they were unsuccessful for a reason) can continue to be played after they’ve divested from it
Licenses and middleware can be chosen more proactively to preserve and distribute the server if they know during development that it’s a requirement. There are tons of people who functionally play MMOs single player already, when the server is already running. And I play a 12 year old fighting game that’s easily able to coordinate 20-100 people to play it multiple times per week with nothing but Discord; there’s no doubt in my mind you’d be able to get 40 people together for a raid on a private server.
The other answer from @ampseandrew already covers most points, so I’ll just a few things:
Most game servers out there are already built in a way to allow for easy deployment. After all, devs have to have way to test changes, so being able to run a small server locally for debugging purposes is hugely beneficial to development.
I also can’t imagine that there’s any game server out there that shouldn’t be able to run on a single system. The heaviest one game I can imagine is Minecraft, due to the whole open world terrain generation, world streaming and physics calculations, and even that can be run off a Raspberry Pi for a small number of players.
While I agree having more options is always a better thing, I really can’t see body type A and B with pronouns choosing anything other than more inclusive, a good thing, and not something that deserves getting up in arms about.
I don’t really see how it could be seen as not more inclusive. Sure it’s not more inclusive than having full blown sliders that let you change every bit of a character’s body, but it’s adding more pronouns and not forcing those pronouns on a certain body type. If we look at number of options, it is more than the previous “male and female” options. Thus including a broader set of people
My issue is how half-assed the measure is. What’s the point of letting me pick between “He/Him” and “She/Her”, if it’s going on a character that looks like a stereotypical brodude or a model in a fashion magazine? Is it really doing anyone any favors?
Would anyone in good faith, with only two options “Stereotypical Brodude or Fashion Magazine Cover Girl”, is going to play the former with she/her or the latter with he/him? If there was more variety or perhaps something like Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur’s Gate 3 where you can have a masculine build with feminine features or vice versa, I could see the point… but for most games that are only going to give you the most common denominator as your only two options?
It just feels like throwing a coat of paint to make it look like the studio cares about making their product more accessible, when really it’s just trying to check a box to appease HR.
It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s so small that it’s insulting to everyone involved.
Would anyone in good faith, with only two options “Stereotypical Brodude or Fashion Magazine Cover Girl”, is going to play the former with she/her or the latter with he/him?
I think so. Why not? There are as many valid genders and identities as there are people in the world. Who am I to judge what people want to be referred as? Also even if there wasn’t people like that, I can almost guarantee there are people who would want to put a “they/them” to those body types, which seems to be the main point of this body type trend.
I don’t see it as a bad faith thing to be like “hey, we should include the ability for NB people to have their preferred pronouns”
Again, I agree that having more options would be better, but why does perfect have to be the enemy of good?
Edit: I also want to say that NB does not equal androgenous. Sure many NB people may desire or have an androgenous look. But I also know people who like to look and be feminine but are still NB, and the other way around
The reason why perfect is an enemy of good in this particular circumstance because the message it gives off now is “We care about buzzwords”, with just a little more effort, it could be “We care about inclusion.”
As it stands now, I’m just left rolling my eyes because game studios see me as not a woman, but as “Body Type B”, but if we had some more androgynous options alongside itl, it’d come across more… “Oh I CAN have a feminine build if I WANT to.”
I guess I just really don’t see it that way. Man and woman and “she/her” and “he/him” are so much more than the way a body looks. Like someone could be the most traditionally culturally masculine looking person and go by she/her. That’s valid, that’s fine.
I don’t see it as the studio not seeing you as a woman. I am somewhat confused by that statement. Like you get the ability to choose she /her with a couple body options. The she / her is the woman here no? They recognize it as a thing. You can look however. I mean fuck I certainly don’t have a body type B, but I’m still a woman
Thing is I definitely don’t look like the “Type B”, but my other option is “Type A”, which is something so blatantly masculine in every way that it would be insulting for me to represented as such, and I guarantee any other trans woman would feel that same in that scenario.
As another trans woman, I just have to say you do not speak for all trans women. I have met sooooo many trans women whose idea of transness are much different to my own. It’s so broad and expansive there are no absolutes here
@HawlSera@chloyster I mean, I absolutely know people who use she/her but present very masc, and vise-versa. They may be relatively uncommon, but so are trans people in general and we're still worth representing. Not to mention non-binary people who have relatively binary gender presentation. Your experience is absolutely not universal.
I am a tomboy, I present very masc, and it does annoy me when as a consequence people mistake me for a guy despite the fact that I obviously have breasts… But that is what it is…
But what I’m getting at is most Body Type A options don’t allow me to play a masc-presenting woman, but a masc-presenting man as in “Someone who looks like Leonidas on Steroids”. If Body Type A regularly allowed you to play as a masc-presenting woman I’d see your point.
The option to play someone like Zarya rarely if ever exists, whereas the option to play as someone who looks like Kratos is overwhelmingly what Body A refers to.
@HawlSera I do recognize that tomboys, buff women, etc are worth representing, (and we should push for their inclusion) but that's not what I'm talking about - I mean people who look like "men" but use pronouns other than he/him.
In agile development. You do a little, release. Otherwise it is too big and may never be done. The fact they committed resources to improve this is a positive. The hope is they build on it and add more options.
However, if they get trashed for trying, they and many other companies may not try. Why spend money to get a bad reputation when the spending nothing creates less I’ll will to the company. That is ultimately the decision Product Owners and Designers will weigh up.
I think for progress, the best approach is maybe “positive first step but more options are needed for non-bonary for this to really make players feel comfortable”.
From a technical perspective, separating pronoun hard coding from the models gives more scope to give more options in the future, however, as someone mentioned, there is a lot of art work needed on assets and animations so the new shapes function the same in all cases.
To be clear, your stance is it’s such a small step in the right direction, you’d prefer no step at all? Keep it cis-only or invest time/money in extra character models?
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”?
Would anyone in good faith, with only two options “Stereotypical Brodude or Fashion Magazine Cover Girl”, is going to play the former with she/her or the latter with he/him?
Not sure what you mean by “good faith” here, but I can assure you there are some he/him dudebros that play female characters bc if you’re gonna be staring at someone in 3rd person the entire game it might as well be someone attractive to you.
Also it’s perhaps a minority of gamers, but people with fewer identity issues don’t need to see themselves as a self insert for their character, so why not play someone totally different from you?
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.
WhatbI don’t get is why they are using body type A/1 and B/2. One is clearly feminine and the other masculine, regardless of the gender of the character, why not use those words? They are describing the physical form of the body, it says nothing about gender.
Unless you’ve installed some very particular mods, the body types in most video games do not contain genitals, and therefore are not definitively male nor female.
I have boobs and a butt. My body looks like “Body B” from these games. It is not a female body. It does not have a vagina. I have a surgery planned, and that surgery will not result in a vagina. What I’m hearing right now is that you think my body is female. And that makes me feel uncomfortable because I do not want a female body. A feminine body, I am happy with, but not female. I choose “Body B” in these games because it looks like my body, which I am happy with. I do not choose it because it’s “female”. I feel a little bit of pain every time I have to click on female.
…they literally said “feminine” and “masculine”, not “male” or “female”. Specifically using language you say you’re okay with, but still prompting this response. What exactly is your problem with what they said?
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…
What I’m hearing right now is that you think my preference to have a character that looks like me in video games isn’t worth pursuing because of camel toes, and because a troll might conceivably use the same features that help me, to make a character you don’t like. I already told you the nonbinary perspective on this issue. I’d just like to take a moment before I offer counterarguments to ask… what on earth is your intention with offering these arguments?
Now, as to camel toes: I cannot remember ever seeing a visible camel toe on a character in a video game. Maybe this is just because I don’t make a habit of staring at the crotches of women and femmes in games. But if I did notice a camel toe in a video game that was not about sex, my first thought would be “what the fuck game developers” and I would immediately be on the look out for misogyny in other aspects of the game. Maybe I’m completely off base here and I’ve actually been playing characters with camel toes this entire time and not realised it because I’m not a creep. But in that case, revealing this information to me would increase the gender dysphoria I feel in these games. Why do you want to do that?
And as for trolls? I saw someone in this thread respond to you say they like bearded ladies. You might have read that as a joke, but it wasn’t. Popular streamer JoCat is also a fan of bearded ladies, and I know this because he was cancelled by a bunch of TERFs for playing one in Baldur’s Gate while singing a controversial song. He decided to quit making his YouTube videos because of the harassment. JoCat is not a transphobe. He’s used his platform to raise money for LGBTQ charities in the past, and he was previously embedded quite firmly in the queer D&D youtubers community, friends with a lot of queer people who had nothing but positive things to say about him. I think that you’re confusing your trauma around transphobic representations with other genuine queer people who just wanna live as themselves, and you’re circling back around to transphobia as a result.
While I don’t personally agree with OP, I still believe that they are discussing in good faith. I see nothing here that says they think NB people are “alt right trolls”. Our rule here is to be(e) nice. Please don’t resort to unfounded personal attacks
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.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne