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From an LA TImes post (Ignore the trans stuff, this is about the word in generalization.)
For decades, transgender rights advocates have noted that literary giants Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, and Geoffrey Chaucer all used singular they in their writing. In a letter dated Sept. 24, 1881, Dickinson wrote: “Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs (Possessive Past-Tense Pronoun) , or indeed if they were themself (Past / Present-Tense Personal Pronoun) — but to us it was clear.” In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare used “them” in reference to the word mother: “‘Tis meet that some more audience than a mother — Since nature makes them (Present / Future-Tense Pronoun) partial — should o’erhear the speech.”
There is nothing grammatically incorrect about "This is a pen." Now name me one time in your life you have ever said this sentence in a normal conversation. It's unnatural and not something people say. But because Shakespeare (who was famous for fluffy plays and outrageous characters) wrote 'they' singular, that apparently was common parlance now despite nobody in hundreds of years since ever using the term like that in spoken language.
The woke mob do not define modern English and never will, that is up to the people and English natives overwhelmingly do not use 'they' in this way. But as I said in the beginning, the guy is probably autistic with little understanding of how people actually communicate and it's a complete waste of time trying to convince him when he's spent the better half of his day responding to every post in this thread.
Even the most strident grammarians give pause when faced with evidence that singular they has long been a tool of the trade. Activists have also emphasized that singular they is used all the time in speaking and writing when we don’t know or don’t want to specify the gender of the subject.
The 100% gender neutral is my only real criticism of the game beyond the performance issues.
It's not inclusive if it's still excluding people who prefer traditional gender choices and prefer he/she. This shouldn't be a hot take. Be inclusive, it's fine, but inclusive should include traditional gender pronouns or it's literally not inclusive. The devs literally are catering to the smallest segment of the gamer base while leaving out the majority. That's the opposite of inclusion. The irony.
Also, gender is relevant to the Harry Potter story. Males are wizards, females are witches, and the boys and girls are separated into their own dorms by gender.
Aside from that, game is still great and it's not like it's impacting the game-play.
I can't help but wonder who's at the helm of these companies that they are so quick to bend to a very small segment of the population when a majority of people are not really concerned whether or not a game is gender neutral. It's very strange.
But in Hogwarts Legacy, professors and classmates (friends), who are standing next to you and clearly know you gender, keep referring you as they.
You have 2 options: Witch and Wizard. Female and Male.
BUT, you also have 2 voice options: One is male, one is female.
What do you think would happen if you chose yourself as Wizard, but your voice is female?
Now what.
English should also have male and female like all other other languages.
And if they wanted to cater to 1% of population, which use mixed voice and body type they could also add they/them.
In current state they cater to 1% of population while 99% gets shafted.
Not trying to hijack the convo, but I think textures are a close second - if not first - when it comes to memory consumption. Especially if textures aren't reused and every NPC is unique.
but yes, I 100% agree with you in the context of certain games like HL. VA'ing is hard (coming from a hobbyist background), and I would gladly record one universal pronoun over 2-3+ different ones in the studio. I'm confident the studio would agree too; since they want to make a game with them most profit as cheaply as possible
Then, you ask.
If you don't know, you ask. That's what normal people do.
And if you don't want to ask and you make a mistake, you apologize if deemed necessary, or if you are polite, then you correct yourself.
Let me try to explain the core of the issue.
There are 10 people in a room with you. You decide to bake a cake.
"What kind of cake?" they ask.
"Lemon Cake" you answer.
7 people are happy, they like lemon cake.
2 are unhappy, they hate lemon cake with a passion.
And 1 doesn't care, they just want to eat cake.
You didn't ask, but the 2 people say they want a strawberry cake.
Out of the 7 people, 2 hate strawberries, 2 still want lemon cake, and 3 don't care, they just want cake.
So, you decide that you want to appeal to the minority because that's how inclusive you are to put some strawberries in your cake. The thing is, you probably have heard about strawberries and have some knowledge about them, but you have never seen or eaten a strawberry in your life.
So you take the first sweet and red fruit you find and put it in your cake.
So, what happens?
4 people don't care, they wanted cake, and they got it. 2 are disappointed, they wanted lemon cake, but at least they got a cake with whatever you put inside.
2 people are really unhappy, they wanted STRAWBERRY CAKE!!!! What a pathetic attempt at trying to please them, at least do things correctly!
And the 2 last are pissed, they wanted lemon cake, and they blame the 2 strawberry people because they couldn't get it because of them. And they blame you because it's not even strawberries you put in the cake. So they couldn't get what they wanted because you wanted to please the minority, and you didn't even do it correctly, but the ones being punished for your mistake are them.
I seriously hope you understand the analogy.
A lot of progressive games use gender-neutral pronouns to look like they are being inclusive and progressive. Most people don't really care.
But you have generally 2 kinds of games, games that are purely gender neutral, you can shape your character however you want, if some parts look more feminine or masculine, there is nothing really defining the character, and there is absolutely 0 mention of sex or gender. So obviously, in that case, you will use gender-neutral pronouns.
(two that come to my mind right now are Hoko Life and Grow Song of the Evertree)
Then, some games try to be more open.
The archetype of the character's look is more oriented toward male or female, but contrary to usual games, they give more freedom in the character creation (male assets available for female archetype and vice versa), and finally, they let you choose how you want your character to be called/referred to.
(Right now, TTW is the first title that comes to my mind, I usually don't play those games for the reasons I will give below)
The thing is, as I said previously, this is usually done as either a marketing move or to fill an agenda (or both), so instead of making the game appealing, they just put some glitter to say "hey, we thought about you, see? Give us your money".
But not only it is not appealing to their targeted audience (the vocal part of the LGBT community), but it's not to a chunk of their main market either.
Here, in that game, they put male and female bodies, then the ability to use either a male or female voice, and finally, the choice to either use a male or a female pronoun.
Good start.
All that to use a "we don't want to take risks so let's be gender neutral". AKA "we don't give a f* let's take the safe road."
I mean, come on, they have a trans character and she has a pronoun... why not the player character?
And no, it wasn't to save costs or to make programming/branching dialogue or voice acting easier because otherwise, they would have done it in all languages. In French, we don't have a gender-neutral, but we use masculine if we have to use a default gender, or there are other ways to not use the gender at all, like using nouns (and once again by default the masculine is used), but stupid example, masculine of a student is "un élève", féminine is "une élève".
Want to make it gender-neutral? "This is the student" is "this is l'élève", it's the same for both masculine and féminine. But that's not what they did.
So, all in all. They tried to do something to appeal to a minority. The minority is not satisfied because glitters to better sell a product are not what they want. They want a strawberry cake.
The result is that some people who wanted Lemon cake also are unhappy because even if they could eat strawberries, there are none in that cake, it looks like it, but usually, strawberries don't take a dump on your face. They don't ask you to make choices to ignore them right after. And worst, they are forced to eat the cake, all of it, the good parts are ok, but nobody wants to be forced -ed the burnt pieces.
Two last things. So yes, most people are satisfied and are not complaining. Honestly, good for them, I'm not even complaining that much, it annoys me, but I'll survive, I've seen way worse. (my issue was more with the way you tried to rationalize everything with false claims).
I have been playing games, reading books/comics, and watching tv shows and movies for close to 30 years now. And since the beginning of the 2010s, I have seen the quality of all of these dropping for the benefits of inclusivity and progressivism.
Most people around 20 nowadays have grown up with this, so for them, having this kind of content is 'normal'.
And honestly, I don't care if people in games, movies, shows, etc... are gay trans or whatever. What I care about is the quality of the content, putting LGBTQ+ content just to appeal to an audience and make quotas is not quality content.
Once upon a time, games had interesting stories and characters. Some lores kept the players and the audience hooked to the franchise.
Nowadays we have "that character is African, this one is Indian, this one is gay, this one is in a homosexual marriage, this one is trans", their story? Their background? Anything to make us feel any kind of empathy for them? None, nada, nyet. If authors and producers don't want to put any effort into their writing, I don't want to put any effort into reading/watching/playing/whatever.
And the fact that some people are ok with all of this is pissing me off because that's the reason things keep getting worse instead of getting better.
And there is nothing transphobic or homophobic in what I said, there are progressive/inclusive games with good stories and good characters. I have plenty of them in my library. One that comes to my mind is "I was a teenager exocolonist".
I have plenty of lesbian/queer games. But the same applies, some are centred around the characters and the story, and some are just some agenda to "bring awareness" or denounce something, that's called propaganda. I play games to have fun, not to eat propaganda.
However, Hogwarts Legacy is a good story. It's just not what you're used to. JK Rowling had very little involvement with the game, and most for good reason. This was made by the company in question as a love letter to the series.
The problem resides on, now that it's here, you can't help but focus on it. Even though that stuff resides in the game in terms of ethnicity and orientation, the game never outright says it. And that's how it should be. It feels far more natural than making it obvious with every character.
Now, let's take it from the opposite spectrum: Imagine playing as someone African-American in the current version of Hogwarts everyone knows from the series. Feels a little...isolative, don't you think? Not a lot of diversity to go around in terms of people who are like you. You feel alone, a bit ashamed even.
This game was made by fans, for fans. It's why it includes EVERYTHING. Even the stuff you don't believe should be in here. Yes, while it doesn't follow what was set in the previous series, it's a lot more inclusive about everyone. Because, well, there's a lot of Harry Potter fans from around the world. Even though it's here, it never makes it obvious. It's only the people who play that call it out, which makes it obvious.
So what if there's a transgender bartender? So what if there's different races all around? The point is, it feels far more natural for a world where you intend to be yourself. What says the game can't feel more like itself as well?
In terms of you being classified as "They", it goes back to the original post: They did this probably as a way to feel like everyone is included, without prioritization of pronouns. It's a thing people do in the industry with a lot of games. This isn't a new thing. It's been around for years. It's not just you playing the game, it's everyone.
I'll be real with you, I don't know why the other languages have it like that, but in the US, UK, and Canada; primarily English-speaking countries, it makes perfect sense. We have far more people that can't be distinguished by simple He / She pronouns. Hell, the US is literally known for being "The Melding Pot of the World." There's so many classifications of who you can be now, that it'd be nigh impossible to distinguish everyone.
Outside of what was said in the original post, this is probably another reason they did it the way they did.
And no, for the last time, it's not 1%, or .5%. It's a far larger percent than that, and it's getting bigger by the year.