Add Pronouns to Steam API

[Krenicus]

Many games provide the player with an opportunity to specify their pronoun(s). Although I believe that it is important to allow people to be represented in-game as they wish, I also believe that asking someone their pronoun(s) may cause some individuals undue stress because it may cause some players to feel as if they aren't viewed by others they way they identify unless they explicitly inform others. I think Steam could solve this by allowing the player to select their pronoun(s) on their Steam profile and allow games to access this information from the Steam API, in this way, the player would only need to identify their pronoun(s) once instead of for every game that uses it.

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Автор сообщения: Dimlhugion

Автор сообщения: Ben Lubar

No, third person pronouns aren't different enough from other pronouns for English to draw a distinction between their parts of speech. They're all just pronouns - short words that stand in for a noun that either isn't known or is just too long and unweildy to repeat every time a person, place, or thing is referenced in a sentence.

Two things can be true at once.

Yes, you are correct that pronouns as a part of speech and writing and communication, really are just stand-ins for "there's a thing I want to reference in a commonly understood way."

But also, yes, MrSteel300 (whom I will refer to via the pronoun "he") is also correct, in that the intended point of this thread is very obviously not pedantic semantics debates in a linguistic academia setting. We all know EXACTLY what we are talking about, here. Don't be coy.

For my part, I think he's right to object on whatever grounds he chooses, if such is his choice. I don't know if Islam or any other religion "actually" dislikes the idea of transgenderism specifically, or if it's just being lumped into the big ol' family of sins involved with "not being of a traditional baby producing familial unit" (which, historically, has been less about "divine intent" and more about "human beings need to survive, and also, some of us like having power over others").

But either way, if he doesn't like it, that's his choice. Nobody's forcing him to interact with us, nor us with him.

Two things can be true at once. Yes, having games use your preferred pronouns without your input would be nice. As a thing Steam does, this would beawful though.

You know where this would fit much, much better? at the OS session level
You OS could just have a standard field for preferred pronouns that any game can access locally without any network calls. This would make a lot more sense.

[Ben Lubar]

Автор сообщения: Dimlhugion

Автор сообщения: Ben Lubar

No, third person pronouns aren't different enough from other pronouns for English to draw a distinction between their parts of speech. They're all just pronouns - short words that stand in for a noun that either isn't known or is just too long and unweildy to repeat every time a person, place, or thing is referenced in a sentence.

Two things can be true at once.

Yes, you are correct that pronouns as a part of speech and writing and communication, really are just stand-ins for "there's a thing I want to reference in a commonly understood way."

But also, yes, MrSteel300 (whom I will refer to via the pronoun "he") is also correct, in that the intended point of this thread is very obviously not pedantic semantics debates in a linguistic academia setting. We all know EXACTLY what we are talking about, here. Don't be coy.

For my part, I think he's right to object on whatever grounds he chooses, if such is his choice. I don't know if Islam or any other religion "actually" dislikes the idea of transgenderism specifically, or if it's just being lumped into the big ol' family of sins involved with "not being of a traditional baby producing familial unit" (which, historically, has been less about "divine intent" and more about "human beings need to survive, and also, some of us like having power over others").

But either way, if he doesn't like it, that's his choice. Nobody's forcing him to interact with us, nor us with him.

You don't need to be transgender to prefer one pronoun over another for other people to use when they refer to you. Everyone has pronouns they prefer over other pronouns. You might prefer that I use "he" or "she" over "it" when referring to you, for example.

And if you're wondering whether religions understand what being transgender is, they do: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-eight-genders-in-the-talmud/

The Talmud is a collection of documents written in the first half of the first millennium (between the years 200 and 500 ish, before Islam was even a thing). It contains, among many other things, descriptions of eight different genders and how they are handled in jewish law. They understood, even two thousand years ago, that there are more than two genders, and even that there are genders that don't cleanly map onto one of the two genders you're probably thinking of when I say "two genders".

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Автор сообщения: cinedine

Автор сообщения: mldb88

The way cookies work is vastly different though, where it collects information on your search history, clicks, text inputs and the like.

Cookies don't collect data, they store them and they are sent with every request to the correpsonding domain. I most cases those are some kind of IDs to connect your actions to the data gathered and stored by the service. By consenting to the use of third-party cookies, you consent to the collection, transferring and processing of data by third parties as per the privacy policy.
Why is this relevant? Because the poster I replied to argued that exactly this is against GDPR even if you consent. (Actually they don't even need your consent if it's business relevant.)

Regarding the unifaction of the implementation ... that's what an API does. There is absolutely no problem. Not more than implementing it for other cases.

---

It's always funny that people make up problems that are none.
Especially considering that they don't even have to concern themselves with it or are in the slightest impacted by it.

It's like another user likes to say: people just like to roleplay as Valve employees and shoot down every suggestion.

The usefulness of it sure is debatable. But technically the only reason against it would be language and internationalisation.

IDK what gave you the impression that im not affected by this, my first post was explicitly explaining a privacy concern I have with my pronouns flying over the net on a thin TLS tunnel. And I am not mentioning the technical details of implementing this because two other people already explained why it is unfeasible at the low-level software support level.

[DruAndrew]

LOL religious people are dumb. "I didn't even read the book, But this guy my family likes talks about it a lot, and says I have to hate people, disrespect all women, and eat follwoing stupid food rules because my great great great great grandpa insisted the world will end if I don't."

Belief is like farting. it is nessecary because human minds are dumb. It is NOT something to be proud of or do violence over. its only use is to help you see all the places that you are dumb. Anywhere you have to use belief instead of knowledge is a subject you don't know much about, and you should be curious and lean more about that.

If you think your belief is justification for anything- I believe the world would be better without your mind in it.

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Additionally, I just thought of a scenario that you need to clarify.
Say I start a run of a game with my steam profile set to he/him and thus my savefile of that game uses he/him. Then I leave for a few days and go through a revelatory experience (as I did 10 years ago) and before I load that save back I switch my steam pronouns to she/her.
When I load that save file, is the game supposed to realize the update happened? Is it supposed to do something? If it doesn't, then I get whiplash and the API is pointless. If it does, the devs now have to think of these cases and make the game adapt and call the API on load. If the API does not exist, I know what to expect, so there's no whiplash, I just assume the old character is not me or try to make the switch myself with a save editor.
I don't come here with answers, only more questions. =3

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Автор сообщения: DruAndrew

LOL religious people are dumb. "I didn't even read the book, But this guy my family likes talks about it a lot, and says I have to hate people, disrespect all women, and eat follwoing stupid food rules because my great great great great grandpa insisted the world will end if I don't."

Belief is like farting. it is nessecary because human minds are dumb. It is NOT something to be proud of or do violence over. its only use is to help you see all the places that you are dumb. Anywhere you have to use belief instead of knowledge is a subject you don't know much about, and you should be curious and lean more about that.

If you think your belief is justification for anything- I believe the world would be better without your mind in it.

No, religious people are not dumb or violent. People in general are equally capable of violence no matter their beliefs. For example, I would stab a right-winger any day. You equating religion with specific beliefs diminishes those beliefs and is, in itself, a form of cultural violence.
I may not agree with what other people believe, but as long as we all follow the same goals of equity, we are on the same team. Insulting people over their beliefs only breaks this equity goal. Keep that in mind when you post about people saying dumb things. Generalizations cause wars.

[Crashed]

To those who hate pronouns, how does one know the gender of someone on the Internet unless they give pronouns to address them?

[mldb88]

Автор сообщения: Dimlhugion

Автор сообщения: Crashed

To those who hate pronouns, how does one know the gender of someone on the Internet unless they give pronouns to address them?

Most people don't "hate pronouns." I don't think one could genuinely communicate in any socially acceptable manner without their usage.

Many people DO get irate when something or someone challenges their core beliefs. Core social norms or values trigger an INTENSE visceral reaction at a near-subconscious level because the mind does not discriminate when it comes to existential threats. Something that threatens "your way of life" is LITERALLY equal, in your brain's chemical responses, to someone stabbing you in the kidney.

We don't differentiate between emotional/intellectual threat, and physical threat. That's literally why PTSD happens.

So when someone thinks, either via nature, nurture, or just by their own volition, that X is a problem to them, they react negatively almost by instinct.

The other issue is less people hating pronouns and more just getting tired of it being shoved out faces over every little thing. Just because someone wants to be identified as something doesn’t mean every single database, data collection system, game, character creation system, but the insert laundry list of other example needs to care enough to overhaul their entire system just for you, especially if said system doesn’t even collect or care about that information to begin with.

[Tito Shivan]

Автор сообщения: Glyphid Lasagna

Say I start a run of a game with my steam profile set to he/him and thus my savefile of that game uses he/him. Then I leave for a few days and go through a revelatory experience (as I did 10 years ago) and before I load that save back I switch my steam pronouns to she/her.
When I load that save file, is the game supposed to realize the update happened? Is it supposed to do something? If it doesn't, then I get whiplash and the API is pointless.

This routinely happens with people who change their profile names without issue.

[Ben Lubar]

Автор сообщения: Tito Shivan

Автор сообщения: Glyphid Lasagna

Say I start a run of a game with my steam profile set to he/him and thus my savefile of that game uses he/him. Then I leave for a few days and go through a revelatory experience (as I did 10 years ago) and before I load that save back I switch my steam pronouns to she/her.
When I load that save file, is the game supposed to realize the update happened? Is it supposed to do something? If it doesn't, then I get whiplash and the API is pointless.

This routinely happens with people who change their profile names without issue.

I don't know of any video games that change dialogue or character models based on profile display names.

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Автор сообщения: Crashed

To those who hate pronouns, how does one know the gender of someone on the Internet unless they give pronouns to address them?

you don't need to know anyone's gender or pronouns
when speaking in english you can use "they/them" as a stand-in for the unknown

[MonkehMaster]

no reason for steam to add a useless feature, when you can already add that nonsense to your profile name (or even in your profile) by yourself.

so, too the suggestion, i vote no.

[MonkehMaster]

Автор сообщения: Dimlhugion

Автор сообщения: MonkehMaster

no reason for steam to add a useless feature, when you can already add that nonsense to your profile name by yourself.

so, to the suggestion, i vote no.

It's not a "useless" feature just because you don't like it or wouldn't use it yourself.

It's not something that is feasible to implement. And you yourself wouldn't like / need it even if it were feasible. But that's all it is.

something you can do by yourself easily by adding it to your profile name or in your profile, instead of valve wasting coding time/money to add said feature, makes it 100% useless.

[MonkehMaster]

Автор сообщения: Dimlhugion

Автор сообщения: MonkehMaster

something you can do by yourself, instead of valve wasting coding/money to add said feature, makes it 100% useless.

You could make video games all by yourself. Steam itself is now useless?

sorry that doesnt work here and the analogy doesnt fit, nice try though.

my point stands and no amount of spamming analogies that dont work or fit the topic, are going to change that.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Автор сообщения: MrSteel300

Автор сообщения: SlowMango

Pronouns aren't 'anti-human'.

only to you and the likeminded, not my problem but those are the facts

Not just 'to me'. It's just standard language.