It is becoming more common for people to speak about their preferred pronoun used to identify themselves, particularly in countries where traditional language creates an assumed divide between masculine and feminine words. As the market for video games continues to grow, now is the time for more developers to embrace the shift towards gender neutral pronouns, and some are doing a fantastic job already in leading the way.

For nonbinary people, video games have traditionally offered little in the way of representation, as players are generally offered the option to create male or female characters. Temtem, a new and popular game in Steam Early Access, is doing a great job in breaking free from these old and unnecessary restrictions. Players are asked to choose their preferred pronoun from She/Her, He/Him, and They/Them. Clothing, hairstyles, body types, and voices can be mixed as players desire, providing a great way for players to express themselves while many other games limit these features by strict gender divisions.

Via: reddit.com (u/LMGDiVa)

Language Evolves, And So Should We

The decision to foster an inclusive environment for all players in Temtem is a positive step in the right direction, and video games, in general, should take a cue and follow suit, especially since the world at large is trending in a direction towards creating more inclusive language for everyone. While some languages have gender neutrality baked into the core grammar, such as Mandarin Chinese, most do not and require a rethinking of traditional labels.

Via: twitter.com (@monchalabi)

In English, there has been a significant push towards a similar use of genderless pronouns as the default, which would serve to not misgender a subject. In September of 2019, “they” was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary specifically in reference to a nonbinary pronoun. Despite some initial pushback from critics who claimed that “they” would be too confusing, the consensus seems to be on the side of common sense, and the pronoun continues to gain traction.

The Hispanic world has also seen vocal advocates towards what is currently termed Latinx, often used to replace Latino or Latina. While the term is still a topic of debate and reaction has been mixed, it still appears often and offers an alternative to binary gender classifications, which is no small task for Romance Languages with strict grammatical rules that incorporate gender in their articles, adjectives, and nouns.

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Video Games Developers Doing It Wrong

While Temtem is a great example of how to do nonbinary character representation in a positive way, many other video game developers are still stuck in the past, and in some cases, way in the past. Russian studio Battlestate Games was recently the topic of discussion following the discovery of an interview with one of its developers from 2016 regarding their upcoming game Escape From Tarkov.

Via Battlestate Games

There, developer Pavel Dyatlov stated specifically that only men would be playable characters in the game because women could not handle the stress of war, and only hardened men could survive.

The response was, as to be expected, one of condemnation towards the organization for such blatant sexism. The studio later stated that in fact the decision was not made for the reason given in the interview, but because of “the huge amount of work needed with animations, gear fitting etc [sic].”

This too caused an uproar as a veteran game designer with experience in this type of character creation laid out exactly why the statement was false with today’s broad range of development tools. It seems here that the developer was now being called out a second time for its decision to only include men, which is odd, because on a fundamental level there are so many reasons that could be given to justify the inclusion of only men by relating to lore, to a story that they envisioned, or anything else, but instead, the developer tried to hide behind a nonsensical technological limitation that does not exist.

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Developers Doing It Right

Temtem is not the first to offer gender-neutral choices for players, but it is an important addition given how great the potential is for the game to grow as it is similar to, and in many ways, superior to Pokémon. In the past, games like Sunless Sea have made the effort to do the same, even though we do not even see the character on screen in this survival title. When creating a character, the game asks you how you want to be addressed, and then states, “Your actual gender is up to you,” and the decision is more of a formality as your crew will respect you for your ability, not your gender.

Via: medium.com

Shovel Knight is another popular indie game that went above and beyond to rectify an initial mistake from their point of view. The original game portrayed men as heroes and women primarily as damsels in need of rescue and seeing the problem in this antiquated representation of masculinity and femininity, changed this by adding the Gender Swap feature, now known as Body Swap Mode. This lets players select the gender of their characters in Shovel of Hope, or the genders can be assigned to players and major story NPCs randomly without changing their dialogue or personality.

Via: polygon.com

Language Evolves, And Game Developers Should Lead The Way

As language evolves throughout the world and LGTBQ inclusiveness grows, video game developers should be at the forefront of embracing gender-neutral pronouns. Video games are a way of bringing people together, especially as the presence of online modes is now almost the default, and inclusivity is something that too should be a default, and never an exception. In the future, an ideal scenario would be where praising a game like Temtem for the inclusivity is unnecessary, because it would be the norm, and by taking a few steps at a time, that will hopefully be reality in the future.

NEXT: Temtem: Beginner’s Guide