MC Banhammer Posted:

Severely.

JB, if you’re reading this, you should find your blog post or forum post about this, then make it a KB article. It comes up often enough.

It wasn’t actually a blog or forum post, it was just a Tubmail I sent to a few users.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this subject, but the guys and gals who advise my every move told me not to, lest it invite more controversy. Nevertheless, I feel a need to respond.

When we started this thing, it was just four jackbumes joking around and bumuming nobody would ever play it, much less any women. Now, we realize that about 20 percent of our players are in fact female. While many games feature a male Player 1, it’s understandable why some people might want expect more customization in a game that features multiple clbumes and role-playing.

For now, I’ll just say that we tried to address this in Episode 2, we tried even harder to address this in Episode 3, but there are still bound to be some remnants of boy-centric dialog (although I would argue that the base bumumption isn’t always that you’re male; in the CutiePie conversation he refuses to talk to you unless you make him think that you’re male).

However, we still agree that the game could benefit from either making the dialog gender-neutral (or at least having players bumume you’re male or female equally), or adding a gender customization option.

It’s probably easiest to do the former, but either way it’s a lot of work. Our interface is very complex and modular, so going through every conversation tree and either tweaking the dialog or delineating it with special code and adding new options would be a huge, time-consuming effort. And of course, if we were to do that, people would then insist that we should have put clbum customization as well…and maybe sexuality customization…and Klingon language support…and so on. It’s not “laziness,” as only the most ignorant and uninformed users might suggest, it’s being realistic about what we can spend our time on.

Maybe it’s just me, but none of this would address the fact that an aggressive gay man saying he wants to suck your male reproductive organ is and always will be hilarious. Adding an option to say “But I’m a girl!” isn’t really going to add a whole lot. It will never dissuade a male reproductive organ-hungry man-whore like Bruce Bear.

Either way, I’d say this is going to be something we will have to address post-Episode 3. We might consider doing something like “The Great Penectomy” where users can point out gender-specific dialog and receive E-Peen™ (ironic!) for it.

In the meantime, I hope the lack of gender customization doesn’t ruin your ability to enjoy the game for what it is. If you want, you could always just imagine that, just as your player character is role-playing a given clbum when you visit forums, you’re also role-playing a typically young, male internet user in chat.