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They Can't Play with Us: Pronoun Controversies and the Reinforcement of Heteronormativity in Games

Published: 05 July 2024 Publication History

Abstract

In 2023, three major games introduced they/them pronouns into their character creation options: Baldur's Gate 3 (Larian Studios), Starfield (Bethesda); and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (Marvelous). Each of these games comes from companies or series with a history of enforcing binary gender. Making such shifts to include both gender equity and same-sex romance sparked backlash, particularly at a moment when “woke” cultural production is under intense cultural scrutiny. By examining the responses to these three very different, but culturally significant, games, we contextualize the importance of meaningful gender and sexuality inclusivity in gaming given a history of reactionary movements in gaming culture (most notoriously Gamergate). Critically, all of these games became bestsellers, suggesting that while “go woke, go broke” might remain a rallying cry in small portions of gaming subculture, the move towards inclusivity is ultimately not harming the commercial success of these games.

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      FDG '24: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
      May 2024
      644 pages
      ISBN:9798400709555
      DOI:10.1145/3649921
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Published: 05 July 2024

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      Author Tags

      1. game character creators
      2. game culture
      3. gender inclusivity
      4. queer content

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      FDG 2024
      FDG 2024: Foundations of Digital Games
      May 21 - 24, 2024
      MA, Worcester, USA

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