11/11/2010

Ladies and gentlemen. may I present: the scam. no wait, just the ladies.

Yes, it's true. I'm back. And most importantly I'm pissed. Again.

The Rant of the Day? I was playing Legends of Zork the other day, and cause it should be (even though casual) RPG you can make your character either male or female. Always appreciated, as I have stated. I was enjoying the game until on the level 20 people started approaching me like this:

The stony-faced butler fixes you with a particularly hard look. "Sir is not an opportunistic adventurer, here to try and get a reward, is Sir?"

And apparantly I say things like this:

Evenin' all. My name is Dirk Softly.

So…this seems a bit odd, since my character looks like this:
Dirkette?
Unfortunately I totally get why this has happened. Because even though games are supposed to be for girls too these days, the game makers only think players as guys when making the games. If a girl faces this sort of a situation when playing it’s borderline offensive, cause you have made her believe she had something to affect on while making the character.

It’s most defenately a popurity contest. RPG makes it possible to reach all players no matter what’s in their panties, but you know, I would have been less mad if you’d just made the character male. It’s quite obvious you are too lazy to think about us girls 5 seconds after you start writing the mission texts. I had to point this out to another game designer (who I live with) that admitted he actually never thought of the girls in the missions because in the instructions the player was refered to as ”he”.

It’s a small gesture really. To write that alternative text. To, you know, give a shit.

This is why we need more girl designers.

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