You can also see another dev, Hugh Jeremy (who I think is primarily the PR guy) in the comments.
Oh, that's not as bad as I thought it would be. I don't think it was one or the other, I think it was which one you wanted right then. He did say stuff in the comments like "Cutting" content which wasn't in the best taste, but overall I think he was just frustrated with something.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2017
Hmm a bit of a poor choice in words perhaps, but I see nothing offending there. It's just a question, but it is also exactly one year later now (tomorrow vs 9 Feb 2016)
The way it was worded makes it seem like some kind of herculean task to add something which is a relatively small feature
Calarand77lurking in general forumsJoin Date: 2016-01-22Member: 211786Members
All right, before I get accused of telling lies... yes, the poll is worded poorly, but the dev's replies are where I see the real problem: from insisting that adding female model would take enough effort to warrant cutting out a big part of the planned content, to outright stating that granting female players the same level of immersion that male players can enjoy would bring... little benefit.
This is what I was referring to in my first post and no, I did not want to turn this conversation into hounding one developer over something he tweeted a year ago - that's why I didn't bring up any names. Now that someone else did that anyway, I felt the need to clarify.
Yeah, I don't buy it either. You need to add what, 1 screen to choose between a male and female character? It could even be done as a checkbox when selecting difficulty - it's not like they plan a massive facial sculpting system. That tweet showed they already had a model, so it needed to be rigged and textured, which is a week, tops, for an animator and an artist. That doesn't effect "core systems" - those aren't going to be done by the same person. Changing the Gravsphere and air bladder models and animations is probably about as difficult.
from insisting that adding female model would take enough effort to warrant cutting out a big part of the planned content, to outright stating that granting female players the same level of immersion that male players can enjoy would bring... little benefit.
narfblatUtah, USAJoin Date: 2016-05-15Member: 216799Members, Forum Moderators, Forum staff
I don't think the developer meant to come across as he did, he was just trying to express the difficulty in making this change. The time to work on this change would have to come from somewhere, and I highly doubt it's the "few days" someone mentioned. Difficulty that is hard to see from a distance can creep up when you get up close to it.
I do hope they are able to get the female character released soon after v1.0.
04LeonhardtI came here to laugh at youJoin Date: 2015-08-01Member: 206618Members
edited February 2017
Funny thing is, most of the people in those screenshots would very likely never have bought the game even if they added female characters.
They're just complaining and bullying the game dev to try to get them to do what they want so they can later brag to their friends about how progressive and inclusive they are. And then never buy the game or play at the most 4-8 hours before realizing swimming with alien sharks is really cutting into their Twitter Activism time.
It's called Virtue Signaling. Its what SJWs do instead of eating food like normal people.
And pretty sure what he means by "Little Benefit" is "Not enough new people buying the game because they added another player model instead of a new biome or story mechanic."
i agree and a female can and probably will come in time but first let them finish with the major issues bugs glitchs crashs. i get people want gender choice and dev never said straight no just not yet.
I don't think the developer meant to come across as he did, he was just trying to express the difficulty in making this change. The time to work on this change would have to come from somewhere, and I highly doubt it's the "few days" someone mentioned.
It should definitely not take more than a few days if they have the model ready and textured. It is basically nothing more than a model replacement, they should be able to recycle and maybe tweak the animations from the original character. All the work is technically already there, it's should just be a matter of hooking it up and creating a GUI which let's you choose you character and adding in some female sounding sounds.
If this truly takes anything more than a week, there's something wrong with this engine design on how things work and are hooked up... Surely they prototype this stuff and have libraries already in place for easy access and development
Also you can't compared it to adding a scripted events, that in itself is already more work. let alone adding another biome, which would indeed take A LOT longer to create with them handcrafting it, not to mention all the extra fish and static models which have to be textured, with some of them using those swaying animations.
but they did say they'd add it in so it is coming, we just don't know when or whats the holdup
SpongedogTexas, United StatesJoin Date: 2017-01-09Member: 226461Members
The problem is that it really doesn't add much to the game. Yes, some people are all riled up now that there's no real female character, but how much does it matter? I bet a few months after this thread you won't even notice the gender of the character.
If we are going to bother about gender, shouldn't we also consider ethnicity? Different colours/shades of skin etc? Or does skin colour/race not matter?
If we are going to bother about gender, shouldn't we also consider ethnicity? Different colours/shades of skin etc? Or does skin colour/race not matter?
I think it's part of the story that the Aurora was a Mongolian space vessel, so I think that ethnicity is limited.
How many game properties feature a female-only protagonist? I'll give you Tomb Raider and Metroid for free, but if gender really didn't matter, where are the rest? Can we even think of 5? Across all platforms even?
Here's a fun game. Name a female scientist - who's name is not Marie Curie.
Don't get me wrong, Subnautica does plenty of things right. The voice of the PDA is at least female, as well as the base, and we do have Marguerit - but what of the rest of the Aurora survivors? I don't recall any of them being female.
It's a little depressing that a game about exploring the *ocean* - won't have a female option until release. If anything the devs are missing out on potential market share. The paper I linked earlier shows that 57% of undergrad oceanography majors are female, so they're not addressing a significant potential market.
First, tons of games have female protagonists now, let alone games that allow you to choose. Hell there's a flag on steam for games with female protagonists. If you use that flag you see that there are 1014 games right now for sale that are flagged as female protagonist. Side note, if I see that flag I refuse to buy the product because they're marketing based on identity politics and I won't support that in the slightest. Second, naming popular female scientists means what exactly? I can name a few women that I know from real life who are chemists or doctors but you don't know them and in reality you don't care. It's just an identity politics talking point that has zero substantive value in this discussion.
57% of undergrad oceanography majors may be female, but how many of them know you or care that you're white knighting it up on a forum in their name? How many that actually play games wouldn't care in the slightest that there's a single protagonist now and it has different genitalia than they do? How many aren't going to take the time to play the game whether or not a female protagonist is added? You can get down off your pedestal now. As an aside, I have no problem with the devs adding a female protagonist at all. They've said it's a post 1.0 thing. Cool. Nothing wrong with more options. I do have a problem with fallacious arguments based on numbers that are entirely meaningless and emotional appeals. Which prettymuch sums up about all arguments from people who buy into identity politics.
It is basically nothing more than a model replacement, they should be able to recycle and maybe tweak the animations from the original character. All the work is technically already there, it's should just be a matter of hooking it up and creating a GUI which let's you choose you character and adding in some female sounding sounds.
Trust me its hell of a lot of work.
Animations and UI are hard. Subnautica team is small and their resources are limited.
PS. For reference, I took part in creation of 3 videogames.
If you got that over the lack of a couple of higher pitched grunts and a character model we really need to work on your self-esteem. Really, have a hug and a cup of tea.
*sigh* You completely failed to see the bigger picture there and decided to go for a patronizing, personal jab instead. Congratulations and thanks for proving my point, I guess. Of course this entire debacle is not about my self-esteem being hurt, but about women in general being treated as second class customers by the vast majority of game developers. So no, it is not an argument over a little thing, and the attitude the SN dev had expressed is the prime example here - his entire approach to the subject and the way he had handled it in social media, were disgusting and offensive, and there's no real excuse for that.
Could things be more equal? Sure. Was the comment by the dev insensitive? Also sure. As I stated I support the change given it's a relatively simple change (I think) and would be more than willing to wait an extra week or two for release or a given update if this was implemented.
I hadn't intended on being patronizing about it, nor was it intended as a jab. Second class status? You don't matter? These carry very weighty connotations and considerations and I do not appreciate you throwing them around like trivial turns of phrase. I think it should be apparent that I think you matter and value what you say, otherwise I would not take the time to reply or to consider it. It is an incredibly little thing when compared to actual examples of being second-class. Its the equivalent of stubbing your toe and acting like you were tarred and feathered. Again, I agree that it could be more equal and we should push for that equality to become a reality, but that is no excuse to blow it out of proportion.
If we are going to bother about gender, shouldn't we also consider ethnicity? Different colours/shades of skin etc? Or does skin colour/race not matter?
I think it's part of the story that the Aurora was a Mongolian space vessel, so I think that ethnicity is limited.
But it doesn't say anything about our gender.
Aurora was Alterra, the Degasi was the Mongolian vessel. The Torgaals were probably Mongolian though. I don't think there's been any real in-game information on the kind of human or area of Earth Alterra is focused around if any. The player model's med skin tone is perhaps subtropical/Mediterranean in origin? With personal variation he could have the genetics of an Egyptian or could be a Puerto Rican. Or a mix. Could be a lighter skinned African? Another point I think is pretty silly. I'ma survive on this danged planet and I don't really care what color I am >.<
It is basically nothing more than a model replacement, they should be able to recycle and maybe tweak the animations from the original character. All the work is technically already there, it's should just be a matter of hooking it up and creating a GUI which let's you choose you character and adding in some female sounding sounds.
Trust me its hell of a lot of work.
Animations and UI are hard. Subnautica team is small and their resources are limited.
PS. For reference, I took part in creation of 3 videogames.
So you're implying this hugely popular engine called Unity is incapable of reusing animation graphs from a similar model already in game, which is completely finished for both first person and thirdperson? It's not like this lady has all kinds of different limbs or weird stuff which would require a completely new animation. Or is it all stuck on boob physics, are they really that hard to animate
Also how exactly is designing a GUI hard, we're talking about a simple Boolean to select your character model on an extra "character selection" tab in the menu, for which they should have templates ready to go. Heck it could even be placeholder if you're talking about the graphical part, but the ingame menu right now isn't that detailed anyway (template PSD's)
This is basic stuff even ancient engines have, prototyping and using libraries, plugins and classes... Surely a modern and popular engine like Unity has these things built in...
People are making this thing out to be like some kind of HUGE feature, which takes tons and tons of work and time away from development, so you'd basically have to abandon features to even consider adding it before v1.0. When in reality it absolutely is not
It is basically nothing more than a model replacement, they should be able to recycle and maybe tweak the animations from the original character. All the work is technically already there, it's should just be a matter of hooking it up and creating a GUI which let's you choose you character and adding in some female sounding sounds.
Trust me its hell of a lot of work.
Animations and UI are hard. Subnautica team is small and their resources are limited.
PS. For reference, I took part in creation of 3 videogames.
Or is it all stuck on boob physics, are they really that hard to animate
It is according to some games. Some of those games seem to use a chaotic algorithm for their boob physics.
yes we need a female character because EQUALITY!!!!!
To be honest, does it really matter? You can't even see your character model without using the scanner room. Unless for some reason you want the character's sound effects to be more feminine for some absurd reason, there's really no point to this.
Anyway, in all the arguments I've seen so far, the important thing to remember is that it is easy for men to write female player models off as unimportant, because men have ALWAYS been represented in 99% of the games. Male is pretty much the default gender (and not only in games!), and in the extremely rare cases where there is only a female protagonist to play as - like in Tomb Raider, for example - the model is hyper-sexualized to appeal to the MALE eye and make it entertaining for them. All the skin tight outfits, skimpy armors, and giant, gravity-defying boobs are there for men to enjoy, not for women to feel included. Sad but true.
Have you ever fucking played a video game? There are SO many games with female protagonists, and innumerable other games that simply allow you to choose your gender. Portal 2, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, just to name a few, feature only female protagonists.
yes we need a female character because EQUALITY!!!!!
To be honest, does it really matter? You can't even see your character model without using the scanner room. Unless for some reason you want the character's sound effects to be more feminine for some absurd reason, there's really no point to this.
I can see it mattering if you're trying to pretend to be the character in the game (instead of adapting yourself to the character aka I'm a male survivor on the Aurora, adapting the character to you aka I'm female and I, me, personally, am in the future, stranded on 4546B). Then it makes sense.
Anyway, in all the arguments I've seen so far, the important thing to remember is that it is easy for men to write female player models off as unimportant, because men have ALWAYS been represented in 99% of the games. Male is pretty much the default gender (and not only in games!), and in the extremely rare cases where there is only a female protagonist to play as - like in Tomb Raider, for example - the model is hyper-sexualized to appeal to the MALE eye and make it entertaining for them. All the skin tight outfits, skimpy armors, and giant, gravity-defying boobs are there for men to enjoy, not for women to feel included. Sad but true.
Have you ever fucking played a video game? There are SO many games with female protagonists, and innumerable other games that simply allow you to choose your gender. Portal 2, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, just to name a few, feature only female protagonists.
In Portal 2, it didn't matter if Chel was male or female. Her gender had no bearing to the actual story. Replace Chel with some male character and the story would still be the same. So Chel is a good protagonist, but not a good female protagonist. So it matters if a female protagonist provides more than just eye candy. At the moment, providing a female character to Subnautica would be just eye candy instead of providing something more to the story.
There's a new game coming out on PS4 next month called Horizon Zero Dawn which features a female only lead character.
Would it be acceptable for men to complain that they have no male character to play, or would they be classed as sexist? Is it classed as sexist if a woman complains about there being no female character to play?
Anyway, I couldn't care less what the gender of the character I am playing is, so long as the game is entertaining.
There's a new game coming out on PS4 next month called Horizon Zero Dawn which features a female only lead character.
Would it be acceptable for men to complain that they have no male character to play, or would they be classed as sexist? Is it classed as sexist if a woman complains about there being no female character to play?
Anyway, I couldn't care less what the gender of the character I am playing is, so long as the game is entertaining.
Until meninists with their toxic brand of meninism get involved, then there is no problem with a lack of a male character. Although I would be interested in seeing the percentages of players that choose a character of the opposite gender when given a choice. Is the amount of females players playing as male characters the same as the amount of male players playing as female characters? What is sexist is the lack of scantily clad men in video games. If men are able to play as female characters with hardly any clothes on, then women should be able to play as male characters with hardly any clothes on.
Comments
impossibru!
You can also see two other devs, Hugh Jeremy and Cory Strader, in the comments.
Of course, improve the core game before adding the female option, but it would be a good post 1.0 option.
Oh, that's not as bad as I thought it would be. I don't think it was one or the other, I think it was which one you wanted right then. He did say stuff in the comments like "Cutting" content which wasn't in the best taste, but overall I think he was just frustrated with something.
The way it was worded makes it seem like some kind of herculean task to add something which is a relatively small feature
This is what I was referring to in my first post and no, I did not want to turn this conversation into hounding one developer over something he tweeted a year ago - that's why I didn't bring up any names. Now that someone else did that anyway, I felt the need to clarify.
I do hope they are able to get the female character released soon after v1.0.
They're just complaining and bullying the game dev to try to get them to do what they want so they can later brag to their friends about how progressive and inclusive they are. And then never buy the game or play at the most 4-8 hours before realizing swimming with alien sharks is really cutting into their Twitter Activism time.
It's called Virtue Signaling. Its what SJWs do instead of eating food like normal people.
And pretty sure what he means by "Little Benefit" is "Not enough new people buying the game because they added another player model instead of a new biome or story mechanic."
It should definitely not take more than a few days if they have the model ready and textured. It is basically nothing more than a model replacement, they should be able to recycle and maybe tweak the animations from the original character. All the work is technically already there, it's should just be a matter of hooking it up and creating a GUI which let's you choose you character and adding in some female sounding sounds.
If this truly takes anything more than a week, there's something wrong with this engine design on how things work and are hooked up... Surely they prototype this stuff and have libraries already in place for easy access and development
Also you can't compared it to adding a scripted events, that in itself is already more work. let alone adding another biome, which would indeed take A LOT longer to create with them handcrafting it, not to mention all the extra fish and static models which have to be textured, with some of them using those swaying animations.
but they did say they'd add it in so it is coming, we just don't know when or whats the holdup
I think it's part of the story that the Aurora was a Mongolian space vessel, so I think that ethnicity is limited.
But it doesn't say anything about our gender.
First, tons of games have female protagonists now, let alone games that allow you to choose. Hell there's a flag on steam for games with female protagonists. If you use that flag you see that there are 1014 games right now for sale that are flagged as female protagonist. Side note, if I see that flag I refuse to buy the product because they're marketing based on identity politics and I won't support that in the slightest. Second, naming popular female scientists means what exactly? I can name a few women that I know from real life who are chemists or doctors but you don't know them and in reality you don't care. It's just an identity politics talking point that has zero substantive value in this discussion.
57% of undergrad oceanography majors may be female, but how many of them know you or care that you're white knighting it up on a forum in their name? How many that actually play games wouldn't care in the slightest that there's a single protagonist now and it has different genitalia than they do? How many aren't going to take the time to play the game whether or not a female protagonist is added? You can get down off your pedestal now. As an aside, I have no problem with the devs adding a female protagonist at all. They've said it's a post 1.0 thing. Cool. Nothing wrong with more options. I do have a problem with fallacious arguments based on numbers that are entirely meaningless and emotional appeals. Which prettymuch sums up about all arguments from people who buy into identity politics.
Animations and UI are hard. Subnautica team is small and their resources are limited.
PS. For reference, I took part in creation of 3 videogames.
Could things be more equal? Sure. Was the comment by the dev insensitive? Also sure. As I stated I support the change given it's a relatively simple change (I think) and would be more than willing to wait an extra week or two for release or a given update if this was implemented.
I hadn't intended on being patronizing about it, nor was it intended as a jab. Second class status? You don't matter? These carry very weighty connotations and considerations and I do not appreciate you throwing them around like trivial turns of phrase. I think it should be apparent that I think you matter and value what you say, otherwise I would not take the time to reply or to consider it. It is an incredibly little thing when compared to actual examples of being second-class. Its the equivalent of stubbing your toe and acting like you were tarred and feathered. Again, I agree that it could be more equal and we should push for that equality to become a reality, but that is no excuse to blow it out of proportion.
Aurora was Alterra, the Degasi was the Mongolian vessel. The Torgaals were probably Mongolian though. I don't think there's been any real in-game information on the kind of human or area of Earth Alterra is focused around if any. The player model's med skin tone is perhaps subtropical/Mediterranean in origin? With personal variation he could have the genetics of an Egyptian or could be a Puerto Rican. Or a mix. Could be a lighter skinned African? Another point I think is pretty silly. I'ma survive on this danged planet and I don't really care what color I am >.<
So you're implying this hugely popular engine called Unity is incapable of reusing animation graphs from a similar model already in game, which is completely finished for both first person and thirdperson? It's not like this lady has all kinds of different limbs or weird stuff which would require a completely new animation. Or is it all stuck on boob physics, are they really that hard to animate
Also how exactly is designing a GUI hard, we're talking about a simple Boolean to select your character model on an extra "character selection" tab in the menu, for which they should have templates ready to go. Heck it could even be placeholder if you're talking about the graphical part, but the ingame menu right now isn't that detailed anyway (template PSD's)
This is basic stuff even ancient engines have, prototyping and using libraries, plugins and classes... Surely a modern and popular engine like Unity has these things built in...
People are making this thing out to be like some kind of HUGE feature, which takes tons and tons of work and time away from development, so you'd basically have to abandon features to even consider adding it before v1.0. When in reality it absolutely is not
It is according to some games. Some of those games seem to use a chaotic algorithm for their boob physics.
As soon as I saw this thread, I knew.
To be honest, does it really matter? You can't even see your character model without using the scanner room. Unless for some reason you want the character's sound effects to be more feminine for some absurd reason, there's really no point to this.
Have you ever fucking played a video game? There are SO many games with female protagonists, and innumerable other games that simply allow you to choose your gender. Portal 2, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, just to name a few, feature only female protagonists.
I can see it mattering if you're trying to pretend to be the character in the game (instead of adapting yourself to the character aka I'm a male survivor on the Aurora, adapting the character to you aka I'm female and I, me, personally, am in the future, stranded on 4546B). Then it makes sense.
In Portal 2, it didn't matter if Chel was male or female. Her gender had no bearing to the actual story. Replace Chel with some male character and the story would still be the same. So Chel is a good protagonist, but not a good female protagonist. So it matters if a female protagonist provides more than just eye candy. At the moment, providing a female character to Subnautica would be just eye candy instead of providing something more to the story.
Would it be acceptable for men to complain that they have no male character to play, or would they be classed as sexist? Is it classed as sexist if a woman complains about there being no female character to play?
Anyway, I couldn't care less what the gender of the character I am playing is, so long as the game is entertaining.
Until meninists with their toxic brand of meninism get involved, then there is no problem with a lack of a male character. Although I would be interested in seeing the percentages of players that choose a character of the opposite gender when given a choice. Is the amount of females players playing as male characters the same as the amount of male players playing as female characters? What is sexist is the lack of scantily clad men in video games. If men are able to play as female characters with hardly any clothes on, then women should be able to play as male characters with hardly any clothes on.
Oh dear, the mature adults are posting now!