I disagree. By using the masculine word as neutral, you are reinforcing the "male as default" idea, which is quite problematic. The problem is that, quite often, men are seen as the default, and as a result, woman are essentially ignored by the language.

This problem also comes up in many forms of media. Can you think of a joke with a female character where the character's sex is not the topic (or punch-line) of the joke? Can you think of any movies or video games where the main character is female and that fact isn't important to the plot?

I also note that, pretty much every time there's a case where a developer restricts the player's character to one sex (considering here games where the PC could be considered to represent the player), it's always the male sex that is chosen. Offenders here include Ultima 8/9 (especially when earlier games in the series had female options) and Eschalon Book 1.

This issue actually is related to femmephobia; the fear of the feminine (when was the last time you saw a man casually wearing a dress or carrying a purse?), or the idea that the feminine is inferior to the masculine.

By the way, in written Spanish, I hear that, instead of writing "amigo" or "amiga", you can write "amig@". Unfortunately, I don't know how to pronounce the @, and there are cases where software will see the @ and think you're writing an e-mail address. (I remember viewing sites about the Linux command line with JavaScript disabled (or with a browser that doesn't implement JavaScript) and seeing things other than e-mail addresses being replaced with <email protected>. Of note, the English Pokemon community occasionally refers to Lati@s (which refers to both Latias and Latios).

Here are a few links to check out:
http://cratesandribbons.com/2013/01/27/why-the-default-male-is-not-just-annoying-but-also-harmful/
http://www.themarysue.com/bojack-horseman-comedy-gender-parity/
http://www.notsorryfeminism.com/2015/04/male-as-default.html

Then why not ban buildings for their phallic references? Go study masonic architecture. All human design is based on age-old concepts that go way beyond simple foundations and corner-posts. The dome of the east represents the womb of life, the rebirth and redemption of the soul. All things can be symbolic. Again, this is subjective interpretation, not moral or ethical truth. Are you saying the feminine representations should be preferred over the masculine? That would be at least an honest switch of the same idea. But to criticize the meaning of something without finding a suitable replacement isn't just not going to fuel a political movement... it is in fact, mere mental masturbation.

And ultimately, where do you draw the line? Are Hispanics now supposed to be offended because you have told them the masculine 'amigo' should be replaced with a new proper pronoun of your own choosing? That seems awfully disingenuous and not a little condescending to go fucking with someone else's culture and language.

And this is plain stupid, sorry but is it. As there are as many neutral words in the Spanish language used as neutral words that are feminine, but yes, seems that establish problems in communication and artificially and imposing the change the language is more important than communication itself. They use of @ is a natural happening in the language and not an imposition, but someone as obsessed as you by social constructs, to build your own constructs, probably cannot just use logic and see that the @ is in occasions, and not all them, easy to use, and we do not have a sound for it integrated in our vocabulary or any language. But I guess I am giving you nice ideas.

There is something really really wrong in people that cares about the "gender" of words, femmephobia? Who? I always chosen women to play games, you guys have a terrible MENphobia, when you even see men in words... more than make the language natural and easy to use. And yeah, sources as the MarySue, recently trolled by a GG guy, yes, very nice 100% pure truth.

Except that it has been done. For example, see (page in Spanish):
https://casadeesperanza.org/es/buscar-ayuda/ayudar-a-una-amiga/

That ridiculous, most part of the people would never write amigos and amigas with @, and of course cannot be used speaking, the only idiots that use amigos and amigas, constantly are politicians trying to gain votes of people concerned about world dramas as important as this, or I should say DRAMOS?

Drama word exist in Spanish, is feminine, and it should be masculine, as is very pejorative to the women to be associated with DRAMA.

If you cannot see how stupid is this, I will lose today a bit more of my faith in humankind. I will recommend you to see the John Cleese video I posted before, maybe there is still a chance for people like you.
Is exactly as you said.

''Problematic'' means what exactly?

Implying media images are in some way harmful to mentally healthy people.

What if the writer's vision was to have a world where the characters are male for story or graphics reasons? Don't game devs get a say in what they create?

Fear of the feminine? Like spewing hate to pink ''girly'' toys and looking down on girls who wear ''feminine'' attire?

What I see in your post is a whole lot of fear mongering based on exactly jack shit proof.

Remember Me? Child of Light? Venetica? Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels (bleh games, but still)? Contrast? Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2? Transistor? Freedom Planet? NOLF? Gray Matter? The Longest Journey?

There are lots and lots more that I've personally played, which itself is just a small drop in an absurdly large bucket. Not sure what you're getting at here at all.

I don't want to get into this too deep, but feel the need to point out that it's a pretty huge stretch to interpret not a lot of guys wearing dresses as a fear of the feminine. Some of us just don't have the desire to do that.

Or the legs.

EDIT: I totally forgot to mention it, but I've been sick and using my free time to play through the new Fire Emblem that was a point of conversation earlier. Started with Conquest, and I'm at Chapter 24 (which should be near-ish the end). So far the writing hasn't been terrible, with it actually managing to be pretty good toward the middle, but the beginning and now the end are kind of sketchy. The support conversations can be pretty bad, too, and someone was way too fond of using caps lock to indicate EMPHASIS and it gets REALLY OLD after awhile. REALLY. Still, the translation more or less adheres to the tone of previous handheld games in the series, so it's not as bad as I expected going in. Could definitely be better, could definitely be worse.

As someone from Spain I can confirm that.

The "@" (that's pronounced as "arroba") is a symbol, it doesn't have a sound like a letter so it's not possible to say the word "amig@".

The "amig@" is used mostly in the web when you want to write something that contains "amigos y amigas" and don't want to write both words to avoid repeating words or in SMS (or at least is where I've seen most, I'm not a big social media user).

But in formal language (writing some document) or day to day basis you don't use that.

Actually, "Indian" comes from "Indigenous" and originally just refered to a native so technically it was correct no matter where they landed.

Wrong.

The Longest Journey
Oni
BloodRayne
BloosRayne 2
Syberia
Syberia II
Secret Files (Geheimakte Tunguska)
Secret Files 2
Aquaria
Mirror's Edge
Mirror's Edge 2
Knytt Underground
Beyond Good & Evil
Beyond Good & Evil 2
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Charlie's Angels
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.²
Jill of the Jungle
Urban Chaos
Drakan: Order of the Flame
Drakan: The Ancients' Gates
Ōkami
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve II
Sailor Moon
Shantae
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider II
Tomb Raider III
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
Tomb Raider Chronicles
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
Tomb Raider: Legend
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Tomb Raider 2013
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Portal
Portal 2
Lollipop Chainsaw
Super Princess Peach
Bayonetta
Nancy Drew
No One Lives Forever: The Operative
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way
Metroid
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Prime
Metroid: Zero Mission
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Metroid Prime Hunters
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Metroid: Other M

Do I really need to go on?

I can't play a male character there, SEXISM!
They have to cater to my needs and I can't relate to people of the opposite sex thanks to my totally crippled empathy, dammit! /sarcasm

Seriously, stories where everything about the protagonist is interchangable are pointless and it's mostly sandboxing instead of storytelling.
Make you're own game with a gender neutral alien potato and I may play it if it's any good but I wouldn't expect a captivating storyline.

If people cannot control their emotions, they will try to control the behaviour of others indeed.

Have you heard of a game called Undertale? The main character of that game is gender neutral, and that game is apparently quite popular.

Also, "you're" = "you are", so you basically wrote "Make you are own game...", which is not gramatically correct. (You probably meant "your".)

I'm not really sure what this has to do with the Gamergate scandal...

HEIL GRAMMAR dt heil

yeah, I've heard Undertale is popular even among GG (to the dismay of the anti-GG set) It's on my wishlist now that it's here

gamers like good games. and it looks to be a good one
I think dt was trying to show that female main characters were under-represented in media (likely to highlight the "sexism" in the industry).

I heard about it from you not long ago and it's on my radar since I've looked it up afterwards. I hope that it gets a Linux port soon. Does it work well under WINE?

Sorry, I usually stay away from this mistake, it must have slipped through this time.
What I wanted to say is, that I'm glad about games with new perspectives and just don't like nagging about the art of other people who usually had a plan of their own and have put a lot of work into it.

At some point I stopped nagging about the absence of folk sessions in my town and helped creating and promoting a new one and after a few years now it is slowly becoming successful although most people don't care for traditional hand-made European dancing music, much less in sessions where they are supposed to add something and not just consume. I could have gone to the average techno parties and rock sessions and tell them how limited and stupid they are, but I didn't.
I learned to play good enough to fill gaps of silence and motivate others to play along, learned over 70 tunes by heart, filled an online repository with scores that I gathered and converted to .abc code, linked to videos for people that can't read scores, promoted the whole kaboodle at many occasions, etc...
Of course nagging for years and hoping others would change their ways would have been less work.

Do you people know this kind of spectators that stand on the edge of some playing field and go on about how terrible the team plays while they never play themselves? Or those people standing on the edge of a dance floor criticising or making fun of people but never dancing themselves? They are called douche bags, don't do anything constructive and nobody likes them. You don't want to be a douche bag.


Edit: Ok, I just got to know that Undertale does seem to work flawlessly via WINE and a Linux port is planned, but why the frack is it regionally priced? :(

Just a heads up. There are rumours that the localization of Bravely Secondly has been butchered.

http://archive.is/wOeyU

I like the translation here better
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/48ed9t/opinion_japan_womens_institute_of_contemporary/d0iypiz

Because it translate more fully while the article you link miss this

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Note that while both listed works contain sexual violence toward men, sexual violence is not a problem limited to only women, and therefore should not be treated as exclusively a women's rights issue.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I even run the original Japanese statement over Google translator to confirm.
http://wmc-jpn.blogspot.sg/2016/02/blog-post.html?spref=tw
Correct me if I am wrong YaTEdiGo, or someone who know Japanese.

Also contrast that to Western country that jailed and labeled a man as a sex offender for watching anime pron that does not even use real people as actors.
http://www.otakuusamagazine.com/LatestNews/News1/Canadian-Man-Jailed-For-Watching-Anime-Porn-5920.aspx