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Non-Binary Kerbals and Gender Non-conforming Kerbals In KSP2?


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          Hello everyone, I start this thread hoping first and foremost it does not bring any controversy in the KSP community.  I start it to ask the developers  if - what I believe to believe to be a small percentage of the KSP player base and community - may get representation in the new game? I ask this in good heart, especially being one of those players myself because in the original game, I was able to create kerbals, but I couldn't create one to be like me. They had to be either male or female, but personally, it hurt because it made me feel that people like me won't get to one day explore the universe.

          Keep in mind, Sally Ride, the first American "woman" and third "woman" in space, did not personally follow the gender binary, she was in fact an important part of the LGBTQIA+ community after she admitted her secret on her deathbed. I bring this up, not to be political in any way, I believe politics should stay out of space as to preserve a better future for the younger space explorers and to ensure that it is a welcoming environment for explorers of all backgrounds. I've been playing KSP since I was little in fact, since before I understood I was a non-binary person. Which is why it's so important to understand that space isn't just about discovering what is out there to explore, but also discovering what is inside of your wonderful and kind brains to understand yourself.

          This is why I ask the devs to give me and many other players some representation, as we are all explorers. Not a single one of us could explore the entire universe alone, nor was it made for any singular person. It was made for the each of us to go out and explore together, learning new things and sharing it with others. Slowly, but surely expanding our wondrous horizons.

         A simple way that this may be added, is through a kerbal creator that allows us to customize each kerbal to our liking, whether it be a kerbal that follows the gender-binary or a kerbal with a little bit of everything from everywhere. This would also be great for multiplayer, because then every single beautiful person here will be able to greatly express themselves as well as have a little bit of them exploring a far of universe with near limitless bounties.

 

Sincerely,

BigStar Aerospace

 

Note - I ask that each one of you be understanding and unprejudiced, the KSP community is meant to be unpolitical and accepting. If you do not agree, then I apologize greatly, but I ask you politely to move on. I do not believe that this thread breaks any rules and if it does, I ask you to tell me so I may fix it myself.

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Is it the current year? Is this a company that filled an entire game expo segment with discussion of identity matters in employment?

There's essentially zero doubt there will be male shaped kerbal heads with female-typical hair and vise versa. They practically can't not do it because someone would immediately point out that the kerbal randomizer was discriminitory against xyz. I'm just upset the game will be "releasing" only (maybe) halfway done...

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21 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

If they were humans, sure. They're alien species. That's all I have to say about it.

Wouldnt them being aliens be an argument for them not conforming to "traditional" human norms instead of against? Anyways seems like a cute little detail and seems harmless. 

Edited by Strawberry
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@Basesixty Yes, but then again, it should be able to represent each individual explorer that sets out to either dominate the universe or collaboratively prospect each individual science point there is to be had.

@Strawberry I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! That is a better point than I had.

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29 minutes ago, BigStar Aerospace said:

          Hello everyone, I start this thread hoping first and foremost it does not bring any controversy in the KSP community.  I start it to ask the developers  if - what I believe to believe to be a small percentage of the KSP player base and community - may get representation in the new game? I ask this in good heart, especially being one of those players myself because in the original game, I was able to create kerbals, but I couldn't create one to be like me. They had to be either male or female, but personally, it hurt because it made me feel that people like me won't get to one day explore the universe.

          Keep in mind, Sally Ride, the first American "woman" and third "woman" in space, did not personally follow the gender binary, she was in fact an important part of the LGBTQIA+ community after she admitted her secret on her deathbed. I bring this up, not to be political in any way, I believe politics should stay out of space as to preserve a better future for the younger space explorers and to ensure that it is a welcoming environment for explorers of all backgrounds. I've been playing KSP since I was little in fact, since before I understood I was a non-binary person. Which is why it's so important to understand that space isn't just about discovering what is out there to explore, but also discovering what is inside of your wonderful and kind brains to understand yourself.

          This is why I ask the devs to give me and many other players some representation, as we are all explorers. Not a single one of us could explore the entire universe alone, nor was it made for any singular person. It was made for the each of us to go out and explore together, learning new things and sharing it with others. Slowly, but surely expanding our wondrous horizons.

         A simple way that this may be added, is through a kerbal creator that allows us to customize each kerbal to our liking, whether it be a kerbal that follows the gender-binary or a kerbal with a little bit of everything from everywhere. This would also be great for multiplayer, because then every single beautiful person here will be able to greatly express themselves as well as have a little bit of them exploring a far of universe with near limitless bounties.

 

Sincerely,

BigStar Aerospace

 

Note - I ask that each one of you be understanding and unprejudiced, the KSP community is meant to be unpolitical and accepting. If you do not agree, then I apologize greatly, but I ask you politely to move on. I do not believe that this thread breaks any rules and if it does, I ask you to tell me so I may fix it myself.

I feel you, I often deal with feeling left out because of who I am, though to me playing kerbal never bothered me since I always saw kerbals as "the little green frogs that go poof" rather then male or female, but with multiplayer being a thing now kerbals are basically your avatar and I totally get why that could cause some discomfort for people.

Edited by Minmus Taster
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11 minutes ago, BigStar Aerospace said:

@Basesixty Yes, but then again, it should be able to represent each individual explorer that sets out to either dominate the universe or collaboratively prospect each individual science point there is to be had.

There's basically zero chance that it's not going to happen. They have to make a randomizer and customizer anyway. How do you think identity-focused people would view not being able to make a round kerbal face with a beard or a square kerbal face with a ponytail? They'd take to twitter immediately and bring a throng of screen-typing approved accounts along with them to make their views known and the company would be forced to apologize profusely and rewrite about two minutes of code. They know this, hence they will have this feature at some point.

Only question is: will you accept it if this feature is not available on early access release if it's to be added later? Multiplayer appears to be last in the development pipeline, so you may not get it right away.

 

Edited by TLTay
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1 minute ago, TLTay said:

Only question is: will you accept it if this feature is not available on early access release if it's to be added later? 

 

Yes, I've tried my hand at game developing and honestly, it's not all that easy. I couldn't imagine designing a 3D physics based game with an unfathomable amount of 4D space. I can understand a simple feature being postponed until later editions to allow for sooner development of other less simple features. I'm not impatient, just asking for representation.

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I agree that this should be a space game first and foremost, so there's really no reason not to have a diverse population of kerbals, because it is just better socially, fits the optimistic tone of KSP, and it won't exactly impact the space flight aspects. 

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I think this is great, and you may be in luck! They've put quite a bit of work into creating a much more diversified set of styles and looks together that don't seem altogether necessarily bound to any specific gender norm. We've seen a number of looks both in early previews and animations that don't seem to require or lean to heavily on cis/normative binaries. To a large degree the looks of individual kerbals appear to be randomized, and I don't see any reason why male or female needs to be codified by the code itself. Hopefully Kerbals can be a kind of aspirational stand-in for all of us, that Kerbals are Kerbals just as People are People. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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2 minutes ago, Catto said:

can we not argue about gender identities? this is a space game, after all. All we need are astronauts.

I understand your viewpoint, but gender isn't as simple for me as it is for you. Just the fact that there are gender conforming  kerbals means that a majority people get a simple yet vital privilege of representation that others don't have. I believe it's a very simple thing that I'm asking for. Sims 4 came up with one of my favorite ways of allowing for the prime representation of my umbrella of people.

1 minute ago, Pthigrivi said:

Kerbals are Kerbals just as People are People. 

This is the wisest thing in this thread so far and I agree wholly.

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The more I think about it the more I like this idea, I understand the views that this is not that type of game and that KSP2 should stick to the rocketry side of things, but at the end of the day space is for everyone and I can't think of how something like this would hurt the game, I don't know how this would be implemented but I like the overall concept a lot.

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2 minutes ago, Minmus Taster said:

at the end of the day space is for everyone

Agreed, I personally work in a program at my high school called NASA HUNCH, that's High Schools United with NASA to create Hardware. I've gotten a few things that NASA personally plans to use in it's future exploration of the moon, which goes to show that there are people like me in the industry helping push us into the future giving even more of a reason to give us representation. hunchdesign.com

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There is never any harm in opening up the customizer full bore and letting people go ham with it, so definitely hope it is fully flexible. 
Most of the time people will use it to its extremes/limit just to be silly and have fun making weird looking characters but that clearly isn’t the only thing people will use it for. 

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3 minutes ago, BigStar Aerospace said:

Gender is not a political subject, it is a social subject, it is only political if you make it.

All of us know that is "Politically correct". 

Then people ask why there is no red Kerbel? And color is a social subject, but not a political subject.

We should keep this out. That's a people subject, not a Kerbals subject.

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