Kerbal diversity

[Vexillar]

As one who fits the "male, pale and stale" trope, I'd just like to take a moment to tip my hat to the devs for making our little green friends much more variable.

It not only enhances their representation of us (hoo-mans) in the game, but spices the emotional connection with their characters.

[Klapaucius]

I just watched Scott Manley's recent KSP2 video and he played a bit of the tutorial. Gotta say, I found the voice pretty grating. But more to the point, I wonder if all tutorials will be the same voice? Will there be a diversity of accents for the English-language version of the tutorials?  Or a diversity of ages?  I hope it is not all American accents (and I say this as an American). I really hope we get some English and Irish and Indian and Australian and New Zealand.

[Dman979]

Hey all, I've removed some posts from this thread. Please remember not to attack your fellow forum members. Also, if you see something that might go against our rules please report it instead of responding. It makes our lives easier, and it makes your life easier too. Thank you!

[lajoswinkler]

I still remember the great female Kerbal wars back when Valentina Kerman has been announced. It was not pretty.

[Jarin]

19 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

I still remember the great female Kerbal wars back when Valentina Kerman has been announced. It was not pretty.

As an old gamer, I'm always disappointed in just how regressive some of my fellow olds can be. (not remotely specific to the KSP community; it's honestly far better here than a lot of places)

Edited February 23, 2023 by Jarin

[Bej Kerman]

8 minutes ago, Jarin said:

As an old gamer, I'm always disappointed in just how regressive some of my fellow olds can be. (not remotely specific to the KSP community; it's honestly far better here than a lot of places)

This forum being what it is, I didn't anticipate the pushback I saw against non-binary kerbals. Fortunately, as far as I can tell as of the Insiders event, kerbals don't have a defined gender like in KSP 1. I didn't see any strict "male" and "female" labels, so I'm hoping Intercept runs with this.

[lajoswinkler]

21 minutes ago, Jarin said:

As an old gamer, I'm always disappointed in just how regressive some of my fellow olds can be. (not remotely specific to the KSP community; it's honestly far better here than a lot of places)

I wouldn't say it was a problem with old gamers, but almost exclusively young, male, misogynistic gamers. My god, the amount of mental acrobatics they spewed trying to prevent Valentina Kerman from becoming a part of the game was astonishing.

One has to acknowledge, though, that their concentration among KSP players is a lot smaller than among players of typical popular games today which are based on murder, stealing and destruction. Average KSP player is a quite different animal.

[Jarin]

19 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

I wouldn't say it was a problem with old gamers, but almost exclusively young, male, misogynistic gamers

Split the difference and say that this flavor of idiocy probably knows no age.

[Bej Kerman]

22 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

I wouldn't say it was a problem with old gamers, but almost exclusively young, male, misogynistic gamers. My god, the amount of mental acrobatics they spewed trying to prevent Valentina Kerman from becoming a part of the game was astonishing.

One has to acknowledge, though, that their concentration among KSP players is a lot smaller than among players of typical popular games today which are based on murder, stealing and destruction. Average KSP player is a quite different animal.

Just now, Jarin said:

Split the difference and say that this flavor of idiocy probably knows no age.

Again, I'm really glad to see this kind of behaviour being called out on and discussed publicly. I hope the moderators don't cull this discussion, it's important to think about. Really, thank you

[Klapaucius]

27 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

I wouldn't say it was a problem with old gamers, but almost exclusively young, male, misogynistic gamers. My god, the amount of mental acrobatics they spewed trying to prevent Valentina Kerman from becoming a part of the game was astonishing.

One has to acknowledge, though, that their concentration among KSP players is a lot smaller than among players of typical popular games today which are based on murder, stealing and destruction. Average KSP player is a quite different animal.

Crazy, since Valentina is named after a real person.  I'm guessing alot of these folks do not know their aerospace history very well.

[J.Random]

I don't think I ever saw any backlash against diversity itself, unless dishonest representation of historical figures was involved, or the result looked like statistical anomaly. Pretentious virtue signaling, on the other hand, gets (well deserved) backlash every time. Speaking of which, I'm all out of internet brownie points, so you people will have to share. As for "young male misogynists" and Val, IIRC, the only backlash was against slapping "female" tag on a square-jawed kerbal and calling it a day. To which Squad reciprocated and made adjustments, and we've got nice, beautiful feminine kerbals. Now, the second backlash was much stronger (but less numerous) and it was not from "misogynists". Because "oh no, they made kerbals binary". (damn, I feel old when doing these history lessons)

[lajoswinkler]

1 hour ago, J.Random said:

IIRC, the only backlash was against slapping "female" tag on a square-jawed kerbal and calling it a day.

You're recalling incorrectly.

There was a vocal and relentless minority that was rabidly against any idea of female Kerbals. Its usual argument was: "Kerbals are sexless and let them stay like that", which seems like a call for equality, but it was completely ignoring the fact the characters look male and have male names. It was easy to see through this veil and notice it was really a pathetic attempt at excluding females. After one forumer drew his idea of a female Kerbal, and developers presented Valentina, this minority abruptly went silent and we never heard from them again. Good riddance.

To be clear, I would be ok with completely sexless and genderless Kerbals if they were initially like that, but they were not, so there was no point in refusing any changes.

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, J.Random said:

As for "young male misogynists" and Val, IIRC, the only backlash was against slapping "female" tag on a square-jawed kerbal and calling it a day.

The problem with women who have jawlines being............?

4 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

To be clear, I would be ok with completely sexless and genderless Kerbals if they were initially like that, but they were not, so there was no point in refusing any changes.

I've not seen gender labels so far yet, and quite a few of the kerbals we've seen have been androgynous.

[K^2]

26 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I've not seen gender labels so far yet, and quite a few of the kerbals we've seen have been androgynous.

The names and hairstyles are clearly gendered. Yes, you can say that we're just applying human gender stereotypes to species that might not share them, but this is about representation at the end of the day. If you have anthropomorphic characters, players will associate themselves with these characters, and that means you have to think about what labels people will assign to these characters. If you only have masc names and hairstyles, you are going to alienate players who look for fem representation.

On that note, having better non-binary representation in games would be great. I'm not really sure how much they can do with Kerbals, and honestly, an NB artists and designers would be better people to ask, but even going as far as adding some names that are clearly meant to be ungendered would be a good move.

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, K^2 said:

The names and hairstyles are clearly gendered. Yes, you can say that we're just applying human gender stereotypes to species that might not share them, but this is about representation at the end of the day. If you have anthropomorphic characters, players will associate themselves with these characters, and that means you have to think about what labels people will assign to these characters.

I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. Yeah, you've got clearly feminine and masculine styles, but we've also seen androgynous ones, at least they look androgynous to me.

3 minutes ago, K^2 said:

If you only have masc names and hairstyles, you are going to alienate players who look for fem representation.

Indeed

18 minutes ago, K^2 said:

On that note, having better non-binary representation in games would be great. I'm not really sure how much they can do with Kerbals, and honestly, an NB artists and designers would be better people to ask, but even going as far as adding some names that are clearly meant to be ungendered would be a good move.

I've said it a million times before (even in this thread IIRC) but I've not seen gender labels like in KSP 1, from the footage I've seen so far. I won't mind kerbals having no gender

[K^2]

1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

Yeah, you've got clearly feminine and masculine styles, but we've also seen androgynous ones, at least they look androgynous to me.

That might work. But again, I'm definitely not the right person to ask.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

I've not seen gender labels so far yet, and quite a few of the kerbals we've seen have been androgynous.

And honestly this was a really simple and obvious solution. Do... kerbals... even have gender? Is this remotely important to gameplay?  No. The sort of simplified nature of KSP1 was entirely due to the lack of time and resources to make individually distinct kerbals and so at first exactly one and then two models were made. Now that we do have a wide range of looks there's just no real need or want for the game to assign gender roles. They can just be Kerbals and players themselves can see what they want in them and come up with whatever stories they like. Problem solved.

As far as the shades of skin goes? LIke... why are we being weird about this? It took way less time to give different tones of green than it did to add glasses. It just makes them more distinct. Its fine. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Drakenred65]

3 hours ago, J.Random said:

 Because "oh no, they made kerbals binary". (damn, I feel old when doing these history lessons)

Just wait untill you meet a person who identifies as trinary. And yes my neighbor identifies as trinary. It's confusing.

[K^2]

41 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

They can just be Kerbals and players themselves can see what they want in them and come up with whatever stories they like. Problem solved.

We still have names. Whether you like it or not, people are going to assign genders based on gendered names, which there are a lot of in the original, and it looks like the KSP2 is continuing with that. And if you have Kerbals with masculine-sounding names, it's not players' fault for feeling left out if they want female representation in the game. It's still on the developers to do right.

This could have been side-stepped with fictitious names that are intentionally generated to be gender-ambiguous, but the ship sailed on that one. Kerbals are very anthropomorphic, have gender-coded appearance features and traditionally gendered human names. We might as well assume the Kerbals themselves are gendered for the purposes of diversity discussion.

[Ryaja]

I feel(personally) that KSP2 should have gendered kerbals, I feel this would add more humanity to them all because it could be more specific and give you more of an attachment.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Ryaja
I'm fine if they aren't gendered as long as it isn't pushed super hard, KSP2 is first and foremost a space game it shouldn't be used for political statements.

[linuxgurugamer]

19 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

I feel(personally) that KSP2 should have gendered kerbals, I feel this would add more humanity to them all because it could be more specific and give you more of an attachment.

Kerbals aren't human

[Ryaja]

26 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Kerbals aren't human

then why are they adding race?

[Zombie_Striker]

25 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Kerbals aren't human

True, but that doesn't mean kerbals can't have personality.

[regex]

11 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

then why are they adding race?

Are you talking about skin tone? "Race" is a purely human social construct. Kerbals can certainly have different colors without human baggage.

[Ryaja]

8 minutes ago, regex said:

Are you talking about skin tone? "Race" is a purely human social construct. Kerbals can certainly have different colors without human baggage.

I was referring to the biological definition "a group within a species that is distinguishable (as morphologically, genetically, or behaviorally) from others of the same species"

Edited February 24, 2023 by Ryaja
I didn't mean to be rude, sorry if it came off like that