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Poll, Do/Should Kerbal Genders exist?

hawkinator

By hawkinator
in KSP1 Discussion

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Are there kerbal genders  

2 members have voted

  1. 1. Are there kerbal genders

    • There are/should be two kerbal genders, male and female, with female being merely unimplemented.
      128
    • Kerbals are asexual, and don't have genders/have one gender
      120
    • Kerbals have more than two genders (please discuss)
      7
    • other (please discuss)
      11

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Moon Goddess

Moon Goddess

Posted
Posted

Well Rage, I am one of the people constantly calling for female Kerbals. And I will openly tell you that if the choice came to prioritize female Kerbals over Resources, I would pick resources any day.

However, I do not have any reason to believe that implementing one will delay the other, and they have made it clear they are not working on resources right now or any time soon so it's not even up for discussion.

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Rage097

Rage097

Posted
Posted (edited)
Well Rage, I am one of the people constantly calling for female Kerbals. And I will openly tell you that if the choice came to prioritize female Kerbals over Resources, I would pick resources any day.

However, I do not have any reason to believe that implementing one will delay the other, and they have made it clear they are not working on resources right now or any time soon so it's not even up for discussion.

True.

And I have no problem with discussing them. It ends up with a few people starting to argue and it becomes no fun for anyone. :/ Just throwing that bit out there.

EDIT: found this posted by ampsterman...Seems highly relevant.

"While I do want female Kerbals, or at least more androgynous Kerbals, I think on the end it isn't our call.

Felipe (Harvester) is the one that invented these "little green men" when he was a child. It might be too much for us to ask him to change a dream of his for our benefit, no matter how justified, rational, or pasionate an argument to do otherwise might be."

Edited by Rage097
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stupid_chris

stupid_chris

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hey all

Sorry for the inconvenience, the forum migration and server problems have left us kinda confused, and after discussing things, we decided to leave this thread open, as long as the discussion stays healthy, without personal attacks, reaction images and a debate on feminism, as this would be proscribed by the forum rules.

We appreciate constructive criticism, so keep it to this, thanks :)

Edited by stupid_chris
"thengs"
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LaydeeDem

LaydeeDem

Posted
Posted

Wow the forums are confusing as hell after the migration. 3 threads about female Kerbals. Anyways, I personally think there should be not just female kerbals, but more Kerbals in general. I would love to see Kerbals getting a range of skintones ranging from dark green to yellow. Some random hair styles would be cool too.

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AntonioAJC

AntonioAJC

Posted
Posted

Seriously, I wouldn't care if female Kerbals would be added. I'm pretty much staying neutral in this kind of topic. Although, more Kerbal variety other than names would be cool.

kerbals.jpg

Wow, really nice one. I guess SQUAD would keep it simple with these kind of changes.

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lajoswinkler

lajoswinkler

Posted
Posted

Someone has mentioned color on one of the other threads.

The whole debate about the sex/gender came up because Kerbals resemble males. If they were androgynous, no one in their right mind would care. I certainly wouldn't care. Did anyone care about that little white square that was going from left to right in Pong? No.

If Kerbals were genderless (we have absolutely no info on sex, though) no one would have complaints. But they're obviously more male than androgynous, so that's an issue. So how to solve it? Turning them genderless would mean killing the image of Jebediah, Bob an Bill. It's out of the question if you ask me. It's something militant PC-dumbasses would do. Those three Kerbals define KSP. I'd like to keep it that way.

The next easiest solution would be to add non-sexualized female Kerbals, just like the ones in these sketches:

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/2296/comparisonm.jpg

http://www.spaceflightonline.net/images/kerbals.jpg

No badonkadonks and springy boobs, no stupid drag-appearance with makeup and sh*t. Plain simple subtle differences. Problem solved. No one gets hurt, everyone's happy.

Introducing color is just asking for trouble. Kerbals do not resemble any ethnic group on Earth, so why should we introduce it? It's completely unnecessary. It's creating an issue where there is none.

I'd even ignore the age and the physical size. Why implementing complications when it solves nothing? Finally we have a game that's all about the astronautics. Why ruining it?

Also consider that, with unified species trying to reach space, young people can also learn to leave aside physical differences. That's a nice thing. A bit of an investment in the future generations.

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LaydeeDem

LaydeeDem

Posted
Posted
Someone has mentioned color on one of the other threads.

The whole debate about the sex/gender came up because Kerbals resemble males. If they were androgynous, no one in their right mind would care. I certainly wouldn't care. Did anyone care about that little white square that was going from left to right in Pong? No.

If Kerbals were genderless (we have absolutely no info on sex, though) no one would have complaints. But they're obviously more male than androgynous, so that's an issue. So how to solve it? Turning them genderless would mean killing the image of Jebediah, Bob an Bill. It's out of the question if you ask me. It's something militant PC-dumbasses would do. Those three Kerbals define KSP. I'd like to keep it that way.

The next easiest solution would be to add non-sexualized female Kerbals, just like the ones in these sketches:

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/2296/comparisonm.jpg

http://www.spaceflightonline.net/images/kerbals.jpg

No badonkadonks and springy boobs, no stupid drag-appearance with makeup and sh*t. Plain simple subtle differences. Problem solved. No one gets hurt, everyone's happy.

Introducing color is just asking for trouble. Kerbals do not resemble any ethnic group on Earth, so why should we introduce it? It's completely unnecessary. It's creating an issue where there is none.

I'd even ignore the age and the physical size. Why implementing complications when it solves nothing? Finally we have a game that's all about the astronautics. Why ruining it?

Also consider that, with unified species trying to reach space, young people can also learn to leave aside physical differences. That's a nice thing. A bit of an investment in the future generations.

You make a good point, maybe I was going a bit far there. I just want at least SOME form of variety.

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DMagic

DMagic

Posted
Posted

My opinion is that we should have female Kerbals, but that this shouldn't be a development priority.

In fact, since these are aliens with arbitrary characteristics, we should have a whole range of customization options. Gender, color, physical size (within limits of course), age, etc... could all be options for choosing new Kerbalnauts. We already have the Kerbalizer; that can be improved upon and added to KSP itself.

I understand that some people couldn't care less about this, and that's fine, but others would really benefit from being able to customize our Kerbals. For a recent example of this just look at X-Com Enemy Unknown. That game allows for a range of customization options for your soldiers. This allows some people to really get into the game and care more about their squad; it can really make a difference in how you play and experience the game.

KSP, I believe, is perfectly suited to this style of interaction. For many of us the defining characteristic of the game is the ability to build crafts exactly the way we want them (and if you can't find a way to that you can find a mod or make one yourself that will fulfill your need). The ability to do something similar with the Kerbals is a great way to complement that.

And if you don't think people care about who their Kerbals are just take a look at some of the mission write-ups. There is a tremendous amount of creativity to be found in those forum threads, and increasing our ability to customize and interact with our crews can only add to that.

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comham

comham

Posted
Posted

Kerbals are comedy humans. Humans have two genders*. Kerbals right now are obviously male. Plenty of excellent artists have sketched what a female kerbal would look like and games in general have a problem with under-representation of women, and so does science. Given that this is such an excellent game for science education it would be a horribly missed opportunity if there were no femkerbals.

It would not take much work at all since it only needs an extra female kerbal head. Just use all the existing animations and textures otherwise.

*Well gender is a fluid concept but as far as putting character models into videogames goes, a male model and a female model is the absolute minimum

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Xellith

Xellith

Posted
Posted

Its a fictional alien race. The Kerbals resemble males because we are comparing them to our species. As a species that evolved via a completely different tree of life, comparing humans to Kerbals is just silly. Whatever Squad wants to do is what I am completely happy with. If they just want to give kerbals "eyelashes" and leave the rest of the physical appearance of Kerbals alone I will be entirely fine with that. Until we get an official response from Squad the Kerbals reproduce however you want in your sandbox universe.

I respect the artistic vision of the team and I look forward to seeing whatever it is that they produce.

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rowns

rowns

Posted
Posted
I do it the Greg Egan way:

Male: He, Him, His, Himself

Female: She, Her, Hers, Herself

Other: Ve, Ver, Vis, Verself

Then i do it on the kerbal way:

Male: he, Him, His, Himself

female: She, Her, Hers, Herself

Other: Ke, Ker, Kis, Kerself.

Dont know why i did it but anyway.

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rodion

rodion

Posted
Posted

Considering the game is a specifically Earth-analogue space agency simulator and that women have been piloting space missions for fifty years, and that some of the most accomplished of all astronauts are women, it seems more sensible and realistic to include female Kerbals than not. I think it's quite a conspicuous gap at the present time, completeness suggests the addition.

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lajoswinkler

lajoswinkler

Posted
Posted
Its a fictional alien race. The Kerbals resemble males because we are comparing them to our species. As a species that evolved via a completely different tree of life, comparing humans to Kerbals is just silly. Whatever Squad wants to do is what I am completely happy with. If they just want to give kerbals "eyelashes" and leave the rest of the physical appearance of Kerbals alone I will be entirely fine with that. Until we get an official response from Squad the Kerbals reproduce however you want in your sandbox universe.

I respect the artistic vision of the team and I look forward to seeing whatever it is that they produce.

Kerbals did not evolve. There's no Kerbal tree of life. They're fictional computer game characters developed by humans. They aren't real. They're imagined, artificial, therefore anything about them is manmade. We've got Kerbal analogues of Eugene Cernan, von Braun and Ferdowsi. The whole program is analogue of American space program. They aren't androgynous. They aren't stereotypically manly either, but they aren't androgynous.

If Kerbals are truly androgynous as many people say, why havn't there been any threads asking for male kerbals to be implemented?......

Burrrrrned. :)

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zxcvb55

zxcvb55

Posted
Posted
Can we not have a way to honor the Valentina's, Sally's, and Eilieen's as we have Wernher, Neil, and Gene?

This is the most important point in this thread, in my opinion. Sure, Kerbals can be asexual or genderless, that's fine, but then it shouldn't matter if you throw in a few female names too and apply them to the regular "male" looking kerbals. After all they have no gender or sex, so why would it matter? It would also just be as simple as adding a few names to the generation list (maybe a few rules too, I suppose), so I doubt it would take a significant amount of time away from working on the bigger aspects of the game.

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leax256

leax256

Posted
Posted
Asexual, a-racial. Its not an issue, why do people insist on making it one? Would you honestly prefer that dev time was spent on this and not the game or community projects?

why is it you assume we want this to take priority? All we want is for it to be added eventually. We are perfectly happy waiting for them to completly redo the kerbal generator/addition of the kerbaliser to get this feature.

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lazarus1024

lazarus1024

Posted
Posted

Meh. I am cool with asexual, but I do think "female" names should be added at some point. Seems odd if they are really asexual that only "masculine" names are being used.

I guess my feminist protective sense doesn't get twigged on this one. I view the Kerbals as asexual, not male only or male/female with no one seeing any female Kerbonauts. I just think it would be cool to see Florence Kermin and Clara Kermin and stuff come up in the rooster.

I personally feel that Kerbals are fungal. Which is why you have some many of them ready to ride a rocket. It blows up, no sweat. The Kerbal engineers swoop in, swap the wreckage for some left over spores and grow Jeb back up to speed and strap him in another rocket.

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Tw1

Tw1

Posted
Posted (edited)
The whole program is analogue of American space program.

While I agree with most things you've said, I disagree about this. Many elements are inspired by it, but each Kerbal space program is unique.

If I recall correctly, the Americans didn't just add more SRBs until they got high enough to hit the Moon. Yet that's how my first endeavour in this game went.

I do have several kerbals with girl sounding names, but the illusion is ruined slightly when you look closely at them. So I'd like there to be a female version with a slightly different face.

Edited by Tw1
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