Four things for pro KGV*

[3mon]

I just dont get all the fuss with this subject... There's like no reason at all to tackle the gender equality thing in a videogame. For instance, i didnt give a single damn there was no male playable character in say Tomb Raider. Didnt even think about it for a second, and neither did i with KSP until i saw it posted here in the forums. And it seems to be such a big thing for some of you... it just blows my mind

[Benjpalmer]

...Okay, is their ANY reason for adding female Kerbals other than "Gender equality"?

[mdatspace]

I just dont get all the fuss with this subject... There's like no reason at all to tackle the gender equality thing in a videogame. For instance, i didnt give a single damn there was no male playable character in say Tomb Raider. Didnt even think about it for a second, and neither did i with KSP until i saw it posted here in the forums. And it seems to be such a big thing for some of you... it just blows my mind

I agree. It is a non-issue. This game is not about gender. It is about rocketry.

[Sirrobert]

Men can get time off from work to be with a child after he/she is born. It is part of The FMLA(Family Medical Leave Act) in the US and most other developed countries have the similar rules. FMLA is un-paid leave but many companies provide for paid maternity/paternity leave in addition to the required unpaid FMLA leave.

Last year one of my employees took about ten days off to be with his daughter after she was born and I will take at least a week off when my daughter is born later this month.

So can the woman. So that's still more days of that the woman gets than the man.

It's not relavent though. The example is about how man and woman are DIFFERENT. So equality does not work, because you can't treat different things like they are the same

[_Aramchek_]

Careful guys, apparently this debate is close to being about "politics" and you may get warnings/infractions even if you dont say anything about politics.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

Personally I refere to my Kerbal as he. Did you know that most people refere to something without a gender as 'he'?

If I don't know what gender a dog I meet on the streets is, I call it a he. That's how I call my Kerbals. He in the gender neutral sense.

It is reserved for non living objects

Don't you think this speaks to intrinsic biases?

I wonder why we even care. This game is about rockets, not kerbals or gender.

I wouldn't care at all if this were a niche game that nobody knew about. But for you guys who think this doesn't matter at all, or can't understand why someone might feel this is a problem, I ask you to consider this -

-If a TV show came out today about a fictional, but realistic space program that only featured men, do you think it'd be a problem?

-If a move came out with a similar premise and only featured men, do you think that's a problem?

-Do you think cultural exposure shapes gender roles?

If you answer yes to any of these things, I'd ask that you consider why these fundamental issues can't be extended to KSP. While it's true KSP is about rocket, the implicit message sent by KSP right now (which is early in development of course, something I think we're all reasonable towards) is that everyone involved in rocket stuff is men. And unfortunately this is actually true in real life as well, because for the past 100 years we haven't done a great job encouraging women to go into science and engineering. This isn't something where men and women have big biological discrepancies like athletics, I don't think any of us will argue that women are incapable of doing STEM. So then the question, should we strive to ensure girls growing up should be able to feel they can do anything in these fields that they want? This kind of feeling is nurtured through many influences, culture and environment being a major factor. And games are a big part of our culture. Coupled with the fact that KSP is striving to have a place in schools (for good reason), having lady kerbals can only be a good thing. At the expense of game polish in other areas? Probably not. But this isn't a zero-sum game, we can have all these things, and I don't see why this personally offends so many people.

For those of you who think kerbals right now are completely ungendered, I think you're being willfully blind a bit. Come on. Just, come on.

[ElJugador]

...Okay, is their ANY reason for adding female Kerbals other than "Gender equality"?

It would add nice variety to crew appearance.

[Deadpangod3]

Just code something to give a Kerbal a 50 percent chance of being female, and if it ends up being female, just code it to use a head texture that has what looks like hair going to the side of its head or something!

Problem solved

[Sirrobert]

Don't you think this speaks to intrinsic biases?

It speaks of language. That's how language works. If you want to change that, this is not the location to do it

I wouldn't care at all if this were a niche game that nobody knew about. But for you guys who think this doesn't matter at all, or can't understand why someone might feel this is a problem, I ask you to consider this -

-If a TV show came out today about a fictional, but realistic space program that only featured men, do you think it'd be a problem?

-If a move came out with a similar premise and only featured men, do you think that's a problem?

-Do you think cultural exposure shapes gender roles?

If you answer yes to any of these things, I'd ask that you consider why these fundamental issues can't be extended to KSP. While it's true KSP is about rocket, the implicit message sent by KSP right now (which is early in development of course, something I think we're all reasonable towards) is that everyone involved in rocket stuff is men. And unfortunately this is actually true in real life as well, because for the past 100 years we haven't done a great job encouraging women to go into science and engineering. This isn't something where men and women have big biological discrepancies like athletics, I don't think any of us will argue that women are incapable of doing STEM. So then the question, should we strive to ensure girls growing up should be able to feel they can do anything in these fields that they want? This kind of feeling is nurtured through many influences, culture and environment being a major factor. And games are a big part of our culture. Coupled with the fact that KSP is striving to have a place in schools (for good reason), having lady kerbals can only be a good thing. At the expense of game polish in other areas? Probably not. But this isn't a zero-sum game, we can have all these things, and I don't see why this personally offends so many people.

For those of you who think kerbals right now are completely ungendered, I think you're being willfully blind a bit. Come on. Just, come on.

No, I don't think any of those are a problem. If the person that tells the story deceides that his story only has male, than that is his right to deceide.

And in the same way are there storys that contain only females, and I give just as much of a crap about that

And I still don't see how that is relavent to KSP. NOWHERE does it say anything about genders of the Kerbals. That's just what some people choise to believe. And those people are somehow the exact same people that think it's a problem

Edited December 19, 2013 by Sirrobert

[I_Killed_Jeb]

It speaks of language. That's how language works. If you want to change that, this is not the location to do it

Language is actually a primary domain through which gender biases are perpetrated, there's decades of research into this

[Firov]

Clearly, as seen from the Kerbalizer, there are already female Kerbals. So where are they in the context of the Kerbal Space Program? I'll tell you.

They're the one's running the show, pulling all the strings from the background.

You see, Kerbals actually live in a matriarchal society. A female controlled empire that has existed for a thousand years, and will persist for another thousand to come. They rule their male thralls with an iron fist. The females, drunk with their own power and wealth, aren't foolish enough to stand within a hundred miles of the Kerbal Space Center. Instead, they send their male slaves to do the dangerous work of constructing and launching rockets, and at the slightest provocation the females will punish their male servants by putting them on the next one way trip to Minmus so they can die alone and afraid in the empty vacuum of space, their silent screams serving as a warning to any male who might decide to rise up against their female overlords.

What you need to realize is that the Kerbal space program is really only to entertain the females, who enjoy watching an entire army of male astronauts, engineers, and scientists dance and sing at their slightest whim. Throwing their lives away in explosion after explosion, simply because the females wish it so.

Alternatively, Kerbals are fungal in nature and there aren't actually any genders.

Believe whatever makes you feel better. As for the 8 year old who refused to play the game because there are no visible females, just tell her that story and I guarantee she'll love it. Heck, maybe even throw in a tidbit about the females being too busy watching the males kill one another in blood sports for the female's entertainment to show up at the space center. She won't be able to put the game down after that.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

No, I don't think any of those are a problem. If the person that tells the story deceides that his story only has male, than that is his right to deceide.

And in the same way are there storys that contain only females, and I give just as much of a crap about that

And I still don't see how that is relavent to KSP. NOWHERE does it say anything about genders of the Kerbals. That's just what some people choise to believe. And those people are somehow the exact same people that think it's a problem

Then there's literally nothing I can say to you.

[Great General Kaboomsky]

[i would think any and all of these things would be cool to add, though I would have to say that the fact that Kerbals are unrecognizable to us, racially, probably alleviates some of the need to add multiple races, at least on the front that we should want players to be able to identify with their Kerbal avatars.

(I DO, however, especially like the idea of Ker-hippies protesting my use of mysterious goo and dumping of dozens of NTRs and NERVA engines down on their heads!)

The "these aren't humans" arguments that went on above are completely unmoving to me. This is a game created for humans, by humans and is intended to be viewed through a human reference frame, and would be a total failure if it weren't relatable to humans (heck, the reason I’m playing KSP instead of Orbiter IS the little green guys.)

To say that we shouldn't make at least some minimal effort to be inclusive of all humans, and give women an in-game avatar to identify with because we, the community of a game, have decided that our masculine-featured avatars with names that follow the common English structures for masculine names within said game are genderless, is... well.. just silly, to me.

I don’t really care WHEN it happens, but sometime before the official release, I would really prefer to see female Kerbals added. The (as I understand it) relatively small effort of adding a Kerbal head with a recognizably female jaw and hair-line really must be outweighed by the possibility of expanding the number of people who identify with the little green people that we love.

I might be biased though... my wife keeps telling me the reason that my rockets are crashing is that there isn't a girl-Kerbal to keep Jeb, Bob and Bill in line.

[Deadweasel]

[TABLE=width: 800]

<tbody>[TR]

[TD]For the love of... *smh*

If it's really that big a deal (and all should bear in mind that the subject of female kerbals is something that is SPECIFICALLY called-out as being barred from suggestion), just go install the TextureReplacer mod already.

Now those among the "girl power" crowd can have what they're clamoring for without trying to badger the devs into something they have already said they're not going to consider.[/TD]

[/TR]

</tbody>[/TABLE]

[jcraft]

Just looks like the difference between old Elvis and young Elvis. Nothing feminine to me about either of them.

They really do not have to look femine - they simply just need to look different.

...Okay, is their ANY reason for adding female Kerbals other than "Gender equality"?

Same reason as for adding bearded kerbals or kerbals with different skin tones - to make game characters more diverse in terms of how they look. And frankly, that is the only reason I care about addition of kerbal females to the game - the whole "gender equality" issue in this case doesn't mean anything to me.

Edited December 19, 2013 by jcraft

[Sirrobert]

You know what's a fun fact about 'we should encourage females to go into science'?

There are fields with more females, and there are fields with more males. Most of those fields have those distributions because FEMALES ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SOME FIELDS. And males are not interested in other fields

[3mon]

Personally, if we are going to be like that, i would be more concerned with the cheap and seemingly expendable lifes of the poor Kerbals exploding all around and flying without a reasonable minimal of security, than with gender equality... I mean, what KIND of example is that anyway

[Sirrobert]

Then there's literally nothing I can say to you.

The existance of token females is a bad thing.

There are plenty of groups of highly competent males that for some reason MUST have a female in them. No competend females are available? Don't care, we MUST HAVE A FEMALE. Just get one that's rubbish

[Sirrobert]

[TABLE=width: 800]

<tbody>[TR]

[TD]For the love of... *smh*

If it's really that big a deal (and all should bear in mind that the subject of female kerbals is something that is SPECIFICALLY called-out as being barred from suggestion), just go install the TextureReplacer mod already.

http://i.imgur.com/ZljAQdy.jpg

Now those among the "girl power" crowd can have what they're clamoring for without trying to badger the devs into something they have already said they're not going to consider.[/TD]

[/TR]

</tbody>[/TABLE]

Is that supposed to be a female? I can't tell if it is supposed to have a gender

[British_Rover]

It is about marketing.

You know what my four year old son called Kerbal Space Program the first time he saw it?

The Man Game. He still calls it that some time because he has a hard time pronouncing Kerbal.

Why? Cause it is obvious to him at four that the little Kerbals are men. He is a boy's boy. He likes trucks and planes that he can crash into each other. Sometimes he asks to watch a boy movie though I am still not sure exactly what that means to him. Sometimes he will ask to watch a girl movie. Again I am not exactly sure how he differentiates between the two but he does somehow and it makes sense to him.

Having characters that girls can better relate to is better for marketing. Having female looking Kerbals, and I will say those sketches look great and are appropriate, would help with marketing.

Is it something that should be implemented right now full stop? No, but it is something that should be planned on and implemented in the not to distant future. You will get more sales if a product is marketable to both boys, girls and men women. The more relatable a product the more you will sell of it. Obviously not all products will be marketable to all people and some products are deliberately marketed to certain groups. KSP should have as broad a marketing push as possible.

[Sirrobert]

It is about marketing.

You know what my four year old son called Kerbal Space Program the first time he saw it?

The Man Game. He still calls it that some time because he has a hard time pronouncing Kerbal.

Why? Cause it is obvious to him at four that the little Kerbals are men. He is a boy's boy. He likes trucks and planes that he can crash into each other. Sometimes he asks to watch a boy movie though I am still not sure exactly what that means to him. Sometimes he will ask to watch a girl movie. Again I am not exactly sure how he differentiates between the two but he does somehow and it makes sense to him.

Having characters that girls can better relate to is better for marketing. Having female looking Kerbals, and I will say those sketches look great and are appropriate, would help with marketing.

Is it something that should be implemented right now full stop? No, but it is something that should be planned on and implemented in the not to distant future. You will get more sales if a product is marketable to both boys, girls and men women. The more relatable a product the more you will sell of it. Obviously not all products will be marketable to all people and some products are deliberately marketed to certain groups. KSP should have as broad a marketing push as possible.

He's a male. He will project his own ego on things he can not directly identify. That's what humans do

[Great General Kaboomsky]

What about kerbals of color? Other than green that is. How about gay kerbals? I'm part Native American and would really like to see some sort of "native" or indigenous kerbals. Speaking of indigenous kerbals, lets not forget kerbals of different ethnic groups. I can't imagine that kerbal are all one race. What about kid kerbals? We don't see any tours of KSC being given to school aged kerbals. Maybe that would be a nice touch to add atmosphere to KSC. Which means we could also have hippie protesters and OWS type protesters marching picket lines and blocking traffic. What ever happen to kerbal dog or monkey equivalents? It would be nice to do missions that send dogs and monkeys into space first.

I would think any and all of these things would be cool to add, though I would have to say that the fact that Kerbals are unrecognizable to us, racially, probably alleviates some of the need to add multiple races, at least on the front that we should want players to be able to identify with their Kerbal avatars.

(I DO, however, LOVE the idea of Ker-hippies protesting my use of mysterious goo and dumping of dozens of NTRs and NERVA engines down on their heads!)

The "these aren't humans" arguments are completely unmoving to me. This is a game created for humans, by humans and is intended to be viewed through a human reference frame, and would be a total failure if it weren't relatable to humans (heck, the reason I’m playing KSP instead of Orbiter IS the little green guys.)

To say that we shouldn't make at least some minimal effort to be inclusive of all humans, and give women an in-game avatar to identify with because we, the community of a game, have decided that our masculine-featured avatars with names that follow the common English structures for masculine names within said game are genderless, is... well.. just silly, to me, and the argument that there is currently no gender in the game when the Kerbals bare recognizable masculine features both in name and image seems a little lame.

I don’t really care WHEN it happens, but sometime before the official release, I would really prefer to see female Kerbals added. The (as I understand it) relatively small effort of adding a Kerbal head with a recognizably female jaw and hair-line really must be outweighed by the possibility of expanding the number of people who identify with the little green people that we love. Even if its just ONE more human, really... and knowing how my two young neices operate, my odds of getting them to play KSP would about double if they could tell that their Kerbal was a "girl."

Is this a huge deal? No. Ultimatley, the game IS about rocketry rather than social dynamics, but it does no harm and maybe a fair bit of good to add some female Kerbals. (I'm especially a fan of the plain-featured Kerb-etts that the OP suggested. Let's not just color Barbie green, please...)

I may be biased though… my wife keeps telling me that the reason my rockets keep crashing when hers don’t is that I don’t have a woman-Kerbal to keep Jeb, Bob and Bill in line.

[Deadweasel]

Is that supposed to be a female? I can't tell if it is supposed to have a gender

Well, since the entire discussion of female kerbals is based primarily around conflict with an individual's interpretation of the game and its underlying story, then I would have to say that image is almost poetic in how it leaves the interpretation up to the player.

Anyway, the POINT is that it's quite possible just make your own skins for the kerbal heads, and there are packs out there already that include more "feminine" hair styles, and yes, even lipstick for those who believe females of an alien race would perceive the concept of beauty the exact same way humans do. It doesn't really need to be said that that's an extremely narrow (and honestly ignorant) viewpoint in my opinion, but there it is, for those who desire it.

[um3k]

At first I was indifferent to female Kerbals, but Sirrobert, _Aramchek_, and sanoj688's arguments have swayed my opinion. I now strongly support the addition of female Kerbals, implemented similarly to the image in the OP.

In addition, I find it interesting that some of the most vocal people in this thread are the ones who claim not to care about the subject matter. For reference, people who truly don't care about a thing generally do not attempt to win an argument about said thing.

Edited December 19, 2013 by um3k

[Sirrobert]

At first I was indifferent to female Kerbals, but Sirrobert, _Aramchek_, and sanoj688's arguments have swayed my opinion. I now strongly support the addition of female Kerbals, implemented similarly to the image in the OP.

Huh, someone changed his opinion just to disagree with me. I didn't know I had that power