Here’s the thing upfront: I am writing this from an outsider’s perspective. Not from the perspective of someone who doesn’t enjoy or appreciate video games. But from the perspective of someone who is not affected by the additions of pronouns as a menu option in videogames.

So, here’s my quick take: They don’t affect me, but I’m glad they’re there. I think the conversation around them being forced on people or shoved down people’s throats is disengenous. It’s hard for me to say these new menu options force a viewpoint or an agenda on someone when the implementation is so small. It is usually one box, asking someone their character’s preferred pronouns, maybe body type, and maybe there’s more options when picking your voice line. The only time I’ve had a criticism around these options is one time I felt the option for pronouns was shown a bit late in the process for someone who would use it.

My thoughts around this come up because of the small narrative I’ve seen around Avowed, that it’s another “woke” game and should be avoided because of that. The game follows the standard template of picking your pronouns, selecting body type, and then you get a choice of masculine or feminine voice lines for your character. I suppose you also have to go through a ton of hair options as it gives you all hairstyles by default. But the game doesn’t teach you about pronouns, and there’s no large tooltip saying you need to understand what these additional options mean. Now, I want to stress that I’m sure a majority of people may not care about these options, and they just want a good RPG to play. But I wanted to think through how these options are implemented and why I appreciate that they exist, even though I have no use for them.

Like I said, most times, these are just drop-down menus you can breeze through when creating your character. Sure, you might be annoyed at all the hairstyles you need to go through, and if a game doesn’t have a great preview system, it might take you a while to create your character. But after you confirm all your options and you’re going through that intro cutscenes, all those choices are now interalized. I have yet to run into a game with this feature that has gameplay or dialogue around soldifying your choice. No character asks you your preferred pronouns, and you never have to correct anyone. At this point and time, it’s a line item on a character sheet. I also feel that dialogue may be moot for this feature as well because maybe developers lean towards gender neutral dialogue, so they have to record less. So all this is to say it’s one tiny option that is never brought up again. Same with your choice in skin tone or hairstyle. If we look at Avowed, the only real character creation option that plays into the game is if you pick to let your godlike features be addressed. So there’s a chance character will freak out that your face is just a piece of bark from a tree.

So, as it stands, pronouns do not actually change the gameplay or mechanics, and they don’t affect me personally, so why do I appreciate them as an option? Because it’s about letting people be themselves or create a fully realized character. When I create a character, I want it to look like me, so I’m going to tweak that skintone a bit to match my slightly darker skintone. There are people who don’t care and will use preset characters or all the default options. Also, there are also people who will create a character, and to get it look like them, they may have to change hairstyle and some facial features, but that’s it. I, personally, need more options to make my character look like me. The same goes for people who are not gender conforming. I have a certain level of privilege to gloss over those menu items since I picked a masculine body type, and it’s going to default to he/him pronouns. But like the example I used for skin tone, that’s not the same for everyone. So, it makes sense to include those additional options if you need them. It boils down to how you want to roleplay. I feel like some people have an internal storyline for their character that a game will never address through the main story, but players can address through their actions and roleplaying. That includes character creation, there’s a reason their character has those scars, tattos, and yes, pronouns.

These additional options of skin tone, hairstyle, pronouns, voice type, tattoos, and scars. They help people say, “This is my character, this is who they are completely.” If someone wants to create a 100% fictionalized character, the tools should let them do that. But if they want to inject some of themselves into that character, then even more so, they need to have all the options necessary to do that. It’s so odd that Avowed is getting such hate for this feature when Cyberpunk had way more in-depth tools where you could pick the type of genitals your character had. Dragon Age: Veilguard, I feel, had the same pushback as Avowed, and I will say that game had way more options. In Dragon Age, you could add scars for top surgery if that’s something you feel your character went through. But again, I’m glad those options exist so a person that can use them feels seen, they feel accepted. The one cynical thing I have to say is that I know some will say that the only reason developers add these features is to sell more games. I don’t know if that’s true, people that would use these features might appreciate that they exist. But that population has been underserved for so long that the cynic in me feels like they just expect to not have the options available to them, so it’s not a selling point, it’s a nice to have. It is only the ones that do not like these features that are attempting to speak with their wallets. I am glad to see that it is a very small population, and it appears those with negative feelings around this are not getting their way any time soon.

This reminds me of the dadification of games. This was a trend where games had you playing as a father figure, whether actual father or in a pseudo father-like role. That came about, I feel, because those that got into the gaming industry became dads, and that changed the stories they told. They gained a new perspective, and that made its way into games. This is just the same thing it’s a new perspective, and we’re implementing it a best we can. I know some developers stand to gain some ground by pushing back against pronouns in games and stating they’ll deliver the same narrative with the same types of characters. But these options exist, and I’m glad they do. I don’t need them, some people do, so I’ll gladly deal with the extra seconds it takes to go through these new menu options, because they mean something to someone, so they mean something to me.