Hi.
For quite a long time the "Body Type" setting in games was annoying to me, a sign of weakness and cowardice from developers catering to "the modern audience". To the point I always pictured in my mind the devs of games implementing this looking at me and saying "I'm sorry for being a game-developer".
But on the last few years this annoyance evolved to complete disgust, also doubling down as a practical filter to avoid games - a redflag. Some people found my instance "too radical", but time and learning validated this filter more than I could ever expect. So let me show you why "such a little thing" is much worse than it looks at the surface.
The Six Paths of Dishonesty
Recently I watched a funny parody of Naruto Shippuden's Pain saga, in a court trial of Pain's actions - and the several types of crimes each of them would represent in real life. That's why I'm going for the six paths here.
Path of Pandering
This is what called my attention first, the virtue-signaling of changing a "problematic" term to massage the ego of the always-offended.
A shameless defense rises when this is pointed out: it's for inclusion! OH REALLY?! Then of course I can set the option to whatever I want, instead of just the old binary with new labels, can I? Can I?!
Of course not! This always has been just soulless virtue-signaling, not a real change for inclusion! Calling it "inclusive" is a spit on the face of the very people developers are pretending to care for.
Path of Dehumanization
The most common way to point how a corporation/government do not care at all about you is saying that "you are just a number", because this takes the humanity out of the person - reducing the individual to some non-relatable and often unimportant piece of data.
Taking one of the most basic characteristics from human beings, gender, and reducing it to a mere number (body type 1/2) or letter (body type A/B) is both dehumanizing the character and forcing a immersion-breaking label to the player, since no one uses this terminology in their daily lives.
This point reminds me of Nier Automata, where the YoRHa androids have alphanumeric codenames (like 2B and 9S) to reinforce how they are seen by their organization as disposable and mass-produced tools , instead of persons - Units of a Model, using the terms of the game. This logic works there exactly because making the characters less human is the point.
Path of Ignorance
Working in character art for some time in my first game, Hidden Waifus, eventually made me need to study human anatomy to draw my own Waifus onto the game. And there is a lot more than expected on this subject.
To draw good characters you gotta learn about how muscles and the skin over them are shaped on humans, where the real concept of anatomic Body Type (Somatotypes) enters the room: the standard proportions for harmonic bodies in humans, with 3 different standards of muscle/fat distribution:
- Ectomorph: lean build, thin body with low amount of muscles and fat
- Mesomorph: bodybuilder build, high amount of muscle with low fat
- Endomorph: 'stronk' build, great amount of both muscles and fat
Most people will be between two of the Body Type, but often closer to one specific.
It's already very different from the lazy label used in most games, but I intentionally left one detail for later: each of those types is varies depending on biological sex (masculine or feminine). Both transgender and intersex individuals typically have a mix of characteristics from the same Body Type in both sexes, bringing even more variation.
Noticed how all of this brings A LOT more possibilities than what is present in most games? This is why this re-labelling is intentionally ignorant, it hides something a lot greater behind internet idiocy.
Path of Corruption
Besides ignorant, using the wrong concept for a stupid - and honestly useless - re-labelling is also eroding the meaning of the term, corrupting the words. Body Type/Somatotype in anatomy is a very interesting concept, so full of diversity, so rich in details and combinations ... only to be reduced to a lazy and dehumanizing re-label of a term that was never the problem, while pretending to "be inclusive". Pure corruption.
To add insult to the injury, most games with a 'Body Type' as Gender setting - like Warframe - use the same anatomic body type for both genders! Your male/body-type-1 operator will be as much of an ectomorph as your female/body-type-2 operator, because this setting was a lie all along!
Other games, like Elden Ring and Palworld, use different settings (with different labels) to control the amount of muscles and fat on the character with the result varying by the 'Body Type' as Gender, reducing this setting to a toggle of "breasts or no breasts".
Path of Censorship
Runescape and Terraria. Do you know what those two games have in common? For decades they had character creators using gender (masculine or feminine) for customization, but received a update retroactively changing the setting to Body Type and removing the traditional gender icons - effectively censoring the games long after players bought them.
This was the breaking point that made stop turning a blind eye to this crap, remove any game with this setting from my Wishlist and never spend another dime on games on my library that implemented this after I started playing - like Warframe. At the moment I knew this is a tool to censorship, going against it however I can became a duty to me.
Path of Repetition
"A lie told a thousand times becomes a truth", both a phrase attributed to a horrible historic figure from the 20th century and the core methodology behind the censorious lie that is the 'Body Type' setting in games. Most people that can be reached by this lie, a synonym to sex/gender, won't ever know the original meaning of the term, making it true in their eyes - and the repetition gradually creates an artificial "truth" in the culture.
On top of that, the endless repetition also creates the coward excuse of "it is a standard of the industry" - the ultimate source of bad decisions in modern gaming.
At the end of the day, it's comically ironic that all the people lying to "create a truth" in the Gaming Industry swear to be against the before-mentioned historical figure and his nasty ideals, but faithfully apply his methods. If it isn't a practical application of Nietzsche's remark:
If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
Breaking the cycle of Dishonesty
As Naruto used talk-no-jutsu promised to "break the cycle of hatred" behind the Paths of Pain, this text is intended to plant a seed of change.
Exposing the lies
It's important to expose how there is no honest defense for this bullshit setting. It will always fall in one of the repeated lies: "it's inclusive", "it is just a small thing", "it doesn't really matter" - all exposed as false before in this text.
This reminds me of a religious quote I heard a lot in my life, "the greatest trick of the Devil was to convince people he does not exist". This can be neatly adapted to "the greatest trick of the Gaming Industry was to convince people that disonesty is progress".
Sharing good information
Not everyone is an artist drawing human characters to know the true concept of Body Type, so it's important to show what it really means - preferably with examples - and how much more it can bring to creative processes than the lazy re-labeling of the gaming industry.
You may not be an artist or aspire to be one, but I strongly recommend checking out the concept of anatomic Body Types and how they influnce the design of characters. This article on Clip Studio Tips is a great source to begin learning about it.
True Inclusion
Since the text started with false inclusion, do you know what would be really inclusive? Instead of just renaming the male-female binary, allowing anything as gender - so whatever the player wants to idenfy as is valid.
"And who does that"? Myself! In the truly inclusive Gender subsystem for the Gallery in Hidden Waifus, where one or more text fragments can be used for character genders - each receiving one of three icons for classification: female (red), other (green) and male (blue). Because if wouldn't be gaming without RGB. :P
Spinning this into a character creator is quite simple: allow the player to either select some pre-defined genders (like female, male or other), have a text-input for custom genders or both. This practical solution brings true inclusion to man, women, intersex, non-binary and anyone else, by giving more freedom to the players instead of lying to them.
Taking this out of my chest makes me little lighter, hopefully the information presented here was useful to you. Regardless if we agree or not, because at the end of the day diversity of ideas is vital.
See you on the next article - not another huge rant next time. :|