Shroud will have gender equality, right?

This bothers me, too. I've hoped for a long time that the fantasy genre as well as the gaming hobby would transcend its roots of "burly hero saves meek damsel in distress" wish fulfilment for teenage boys, but it seems like for as long as the D&D authors of old write books, it just won't happen. I would've believed that this is something RG would've opposed himself, as the Ultima series had quite a few jabs the stereotypical presentation of women in fantasy settings.

 

You have to remember that not only are we seeing a military-based campaign, but an Obsidian Empire campaign. These are the bad guys; it makes some sort of sense that they are sexist, racist bigots. What I would be more concerned about is who is opposing them. There are seven representatives of the Council of Might, and only two are women. We havn't seen their military forces at all. Lets see what they are made up of before getting up in arms, so to speak.

 

I'm upset by the marginalization of people who are transgendered. Shame.

sent from the future using my Coleco Adam

 

Just so long as there is gelatinous cube equality as well!

 

I always considered all of Richard Garriott's work to fit gender equality. The companions had a nice mix of men and women throughout the Ultima games. Each were fascinating in their own way. The worlds he created had neat men and women of all kinds of types that added interesting lore and content as well as NPCs.... remember, what we have atm is just pre-alpha... we dont even have all the NPCs that will be in these villages/towns/etc.

 

I get the OP's point, but:
- A precise 50-50 split would be quite unrealistic. Anywhere you go, you will likely find either more men or more women, not an exact 50-50 split.
- Even if you had more women than men, that would not mean that there is no discrimination (e.g. one man ruling over a population of a thousand submitted slave women).

Our world's population currently has about a 1:1 sex ratio, but that does not mean that everywhere you go you will find exactly as meny men as women.

Look at this, for example:
- Applicants to the Human Sciences course: 117 females, 38 males.
- Applicants to the Computer Science course: 23 females, 123 males.


TL;DR: Sex equality should NOT be in the numbers!

 

We ABSOLUTELY will have gender, ethnicity and any other forms of nominal social equality!
Any temporary bias, is purely temporary, and caused only by the tiny number of models we built first, and will quickly be expanded.
Apologies for any implication of that initial set, we will rectify as soon as possible.

By the way, our companies past and present: Origin, Destination and Port - ALL pride themselves on a policy of openness and inclusion at all levels.

Thanks!
- Richard Garriott

 

Phew ! I was worried ....

 

I never had any doubt. Always a joy to see you hanging out here in the forums though and interacting with us.

 

I don't think RG has ever given us reason to worry in the past about this sort of thing.

 

Amen to that...

 

lol

 

Numbers are just easy to point to. They're a proxy for how many important women there are, and whether there are good and interesting "rolemodels" of a sort for different genders. Looking at named characters, I think, is a pretty good proxy - that's the barest minimum of character development, and what we really want are a large number of realistic, well-developed, and varied characters. If everyone in the book/game is a white, male soldier, there's a large portion of the population that isn't going to have anyone they can relate to very much. But a good portion of developed women, of different races, in a variety of professions? That not only makes things more interesting, increases the diversity of the world, but also makes it more attractive to more of the population.

We can also ask how often the game/book passes the Bechdel test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test), but that test doesn't work so well for most games (I would be interested to hear how the book does, though! I haven't started reading yet).

 

Equal numbers of men, women, elves or bobbits shouldn't be the focus. A good game with a good story should.

 

This. In the end, it will probably only serve to hamper the telling of a good story if Portalarium becomes too concerned with running down a checklist of socio-political sensitivities to address.

That's not to say that the game should be biased in any particular way, or at all, but it is to say that its inclusivity should be an emergent property of an engaging story and a well-crafted world, rather than the story and the world being built around a strict requirement to be inclusive.

 

Equal rights, equal lefts.

 

It will never be equal no mater how you look at it

 

Quite Quite!

Where is the ability to wield my crafting tool in my Left Hand ?

Handedness Equality for all!

 

I agree there are some societal double standards. And any time you divide groups of humans, they will never be treated 100% equally. But we can strive towards that goal. That being said, if you post something that says all women need help when doing work, that comes across to me as really sexist. You're no longer commenting on how male/female behavior is viewed differently by society. You're saying women are incapable on the whole.

5 of the 7 examples in this post cover perversion. While there is some truth to these claims on a simplistic level, this is a frightenly gross oversimplification of how sex is treated in society and one-sided in its perspective.