I like this idea a lot, but I really dislike the facial hair without a female-typical counterpart. The facial hair clearly implicates gender in our society, especially since the villagers are clearly a representation of humans... And it would be really unfair to have a male-typical visual cue without a female counterpart.
The problem with that is that villagers are currently genderless. And while I'd be all for lady villagers in addition to male villagers, villagers are a breedable mob in MC and that leads to issues when you add in the idea of gender.
Do you allow all genders to spawn offspring with eachother?
Do you only allow "female" villagers to spawn babies?
Do you only allow hetero villager pairs to spawn babies?
If you make gender relevant for baby villager spawning, how does that effect coding? What about gameplay? Is there a potion to swap villager genders involved? Are villager genders always set from the moment they spawn a certain way?
No matter which way you make it happen, you're making a potentially controversial and definitive political statement. And frankly, I just don't want minecraft to be dabbling in politics, regardless of how I feel about the subjects involved. Even if they made a choice that supported my social viewpoints I would be unhappy with it. Genderless is completely neutral and I like it that way.
I'd like to see villager diversity without gender-relevant visuals.
I like this idea a lot, but I really dislike the facial hair without a female-typical counterpart. The facial hair clearly implicates gender in our society, especially since the villagers are clearly a representation of humans... And it would be really unfair to have a male-typical visual cue without a female counterpart.
The problem with that is that villagers are currently genderless. And while I'd be all for lady villagers in addition to male villagers, villagers are a breedable mob in MC and that leads to issues when you add in the idea of gender.
Do you allow all genders to spawn offspring with eachother?
Do you only allow "female" villagers to spawn babies?
Do you only allow hetero villager pairs to spawn babies?
If you make gender relevant for baby villager spawning, how does that effect coding? What about gameplay? Is there a potion to swap villager genders involved? Are villager genders always set from the moment they spawn a certain way?
No matter which way you make it happen, you're making a potentially controversial and definitive political statement. And frankly, I just don't want minecraft to be dabbling in politics, regardless of how I feel about the subjects involved. Even if they made a choice that supported my social viewpoints I would be unhappy with it. Genderless is completely neutral and I like it that way.
I'd like to see villager diversity without gender-relevant visuals.
So, mostly support.
I don't see any implications of gender in the current selection of hairstyles, unless you're of the mindset that facial hair is a male-only thing--which is in and of itself a stereotype. The hairstyles should have no effect on the villagers being hermaphrodites, and the idea of gender-relevant visuals is just silly. Especially when you think about cows in Minecraft, that have both horns and udders without making any political statements.
I saw the cow thing earlier. This is an argument that is lacking in education, unfortunately. All cows have horns. Some cattle are dehorned at birth with a hot iron or they are born "polled", a genetic variation. Horns are non gendered on cows and goats. It varies on sheep (such as Dorper sheep being hornless). All mammals regardless of gender have nipples as well.
An udder makes sense as to raise young as a mammal, even a non-gendered one, you'd need an udder. Why can't we milk sheep and wolves and whatnot? Well, they probably didn't want to bother with making milk from every animal for gameplay reasons (goodbye a unique and dynamic resource) and even if they did, it wouldn't make much sense for a sheep to produce as much milk as a cow... Did you know you can milk rabbits? I did it once IRL for a baby bunny that wasn't getting enough food, but there's sure not a lot there. A whole milk-update-package seems bit silly. So the cows is not a solid argument IMO.
Also, cows are not humans. Gender relevant visuals are absolutely important in a conversation about diversity with a mob representing humans and I am not the only one who thinks so. Men and women produce different average levels of body hair. Large, prominent mustaches are difficult for women to produce and only a small (tiny) percentage of women can produce them the way men can. Many of these women have a significant testosterone imbalance that can also lead to other health issues, they are much older women (with fewer female hormones) while Villagers are ageless, or they have a unique chromosome structure. Similarly, men who can't grow ANY facial hair are equally rare. To say that notable levels of facial hair is non-gendered ignores biology and medicine. It also ignores societal norms which, even if we'd like them to be different and less stereotyped, they're NOT. Even if you would not see it as a politically gendered statement, the majority probably do or the stereotype wouldn't exist at all.
Additionally, I feel like the villager is already leaning towards a male stereotype with it's design, having a thicker body, a thick unibrow and a bald head (all traits based heavily around hormones in humans which are extremely gender relevant from a biological standpoint). Additionally supporting this, while there are modpacks MAKING lady villagers, the typical "villager" design is 99% of the time depicted as male in fan works. When I googled "minecraft villager" in images, I found ONE potential depiction as a female and it was comedic at best. I think making the design more typically male would be a mistake. It would feel even less genderless than it does right now. Right now it makes a passing attempt at genderless and not quite human despite the flaws.
The whole rest of this idea is great. But to ignore the fact that sexual dimorphism exists in humans and to try to incorporate typically (social or biological) male features into a human based mob without also giving female traits is exclusionary. Minecraft wants to include women, hence the Alex base. But players do not breed in game. To create gendered villagers which breed still makes a political statement one way or another.
To put gender relevant (commonly societal or biological) visuals on villagers in Minecraft is a political statement, especially when you start to talk about a breedable mob because even just leaving the mechanics as-is (any villager can breed with any villager) makes a statement in SOME form. Minecraft is under Microsoft and I doubt they want to rock to boat with anything that's so hotly contested right now. And while it's up to them, ultimately, I would rather not see that debate brought into MC gameplay. And that's just my personal opinion. You are welcome to disagree with that, and hope that MC does take diverse (or not) political stances as you would prefer. But I would rather them stay down the path of true neutral in this case.
If the facial hair were removed it would have my full support. Right now it feels exclusionary. I would prefer to see facial hair removed then female-relevant traits added. But if it must have one it should have both. Let's not make the villagers look exclusively masculine.
Actually, now that I have slept on it, a good solution might be more prominent hair styles... Since head hair styles is exclusively a social construct with far fewer roots in biology, adding in a few hair styles (long, short, medium, puffy) would be a solid visual cue for identification with no gendering concepts applied save for people with deeply rooted social perceptions. It would be just as easy as putting in facial hair I think and avoids the issue entirely. It may even lean the villagers towards looking a teensy bit more genderless in general.
It'd make texture pack support a lot harder, but at the same time this would be really great for, like you said, keeping the same "brand" of villagers distinct enough to tell apart at a glance. Plus it never hurts to have more NPC diversity when you're making custom NPCs in adventure maps. That way "BILLY THE ULTRA TESTIFICATE PRIEST QUEST NPC YOU MUST RESCUE" can look more visually distinct from Tim, the regular testificate priest who lives down the street.
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This would get my support if it was implemented in a biologically sound way. So I'm hoping the code of the game would consider "alleles" for each gene so as to develop phenotype and genotype, and implement heterozygous, homozygous, dominant and recessive gene coding, so as to make it scientifically accurate.
This would get my support if it was implemented in a biologically sound way. So I'm hoping the code of the game would consider "alleles" for each gene so as to develop phenotype and genotype, and implement heterozygous, homozygous, dominant and recessive gene coding, so as to make it scientifically accurate.
Actually, that probably wouldn't be too hard. If you treated each gene as a simple dominant, recessive or partial dominant gene it'd be pretty easy I'd think. I don't know much about coding but genes come in pairs so for instance eye genes would be fairly easy to determine. As it stands you'd be coding two points of data for each villager instead of one. If Villager A has black eyes and villager B has blue, then you randomly select between blue and black. If you are basing it on simple punnet squares you'd just code the same thing but twice. If you express it as dominance, each gene would have one of three states (dom, partial, recessive) assigned to the color and whichever one has the higher state comes out visually (as the phenotype). The other one is just an unrendered point of data. If they're the same then it randomizes. So if villager A's eyes are Blue(partial)Blue(partial) and Villager B's eyes are Black(dom)Purple(Recessive) then the computer randomly selects Blue from one villager and either black or purple from the other. If it selects black, the villager has black eyes and carries blue. If it selects purple, the villager has blue eyes carrying purple. You'd only get Purple in this example if the computer could (and does) select Purple from both parents. This would make certain eye colors very rare and give something to pursue (like an all purple-eyed village or something) so it's a kinda cool idea.
Giving the two-gene system would double the amount of data, which I don't know how relevant that is for such a simple data point. Making each gene then dom/partial/recessive I am not sure but since it's coded into the color data for the eyes, hair, etc. itself and it's a simple tree for how to determine which color to display, I imagine it would not be much more than it would be normally. So it would work nearly exactly like horse/rabbit/cat heredity works now but coded twice instead.
I saw the cow thing earlier. This is an argument that is lacking in education, unfortunately. All cows have horns. Some cattle are dehorned at birth with a hot iron or they are born "polled", a genetic variation. Horns are non gendered on cows and goats. It varies on sheep (such as Dorper sheep being hornless). All mammals regardless of gender have nipples as well.
An udder makes sense as to raise young as a mammal, even a non-gendered one, you'd need an udder. Why can't we milk sheep and wolves and whatnot? Well, they probably didn't want to bother with making milk from every animal for gameplay reasons (goodbye a unique and dynamic resource) and even if they did, it wouldn't make much sense for a sheep to produce as much milk as a cow... Did you know you can milk rabbits? I did it once IRL for a baby bunny that wasn't getting enough food, but there's sure not a lot there. A whole milk-update-package seems bit silly. So the cows is not a solid argument IMO.
Also, cows are not humans. Gender relevant visuals are absolutely important in a conversation about diversity with a mob representing humans and I am not the only one who thinks so. Men and women produce different average levels of body hair. Large, prominent mustaches are difficult for women to produce and only a small (tiny) percentage of women can produce them the way men can. Many of these women have a significant testosterone imbalance that can also lead to other health issues, they are much older women (with fewer female hormones) while Villagers are ageless, or they have a unique chromosome structure. Similarly, men who can't grow ANY facial hair are equally rare. To say that notable levels of facial hair is non-gendered ignores biology and medicine. It also ignores societal norms which, even if we'd like them to be different and less stereotyped, they're NOT. Even if you would not see it as a politically gendered statement, the majority probably do or the stereotype wouldn't exist at all.
Additionally, I feel like the villager is already leaning towards a male stereotype with it's design, having a thicker body, a thick unibrow and a bald head (all traits based heavily around hormones in humans which are extremely gender relevant from a biological standpoint). Additionally supporting this, while there are modpacks MAKING lady villagers, the typical "villager" design is 99% of the time depicted as male in fan works. When I googled "minecraft villager" in images, I found ONE potential depiction as a female and it was comedic at best. I think making the design more typically male would be a mistake. It would feel even less genderless than it does right now. Right now it makes a passing attempt at genderless and not quite human despite the flaws.
The whole rest of this idea is great. But to ignore the fact that sexual dimorphism exists in humans and to try to incorporate typically (social or biological) male features into a human based mob without also giving female traits is exclusionary. Minecraft wants to include women, hence the Alex base. But players do not breed in game. To create gendered villagers which breed still makes a political statement one way or another.
To put gender relevant (commonly societal or biological) visuals on villagers in Minecraft is a political statement, especially when you start to talk about a breedable mob because even just leaving the mechanics as-is (any villager can breed with any villager) makes a statement in SOME form. Minecraft is under Microsoft and I doubt they want to rock to boat with anything that's so hotly contested right now. And while it's up to them, ultimately, I would rather not see that debate brought into MC gameplay. And that's just my personal opinion. You are welcome to disagree with that, and hope that MC does take diverse (or not) political stances as you would prefer. But I would rather them stay down the path of true neutral in this case.
If the facial hair were removed it would have my full support. Right now it feels exclusionary. I would prefer to see facial hair removed then female-relevant traits added. But if it must have one it should have both. Let's not make the villagers look exclusively masculine.
Jesus, they have unibrows and bald heads, how are they not seen as men? Unless you're Anita Sarkeesian, I don't think this will trigger anyone.
A God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. - Jonathan Edwards
"Jesus, they have unibrows and bald heads, how are they not seen as men? Unless you're Anita Sarkeesian, I don't think this will trigger anyone."
I kind of agree with you, I usually think of them all as male but right now you could at least AGRUE that they're genderless humanoids and just all kinda look that way because they're not actually humans and if you choose to stick a name tag on one and call it "Sally" it wouldn't be that misplaced... When you start adding more gender-relevant visuals it gets rid of any chance of being seen as genderless. It's an all male society, which is a little annoying as-is from an equality/representation standpoint (It's really not about being "triggered" which is such a dumb concept IMO. It just gets old being a girl and seeing most things depicted as male, not like raving bite your head off "triggered" mad, but low key annoyance of "christ! why's it always gotta be boys? Where the girls at?" and feels refreshing to be represented which is what equality is about), but then it's also an all boy-love baby making society and there's no argument to be made otherwise and you drop into politics. I'm hardly a die-hard feminist but I just dislike the idea of trying to turn something arguably genderless in a game without gendered mobs into something that's clearly masculine. I would also be against making them distinctly feminine, but that would require a more dramatic series of changes. I feel like with the current design one more drop in the "sterotypically male" bucket and there's no chance of them being ever viewed as female or genderless.
Thank you! Have a and some
Can you please give us a link?
If you like threads about mobs, then my threads are mainly about that: http://www.minecraftforum.net/members/AGmantheAG/threads
Support, this is a really nice idea, and would fit in with what they're currently trying to do with the game (make it more realistic)
Question though, would Zombie Villagers look the same when they're zombified? Or would they keep their unique look?
absolute support!
I like this idea a lot, but I really dislike the facial hair without a female-typical counterpart. The facial hair clearly implicates gender in our society, especially since the villagers are clearly a representation of humans... And it would be really unfair to have a male-typical visual cue without a female counterpart.
The problem with that is that villagers are currently genderless. And while I'd be all for lady villagers in addition to male villagers, villagers are a breedable mob in MC and that leads to issues when you add in the idea of gender.
Do you allow all genders to spawn offspring with eachother?
Do you only allow "female" villagers to spawn babies?
Do you only allow hetero villager pairs to spawn babies?
If you make gender relevant for baby villager spawning, how does that effect coding? What about gameplay? Is there a potion to swap villager genders involved? Are villager genders always set from the moment they spawn a certain way?
No matter which way you make it happen, you're making a potentially controversial and definitive political statement. And frankly, I just don't want minecraft to be dabbling in politics, regardless of how I feel about the subjects involved. Even if they made a choice that supported my social viewpoints I would be unhappy with it. Genderless is completely neutral and I like it that way.
I'd like to see villager diversity without gender-relevant visuals.
So, mostly support.
I don't see any implications of gender in the current selection of hairstyles, unless you're of the mindset that facial hair is a male-only thing--which is in and of itself a stereotype. The hairstyles should have no effect on the villagers being hermaphrodites, and the idea of gender-relevant visuals is just silly. Especially when you think about cows in Minecraft, that have both horns and udders without making any political statements.
I support this, this, and this. And this now. Also this.
I saw the cow thing earlier. This is an argument that is lacking in education, unfortunately. All cows have horns. Some cattle are dehorned at birth with a hot iron or they are born "polled", a genetic variation. Horns are non gendered on cows and goats. It varies on sheep (such as Dorper sheep being hornless). All mammals regardless of gender have nipples as well.
An udder makes sense as to raise young as a mammal, even a non-gendered one, you'd need an udder. Why can't we milk sheep and wolves and whatnot? Well, they probably didn't want to bother with making milk from every animal for gameplay reasons (goodbye a unique and dynamic resource) and even if they did, it wouldn't make much sense for a sheep to produce as much milk as a cow... Did you know you can milk rabbits? I did it once IRL for a baby bunny that wasn't getting enough food, but there's sure not a lot there. A whole milk-update-package seems bit silly. So the cows is not a solid argument IMO.
Also, cows are not humans. Gender relevant visuals are absolutely important in a conversation about diversity with a mob representing humans and I am not the only one who thinks so. Men and women produce different average levels of body hair. Large, prominent mustaches are difficult for women to produce and only a small (tiny) percentage of women can produce them the way men can. Many of these women have a significant testosterone imbalance that can also lead to other health issues, they are much older women (with fewer female hormones) while Villagers are ageless, or they have a unique chromosome structure. Similarly, men who can't grow ANY facial hair are equally rare. To say that notable levels of facial hair is non-gendered ignores biology and medicine. It also ignores societal norms which, even if we'd like them to be different and less stereotyped, they're NOT. Even if you would not see it as a politically gendered statement, the majority probably do or the stereotype wouldn't exist at all.
Additionally, I feel like the villager is already leaning towards a male stereotype with it's design, having a thicker body, a thick unibrow and a bald head (all traits based heavily around hormones in humans which are extremely gender relevant from a biological standpoint). Additionally supporting this, while there are modpacks MAKING lady villagers, the typical "villager" design is 99% of the time depicted as male in fan works. When I googled "minecraft villager" in images, I found ONE potential depiction as a female and it was comedic at best. I think making the design more typically male would be a mistake. It would feel even less genderless than it does right now. Right now it makes a passing attempt at genderless and not quite human despite the flaws.
The whole rest of this idea is great. But to ignore the fact that sexual dimorphism exists in humans and to try to incorporate typically (social or biological) male features into a human based mob without also giving female traits is exclusionary. Minecraft wants to include women, hence the Alex base. But players do not breed in game. To create gendered villagers which breed still makes a political statement one way or another.
To put gender relevant (commonly societal or biological) visuals on villagers in Minecraft is a political statement, especially when you start to talk about a breedable mob because even just leaving the mechanics as-is (any villager can breed with any villager) makes a statement in SOME form. Minecraft is under Microsoft and I doubt they want to rock to boat with anything that's so hotly contested right now. And while it's up to them, ultimately, I would rather not see that debate brought into MC gameplay. And that's just my personal opinion. You are welcome to disagree with that, and hope that MC does take diverse (or not) political stances as you would prefer. But I would rather them stay down the path of true neutral in this case.
If the facial hair were removed it would have my full support. Right now it feels exclusionary. I would prefer to see facial hair removed then female-relevant traits added. But if it must have one it should have both. Let's not make the villagers look exclusively masculine.
Actually, now that I have slept on it, a good solution might be more prominent hair styles... Since head hair styles is exclusively a social construct with far fewer roots in biology, adding in a few hair styles (long, short, medium, puffy) would be a solid visual cue for identification with no gendering concepts applied save for people with deeply rooted social perceptions. It would be just as easy as putting in facial hair I think and avoids the issue entirely. It may even lean the villagers towards looking a teensy bit more genderless in general.
It'd make texture pack support a lot harder, but at the same time this would be really great for, like you said, keeping the same "brand" of villagers distinct enough to tell apart at a glance. Plus it never hurts to have more NPC diversity when you're making custom NPCs in adventure maps. That way "BILLY THE ULTRA TESTIFICATE PRIEST QUEST NPC YOU MUST RESCUE" can look more visually distinct from Tim, the regular testificate priest who lives down the street.
This would get my support if it was implemented in a biologically sound way. So I'm hoping the code of the game would consider "alleles" for each gene so as to develop phenotype and genotype, and implement heterozygous, homozygous, dominant and recessive gene coding, so as to make it scientifically accurate.
Ah... Is that possible within Minecraft's code?
I support this, this, and this. And this now. Also this.
Ahhhhhh I've wanted something like this for so long!
As much support as possible
We shall break down the gates of Mojang
I love this idea! A village update deserves a villager update!
Support!
Actually, that probably wouldn't be too hard. If you treated each gene as a simple dominant, recessive or partial dominant gene it'd be pretty easy I'd think. I don't know much about coding but genes come in pairs so for instance eye genes would be fairly easy to determine. As it stands you'd be coding two points of data for each villager instead of one. If Villager A has black eyes and villager B has blue, then you randomly select between blue and black. If you are basing it on simple punnet squares you'd just code the same thing but twice. If you express it as dominance, each gene would have one of three states (dom, partial, recessive) assigned to the color and whichever one has the higher state comes out visually (as the phenotype). The other one is just an unrendered point of data. If they're the same then it randomizes. So if villager A's eyes are Blue(partial)Blue(partial) and Villager B's eyes are Black(dom)Purple(Recessive) then the computer randomly selects Blue from one villager and either black or purple from the other. If it selects black, the villager has black eyes and carries blue. If it selects purple, the villager has blue eyes carrying purple. You'd only get Purple in this example if the computer could (and does) select Purple from both parents. This would make certain eye colors very rare and give something to pursue (like an all purple-eyed village or something) so it's a kinda cool idea.
Giving the two-gene system would double the amount of data, which I don't know how relevant that is for such a simple data point. Making each gene then dom/partial/recessive I am not sure but since it's coded into the color data for the eyes, hair, etc. itself and it's a simple tree for how to determine which color to display, I imagine it would not be much more than it would be normally. So it would work nearly exactly like horse/rabbit/cat heredity works now but coded twice instead.
This is the #1 best idea i have ever found in suggestions
Support!
Jesus, they have unibrows and bald heads, how are they not seen as men? Unless you're Anita Sarkeesian, I don't think this will trigger anyone.
A God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. - Jonathan Edwards
Could you please provide a link to the villager textures you used?
I made the textures- there is no link.
"Jesus, they have unibrows and bald heads, how are they not seen as men? Unless you're Anita Sarkeesian, I don't think this will trigger anyone."
I kind of agree with you, I usually think of them all as male but right now you could at least AGRUE that they're genderless humanoids and just all kinda look that way because they're not actually humans and if you choose to stick a name tag on one and call it "Sally" it wouldn't be that misplaced... When you start adding more gender-relevant visuals it gets rid of any chance of being seen as genderless. It's an all male society, which is a little annoying as-is from an equality/representation standpoint (It's really not about being "triggered" which is such a dumb concept IMO. It just gets old being a girl and seeing most things depicted as male, not like raving bite your head off "triggered" mad, but low key annoyance of "christ! why's it always gotta be boys? Where the girls at?" and feels refreshing to be represented which is what equality is about), but then it's also an all boy-love baby making society and there's no argument to be made otherwise and you drop into politics. I'm hardly a die-hard feminist but I just dislike the idea of trying to turn something arguably genderless in a game without gendered mobs into something that's clearly masculine. I would also be against making them distinctly feminine, but that would require a more dramatic series of changes. I feel like with the current design one more drop in the "sterotypically male" bucket and there's no chance of them being ever viewed as female or genderless.