I learned Ticket to Ride from others & never realized how gendered the rulebook is. (I'll put some examples in comments.) This response to a request to change it sounds to me like "we're fine with our massive gateway game calling players "he," until we feel like getting around to changing it." UGH
Hi everyone, I've been campaigning for gender-fair language in board game instructions with a few friends for about two months now, see here and here, and have had some great discussions here on BBG. ...
Unacceptable. How long would a find and replace take? I know that’s simplifying it but still…easily fixable if inclusion is a priority
If they feel compelled to stick with gendered language, could they at least change it to “she.” Just so somewhere there will be a fragile man who calls himself a patriot saying something like “the libs are comin for my little train game but they’ll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.”
BOARD GAME PUBLISHERS WHEN THEIR GAME SELLS 200K COPIES OR THEY GET A MILLION DOLLARS FOR THE KICKSTARTER PROJECT: yeah just get Greg to write the rulebook, he'll do it for a copy of the game
I have a rule not to review games on my blog whose rulebook is gendered. That means I won't cover quite a few older games, when "he" was the de facto standard, unless they've had a reprint and updated their rulebook. I've got a similar rule concerning other in-game text. I want diversity. 🙂👍
Ugh,especially since its pretty easy to use gender neutral language in English. Its harder (but still very possible)in German with its gendered nouns(which you have to avoid) and harder still in spanish, since the gender affects adjectives as well (Dont know french).But english should be done by now
The game descriptions on BGG are wiki pages that are directly user editable. I edit "he/him" descriptions to neutral ones as I come across them. It's something everyone can do right now. It's more welcoming, and a step towards inclusive being the norm.
Amazed to pick up a copy of Captain Sonar from the charity shop / thrift store today. There's a note in the rulebook that reads: "..Male pronouns are used for the sake of simplicity and readability. In each instance, the rules are meant to include players of any gender."
When something is so easy to fix and remains unchanged... The status quo stands for a reason 🙃
Example 1: It's never a good sign when you can't make it through the setup phase without calling the player HE.
