{"id":42113,"date":"2012-07-30T14:04:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T12:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=42113"},"modified":"2012-07-30T14:06:53","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T12:06:53","slug":"minecraft-characters-are-all-gender-neutral-says-dev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/42113-minecraft-characters-are-all-gender-neutral-says-dev","title":{"rendered":"Minecraft characters are all gender-neutral, says dev"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Minecraft&#8217;s mascot &#8220;Steve&#8221; might have a boy&#8217;s name and a goatee, but that doesn&#8217;t mean Steve is a man. In fact, Steve isn&#8217;t supposed to be a man or a woman, Steve is just Steve, according to game developer Markus &#8220;Notch&#8221; Persson.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it wasn\u2019t for the fact that the default Minecraft character is referred to as &#8216;Minecraft Guy&#8217; and that I once jokingly answered &#8216;Steve?&#8217; when asked what his name was, Minecraft would be a game where gender isn\u2019t a gameplay element,&#8221; Notch explained in a blog post about gender in the blockbuster game.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The human model is intended to represent a Human Being. Not a male Human Being or a female Human Being, but simply a Human Being. The blocky shape gives it a bit of a traditional masculine look, but adding a separate female mesh would just make it worse by having one specific model for female Human Beings and male ones. That would force players to make a decisions about gender in a game where gender doesn\u2019t even exist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As Notch pointed out, all animals in the game exhibit traits of both genders.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Cows have horns and udders (even if I\u2019ve later learned that there are some cows where the females do have horns), and the chicken\/duck\/whatevers have heads that look like roosters, but still lay eggs,&#8221; he said. &#8220;For breeding, any animal can breed with any other animal of the same species.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not necessarily that Notch wanted to make some kind of profound statement about gender or anything like that, though, but rather that the game&#8217;s simplistic graphics restricted character design. On the other hand, that means that with only a single gender represented, everybody in the game is gay.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Also, as a fun side fact, it means every character and animal in Minecraft is homosexual because there\u2019s only one gender to choose from,&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;Take THAT, homophobes!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So there&#8217;s sexual tension between my sheep? Minecraft just got about 100 times more interesting.<\/p>\n<h5>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/notch.tumblr.com\/post\/28188312756\/gender-in-minecraft\" target=\"_blank\">The Word of Notch<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/kotaku.com\/5929849\/minecraft-guy-isnt-supposed-to-be-a-guyor-a-girl-says-games-creator\" target=\"_blank\">Kotaku<\/a>)<\/h5>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Related articles:<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/41759-patent-troll-sues-mojang-over-minecraft-security.html\">Patent troll sues Mojang over Minecraft security<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/40784-minecraft-xbox-dlc-revealed-update-in-the-works.html\">Minecraft Xbox DLC revealed, update in the works<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/40107-minecraft-troll-sends-police-to-moderators-house.html\">Minecraft troll sends police to moderator\u2019s house<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/39056-minecraft-xbox-360-edition-sells-2-million.html\">Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition sells 2 million<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/38537-minecraft-hits-6-million-sold-copies.html\">Minecraft hits 6 million sold copies<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Also, as a fun side fact, it means every character and animal in Minecraft is homosexual.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":25841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[5969,881,333,727],"class_list":["post-42113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-pc","tag-gender","tag-markus-persson","tag-minecraft","tag-notch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42126,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42113\/revisions\/42126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}