I recently watched a video about an unpolled change in old-school runescape that added the ability to change your character’s pronouns, as well as have beards as female characters, and the community’s reaction to it. Sadly, most of the runescape playerbase is pretty right leaning, with the expected reactions of “this is dumb why would they add this,” “why add this unpolled,” and “this is a medieval fantasy game not a dating simulator”
I wonder what people’s thoughts on this are, as if you are a paying customer for a game, and the game has been promised to only add poll-approved changes, is this unreasonable and why? The game is “old-school runescape,” the players are notoriously resistant to change, and are paying to keep the game as they like it. Can you pay to keep your uninclusive game uninclusive? I don’t have a great argument against it past “this literally doesn’t matter” which won’t convince people who believe it does.
Companies don’t just think about paying customers, they also consider future paying customers. Making an accepting environment can broaden appeal and, at least to me, it makes sense why they would make this change. Don’t want a beard? Don’t choose a beard. Simple.