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More on Mizhena from Trent Oster

JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,758
in Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear
In addition to an interview to www.develop-online, Trent Oster has talked about Mizhena and surrounding issues to http://www.gamebug.com.au/.

1. What was Beamdog’s gut reaction to the overall negative reception of the trans character Mizhena ?

We’ve had three reactions to the character of Mizhena. The first reaction has been positive, which we’ve received a large volume of feedback from people who like the character and feel she is a welcome addition to the Baldur’s Gate series. The secondary reaction has been around the speed Mizhena goes from meeting you to revealing her gender.

While RPGs have a great history of people blurting out their stories / needs to players at the drop of a hat, some people felt Mizhena should be more protective of her gender identity and would keep it hidden. One interesting counter to that I’ve heard a lot recently is: In a fantasy world, with half-elves, half orcs and girdles of masculinity/femininity, maybe gender isn’t such a big deal and as such the character doesn’t feel she’s really risking anything by telling you the origin of her name.

On the other hand, Mizhena was written under guidelines to limit support characters to only three nodes of dialogue. This construct really forces the character to quickly get to the point on anything we want them to discuss or reveal. We’re going to revisit Mizhena and expand her lines to make her flow better and feel less forced in a future update. The third reaction has been one against the concept of the character due to her gender. There isn’t much you can say about that reaction to a character in a fictional setting.

2. Were you able to find actual constructive critique in the sea of hate speech that was given to you, and if so are you taking those criticisms on board when writing for trans characters in the future ?

I think the biggest lesson learned is we need to approach future transgendered characters with more intent and a bigger plan. Mizhena is a supporting character and was written as such. Going forward we’ll tackle any transgendered characters in greater detail and depth.

3. How do you think this incident has affected the broader industry as a whole when it comes to equal representation within games ?

I think this is one of a string of incidents and by itself has little effect. I think as part of a larger, industry-wide issue, it will increase the attention and the conversations around inclusion.

This controversy, as all the previous video game character controversy, will create more talks at conferences, more articles and more people who are engaged on the topic. As a while, I see it as an attention gathering moment which will feed the future conversation around inclusion within video games.

4. Did you and your team take offence with suggestions that Mizhena was just a form of “LGBT tokenism”, how do you think this perception can be changed overall when it comes to including LGBT characters for the sake of the narrative experience and not a presumed publicity stunt ?

Mizhena was intended as a cleric support character who is an interesting person in her own right. The lack of depth was not intended, but was an artifact of our limit on the conversation depth for support characters. I think the right thing to do is for us to do a better job and remove the arbitrary conversation limitations.

This character has captured a lot of attention and as such, it is only fitting we expand her writing to accommodate the interest level. We are still working out what our exact approach will be for the character and it will be a few updates before the new content makes it into the game, but we’re going to put a good effort into giving her more depth.

http://www.gamebug.com.au/2016/04/12/that-business-with-baldurs-gate/
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Comments

  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    No canonical way, that is perfectly true.

    Still odd behavior though. Walking up to complete strangers and explaining her "situation" right away.

    With transgendered people being a not unusual sight in the Realms, and never has been, I think they should add an option to tell the character to sod off. You can do that with most other characters anyway, so no need to be all polite and treat this one with any more care than a half-elf or what have you.
  • FrozenCellsFrozenCells Member Posts: 385
    I like characters. Adding more depth is a good thing for me whatever the reason.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    joluv said:

    Rawgrim said:

    Still odd behavior though. Walking up to complete strangers and explaining her "situation" right away.

    I understand you still haven't played the game, but I think you know that this isn't what happens. Please stop mischaracterizing the behavior.
    Hard to play it with that graphic update that is in no way compatible with colourblindness.

    What is it you felt I got wrong in my comment? The character follows that rule of three comments, as the developer explained in the interview. So it all happens pretty much straight away.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    GrimLefourbe said:

    She doesn't walk up to you, she's the cleric in the camp, you need to ask her about her name, she says she made it herself, and then if you ask her about what was wrong with her previous name, she'll tell you she was born a male and realised later she was a woman so she chose a new name.

    Not "Walking up to complete strangers and explaining her "situation" right away." at all.

    And not odd behaviour at all when her gender is no big deal, as I've said on other posts, I've had the same kind of dialogs happen to me about my family name and I had no problem at all saying what it was about because having divorced parents is no big deal in the 21st century (in my country at least).

    No she doesn't actually do the walking herself. But she is still being frightfully open to someone she doesn't know at all.

    It felt very very rushed. Hence why the developers are adding to the character in an upcoming patch.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    bengoshi said:

    Rawgrim said:


    It felt very very rushed. Hence why the developers are adding to the character in an upcoming patch.

    Not exactly right. Trent Oster said: “Obviously we wanted to explore her story in a broader, deeper way, but the three-line limitation cut it off. If anyone was going to get to the fact that this character is transgender, they had to do it pretty fast. Upon my review of the character, I think that within three lines it’s actually quite well done.”

    And now he says: "We’re going to revisit Mizhena and expand her lines to make her flow better and feel less forced in a future update."

    So, at first the developers thought she didn't feel rushed. But based on the feedback they will expand her story.
    Less forced + more development, yes. That was what I said.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    GrimLefourbe said:

    Say, I'm at a game convention, and a game developper from a very famous game comes to me.
    "Hey, who are you?" he's like a really famous guy.
    "Hi, i'm Grim Thorik-Lefourbe, what an honor to meet you."
    "Grim Thorik-Lefourbe?? That's an unusual name, what's up with that?"
    "Well, Thorik's my father's name and Lefourbe is my mother's name so really it's just a mashup of both"
    "Ah, what would they need to mash up both names? Is that only in your country or something?"
    "No no, it's just because they divorced and it wasn't so smooth so I ended up having both names, no big deal though"

    Does that sound like i'm pushing myself onto the guy or does it look like a normal conversation ? To me, it looks completely believable (except for the famous guy talking to me :( ).

    I actually like this analogy a lot because a few decades ago, having divorced parents would have been seen badly but nowadays it's really something people don't care about.

    Do you think a cleric would reveal that to an evil necromancer who killed Sarevok for power, and had a reputation for being a mass murderer? The player character could be that too, you know.
  • PurudayaPurudaya Member Posts: 816
    I'm still not totally on board with Beamdog's conclusions here. If you're going to stand by your dialogue system as an explanation for why Mizhena's reveal is in fact exactly in line with how most NPCs behave, then why say you have to have a "bigger plan" for trans NPCs in the future? If you say that being trans in the realms is not canonically controversial, why change the way Mizhena relates to the player?

    You should not have to change the way you write in fear of inciting rage from a group whose points re: Mizhena you have fully debunked in this statement and others. If everything you're saying is true: Mizhena's reveal was limited by dialogue options imposed on all NPCs, other NPCs reveal their life history similarly, Mizhena has more side quests than most NPCs, her behavior is not anti-caonical, and you feel her content was "well done" given this context; then you should stand by your character.

    While I have faith that the new content will be sensitive to the myriad trans experiences posted in this forum, it does feel an awful lot like appeasement.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    GrimLefourbe said:

    The player character is mostly known as "Hero of Baldur's Gate" and that's how it is.

    In BG1, everyone asks for your help, even if you've murdered the 100 previous guys who asked.
    That really has nothing to do with Mizhena, and that's the whole issue with this "complaint". If it wasn't about people's own perceptions of transpeople, there would be no complaints about this character in particular but just complaints about the whole game.

    Actually they won't ask you for help if your reputation is too low. You get attacked on sight.

    Nothing to do with transpeople. It just adds some thoughts on future add-ons to her dialog and all that. Not everything is bigoted, you know.
  • PurudayaPurudaya Member Posts: 816
    GrimLefourbe said:

    I feel like Beamdog realizes that part of their public aren't ready for casual transness, as many people reminded us since release, there's still a good deal of people who just find changing gender revolting. I think this is Beamdog making an extra effort for these people to not present it as too casual and maybe Beamdog actually plan on making more developped transgenders characters in a way to help these people find it less revolting.

    That's kind of my read on it and while I would personnally be ok with just telling these people to go back to the originals, I think that's not what Beamdog wants here.

    Agreed. I think this change is more for the players you're talking about than it is for players who liked the inclusion and wanted more.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    Hoping they expand her and add to her to the point where she becomes a joinable npc, actually. You can never have enough clerics.
  • KcoQuidamKcoQuidam Member Posts: 181
    I keep high hope. There a lot of good add they can do here, like adding a "Oh I see it's just like me" dialog option (and the one you can choose even if you don't use the griddle, and without explicitly mark if it's exactly the same thing or just if charname emphase with Mizhena's name's story).

    (Yes i'm totaly obsess with this idea. It will be so good)
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited April 2016
    If you say that being trans in the realms is not canonically controversial, why change the way Mizhena relates to the player?
    Honestly, the problem to me with this statement is that, it's also not noteworthy. In other words, while I believe that being a trans person in FR is still probably rare (same as being a tiefling is rare)...it's also not a big deal. Some of the common folks may find a trans character weird (and your PC should have the option, imho, to react this way too, because your PC's roots may be "common"). But, really, the PC and other adventurers would most likely just be like, "Ok, whatever. Doesn't matter much to us." I mean, by the time you get to SoD, the idea is that CHARNAME has seen/heard/experienced a LOT.
    Also, cities like Baldur's Gate are cosmopolitan in every sense of the word. There's people of all kinds of backgrounds, races, creeds, etc., etc., etc. in the city. It bugs me that Mizhena is being made into a big deal. Really, it's not a big deal.
    Purudaya said:

    While I have faith that the new content will be sensitive to the myriad trans experiences posted in this forum, it does feel an awful lot like appeasement.

    Yeah, to me, this is all of what it is. Imho, Mizhena should neither be emphasized or de-emphasized. And it feels like, in the name of appeasement, they're actually going to emphasize Mizhena.
    Mizhena should just be there, as-is. Maybe the dialog is a little abrupt, but so what? Maybe that's part of Mizhena's personality? Who knows? My question really is, why are we exploring the "roots" of a minor NPC in greater depth?
  • GrimLefourbeGrimLefourbe Member Posts: 637
    @KcoQuidam Funnily enough, this option will also work as a "Sod off" depending on the tone it has, which is entirely to the player's interpretation.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    KcoQuidam said:

    I keep high hope. There a lot of good add they can do here, like adding a "Oh I see it's just like me" dialog option (and the one you can choose even if you don't use the griddle, and without explicitly mark if it's exactly the same thing or just if charname emphase with Mizhena's name's story).

    (Yes i'm totaly obsess with this idea. It will be so good)

    That is a great idea, actually. An option for the player to tell someone he\she is transgendered.
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited April 2016
    Rawgrim said:

    That is a great idea, actually. An option for the player to tell someone he\she is transgendered.

    But why?! Sexuality or gender is not a big deal in the FR. It never has been. If CHARNAME is RP'ed as "transgendered", that's fine. But why would such a thing be of enough note to actually be worth mention?
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    rapsam2003 said:

    Rawgrim said:

    That is a great idea, actually. An option for the player to tell someone he\she is transgendered.

    But why?! Sexuality or gender is not a big deal in the FR. It never has been. If CHARNAME is RP'ed as "transgendered", that's fine. But why would such a thing be of enough note to actually be worth mention?
    I would be cool for the player playing the character to be able to address it in a conversation in-game. And in a conversation with Mizhena, something like that could easily come up if it was the case. Natural part of the conversation, really. And it wouldn't be a big deal either.
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    Rawgrim said:

    rapsam2003 said:

    Rawgrim said:

    That is a great idea, actually. An option for the player to tell someone he\she is transgendered.

    But why?! Sexuality or gender is not a big deal in the FR. It never has been. If CHARNAME is RP'ed as "transgendered", that's fine. But why would such a thing be of enough note to actually be worth mention?
    I would be cool for the player playing the character to be able to address it in a conversation in-game. And in a conversation with Mizhena, something like that could easily come up if it was the case. Natural part of the conversation, really. And it wouldn't be a big deal either.
    Eh, I suppose.

    It really seems like appeasement to me, adding that. Honestly, as I said earlier (and as @Purudaya mentioned), this whole situation feels like that. For some reason, a lot of folks feel as if their specific situations are more valid -- in a fantasy world setting, no less -- than the way that Mizhena presents transgenderism. Since transgenderism in FR isn't a big deal, there doesn't seem to me to be any reason to emphasize things to a greater degree than they already emphasized. It's just a "Whatever floats your boat, man" situation to me. I don't think Beamdog needs to cater any more or any less than they already had by simply creating Mizhena.
  • KcoQuidamKcoQuidam Member Posts: 181
    rapsam2003 said:

    Rawgrim said:

    That is a great idea, actually. An option for the player to tell someone he\she is transgendered.

    But why?! Sexuality or gender is not a big deal in the FR. It never has been. If CHARNAME is RP'ed as "transgendered", that's fine. But why would such a thing be of enough note to actually be worth mention?
    In the current situation it's just an option for saying "Oh yes I see what you're are talking about". Just because if you RP as a character who already know this subject the current only answer-option look pretty strange in my opinion (and just in my opinion).
  • NightRevanNightRevan Member Posts: 81
    rapsam2003 said:

    If you say that being trans in the realms is not canonically controversial, why change the way Mizhena relates to the player?
    Honestly, the problem to me with this statement is that, it's also not noteworthy. In other words, while I believe that being a trans person in FR is still probably rare (same as being a tiefling is rare)...it's also not a big deal. Some of the common folks may find a trans character weird (and your PC should have the option, imho, to react this way too, because your PC's roots may be "common"). But, really, the PC and other adventurers would most likely just be like, "Ok, whatever. Doesn't matter much to us." I mean, by the time you get to SoD, the idea is that CHARNAME has seen/heard/experienced a LOT.
    Also, cities like Baldur's Gate are cosmopolitan in every sense of the word. There's people of all kinds of backgrounds, races, creeds, etc., etc., etc. in the city. It bugs me that Mizhena is being made into a big deal. Really, it's not a big deal.
    Purudaya said:

    While I have faith that the new content will be sensitive to the myriad trans experiences posted in this forum, it does feel an awful lot like appeasement.

    Yeah, to me, this is all of what it is. Imho, Mizhena should neither be emphasized or de-emphasized. And it feels like, in the name of appeasement, they're actually going to emphasize Mizhena.
    Mizhena should just be there, as-is. Maybe the dialog is a little abrupt, but so what? Maybe that's part of Mizhena's personality? Who knows? My question really is, why are we exploring the "roots" of a minor NPC in greater depth?


    In fact people in FR are likely to have more problems or reactions to tieflings than any trans person (similar to drow for many people I imagine given their heritage, fair or not). Such as the rogue companion in NWN2 OC whose name escapes me for the moment. You have to rescue her from corrupt soldiers using her as a scapegoat and people are regularly suspicious of her and not to favourable that I remember.
  • RawgrimRawgrim Member Posts: 621
    Yeah tieflings get stick due to the demon blood. Demons are evil, so it is understandable. Drow elves too. they are pretty damn evil.
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited April 2016
    NightRevan said:

    In fact people in FR are likely to have more problems or reactions to tieflings than any trans person (similar to drow for many people I imagine given their heritage, fair or not). Such as the rogue companion in NWN2 OC whose name escapes me for the moment. You have to rescue her from corrupt soldiers using her as a scapegoat and people are regularly suspicious of her and not to favourable that I remember.

    Yeah, definitely. The most reaction a transperson would probably get is some peasant saying, "Well, that's bloody weird." By contrast, that same peasant may try to rustle up a mob to kill that tiefling if said tiefling was in the wrong region/country in the FR setting.

    The rogue in NWN2 you mention, Neeshka, is a perfect example. She has small horns (sidenote: I dislike how NWN2 made tiefling horns so miniscule for ALL tieflings), a tail, and red splotches near her scalp. All of those traits make people think, "DEMON!" in most areas of the FR. City-states like Neverwinter aren't particularly cosmopolitan compared to cities like Baldur's Gate or Waterdeep. Even in the latter cities, while folks are more lenient, but people still would just "tolerate" tieflings.
    http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tiefling#Description
    http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tiefling#Homelands
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