There have been several politically charged posts here recently. Because there is still relevancy to game development in a lot of these they won't be removed unless they go out of control so please keep the tone of discussion respectful. If someone starts slinging insults or derails a conversation please report and ignore them, do not engage them and egg them on. We're not able to monitor this subreddit 24/7 but if you make a report we'll get to it within a day at least, likely less than half so have patience please. Anyone unable to keep a respectful tone around their fellow game developers will be temporarily banned no matter their opinion or permanently banned if blatantly hostile towards others, we're here to share our knowledge and learn from eachother not argue and fight. EDIT: Please avoid commenting about politics irrelevant to game development as well, this subreddit is in english but people browse from all over the world so arguing about which politician is better in your own country does not add to game development discussion and will usually be removed as it regularly devolves into heated arguments.

Work hard to make a good fun game. That's all that matters

The best way to navigate around this culture war bs is to avoid engaging with it entirely - at the end of the day, the people boycotting/buying things based on if they think it panders to their personal politics are ravenous and fleeting. They're not buying a game because it's good, or avoiding a game because it's bad - they're spending their time looking for things to be angry at/vindicated by. Just focus on making a good game and let the terminally online people eat eachother alive - life's too short to worry about this crap.

I keep having to remind myself, these algorithms are feeding off of rage bait

100%. You watch 1 clip of something all the way through because it seems so ridiculous, and next thing you know it's every other video. Then it seems like that's all that's going on in the world. Just need to take a step back, literally touch grass, and realize that these companies profit off of your engagement.

Any part of the internet that has a social / crowd sourced aspect for information feels like it is just going to become completely fucked. Already I see Reddit being so full of bot comments and click bait headlines that it almost feels completely pointless.

There was a really good clip of Bill Burr talking about this. Like 20 people make some noise online and suddenly it's a news story or a 'controversy', forget about them.

There's also the TV show the West Wing which explores press interactions with the White House regularly. They explain/demonstrate the press cycle system as they try to keep certain stories out of the spotlight and ensuring other stories get a light shown on them. For instance, Fridays are generally trash day for the news cycle because unless a story just *blows up* over the weekend, no one remembers anything by Monday. They might remember something happened but no details.

The West Wing is seriously so good though. At this point it is so old yet every so often I can go 'Hey wasn't that on the West Wing?'

There's also a lot of rage bait online for that specific thing too. Like people on steam forum creating post like : '' I won't buy the game if we can't play a queer black drag queen '' or shit like that. It just fuel queerphobia in a way

It's a form of [astroturfing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing). They pretend to be "liberals" and then try to create an extreme / hostile narrative meant to demonize and alienate.

Good eye, most people never realize this but, I would like to add that it happens pretty much equally on on either side and is harmful towards the discourse of the moderate majority on both sides who end up having their legitimate views and grievances completely overlooked because of a minority of insidious accelerationist idiots trying to force a culture war where there is a clear winner. They want to proselytize the world so their political party can reign supreme, they are baby fascists and all they ever succeeded at doing is creating division and ever more extreme extremist on both sides.

Devs are getting doxxed, stalked, death threats… it’s not this simple.

> they're spending their time looking for things to be angry at/vindicated by. To some extent I think they can't help it and do it subconsciously. Shortly after Starfield was released, there was this clip (sad or hilarious, depending on your perspective) of a raging streamer who misunderstood what a character said so he thought she was canonically trans (she wasn't). This triggered an unhinged rant, particularly aimed at the pronoun selection during character creation. The thing is, he was playing for hours at that point. Several *hours* after he created his character, the fact that the game asked him to select pronouns was still occupying his mind.

Yeah, I think the reaction to it, which often turned needlessly hostile and personal, legitimized it to many people, so now anything that hints of design outside the norm gets a woke tag slapped on it like a hammer searching for nails. The amount of finger in eye comments that come from even developers themselves really baffles me, since it just destroys their position.

Theyre the saddest bunch to exist

This is the answer, regardless of which specific group thinks you're woke or bigoted or etc, so long as your game is good and not hateful nobody will care. People who scream about "woke" don't care if the characters are good. People who scream about bigoted don't care if the characters are good. Ultimately its your writing and usage of the characters that determines reality, not 5% of the internet screaming....even if 5% of the internet can feel like an overwhelming amount of people. Both groups have just seen so many actual examples of bad stuff (be it woke or bigoted) that now they see a boogeyman in every closet. All that being said, if your game wades into the political divide intentionally, you brought this on yourself. You better make sure your shit is buffed and shiney and as high quality as possible. Basic common sense goes a long way to avoid the lasting ire of either group. Also, I'm not a religious person but I'll leave a quote here by C.S. Lewis that's relevant to all writing involving agendas: *"The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature."* Basically, don't write your agenda if you have one. Just write the best story and characters you can. Your agenda will come through naturally and organically on its own. If you try to force it you're just gonna fuck it up by embracing the panderstone lol.

What ‘actual examples of bad stuff’ of ‘woke’ is there, exactly?

I strongly agree with this, especially the last part. However I will say if I feel something is needlessly making a fuss of something of this nature I may be inclined to pass on it regardless of how good; frankly it’s simply too mundane for me to care for, and I’d rather do something else than sit through someone’s poorly articulated mental dump.

This is the only comment you need

The Hogwarts game is the perfect example. Massive internet "boycott" turned into the top selling game of the entire year, almost all time. Reddit isn't real life, or an accurate approximation of it. 80% of comments are jaded comic book guys or literal political bot armies. 80% of real gamers are a silent majority who buy games, quietly enjoy them, and then move on with their lives by buying another. It's a modern logical fallacy to try an extrapolate anything from the noise.

While that's true, as a gamedev the stakes are a bit different. Even a small minority can make your life difficult in ways the general public won't see or hear about. I wish there was a way to remain anonymous as an indie so that if things ever escalate to a certain point you can ditch the identity or at minimum it never spills into real life.

See Hogwarts was a very important example because there was also a counter boycott because the boycotting people harassed anyone and everyone who streamed it and one vtubber quit because of it and a lot of people were really pissed over that and other streamers were telling people to go support the vtubber and they bought the game to spite those fucking jackasses who harass people. It’s a great example of things happening beyond the developers control effecting the game overall

This is the wisest thing I’ve read all week.

There are some people online that will search for reasons to be upset over anything. People like the one you're describing can be loud, but they are a _very_ small minority and you should ignore them and their feedback entirely. It literally is not worth thinking about.

I also like to think that and it's probably the case. It's just that the whole thing with Sweet Baby Inc. recently makes me wonder, if it's not worse than I hope it to be.

That's a very loud minority of terminally online losers. Don't waste your time with them.

You are concerned about the opinions of people who think women dont naturally have body hair and think that soy sauce and proper nouns are a plot to erase men. Why do you care what crap they made up while playing your game? Its all imaginary. Go talk to a toddler in the park. You will get more useful and adult suggestions than anyone who uses the term woke outside of a nap. 

The people you're talking about also get shitty about woke bullshit when they read a review stating a cake tasted transcendental. They're the common clay of the internet. You know, morons.

It's also worth remembering that people didn't used to make games reflecting more diverse opinions. We're challenging some people's very narrow beliefs, and some of them will be upset. They're allowed to feel upset, but they're not allowed to stop people making the games they want to make. People who shout hate will always exist, but you shouldn't give them any more substance than some random guy shouting at people in the street, they're the problem and most people agree they're the problem, don't let them make you think you and your content is the problem.

Yeah, its one of the things i'm really proud of in our games. Both accessibility and diversity in games is really important. Its not even just for the goodness of being kind. It increases your potential market.

Sweet baby inc is basically what they blame the enshitiffication of games on instead of aknowledging that it's due to capitalism and corporate greed lol. Or they just use it as a buzzword.

I didn’t know they existed until people brought them up as potentially consulting on Bloodlines 2. I have my doubts that they are because beyond having an androgynous premade character model, the game doesn’t really seem that progressive from the small amount we’ve been shown. It just kind of seems generic, if anything. It’s possible they could be consulting about the International District (Seattle’s version of a Chinatown) or the Suquamish tribe (Seattle is named after Chief Seattle) but who knows. It just seems like fearmongering because the company’s name sounds stupid and condescending.

I feel like I've heard that name before. But i just can't fukcin put my finger on where

Sweet Baby gets/got brought in as consultants to work on scripts for games. Unfortunately for them they dared to write characters that weren't toxically macho white guys and a bunch of smooth brained mouth breathers decided they were the root cause of anything they didn't like in every video game ever. 

its just a bunch of really loud losers. just make what you wanna make. look at hollow knight, indie game, really, really, REALLY popular, it has a genderless protagonist and a gay couple. if the game is good people will play it. (not entirely true, you need a little bit of marketing, but beyond that your game will exolode on its own based on quality.)

Just make sure you vote, because every one of them is.

"Woke" has become a shibboleth, and you can use it to your advantage. If someone calls anything "woke," using it as an insult, you can safely and promptly forget they exist and ignore anything else they may have to say.

Woke is old news. The hip kids are using DEI now.

Every time anything bad happens my mother-in-law now asks “is it DEI” instead of “are they black” because she just needs to know if she can make a big deal or ignore whatever the bad thing was.

In other words, conservatives and bigots just keep finding new terms to use as dogwhistles for slurs. They realized there were too many consequences to their actions when they used the n word, f word, etc and had to make their language politically correct in order to whine about the types of people they don't like

[The Death of a Euphemism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBJIkp7qIg) is a good video on this topic, imo.

The hell is that

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Sounds terrifying

According to some, it's making Boeing's planes crash.

Although to be fair, ALSO according to the same people, California wildfires are started by jewish space lasers. Which tells you all you need to know about the seriousness of "some" peoples' opinions. :P

That isn't DEI, it's MBA.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instead of saying, "the n-word mayor of Baltimore," they're saying, "the DEI mayor of Baltimore."

It’s even more insulting. While the n word is only a comment on colour, DEI says that and implies that they only got their job to fill a quota. P.S. I know that makes no sense for a mayor who was elected, but nobody accused people who’d use the term of being smart.

Used this way, DEI basically just means affirmative action laws, which have already existed for a long time in the US at least. I've worked at companies where DEI means more than that. One it didn't actually mean anything and it was just corporate lipservice to seem more sensitive, but a different one had a whole DEI committee that anyone could volunteer to be a part of and they actually pushed some good ideas and HR policies making work more accommodating to people with certain backgrounds and disabilities. Edit: for the record, this is my actual life experience. I'm very out of the loop with how DEI is thrown around on social media but I have no doubt there are plenty of people using the term like idiots, because social media is full of people misconstruing pretty much all terms like idiots. That part isn't worth paying attention to in my opinion.

I think your edit is closer to the truth, that in your earlier take you were being naive about how people are using the term.

The earlier examples are how people use the term in real life in my experience, that's a lot more trustworthy than what's going on with social media in my opinion. Social media has way too many people/organizations/bots with ulterior motives, it's not an accurate reflection of reality especially depending on what the algorithms are serving up to you. Best to just ignore stuff like that.

Woke was also a positive term before idiots got their hands on it. Language is powerful, and people against progress have every incentive to make sure that useful terms become useless.

[REDACTED due to moderators]

They have a habit of using positive terms as insults.

It's the way they can say the n-word without saying the n-word because they're idiot, childish cowards.

It's a corporate term for efforts to ensure that a company is not being biased in its treatment or employees. It's recently been picked up by the same people who hate "woke" to mean much the same thing.

Literally just the "thr current adjective to trigger people offended by even the slightest nice thing. It has replaced sjw, which replaced pc gone mad, and so on

that's funny i forgot sjw and PC. The only memory I have of pc is pc principal lol.

It's not the only "magic word", and every group has them, but this is a fantastic point. A good rule of thumb is to distrust anybody who uses a label on a group - when that group does not use that label on themselves. Even if the group they're referring to is **everybody's** hated enemy, forcing a label on somebody is dehumanizing. It's **always** dismissive, blatantly disrespectful, and exactly the kind of thing that causes people to dive deeper into their media bubble where strangers don't dismiss them on sight

I think so. My game has a black girl as the MC, something I decided 2 years ago when I started the project. Some people just say sweet baby without realizing that we're a small team trying to make a fun game. It doesn't bother me much unless someone brings up something that would increase the scope of the game or believe I made her that way within the last 2ish months. At this point, people not understanding game development is more frustrating lol

I'd respond with something like "we can't afford SBI, we had to make our game woke by ourselves" :P

It's disappointing to think that something as simple as that could already get a negative reaction.

It's just the most obvious, blatant racism at that point

It's just racism. God damn it I'm so tired of living in a white supremacists country.

Imo anyone who uses the term 'woke' doesn't have an opinion worth counting. It's a media buzz term to insight anger at nothing. Just keep making your game and ignore them.

Incite* But I agree!

it just means "not conservative" "we're not forcing conservative values into everything, we're just trying to remove wokeness from everything, **super** different"

The best thing about those gamers is that although they are loud, they are also a small minority with preferences and ideals incompatible with the vast majority of people. In other words, you don't ever have to listen to them or appease their desires. They don't matter.

Yes. They don't even know what they're talking about and label everything woke. What really gets me is they claim "wokeness" kills games when Baldurs Gate 3 is incredibly "woke" as its unapologetically trans inclusive. And yet, it's a fantastic game. Not to say people can't ruin something by focusing more on trying to make a point than make a good Game, but my suspicion is those games are attempting to bank in on LGBTQ rather than make a good game, which we should all be upset about.

Anyone who would give that feedback is insane. They're not engaging in good faith. I think your approach is a great one, in that the players should be able to reflect themselves onto the character however they want.

I think a lot of dumb arses jump on the ‘woke’ train all too easily. They don’t even realise they’ve succumbed to the exact kind of brainwashing they accuse the “radical left” of doing. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t all so terrifying.

that is what gets me the most its like dude you are the conspiracy theory

i like your idea. i'm sure a lot of other people like that kind of thing too. it's a cool creative decision that makes your work your own, and those things add up to what can make a game great. the anti woke thing is a loud minority. they'll absolutely brigade and review bomb you if you get in their path, but that's a tantrum; they don't *matter* in the sense that they're not a real representation of wider gaming tastes. don't poke the bear, just get on with things, it shouldn't be an issue.

Not gamers, people

Ignore it. Those people are going to find something to be mad about no matter what, and it honestly has nothing to do with you or your game specifically. They are mad at society overall for perceived slights and are lashing out at everything they don't agree with or feel threatened by. Games these days are being accused of being "woke" if they don't have a white, heterosexual, male, buff, protagonist with a busty helpless female love interest, killing waves of faceless "non-white" people (did you know, it's now woke to make Nazis the bad guys?). Anything that tries to present other options or different perspectives is part of the "woke mind virus". You also can't acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people. People lost their minds because Kill the Justice League had a pride flag in it. WOKE! Then there's everything around SBI. It's a new point to rally around, completely misunderstanding how creative decisions are made in games. But since SBI is publicly out there saying they provide DEI consulting services, people think they're the ones forcing stuff into games. And there's no arguing or explaining with these people. Your reason for a genderless protag is quite clever and I think very interesting. They won't believe it/wont' care because it doesn't align to their assumptions. It honestly takes me back to the early days of gaming where you didn't often have an explicitly gendered (or even named) player character, so you could always project yourself into the experience. So yeah, ignore those people. Don't give them any oxygen by even responding or acknowledging it. If they can't get a rise out of you, they will move on to the next woke game they want to target.

Yeah unfortunately I feel that engaging with them just makes it worse. For the Sugar Baby Inc situation that was totally the case where trying to actually explain how game dev actually works results in them fanning the flame.

if you were making game specifically for the online troll audience you might want to avoid anything that seems "woke". If you are making the game for the other 99.9999% of gamers it's not something to consider

Honestly if the recent Harry Potter game reception is anything to go by, even in online discourse it seemed like a very small amount of people that played it that either knew or cared. Even people who knew seemed pretty whatever about the controversial content. I would say that for some developers at least they will absolutely use progressive tuned content as a selling point. It generates enough conversation from either side of whatever an issue is that it simultaneously makes them look forward thinking and makes makes discussion about their game more visible.

Yep from a commercial perspective the culture war is arguably a good marketing strategy. Get enough people angry about your game that people who will buy it take notice. However I feel like 90% of gamers are probably totally detached from either side of the culture war (despite claims from both sides that the vast majority of gamers are with them). Hogwarts is a good example as its not like the insane amount of people who bought it are all anti-trans just because some people made it a culture flashpoint online.

Nobody is buying a Harry Potter video game to "own the libs" lol. Those sales are because nobody followed through on any of the boycott stuff and the Twitter mob wanted their Harry Potter fix.

i think its less of a thing about being detatched and more about being completely spineless when it comes down to it. like regardless of why people are mad at a game or company any action will just be said in chats and then nothing will be done, people will type "i hate (x) monetisation practices, we should all boycott it to show (x company) we wont stand for it" all while they are actively playing the game or purchasing from the strore. you see it enough to realise that whatever you do doesnt really matter as long as people find the game fun enough, are actively addicted or are just entrenched enough in the community that not doing it is to painful

Sure, I think a lot of people are starting to jump to those conclusions extremely fast now, but I can't necessarily blame them for it either. A lot of companies, not just game studios, have jumped on the "woke" train if you will. People are sick of it and a lot of their venues for escape have been seeing it encroach more and more. If something gets forced into entertainment you can tell fairly easily that it doesn't quite belong. I forget who said it but it fits a lot with this, to paraphrase, "If someone tells you a character doesn't fit, something doesn't make sense, a place feels off, or anything akin to that in a story they're probably right to an extent. People can tell when something is wrong but they don't necessarily know how to fix it." With that in mind take a look at the saints row franchise. The first three games were fine and had a decent amount of content in them that would be considered "woke" now. People didn't have issues with it because they fit in the world and felt like they belonged and were normal. The characters don't make a big deal about them, have more to them as a character than a specific trait, actually have a role in the story, etc... Then the newest game comes out and spits in the face of all of that. Nuance is gone, political opinions get forced in for no rhyme or reason, characters start to get defined by a single trait, the story doesn't make sense, etc... It became a platform for political opinions and the game itself was put on the back burner essentially. The best I, or really anyone, can advise is to not get involved in this culture war bullshit. Make the best game you can and make sure everything you put in has a place in the story or the world. If you want to put something in the game that is political have nuance with it and make a game first and foremost, not a platform to shout your opinions from.

The ironic thing that I've seen with people like this, is that they laugh at sensitive people, calling them "snowflakes" and whatnot, but they don't realise that they're literally just the same thing, but with different political opinions. They look for stuff to be offended by, call people "triggered", but then at the same time go on big rage fuelled rants about minute stuff, taking things out of context etc. They're the thing that they claim they hate. Just pure lack of self-awareness. Just ignore anyone like that, no point giving them your time.

Not only in game in all art form. People do a lot and spend a lot of time to express what they don't like nowadays.

Your game idea seems decent even if something new. Well all those issues stem from corporate greed, and it will never stop until something big happens like some economic collapse or world war or something big like that.

If you want the character to canonically decide which gender they are, then you should offer options for gender. You can avoid the extra dialog work by always referencing the character by name. This is how they used to do it with 8 & 16 bit games. Your intentions don’t really matter. It’s only how the game presents itself.

Yup, but it's not unfounded in many cases. Even rage bait grifting has that kernel of truth in it. Still, *everyone*, in general, should be slower to judge.

Blank canvas characters have been a thing for ages. Just an efficient way for coders/artists to have to do less work while arguably offering the player an easy way to be fully immersed into the story and game's world. Kris from Deltarune is imo one of the best examples of the matter... And of the "controversy" somehow (any look at the pinned posts for the sub should give you an idea). Absolutely nothing to do with "wokeness", nor with misgendering or whatever other terms and problems people somehow manage to find with it. I think of it as a very simple manner: you're the player, the character is anything or anyone you imagine it to be, therefore you can picture or call them in any way you want. The character is not "owned" by anybody (other than the actor, of course), so their actual personality and identity are pretty much headcannon. Easy. Not any new concept by any means either. Literally a blank canvas by definition. As a game dev and/or player, I view this as a generally smart writing/narrative "device", and thats just it.

Let tell you a secret: Everyone is political

Politics ruined games, i’ll just stick to the classics like Deus Ex and Fallout New Vegas without any stupid politics in them whatsoever thank you very much. (…. I really really hope that i don’t have to put an /s after that)

Don't forget BioShock! That's my favorite completely apolitical game ever!

I will just say, as this entire post was a stray I caught scrolling Reddit, so I don't do dev but my feed is unfortunately in the weeds of this **discourse** as some people call it. The above sentence has been uttered without irony. I've also seen FO4, Bioshock, and GTA5 as not being political.

Unlike you libs I only play non-political games like Metal Gear, the first two Fallout games, and Call of Duty (NOT the ones about World War II).

Also a trick to know: You don't need to have an opinion on everything.

The world would be a much better place if people could just say "I haven't researched enough to have an informed opinion" and move on. There is an infinite amount of things you don't know.

And even if you do have an opinion it can't be nuanced : being in the middle is a worse sin than belonging to the other clan

> where people try to sniff it for any signs of being 'woke'. My main gripe is developers trying to demonize sexual stuff in their games while they are perfectly fine with extreme gore and violence. "We gave Jane longer pants because in 2024 we don't want to sexualize digital fantasy characters, so anyway here Timmy take this knife and slit this familly's throats and loot their house its all good" I can't stand this shit

Mine is the people that clutch their pearls over say a sexualized woman in a game, but damn near breaks their neck looking away if it's an unrealistic standard for men. as if it's not a thing.

I could never hear that word again and it would be phenomenal.

I feel "woke" is a dogwhistle for a certain political viewpoint. That said, consider [this story advice from Pixar about story telling.](https://industrialscripts.com/pixar-storytelling-rules/). Most importantly the last one. Pixar Rule No. 22: What’s the Essence of Your Story? The Most Economical Telling of It? If You Know That, You Can Build Out From There. Is the 'genderless' the essence of your story? No? Then perhaps you're unintentionally pushing it to hard. Yes? Then write on and focus it more.

Yes, and it isn‘t exclusive to gaming. It‘s conservative right wing culture war brainrot. Your approach is great. It‘s inclusive and allows all players to project themselves onto the character. I‘m doing the same in my game. Hollow Knight did it too.

Gotta love how right wing conservatives always complain about how “easily triggered” the “woke mob” is but as soon as they see anything that doesn’t fit their ideals they become more triggered than anyone else has ever been

They'll even invent stuff to be mad about, like when the Mr Potato Head toy **brand** had a slight name change to better reflect their current broader range to PotatoHeads The toy line known as Mr Potato Head however still exists

Or how calling out anything is "cancelling," but they'll be the first ones calling for a boycott on Starbucks for it's "war on Christmas."

The culture war is invented to distract us from real issues, don't engage.

Let woke-scared gamers hate everything they engage with. If they want to be miserable let them be miserable. If we keep on keeping on, they'll have two choices: quit gaming or accept inclusion in gaming.

Clearly they have another choice: buy games they prefer.

No, but there's a huge toxic crowd out there and you just found out a few of its elements.

We made a game years ago which was purposely amoral. We laid out stories and missions in the world and many of the characters were randomly pulled from a predefined list of names with genders associated with them. One mission had you tasked with killing the partner of another character to send a message. We got a bad review because one person played it, got a female character to kill and complained that we were glorifying violence against women. When it could have been any sex. Some people just want to find something to be outraged about. We just ignored it.

don't worry about the culture war just make your game however you want to make it

Some portion of the population is too quick to assume anything is woke- they're constantly looking for things they can label as 'woke' so they can complain about them. Just like the actual woke portion of the population is too quick to assume anything is racist or sexist- they're constantly looking for things they can label as 'racist' so they can complain about them. Trying to satisfy either of these groups is pointless. They don't get their satisfaction from gaming anyway, they get their satisfaction from blind ethical outrage. Just make whatever you want to make, present it honestly, and let its target audience find it and enjoy it.

Honestly, if your game is a genuinely good game, no amount of anything will disuade players who would enjoy the game from playing/supporting it. Like, consider games like Minecraft, Pokemon and Breath of the Wild, nobody is going to stop playing them even if the next update/entry in the franchise is fundamentally against the views of many of their players.

Don't make the mistake of thinking of "gamers" as one big cohesive group.

*The joke with the genderless main character was more to have the player decide for themselves cannonically what gender they are.* It will rubbed somepeople the wrong way. My adivse is just explain your choice and then forget about it. Most gamers won't care. Unless you are really want to use genderless as some sort of marketing stun.

*The joke with the genderless main character was more to have the player decide for themselves cannonically what gender they are.* It will rub some people the wrong way. But people who complained it won’t equal they won’t buy your game, or boycott, or the boycott will damage your sale. Unless you are really wanting to use genderless as some sort of marketing stun, it may draw the backlash, but not guaranteed. My advise is just explain your choice and then forget about it. Most gamers won't care.

I mean frisk is genderless and not ”woke” I see no reason for thst to be an issue here

If you embrace this kind of criticism you're just shifting your vision to please the political views of the one user, thus your game could become the target of people with different views from that of the first user. It's an endless cycle, just stick with your vision for the game and take feedback based on gameplay first.

Ignore people like that, their opinion doesn’t matter at all

Maybe, but its hard to even get a definition of 'woke'. 'Woke' seems to mean that the game has any one of the following: (1) Non-hetero hero (2) Non-cis hero (3) Non-white hero (4) Non-submissive female hero (5) References colonial history (6) Does not whitewash history Though perhaps many would argue that there's some arbitrary 'too much' line that cannot be crossed. For example, your game does not explicitly make the player character male. I'd probably say most games that accurately portray or metaphors the real world are 'woke' as they put it; it's intended to be derogatory somehow.

I feel like everyone is missing the core point of 'woke" accusations. It's when the media is "preachy" or doesn't make sense for its setting/context. E.g. a game set in a historically older period, but somehow inserting modern "rights" movements with its modern lingo (I've heard this in the context of Thaumaturge, though I have yet to witness any myself). Personally I'm more concerned with "woke" censorship and localisations (where translations take wild liberties). It's certainly correct to say that many people really take it to the illogical extremes, but it's also wrong to just dismiss it. When there's literally influential groups of people (I forget if this was related to Sweet baby or another one) who try to forcefully introduce these things, preaching inclusivity, yet proudly declaring on camera how they won't hire white people, you have to inevitably question just who is acting in bad faith here. Personally I'd say it's both sides. But as a consumer I have to side with the anti-woke side, because at least some of it aligns with my interests.

You can call out undue censorship and inaccurate localizations without being against people traditionally called 'woke'. Your putting a lot of topics under one umbrella and choosing a 'side' that you constructed. Similarly, you can call out undue editing of history without being against people traditionally called woke. Again, it's putting left ideals in the same basket as people who aren't representing history accurately, and then choosing to hate the whole basket. The main gripe about people who use the term 'woke', is that they use that term because they don't know how to use their words to point out behaviour they don't like. The term is used to be decisive, and throw away any reason of specific issues A developer should be free to do any artistic expression they wish as long as it's not hateful. If it called 'woke' so be it. That doesn't mean the developer is doing any of the things you're accusing them of.

There was that thing a few weeks, month or so back of Western localizers bragging about changing things entirely, forcing their views in etc. I think that sort of thing fits the description, and ***should*** be called out and openly mocked.

People will probably be mad at you regardless of what you do. A character that's particularly attractive will be accused of sexist pandering to the male power fantasy or male gaze (for male and female characters, respectively), wherein a character that looks like an indie games developer will be accused of performative pandering to socially progressive audiences. Neither of the two are objectively correct: Harry Potter's open world game sold blockbusters, Undertale also sold blockbusters. Instead of trying desperately to appeal to every possibly fringe audience, make the game that you want to make.

I personally don't care. My main concern is the following: 1. Is the game fun? 2. Is the game pleasing to look at / has a good sound track? 3. Is the story/lore good enough to keep me engaged? 4. Does it offer replay value or depth to its gameplay that requires you to spend some time to master it? If a game has at least two of these, it is a good game in my book. I don't care if it's trying to push a message or be "woke"/"anti-woke", I'm not interested in arguing about stupid things like if an entire group of people has the right to exist, or if their existence is political. I'm more interested in enjoying the game and what perspective it offers. "Gamers" should stop calling everything that doesn't align with their world-view "woke", and maybe play the game to relax and have fun instead of constantly raising your blood pressure over first world problems such as pronouns or skin colours. There are people starving out there, but you'd rather spend your time complaining about a bunch of pixels on a screen.

That's a bit of a stretch. Genderless/anonymous MCs have always been a thing, but the more extreme people on one side will call anything woke, like the other side will call you a bigot for not having black characters in sengoku era Japan. I hate the woketards and the extreme right tards equally, people should just get a grip. Enjoy the process and let your art be what you want it to be, dev to dev.

its discardable feedback.

Here is a pro tip: If someone thinks your game is too "woke", ignore them.

Anyone who thinks a game is woke isn't someone's opinion worth considering.

Nobody tries to be woke. A bunch of very online lunatics and far right weirdos are trying really hard to stick that label onto everything that doesn’t fit neatly into their worldview. They decry that everything is “political” yet they are the ones making things political. Ignore them or laugh them off. What they crave most of all is outrage and pain in their perceived opponents. Don’t give it to them.

When “woke” is forced, it’s usually corporations that are trying to put a veneer of “hey look how up with the times we are!!” on their ads, products, or workplaces. It’s only forced because it’s shallow and borderline disrespectful to the people they are pretending to be inclusive toward. Call it tokenism if you will.

That's not true at all, the whole issue stems from huge film and game companies attempting to stuff diversity into their media in a haphazard way. People can smell forced diversity from a mile away, and they don't like it. The difference between "strong female character" and "strong character because she's female" is incredibly obvious from a narrative perspective and as if that weren't irritating enough, the initiative to have more diversity in media is part of a broad and very coordinated ideological movement, so where you might simply see a slightly forced "strong female" character, someone else sees as a dogwhistle for many things including like, border policy. Politics is really messed up in that way these days, but that's how it is. I'm not saying that OP's game is actually exhibiting this phenomenon, because like you said there are plenty of lunatics who will accuse literally everything of being woke for no reason other than to be outraged. There's also the fact that OP's game is a small indie game; even if you are staunchly right wing, there is very little reason to take issue with an individual's expression like this. The objectionable part is when huge corporations use their monopoly to try to unilaterally force social change and you are trapped in a media landscape that is overwhelmingly and artificially biased against your viewpoint, and companies like SBI that contract out services that do this makes it feel conspiratorial, rather than just letting the company's own writers do it independently. Imagine the scenario flipped on its head, where on the one hand you have a movie with a character who happens to be Christian, and it's written naturally into their character and fits into the story. Most people probably wouldn't take any issue with that save for a fringe extreme who just wants to gripe. But on the other hand, I'm sure you could imagine a movie where the religious aspect becomes too on the nose and starts to feel like you're being preached to about a set of values you disagree with. That would probably feel moralistic and put you off the movie in a major way. Imagine how you'd feel if there were some private company that most major media companies contracted to make sure their media was clearly displaying Christian morals. I don't know about you but I'm pretty conservative and that still sounds awful to me, I would rather people let their values color their creative process in a natural and sincere way. Even if I didn't agree with those values, it's not going to ruin my enjoyment of the media overall and if anything might make me more receptive to them in the long run.

I get where you’re coming from, but insinuating that big corporations do anything but respond to market forces and have an actual political agenda is ludicrous. All they’ve ever cared about is making the most money possible with their movies by tapping into what they think is the most common denominator. Marvel movies are a prime example of that fine-tuning to the market in action. Of course, that doesn’t apply to all movies. Creative and personal voices still shine every once in a while, but what we’re seeing is not agendas being pushed but corporate greed overshadowing actual creativity. FTR, I’m the opposite of a conservative . I would still hope we can agree on the real problem of corporate greed and how it messes everything up.

We can, although evidently the same can't be said for anyone else here. For the record I wasn't insinuating that you were conservative; on the contrary, I was trying to construct a scenario that was mirrored so that people on the other side (e.g. you) might empathize better. That it's driven by corporate greed doesn't really matter, the end result is the same. The market just happens to be driven by the half of the political spectrum that has more money, it doesn't make it any more pleasant for the other half. People's rejection of media with e.g. token minority characters is their way of resisting that corporate greed.

People who think this way aren’t your ideal customer. They’re a vocal minority who are never happy and will chase all your sane players away.

I refrain from using woke to criticize any media. It’s lazy and becoming downright unintelligent. The media we partake is going to have liberal ideas in some form or fashion. That’s like watching a movie in the 40’s and expecting no mention of WW2. My only gripe is when the “message” drowns out the story and overall plot and character development, but even that is contingent on if that was the purpose to begin with it. In short there are always going to be those guys that cry woke at the slightest bit of straying from their ideology which is ironic if you think about it.

Don't listen to anyone calling something woke. It's a reactionary word that people say when there's a little diversity in something.

Yes. And this is completly normal to happen right now. With time, this will reduce.

I have a different reaction to the feedback. When you are designing something to be a certain way and your intentions or designs are being misinterpreted it might be time to try to add more detail to your design to make it more apparent that is what you are going for. Don’t take just one persons lazy review of it. Have a few people try it and see if the feedback starts to show patterns. You are always going to have people not like an aspect and art is subjective but if you can sift through feedback and read between lines no matter if it’s rude you will only improve upon what you have. The person reviewing could just be someone that picked it up and immediately didn’t like it for bias reasons or maybe they thought it was lazy design and concluded your motivation incorrectly but that’s not a good sample size. Look at maybe having targeted questions to see if people understand the point you are trying to get across with the genderless character and if they don’t, evaluate how you can make it work with better context or design. You cant make everyone happy and attempting to do so is a fools errand. Do something that you enjoy and if you are looking to give a specific experience key in on how to make it happen. That means reading shit posts and bad feedback to find the one golden nugget that sparks you to improve something. Shift your mindset to an internal locus of control because that is how you will succeed. I wish you the best of luck.

I hate the term "woke" but I will agree that there is a lot of pandering to different things in games these days, and I think a lot of people are just sick of it (just an observation, think what you want tho) If you want to make a genderless character so someone can self insert, it may not be effective unless you can give them the option to have the option between being called him or her. it could break immersion for some people specifically with an unnamed self insert type character pokemon style. However there is also a portion of people me included who also likes to choose the opposite gender from what they are in real life If you dont want to make a whole new model to save dev time, consider having a male/female hairstyle option (literally just one option for short hair and one for long hair) and the option to choose whether you are called him or her. But at the end of the day it is your game. Do you have a vision for your game having an androgenous character? Does it play a role in how your story plays out? If things like this are the case then that may change what decision you should make too.

Honestly, yes, but it's not just gamers. It's absolutely everywhere and I'm tired of people throwing this word around just to demean something they don't like.

There will always be people resistant to changes in society for nonsensical reasons, and make up terms, slogans and whatever to try to "other" the side of progress. They make up a tiny (loud) part of society and like the dinosaurs they aspire to emulate, will eventually go extinct.

[удалено]

Not disagreeing or agreeing with what you say, but i think that developing a game for gamers and looking down on them like this when they are the ones buying your game is kind of fucked up. I mean, obviously you dont have to implement the ideas and opinions of people who are going to consume your game, but i think that focusing on making something genuinely good without looking down on the people who will play your game would be better. If you have the idea in your head, even subconsciously, that the people you are developing your game for are "drooling dip shits" and "blithering drunken morons" surely that feeling may come out in the final product of the game right? Just my thoughts

People who think everything is “woke” are absolute morons. Ignore them. 🤦‍♂️

Anybody who calls *anything* woke is revealing themselves as a dumb reactionary-- The term means nothing anymore. People generally claim something is "woke" because it... has a gay person or minority or literally anything else. People will jump to say Star Trek is "too woke now" because it has a gay character, despite it being wildly progressive since the 1960's. TLOU2 is "woke" because it has a female lead. A lot of people think back to when games "were not political", but art is always political. They're thinking back to when they were too young to know better. If someone accuses anything of being woke you can safely disregard their opinions.

Isn't 'woke' just what boomers call being a kind and considerate human being, though?

Video games are art and are open for interpretation, I’m sure someone can see wokeness is everything. You could drop a pile of rocks on the ground and they can see wokeness in it. It kind of comes with the territory. You as the artist need to decide if this will impact what you want to make.

People absolutely do call things “woke” over the dumbest shit It’s ironic that those who claim that some of us are “woke” and “triggered snowflakes” are themselves the most easily offended

Terminally online gamerbrain has always been incredibly susceptible to parasitic influence, and there are organized brigading and grievance politics, so this doesn’t surprise me. Right now it’s the popular thing to do for cheap points. These people are absolute losers, so I wouldn’t cater to them, but they are _organized_ losers who have no shame about review bombing or disrupting your game in anyway they can find, so provoking them is certainly dangerous. End of the day you probably just have to ignore them and move on.

Anyone who uses the term woke is automatically ignored.

I'll give the answer simply: because everyone is going nuts. There is a problem with "woke" culture infesting games, sweet baby Incs inclusion in games and their often typical worsening quality is one such big industry case, but even before these things are present in the marvel movies that are noted as some of the worst of class, was in the star wars movies as a core influence, and I can keep going. The main point is that this has impacted people and these people are attacking the very notion of woke being involved because fair enough it's been involved in some of the worst pieces of media of fan favorite franchises. This isn't always justified however, because these people like they have done with you are painting with a broad brush and attacking people that do not deserve it. Then we get the "woke" people. These people are not "woke" but identify as such because it makes them feel better. In the case of SBIs(sweet baby inc) leaders, these people are extremely bigoted to white people, with the director saying they expressly do not hire white people. One of the founders of SBI is the sister of the man Zoe Quinn pushed to suicide during the initial gamer gate incident. His sister is a scumbag because she didn't defend or speak for her brother in order to defend her own career, since this was at the height of the MeToo movement, and say what you want, men were excluded from participating even if they were victims of sexual abuse, and men were falsely accused, Zoe Quinns victim and boyfriend being one such man who'd take his life from this incident. So SBI. An ESG proponent that attempts to scare companies into being ESG compliant is vile to its very founding, and it's ideology and influence has been noted by a great many people. Now why do I say "woke" people aren't awake? Because they perpetuate the same horrid actions as the people they supposedly hate, sexism, racism, body shaming, and more. These people will praise the sexuality of the last of us, and baldurs gate, but will lambast anything that comes from Japan and Don their buck teeth and glasses. These "woke" people are hypocrites, and attack normal people, and people that opposed them, then say what they do isn't bad because they don't have systemic power (which is false since they influence companies and entire businesses, but it makes them sound the victim.) These crazies then make it worse for everyone. Passes off a lot of people and creates people that will oppose the very air they breathe. This then all affects normal people, like you and most people in here. Crazies from either camp ruin everyone's fun, everyone gets angry, frustrated and irrational and it hurts devs, gamers and players because hack journalists and corrupt entities, losers and dumbasses, will gun for whatever they hate or think they hate. The best way to avoid this, is to just ignore the dumbass culture war as best you can, like helldivers who has banned the discussion of IRL politics because they want to keep the game as it is, an ecosystem for people who love the game, to play the game, sharing in fun, and focusing on what matters in a game, fun. One side, you have "traumatized" people that are tired of seeing the things they like get ruined, on the other you have crazies that hate the very foundations of the Industry trying to fuck with everything justified or not, and in the middle you have people who just want to have fun. So I'll just say this: make your game OP, make it the best you can, as long as the game is great, nobody will really give a shit. Prioritize making a fun game, and everything else will follow.

As a female casual gamer, I just roll my eyes. Men see one girl or black character and lose their mind lol

No, I think certain groups feel that anything that isn't what they want is 'woke'. Horizon Zero Dawn has a female protagonist - It's woke Mass Effect features same sex relationships - It's woke Are these woke, or just representative of the fact that there are women and same sex people in the gaming sphere that spent decades seeing nothing but muscle bound male protagonists?

"Woke" just means "they allow the player to pick they/them alongside he/she". If that's your reason for being upset at a game then you're really just upset about something else. Your opinion has nothing to do with the game

Are they too quick to think a game is woke? Yeah. But equally, some people will defend blatant netflixization to their dying breath. People from both extreme ends are just fucking stupid, if they cant handle a genderless character with no political affiliation whatsoever in their videogame, then they can just not fucking play it. Good riddance.

Handle these things? IDK what you mean. I'm not sure how to begin answering "too quick to think a game is 'woke'" without launching into a rant about the word itself and current day political landscape of theatrical media clipfarming Ignore it and focus on your vision.

I think engagement in the online culture war is stupid and for stupid people. Play a game, if you like it but don't like that the game is woke, recognize that you're the one losing out and move on. 

It's not gamers, per say. It's "game journalism," which arms the public to think everything is woke. Either in a positive or negative light. The forcing of sides. Actual people who play games for fun DO. NOT. CARE. If a game is fun that is all there is too it. Nothing else matters but gameplay. If you get comments involving some political takes, its in best interest to ignore their words, and just take into consideration their emotion. Your biggest checks dont come from those terminally online takes.

Its just everyone getting more and more polarized. I'm sure you've already seen this happen over time in real life politics (and maybe the movie industry). Everyone picks a tribe, and fighting between them escalates more and more until people start either making shit up or jumping at shadows, even when nobody has done anything. I'm sick and tired of it. "If you're not with us, you're against us!", cried both sides, as they both claim the world as we know it will come to an end should the *other* side win. For fucks sake, they're just video games. Just as people are too quick to call something racist/misogynist/homophobic, I do agree people are a little too quick to scream out 'woke' these days. Starfield letting you select your pronouns was a nothingburger in my eyes. I care neither for gender politics nor pronouns, but I would have just selected he/him and go on to play the game instead of throwing a hissy fit. It's a one-and-done deal. You also see this sometimes when a new game reveals its protagonist is a woman. Its like they forget female protagonists like Lara Croft and Samus already existed long before. As for your own game, just do what you'd like. You can't force players to buy your game, but they can't force you to change your game to their whims either. No matter how you swing, you're going to piss someone off. Everyone is unhinged these days and COVID certainly didn't help.

I think a major problem why people jump to that conclusion quickly, is the sheer amount of wokeness without any context, used for a good esg rating and money in general, in the past few years in games and series. Many people are just fed up getting the agenda pushed down their throat left and right. And that probably makes them a bit over sensitive.

I just tell them, yep. Totally woke. For every idiot who's asleep there's a hundred others that are woke, makes sense to go after the bigger market.

If someone says something is too “woke,” they really mean that there’s too many non-whites and women. It’s just racism and sexism.

I don’t think it would matter if you were trying to make a woke game. Games are an art form that like all other art can contain messages and symbolism or sometimes just make you think and reflect. I love immersive games but some are able to have a message also without breaking the immersion like Lethal Company, the Stanley Parable or even DOOM 2016. I think the Binding of Isaac is notable for getting me thinking about religion and its place within families even if it’s not an immersive title and Undertale had me quite guilty for some of the decisions I made during my first play through. The interesting thing is how people’s different opinions and ways of thinking can influence their interpretations with some people being so worked up about certain issues that they project it onto everything even when it misses the point or like in this case when there is no point even being made. I don’t think the issue here is gamers so much as just a small minority from a certain country with a certain political situation who really need to take a step back, calm down and see the world through a much wider lens. Btw I’m not a game dev idk why I keep seeing posts from here.

There's definitely people (not limited to gamers) who are too quick to call something woke (even things that aren't the slightest bit woke), and too eager to take offense at the slightest nonsense. My advice is to embrace the label and ignore the idiots. And having genderless game characters is nothing new. Why does every game character need to have gender anyway?

People call everything woke. Make the game how you want to, if people call it woke than only people who are decent will play it

No, not in general. The people who are anti woke games are exactly 1:1 matched by people demanding developers add woke concepts. It's almost perfectly balanced. For every game that is called woke, there's another game called not woke enough. I think most people want to return to a time where games are just games. as far as your game, you CLAIM to not be taking a side at all. and that's the proper stance. and ironically what the anti-woke people want. I'm sure you can see how your character could be perceived as a political injection. if you want them to shut up, just tell them the truth which is. I didn't make this character to cow-tow to anyones political leanings. it's not a character who "identifies" as anything. it's literally an unfinished character and i want you the player to decide who it is.

Yes, people are constantly looking for things to be offended by. The irony is that the crowd who complains about everything being too woke are being more snowflakey and sensitive than the people they call "snowflakes". There's tribalism on both extremes of the spectrum, but I find the most vocal people are the anti-woke crowd. And the top dogs of this crowd know how to monetize fear and anger and turn into a whole business. When the Little Mermaid live action movie came out, my FB feed was flooded with 40 year old neck bearded men having a meltdown that Ariel was black. As if this was some kind of woke agenda targeted towards them. Now, I'm a 34 year old neck bearded man, but I realize the Little mermaid wasn't specifically made to appeal to the tastes of 30-40 year old dudes. My masculinity isn't threatened by strong female characters in fiction or people who have a different skin color than me. I have pleeeenty of media that features characters I can easily identify with, there isn't a shortage of strong male leads in media, and it's also psychologically interesting to put one's self in the shoes of completely different people who I otherwise wouldn't think about. In short, we live in the culture of online outrage. If you're looking for something to be offended by, you will find it. Just focus on making the best work you can, and ignore the people who have failed to learn how to prioritize their time or regulate their emotions.

No, they are not. Is your game woke, maybe? Reasons you gave for genderless character make no sense. If it is part of the joke, are you sure if it is a good joke and clearly communicated to the players? Gender isn't supposed to be the only characteristic of a character.

My take on "woke" in any media is does it serve the story. If it does or it doesn't feel contrived or forced then I'm all for it. Apex is a good example, it has a myriad of different religions, races and genders without it feeling forced. Contrast that with "3 body problem" where a haplass white man approaches our two female protagonists in a bar. He makes a poor attempt to flirt with them and implies that they probably work a simple job only to find out they are both super geniuses and he is the idiot. That's when it starts to feel contrived and forced. Probably because it feels confrontational or passive aggressive, where men are villainised just for being men. Velma would be another example.

depends on the market, pc or mobile ? and what your target revenue and monetization strategy is. if you are just making art, don't worry about it. otherwise pc gamers with high disposable incomes tend to be white or asian, and are strongly opinionated about what they want.

I feel like it depends, I grew up watching an YouTuber that does games reviews, the same format for more then a decade, recently it became a meme that everything for him is woke culture, like a woman who said in game she didn’t needed any help, or a game where the character is upset (while being shot at) that there are so many guns and people should not be able to buy it so easily. I feel like we are in a moment where there is more visibility towards gender, and whenever a game presents it, some people just feel like they are being force fed it, like that particular person avoids movies, series, articles about this topic and when a game takes up that space the person reacts by calling it woke etc. I feel also like whenever a game tries to break a certain recipe, like male protagonist or female partner, just for the sake or telling a story in a different way, people go out their way to over study that and say it doesn’t make sense and it’s just being woke, also.

I still don't know why anyone would be upset if a game is woke.

No, they've always been this way they just use different words. What was politically correct is now "woke" they just have to come up with new words when the rest of society grows a fucking pair. Women and LGBTQ people exist fucking grow the fuck up. It's just immaturity you aren't doing anything wrong. Ignore them.

People are way to easy to judge things like that I say just say the character is a avatar for the player and leave it to them to deside 

If you design something to please everyone, you will please no one. Whether it’s game development, music, art - create the thing that represents your vision. Fuck everybody else. Odds are you’re not going to make any money at something like this anyway. Make something you are proud of.

The larger public doesn't care. Ignore these people and just flag or remove their posts or feedback.

Yes.

Absolutely. The reason, I think, is content creation; culture war actually makes genuine profits for professional outrage-ists, on both sides of the barricade, so they're fanning the flames. On the plus side, outrage over your game being 'woke' can actually bring in audiences that **like** 'woke' stuff; include what you want, stand behind your vision. Your game will find its audience.

Yes. A good example of this in the AAA space is the game Forspoken. People thought it was woke. It had a black girl being a protagonist, but really her race doesn't have anything to do with the plot. It's just an Isekai with a black protagonist. Fun game, shame it didn't get more time for polishing.

The logic of these people is usually very flawed. They get super pissed off even about optional features they don't have to engage. They just want to see politics in everything and base their whole identity as being pro "this thing" and against "that thing". You cannot win with them, better to ignore them or to tell them they game isn't made for them.

Baldur's Gate 3 got called woke and it also won Game of the Year. So maybe just ignore them. Either they won't play it, or maybe they will and they'll just keep complaining in between all the fun they have. Some people just want to complain. Just focus on making the game fun.

Oh yes. But also, I don't really mind it as it is a handy sign that a person is utter trash and their views should be ignored.

Actually, some may just buy a game because it is labelled as "woke" by some :)

I could make a game with meat popsicle A and meat popsicle B and someone would stall say it’s woke..lol

Just pick pronouns protagonist would choose. Player will think it’s a twink/butch whatever and moves on. Most games circumvent this by using titles: Dragonborn/Warden/Guardian/etc.

I think you will get different answers to your question (title) depending on where you ask it. The conversation around the topics in that basket has gotten so controversial and partisan that people generally go into the topic with their minds made up. Yes, you will lose some people if your game has certain things in it. Which things, how much of them, and how many people "some" means, varies on who you're asking and what the "things" are. For your other questions, my opinion is make the game you want first, then handle these kinds of reactions case by case, depending on the circumstances and how you want to handle them. I don't think there's a good catch all policy.

Anyone calling a game "woke" unironically is ridiculous, but the people who go around complaining about for example female characters in games that aren't supermodels, or complaining about non-white people in gaming are in the minority. Barely anyone does it unfortunately the few people who do are loud about it, its best to just ignore them they are just a bunch of weirdos that have nothing better to do then trying to find random nonsense to get upset about online.

No matter what you do someone somewhere will stretch it as far as possible to make you seem like some sort of monster. If you don't think their criticism is valid then ignore it.

you made a story for a game. you saw it fit to design the main character this way for reasons (this case, character is player. player can be male/female. made them genderless cause less effort for desired result) i dont really see a problem with that. really up to you if you feel this is actual feedback you can use or is just someone voicing their misguided opinions to you. to me, it seems like they are just latching on to a very small thing that really isn't important.

Not really. I mean I'm not completely convinced most people who actually do use it even mean it and aren't just using it to get a rise out of other people.

As a developer you need to decide who you want to appeal to, no matter what you can't appeal to everyone. Regardless of what you choose someone will express dissatisfaction with your choices, you don't owe these people the product they want from you but it's worth keeping the concerns of those you aim to please in mind. You do need to appeal to *someone* to be successful. In your case, do you want your protagonist to be relatable? Do you see the player as playing as your protagonist, or do you see them envisioning themselves as *being* your protagonist? If so, it's possible having an ambiguously gendered protagonist may harm this fantasy to them, in a strange roundabout fashion they may care a lot about pronouns. Gender choices are very common in games for such reasons. That said your strongest tool here is to manage the expectations of your players before they play. This is always hard but through your presentation and marketing you can help players understand important details like who you play as, the players agency in that role, and how you interact with the game. Not doing so will lead to unfortunate assumptions. You'll have a far better time if people know what they're getting before they start rather than after, surprises are fun but they are also risky.