Non-Binary Gender in gaming is nothing new

Fools.

You fucking fools.

You say: “This is new! It has never been done before!” yet it is nothing but chasing the wind.

Gaming has always had non-binary genders.

“Whoa! But Malstrom, we mean in influential and prominent games!”

There is no game on Earth more influential and prominent than Ultima III: Exodus.

The year was 1983.

1983 assholes.

But you dumbasses weren’t even born then. So you think everything you do is new. Fuck you losers.

“But Malstrom! But Malstrom! That’s not well known!”

Who’s fault is that? Not mine.

“But it doesn’t change the stats!”

What fucking stats would it change? But you can clearly see by the image, it says race as Human and sex as ‘Other’. There you go.

“But… I want to make-believe everyone in 1983 were close minded savages that haven’t entered the age of progression we are in now! This little known bit in a very old game makes no matter!”

Fuck you, reader. You don’t know shit about gaming. It’s like people who say, “It’s time to get women into game developing,” without realizing they were there all along. Who developed King’s Quest? Who was the programmer for EA’s first game, Archon?

“But where is the prominent Other?”

Here:

Above: M.U.L.E.

Pictured Above: Dani Bunten

Pictured Above: Danielle Bunten

Those two are the same people.

At this point, the reader is probably asking, “Who the hell is Dani Bunten? Is that a game developer?”

Dani Bunten made some of the most pioneering games… ever. He/she was way ahead of his/her time. M.U.L.E. was local multiplayer awesomeness, Seven Cities of Gold is classic, and Modem Wars (1989) is literally the original online deathmatch.

What does Warren Spector think of Bunten? Here’s a clue:

Dani Bunten, one might say, is the designer’s designer. Greg Costikyan once told what happened when he offered to introduce Warren Spector — one of those designers who can sell more games in a week than Bunten did in a lifetime — to her back in the day: “He regretfully refused; he had loved M.U.L.E. so much he was afraid he wouldn’t know what to say. He would sound like a blithering fanboy and be embarrassed.”

Spector put M.U.L.E. theme into his SPORE:

One game developer who was influenced by Bunten was THIS guy:

Pictured Above: Sid Mier

From here we read:

“That was something kind of visionary of his: that he kind of saw the day when games wouldn’t just be for hardcore gamers,” says Civilization creator Sid Meier, a friend of Berry through thick and thin. “People would play more casual games – people playing together, people playing on networks, people cooperating instead of being competitive. He kind of saw this evolution of gaming that was still pretty far off in the future.”

In 1998, just before she passed away, she was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association. In 2007, she was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

And perhaps most touching, when completing the blockbuster The Sims, designer Will Wright dedicated the game to Berry.

From the first link…

Sid Meier was so taken with Seven Cities of Gold that Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, and Civilization, his trilogy of masterpieces, can all be described as extensions in one way or another of what Bunten first wrought. And Seven Cities of Gold was only Meier’s second favorite Bunten game: he loved M.U.L.E. so much that he was afraid to even try to improve on it.

For some, of course — even for some with generally good intentions — Danielle Bunten Berry’s transgenderism will always be the defining aspect of her life, her career in games a mere footnote to that other part of her story. But that’s not how she would have wanted it. She regarded her games as her greatest legacy after her children, and would doubtless want to be remembered as a game designer above all else.

Emphasis is mine.

“So what does this mean?” cries the reader.

It means that there is nothing new under the sun. Game developers were always a little ‘weird’. But no one cared.

The outrage is that Dani Bunteon is remembered more for his gender change than the revolutionary video games he made.

For some reason, the Game Industry doesn’t see anything before the PlayStation 1 Era. And even the so-called ‘old gamers’, the Millennials’, who grew up with the NES and long for those DOS days, were nothing but wee babes when games like Ultima III were coming out. They might know who Sid Mier is, but not Dani Bunton.

Yet, no one remembers. The younger gamers think they invented gaming. I suppose that is the way of things.

If I was able to live fifty years from now, I’m sure I’d start hearing news reports squealing, “It’s About Time Japanese Start Designing Video Games!” as the usual generational amnesias sweep in.