-snipped-

Like I said, way off topic.

You said your piece, I replied with my piece and you replied to my reply. Pretty much done, given the venue we are posting in.

Were this another forum I'd be happy to continue this, but we aren't on another forum so, SOL I guess.

Since GOG would be well within their rights to shut down this conversation since it *is* so off topic, let's save them the trouble of having to do so.

Find me through chat some time and I can give you my contact info so we can continue this in a more appropriate venue.

Here is the thing: I do not consider "he" to be neutral. Therefore, the problems you have with seeing "she" as a generic pronoun are the same as the ones I have with seeing "he" used generically.

Well, it’s hard to stick to the specific case when it is part of a larger phenomenon, but fair enough.

Well she isn't neutral either is it? :-P I don't like languages which use either "he" or "she" for a neutral noun in general but I care about being understood a fair bit more. I consider "consciousness" pointlessly convoluted word to type, yet if I start calling it "memind" it'll just serve to muddy my message and nobody will understand it properly. Language usage is dictated by majority and its evolution quite simply can't be forced this way. Perhaps if you managed to transform society in such a way that it would find using "he" as a neutral noun weird in itself, people would stop using it spontaneously - but that won't happen if you voice your opinions in a way which is unclear on purpose. Naturally, if you don't care about spreading your point of view at all and just find using "he" as a neutral noun weird yourself, feel free to keep using whatever you want to be using - just don't expect your message to be as clear and, as a consequence, as strong as it could be.

Perhaps the people who would not enjoy what BD produced, and/or who would feel slighted by BD's approach to their displeasure, simply aren't members of the market that BD is seeking to reach and cater to. Companies market to their market, which certainly, in this case, doesn't include everyone who has ever bought a game, or even ever bought a BG game, or a previous BD product.

Companies exist to make a profit, not to satisfy the wants and desires of every segment of the buying public. If one is not a member of the target audience a company cares about or is trying to reach, well, such is Capitalism.

They, BD, choose who they will market to - segments of the overall market don't get to choose which companies cater to them.... Consumers buy, or don't buy. Companies sell or don't sell - It really isn't any more complicated than that.... It's not like BD "owes" fans of this game series anything - they are a private, for-profit company, not a charity looking to salve the hurts of whomever might be disappointed by one of their products....

I doubt BD will miss selling games to people they didn't expect to sell games to...

Problem is, games is NOT real life. Someone plays game to temporarily forget and leave aside real life, to escape to another world... When people mix games with reality, there is always ugly consequences thereafter. I won't advocate anything since i am neutral, but instead, DEFEND THE RIGHT OF EVERYONE TO FREE WILL, FREE CHOICE and INFORMATION, before they are misguided into buying a game while thinking it is the continuation of a classic series in the same spirit, only to find out that it is cheap theatricals and political agendas, being pushed up forcibly on everyone's face, instead.

People have a RIGHT to KNOW what their game contains. Like people have a RIGHT to KNOW everything they buy, exactly what contains inside it. Everyone has a right to INFORMATION. Information brings FREEDOM! By knowing something, you then CAN decide whether to buy it or not, whether it matches with your criteria, or NOT! By knowing the content of ANY product, you ensure two things; FREEDOM and RESPONSIBILITY in choosing (to consume/purchase) it! If, on the other hand, product/game rushes in sneakily the back door way, misguiding you to believe it hails from a well-established franchise with known characteristics, when you try it and notice the differences, you get enraged and start to fan flames, you don't pause to think with logic, to try it first decide second, or anything else of sorts... It is like being duped, this way, hence the hatred, the forum assaults in other sites, etc. Had the developers "come straight" at the fans and announced with clarity during development: "You know, this is not a direct spiritual successor of BG series, but a new experiment of ours with x differences and y experimental implementations, referring mostly to the z category of gamers/people/fans", then NO ONE would complain, NO ONE would snarl, hiss, bite, spew flames or howl for a refund...

Problem is, the expansion itself was bad. A plethora of people have problems with multiplayer, disabling of mod compatibility, various glitches and serious issues, that make the game a faulty title at best. This doesn't help one bit. Even people who are okay with the new liberties, shouted about the state game is, at least currently. And even people whose forceful and pushing "white-knights" from the dev team tried to champion them got really pissed with them, declaring publicly that they didn't like this move, lecturing them even of it causing the opposite effect (which quite frankly and honestly, pretty much did...) and to top it all, some of them even declared that this new product is not BG at all or has no place in the Forgotten Realms lore and game world.

Who wouldn't, really?

1) Games and reality don't mix. Especially a fantasy medieval setting with a modern real life environment.
2) Games are played by minors too and some people don't want their child to get in touch with that content; it is THEIR right, is that not? Their right to KNOW BEFOREHAND, so as NOT TO BUY! No one asked for game to be banned! In Russia for example, LGBT activists were prohibited from law to present their matters and/or preach to underage people who still attend school. No one prevented their rhetoric to be targeted at people over 18, yet they raised a ruckus and demand to push on their faces the matter at all costs! Sorry, this is selfish and to be respected from others, you have to respect them too.
3) Rights work both ways. One way rights, especially imposing on others and hurled under the carpet, sad as is, almost always are perceived as "intrusive".
4) SJWs, what they did here, we call it "Yellow Press" and "Conscripted Art", round these parts. Instead of delivering a neutral product to be enjoyed by everyone, they picked an agenda, they tied a means of entertainment to a political cause and ultimately REPLACED a well known product into something that barely resembles its source. TO SERVE A CAUSE! Of course, it wasn't as "harmful" as a newspaper championing a corrupt political party for example or covering scandals in real life, but yellow press and conscripted art, leave always a bitter taste, even to the mouths of those who were supposed to promote, as per their own feedback too, lol.
5) The label i proposed wasn't with the evil notion others perceived. But to serve the FREEDOM OF CHOICE. Some people want their product to have a set of characteristics that appeal to him/her/them. Shouldn't they have a right to not be forced into buying a product that doesn't fulfill their demands? This was a fine example, of how people asking for freedom, carve up in pieces the freedom of others and even attack them for being heartless, too. Hospitality, friendship, tolerance, acceptance, are EARNED, not given for free and should you try to IMPOSE them on others, even if said others would eventually think to try going along, ultimately they make them angry, instead. And destroying a classic game wasn't helping that at all.

Peace.

"Perhaps the people who would not enjoy what BD produced, and/or who would feel slighted by BD's approach to their displeasure, simply aren't members of the market that BD is seeking to reach and cater to."

If this strategy manages to increase Beamdog's profits, which I think is very unlikely, then good for them. Otherwise this move is digging their own graves.

"Companies exist to make a profit, not to satisfy the wants and desires of every segment of the buying public. If one is not a member of the target audience a company cares about or is trying to reach, well, such is Capitalism."

Capitalism also allows people to boycott anything for whatever reason they see fit. If this reason is a transsexual in a game, they can boycott it. As a company that wants to make profit, Beamdog was foolish, I'd say, to include content in their game that they knew will cause quite a lot of people to boycott it. And they should have figured that showing middle finger to a majority of playerbase will not help, either. They had the right to do so and they used this right. Now the large part of the playerbase is using THEIR right to review the game badly and boycott it.

You reap what you sow. Current "hate campaign" is something Beamdog could have easily avoided.

Beamdog is making a gamble that they can replace the "problematic" long time gamers and Baldur's Gate fans with new SJW customers. Maybe it'll pay off, but other companies (like the developer of Sunset) who tried to sell primarily to the SJW demographic found that it is not a profitable business decision.

Exactly. Beamdog maybe Expected the fans of Baldur's Gate are so loyal they will love their DLC and they will not care about LGBT and SJW activism.
I haven't played the expansion, but I have read that one of the fout new playable character is bisexual, one gay and one goblin activist for racial equality.
I think, this is really strong SJW a LGBT agenda.
It was terrible move from business point of view. They had strong player base so they shouldn't test loayality of numerous Baldurs Gate fans, when the group, which can be pleased by the new "progressive" agenda consists of few SJW and LGBT activists, who are not very interested in gaming at all.

People do not like forced political bs thrown at them in an old established franchise. Especially when the company is on record saying they want to change the originals as well.

They could have had a well written character that wanted to change their sex and made it a well written quest, since the ability is already in the game.

What they did is about as bad as giving your character a cell phone, which he can order domino's pizza on, and have the guy deliver it in a red mustang... while random npcs shout "TRUMP 2016!!!"

While Trump people might find it funny, they still would not want that crap in the game.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/04/04/developers-response-to-baldurs-gate-controversy-misses-the-point/

This sums up how I feel about what they've done to the original characters quite nicely.

This kinda thing broke immersion in games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Last of Us: Left Behind. This time I'm not going to fork over the money. I'm over it.

I'm curious what you found wrong with Last of Us: Left Behind? As I've said many times in this thread, I have no problem with gay / bi / whatever characters as long as they're well written and not being crammed into an existing franchise. TLOU was a new franchise and the Left Behind content was really well done, IMO. In the main game Ellie routinely talked about her friend (I forget her name) and nothing about it felt forced when they show that they're more than just friends and her being bi or lesbian (they never say - again, good writing) was never made the primary point of the plot, it was simply about two people who are close to each other having one last good time before having to say goodbye because of the different paths they chose in life.

Please point me to the specific lore in question, and provide quotations, and explain how the existence of LGBT characters doesn't fit it. And please read the previous posts in this thread on the subject first, because I and others have already addressed this point.

In my opinion the whole DLC felt pointless and like it only existed to show how progressive the developers were. I didn't find running around a mall with Ellie and her friend interesting in the slightest and them kissing right before the zombies came was just over the top. If Ellie had just said she lost her girlfriend in the main game, and there not been a DLC, it would've been far less obnoxious. I'm just glad I got the PS4 version of the game because the DLC was free. I would've been PISSED if I spent money on it.