Hi I'm upset about the unnecessary naming change

Anhigen · 2019-10-10 00:03:35

jasonrohrer wrote:

It was there in the data, from the Social Security Administration, which tracked gender naming trends over the past 138 years. This is fascinating data. I ignored that aspect of the data when I first implemented that system, because I was rushing (shortly after launch) to get the baby names in place as quickly as possible. I also ignored all years except for 2016 originally. When I recently took another look at the data, I discovered that it was tagged by gender. Wow, cool!

Ok.

Do names have gender? Short answer, no. Long answer, also no. So why does OHOL take the stance that they do?

Names inherently are genderless, a fact we all agree and observe because we witness their trends. That's a fact we see in our personal lives and it's reflected in the data. Which brings me to how you misconstrued the public resource. Correlation does not equal causation. 1 million baby "boys" could be named Micheal tomorrow, and despite their gender identity, or sex, "girls" are not precluded from being named Michael. As you mentioned, this already happens, but you disallowed that data in favor of the results you drafted.

jasonrhorer wrote:

There are thousands of boys named Robert, and only 12 girls named Robert, most likely by accident. -- Richard is not a girl's name. -- Mothers in real life never name their girl Richard just to goof off, right?

Legally, in the real world, we make no distinction, so why is it in the game?

Look, I'm about to talk about race here, real quick, because I find people have an easier time of understanding problematic behavior and practices when put into the context of more familiar discriminatory practices--I concede that any of us could not be so brushed up on gender discrimination so... While searching for your data I quickly came across NYC's list of birth names--they keep track too--and I'm glad you didn't find it. NYC not only tracks the year, sex, and name of each baby, but also their "ethnicity" which is often interchanged with race. You could have just as easily found this data set, and since it's from arguably the most diverse city in the world, considered it a great resource for your list. We could have watched you misconstrue that data as well and wrongfully attribute naming trends to race and prohibit players from naming bbs outside their race in order to protect the "beauty" of your game. It's all in the data, you see. I mean, isn't it immersion breaking when you see a black person with name Viking? Or someone with red hair called Tyrone?? Aren't those players merely "trolling".

But that would be ridiculous, you would be suggesting that names have race which isn't true. At least, not in the real world. But you, Jason, would be saying that they do, and you would have coded it into this game's universe as being more than true--only true. However, OHOL isn't the real world and it lacks a lot of the world's problematic beliefs. OHOL has black bodied individuals, but there are no "Black People". OHOL has female bodied individuals, but there are no "women". There is no cultural context for either of those beliefs--no laws, no systems, no nothing--in the game's code. I personally find it incredible that I'm explaining "magic circle" to some one of your pedigree, hence why your points are so obtuse, but OHOL exists in the real world but the real world isn't "in" OHOL. We as players may project our thoughts of "womanhood" or "race" onto the figures contained within the game but that's not any more true than people projecting the usefulness of yum chaining into our imaginary world as well. Players are allowed to make up what these figures mean to them within their own cultural contexts. All players are privileged to this. Well, except for a few now...

So do you Jason Rohrer, believe that names have genders? Yeah.

Even though it's not a real thing. It's a personal belief which you've subjected us to, and taken a stance on by spending workhours coding it into your game's universe, like Lum said. It's a fact of OHOL that names have gender. Of which there are three. You crafted this from data, explained the methodology, and then instituted it. All you, buddy. That is 100% an authorial and authoritative action that you can't simply defer.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Where have I expressed my words or stance on non-binary and trans individuals?

I don't have to read your stance to witness your interaction with them. A trans player voiced their grievance and you dismissed it without even acknowledging them--continued deference to data. Literally, you read their complaint, and that of several others, and said it is more important that boys be named boy names to protect the beauty of your game than how it might have affected them. I will point out here that everyone who has voiced their opinion in favor our your change has noted that the "miss gendered names" were merely an annoyance to them. It would appear one side has greater stakes than the other... using race again, I wonder how many black people would need to voice their concerns before you acknowledge that they were a) black and b) you recognize their concerns.

For those just following this started all the way over here

The OP pointed out that the name Lady was nowhere near similar to the name Laekyn. That's a problem of the way the game chooses the next available name--as all names have to be unique within a two hour window. It's by function, of the game proceeding to the next available "unique" name on the list that this issue arises, as all first names were placed on one continuous list. To us, David is not similar to Davina, though to the game's parameters, it is. Now you could sort the list in any number of ways, its arguable that if I'm naming a child an Arabic name I'd likely be happy if the game produced a "similar" Arabic name that was available instead of something that was just alphabetically similar. You could also sort names by geography trends, yearly ones, or even gender. That last idea wasn't that bad. You can read in that thread that people, myself included, think that's a fine sophistication to the system we had before--surely if you're trying to name your kid a "girl's" name then the game generating Daffodil instead of Davina, is probably better than just switching it to David. But...

jasonrhorer wrote:

I think I'm going to make a new list of first names, separated by M and F, and enforce that when picking a name for you bb.

What's messed up is that this doesn't even solve the first problem we had--Lady and Laekyn are still dissimilar.

jasonrhorer wrote:

If you really hate gendered names in this game, don't use them for your babies. There are 7,917 gender-neutral names for you to chose from.

Revisiting our useful racial "watchdog" analogy this is the same as offering coloured people their own drinking fountains--plenty to choose from just don't use these. For those unfamiliar with racial segregation in the United States... there was a long period of time when white people considered offering a small pittance to negros as a way of showing they were being civil and cooperative. Black people who were upset that they didn't get the same privileges as their white counterparts were regarded as ungrateful. It doesn't matter that they have their own fountain, it's that you've limited them. Nowadays we can all use any water fountain. Most people think that's better as water fountains don't need to be racialized. Likewise with names. If that wasn't clear.

jasonrhorer wrote:

If you're giving your baby a blatantly cross-gender name to be funny.... this is the same as naming your baby Dickhead

I'm not going to get into the entire laundry list of reasons why someone might choose any one name for one person--I think everyone here has enough imagination to picture the scenarios in which they might have a beautiful or unproblematic way of interacting with the responsibility of naming another player--but I will point out how you've not kept the same energy, not even close, for other parts of the naming process in this game.

It's a fact of the universally shared last name list that we have names available to use like Dyke, Mexican, and Troll. It is clear, to all those playing, that these names aren't chosen because they reflect people's real last names or to add to the "beauty" of OHOL. But it arises because the game doesn't take a stance on what's appropriate for a last name, they are all valid names, after all. (I sincerely had to look up Trollerman after coming across it because I couldn't believe there would be enough instances of it to make it onto Jason's culled list of last names--it's a real flipping thing tho) In fact, people can name their kids after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and now, with the growing the list of names, after Game of Thrones characters... they're real names, that real people now have! (If you wanted to be political, you might not be able to get the name Trump2020, but you could still be Trump) That doesn't mean people are not trolling or grieifng with them but hey, they ARE valid. The game doesn't take stance on their viability. None of them. It does take a direct stance on what Jason consider's cross-gender and that's uncool. Let's replace "cross-gender" with "trans-racial" and see how uncomfortable the sentence is... Somehow the game took the stance that naming your kid "Suzie" is tantamount to naming them Dickhead. Cool.

Above all of this, the clearest way to solve this issue of trolling--again, not even the original problem--is to allow players to change their name. It's probably understandable that we couldn't do this with our last names, though I'm sure there will a process by which we'll be able to splinter off families and create new last names sometime in OHOL's future, but we could at least change our first names. I personally think it's shit when my mom names me Wolf and tells me to bark. Every time someone refers to me as Wolf I'm reminded of that weird encounter and wouldn't it be nice if when I was old enough I could change my first name?? Don't like being called Snow?? Change it to Lady. Your parent was talking and accidentally named you?? Change it to what you want!! You're chill and want to RP your given name?? Leave it alone and carry on with your berry munching--it's your game! You could even preserve the sanctity of naming by allowing players to only be able to change their first name once per day. Plen-ty-of-op-tions!

jasonrohrer wrote:

And what do baby names have to do with it?

Look, I'm not here to change anyone's mind as much as I am to show trans players that there will be people who stick up for them. I think what's weird about this whole thing is that it doesn't fit the game, thematically. Considering the game doesn't care what gender we might identify as, as players, and spits us out into this make believe world you'd imagine that the base of people who were REAL STICKLERS ABOUT THEIR DICKS AND VAGS wouldn't be interested in this game. We might wear a dress because it keeps us warm--we're trying to survive!--and it's cool to see what social constructs break down when you remove all the arbitrary bullshit. So enforced gender binaries don't really fit.

I believe you're making a great game and that it is a huge job developing this game by yourself--I champion for you all over these boards bruh. Yeah, it's weird we got an entire update focused on giving us genders which we have to uphold when, you know, no one asked for it... Literally... an entire forum of people asking for specific content and this is what you gave us. Cool. But also... I get it, the data fascinated you, and it's been delightful to watch you use a public resource and create these massive naming lists--we think that's rad! But, you know, a really bad misstep and a clear fumble with how you're receiving the blowback. That can be fine, you're going to run into interesting problems developing a game that needs to suggest the real world while also not containing the real world, specifically. Sounds tricky. However, that doesn't absolve from what your course of actions have been and I strongly suggest you revisit the idea.

Thanks for your time.

Last edited by Anhigen (2019-10-10 05:16:21)

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-10 01:15:07

Go ahead and name your girl baby Richard in real life. It's not illegal, you're right about that.

You can also cut your hair short as a woman or wear long hair as a man in real life. But you can't do that in this game, because it's a 10,000 foot cartoon view of humanity. In this 10,000 foot view, men and women are distinct and can be easily recognized by appearance, based on current stereotypes of women having long hair and men having short hair.

In this 10,000 cartoon foot view, there are no women named Richard.

In The Castle Doctrine, which was an abstract, cartoon representation of 1991 crime fears, you procedurally-generated wife and daughter would never have the procedurally-selected name Richard either.

In these abstract, artistic depictions that are primarily about other issues (like the paranoid nightmare of home security or the deep mystery of human civilization), including nods to modern gender bending practices would be distracting and out of place.

This is not a work of art about gender politics.

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-10 01:18:23

And regarding no one asking for it, the update was specifically motivated by the omission of the name "HELGA" as pointed out by a forum member, which caused me to dig in to the name code again to figure out why Helga was missing. It was also specifically motivated by forum members complaining about the way closest-matching names were often an unpleasant surprise, including when the names crossed gender unexpectedly.

coriander · 2019-10-10 03:47:02

As much as I respect you and your work Jason, I have no clue why you would, of all the issues raised on the forums, choose to rework something so minor.

I don't personally feel like it is "radical" to call my daughter "YALE". But now I shall call her the abominable "YALEEN". At least that one player on the forum gets to call their daughter "HELGA" now.

Whatever · 2019-10-10 04:32:29

this is the thread jason is referring to: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7994

jasonrohrer wrote:

It was also specifically motivated by forum members complaining about the way closest-matching names were often an unpleasant surprise, including when the names crossed gender unexpectedly.

the thread starts with:

I really loved the idea of freedom of naming kids. Why has it changed?

freedom of naming kids - exactly what this thread is also about.

Anyways, i personally dont care at all about the naming system.

Last edited by Whatever (2019-10-10 04:37:57)

Melea · 2019-10-10 04:49:12

As a counterpoint, I quite like the naming update. There's far more variety in available names now, clarity for what you're ACTUALLY going to end up naming your kid (SO NICE!), and likely fewer SID kids for some.

I have had kids that were obviously quite discontented or suicided after mistakenly naming them a name that is pervasively used for the other sex. Naming your boy child Susan or your girl Richard...it obviously matters A LOT to some players. Sometimes enough for them to /die out of that life.

There's nothing stopping you from choosing off-the-wall names for kids in real life...but this is a game that's meant to be enjoyable for the players, and more than just a few players seem to greatly dislike being stuck for an hour with what is to today's cultures often an extremely aberrant name for their in-game sex. Especially since your hour-long character's name is entirely in the control of another player...it's a big deal for the kid to get a terrible name that they're stuck with their entire in-game life, but a very minor inconvenience for the mother to simply pick a different, likely much less controversial or annoying name instead for the other player.

fug · 2019-10-10 05:09:26

Who cares whether or not names are gender specific. Sure it's slightly annoying to get a derp name but it never ruined any part of the game. "Omg what am I going to do when I'm named babygirl while male????"

/die

Names don't really matter but enforcing gender appropriate names seems silly. It's still wrong to basically play male in the current game lol.

Melea · 2019-10-10 05:59:01

It never ruined any part of the game...*for you* in particular. It's gotta be obvious that doesn't necessarily apply to everybody. Especially since I have seen people /die apparently directly related to the name they got, after otherwise happily interacting with their mother.

fug wrote:

It's still wrong to basically play male in the current game lol.

Why? The avatars are bearded, penis'd, don't give birth, and are free to work instead of taking time from 14-40 tending a procession of children. Why not play them as male, either for RP, immersion, or just because?

Last edited by Melea (2019-10-10 05:59:49)

Amon · 2019-10-10 11:37:30

Aight guys. Certain countries have LISTS of allowed names or at least give you a stop to a name that would get your kid bullied in school, and they aren't backwater countries either. Names that switched gender only did so in recent human history where name meanings are so far removed from the languages they originated in. If each time we spoke names we said "Flower girl" "Warrior" "Shinig light" "Thirdborn boy" "Son of twin" we would err some more. Where do we think name meanings even come from? Languages.
How does a language develop? Like a group of people.

Anhigen wrote:

Legally, in the real world, we make no distinction, so why is it in the game?
Look, I'm about to talk about race here, real quick, because I find people have an easier time of understanding problematic behavior and practices when put into the context of more familiar discriminatory practices -///-
But that would be ridiculous, you would be suggesting that names have race which isn't true. At least, not in the real world. -///-

Legally in the world, some goverments can stop you from naming your children whatever you want.

It is true that names are only a semantic value, but ignoring that as simply such and running it under the hyperpolitical gender-erasing race-erasing modern day politics without head or tail isn't truthful either. Humanity has always been hyper aware about such things. Names in particular have been put under a very high moral ground worldwide. Why are there so many stories about finding out the 'true name' of someone? Or why did certain cultures have names that mean 'unwanted' or 'black dog' for either their childhood or entire life if not but to decieve malevolent spirits. Why do certain cultures have specific names for occasions of birth? Specific names for twins, the third born boy, the child that is 'enough children now'. Why do some cultures name their children semantically the same but tend to choose similair things for either gender regardless? And why are such practices not universal but contained among a culture of people?

The phenomenom of New York is only an extreme yet extremely tiny fragmant of the whole history of humanity, and a small fragment of an ironically 'global' world. Exchange of name practices happned slowly, very slowly, so slowly it's mostly tied with periods of migration. Not googling baby lists on the phone, and even then, outside of cultural crockpots, that practice is rare.
Names are a product of a culture's language and it's based off it. Language, a thing which is developed among a certain group of people over many generations. If names, language weren't tied with 'race', we wouldn't have hyper-political activists running around telling people to not learn different languages unless they belong to that race.
-eyeroll-
Or advocating against cultural exchange.
-more eyeroll-
Something that has been exchanging at a slow rate throughout the whole of human history.
Something we have to accept is indicative in the now yet fluid in a multi-generational time span.

It is culturaly deep. And that goes much deeper than 'race', which seems to change meaning and what it includes on a whim of politics.

Like genes, language, practice, they evolve on their own, they fork and diversify, they exchange when new g/l/p's are introduced, they spread as population migrates. They also assimilate.
A group of people is united among those and many more different factors. But those different factors can interchange, split, dissapear, get assimilated or incorporated at different rates.

In the dark ages in europe, some family in the Anglo Saxon kingdom wouldn't name their newborn Rikka, Snežinkai or Aputsiak. Yet all these names are semantically equivalent.
They'd name their child in Old English. Yet. The names would become typicaly Norman only a few hundrets of years later. Why? The Normanl conquest of course.
Yet a name like 'Mary' 'Peter', Biblical and Hebrew names would replace those a few hundreths of years later? Why? Because the romans spread christianity, then the catholic church furthered their grip.
And even then. Those names, from another culture, STILL they tailored to the needs of a culture and a language. Why is a name like Eliyyahu turned to Ilija, Elijah, Ilyas, Elias depending on the people they settled in? Because a name is the child of a language, and language goes historically as deep as a person's genome and culture etc. and goes through the same historical transformations, asimilations, adaptations.

On a side note it would make sense to bracket names and assign them randomly to a family that springs up alongside a language.
And as two families mingle, so do their names and your lineage forever expands on their available naming pool.

But should it? -shrugs-
People pick out their favurite names, but booting someone out of their safe zone isn't necessarily bad.

OHOL is interesting specifically because of the human nature to it. Think about it when it was the norm to dump your child at the 'daycare' by the fire. If you felt bad about that and the meh relationship your had with your child, that tells something about the world in the real...

Last edited by Amon (2019-10-10 11:40:35)

jasonrohrer · 2019-10-10 15:45:36

Yeah, I forgot about that....

Many countries in Europe have a "ministry of names" that requires you pick a name from an approved list, and the lists are separated by gender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law

This includes most of Scandinavia, Germany, Hungary, etc.

Anyway, a note to the original poster Lum:

I understand about your gender identity, but what does that have to do with how you name another player who is NOT you and likely does not share your gender identity?

This is not about picking your own name, or expressing your own identity, but about picking something for another player. Which is, again, why its so important to have a whitelist. Never in the history of video games, as far as I know, have players ever been given the power to permanently name each other unilaterally. So far, it has been a successful experiment, thanks to carefully designed limitations.

Anhigen wrote:

No one is going to name me n****r.

Why not? Why not let another player express this offensive political view through the way that they name you? The answer is obvious.

And though way less offensive to most people, names that are obviously cross-gender are doing a similar thing. They are a humorous (or perhaps, rarely, political) gotcha that will stick with you for your whole life.

The logic of the "ministry of names," though it seems tyrannical to my American sensibilities, is that you are naming another person, not yourself, and that other person has some rights that need to be protected. But the poor baby who gets a cruel name won't figure it out for a decade, and furthermore, most real-life parents have a vested interest in NOT being cruel to to their babies.

In the context of this game, it's much worse, because the name is processed instantly by the thinking adult who is controlling the named baby, and the in-game parent has a much weaker vested interest.

As a parent who made up three novel, gender-neutral names for my own children (which were not cruel), I find the idea of a "ministry of names" to be abhorrent.

However, I didn't think twice before implementing a similar whitelist for this game, because allowing completely free choice in permanently naming other players would have been disastrous. This update represents a hole in the original system that has been patched.

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#26 2019-10-10 00:03:35

Re: Hi I'm upset about the unnecessary naming change

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Re: Hi I'm upset about the unnecessary naming change

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