Adeptus Custodes Officially Include Women

[Indy Techwisp]

I'm still of the opinion that this, at it's core, will be good for the IP in the long run, primarily because when Games Workshop inevitably does reach for Female Space Marines some time in the future, they can look back at all this, see the criticisms, see the arguments, see how people reacted, what people actually liked and how the market reacted in response.

 

This whole situation is providing a wealth of data for Games Workshop to reference in the future so that hopefully, when the next change in this category comes rolling out of a Boardmeeting, it will be a far more civil affair than this.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

Some of the examples you just gave are in the process of going into the toilet due to mismanagement or specifically driving fans away due to diversity. If you are unaware of that, I have no idea how. But some better examples are Rings of Power, and The Witcher, if you want to be on the nose about it.

 

As for the rest of your high horse nonsense argument, being excluded from things is a large part of my life. While I was born white, and male (like the majority of people who play 40K), I was also born with cancer. I lost my sight at a very young age, and coming to terms with things I get excluded from due to either people not thinking I was capable, or actually not being physically capable, is an ongoing feature of my life. I've been turned away from working jobs at good will because the manager didn't think I had the skill set required to sort donated clothing. 

 

But frankly, none of this matters. This discussion won't change anything. The damage has been done, and now we have to see how far GW will take it, and how many fans they drive away if they choose to aggressively promote it. Maybe this will be the one time in recent history where a company, and the insane people who follow this culture war, will let people be grumpy about something that was changed and give them time to get it out. But more likely it'll be a bunch of aggressive doubling down that just makes it worse.

[Jings]

10 minutes ago, Sword Brother Adelard said:

 

I did, you have it backwards. The studio had made the models and there were all 'male' so none in the book. 

 

That sounds like legal laying down the 'no models, no lore' rule which they've thankfully stepped back from a little.

 

This is a longer quote that goes into it in more depth.

 

Less "we've already made the models", more "Custodes are male". 

[Indy Techwisp]

Also, just to get this out there before this thread is inevitably canned.

No.

This isn't Games Workshop going Woke.

This isn't Games Workshop picking a side in the "culture war", whatever the  that is.

 

This is called a business model, and Games Workshop have been openly pursuing this more diverse business model for a while now.

Not that seemingly anyone else in 40k noticed it, because it's mostly been trialled in AoS.

 

They put Female Stormcast in, they sold better.

They started making mixed sex units in other armies, they also sold better.

To the higher ups, this shows them that this strategy makes them more money, so that's where they're going.

 

This is the first trial of it in 40k and look at how it's going.

We've got people clinging to sentences in order to try and invalidate the company who actually owns the game and we've got people on both sides making personal attacks at eachother other words in a codex.

 

To me at least, I can see a far worse outcome for this than just "GW do/do not stick to their guns."

40k games Games Workshop a lot of money, but a lot of that money comes from people who don't interact with this entire side of the community.

People for whom this isn't an issue.

People who will just buy the models and the rules regardless of what happens.

 

I feel if we push too hard, or the personal attacks go to far, we could be causing the true death of 40k with our own hands by pushing GW to the point where scrapping the entire game and launching a new version AoS style is the more profitable and safer option.

 

We've already had a couple people on social media claiming there's been actual physical altercations with Games Workshop staff over this, so we are rapidly approaching the point where it's the whole community that Games Workshop need to cut to save their profits.

[Indy Techwisp]

Also, this is quite literally the tamest way Games Workshop could have approached this.

 

They didn't release new Female models.

 

They didn't jump in with Female Space Marines

 

They didn't do a massive lore event to explain why.

 

They just put Female names in a book, female names in a short story and changed the copy and paste dialogue to gender neutral language.

 

And now there's female custodes.

 

That's it.

 

You would quite possibly have never noticed this if you, like a lot of players, just skip the lore in the codex and go right to the stats.

 

They did the bare minimum to test the water and it's pretty much blown up the entire community.

 

 

I fail to see how people think reacting like this will have any positive outcome.

 

For some context, they put more effort into explaining why House Van Saar on Necromunda have bone white skin on the studio paint job.

Edited April 16 by Indy Techwisp

[Indy Techwisp]

40k is a popular game.

It's not a niche little fan project which relies on a small community.

It's a franchise which people interact with around the world.

 

So it's a bit strange that I've not really seen any foreign language response to this.

 

I'd guess it's because the initial leak that confirmed this was in English, but once it's out proper we should be getting the opinions of the international community too.

 

I'm interested to see how well it goes, all things considered.

Edited April 16 by Indy Techwisp

[Slips]

4 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

40k is a popular game.

It's not a niche little fan project which relies on a small community.

It's a franchise which people interact with around the world.

 

So it's a bit strange that I've not really seen any foreign language response to this.

 

I'd guess it's because the initial leak that confirmed this was in English, but once it's out proper we should be getting the opinions of the international community too.

 

I'm interested to see how well it goes, all things considered.

The initial leak I saw was Spanish on my end. 

 

[Indy Techwisp]

Huh, guess I missed that.

Thanks for pointing it out.

[Marshal Rohr]

GW did Primaris and Custodes exactly backwards. They should’ve made femstodes something to recover losses from the webway war after the emperor could no longer personally make them to replenish numbers and they should’ve just rescaled marines and said they’ve always been that big and mark 10 armor has been around and no one noticed. 

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

28 minutes ago, Trysanna said:

And neither of those things were bad because of their attempts at diversity, they're bad because of poor writing or bad pacing or bad editing or a million other reasons. It's not Soley because they have decided to add more women to it. Also, the wider franchises will survive these sub-par products because they're monolithic at this point, especially Tolkien's work, and the same will apply to 40k. It's big enough to take some hits, as it were. 

 

And yeah, okay, I'm sorry about your disability, I watched my best friend die from cancer, isn't fun and I am sorry to hear about that. But that doesn't suddenly make it a 1:1 comparison. Blind people weren't treated as literal property for hundreds of years, had to fight for the right to vote, excluded from existing in nerd spaces, seen as an invading outsider here to ruin the fun toys, had their history and contributions to these spaces and actual history erased and forgotten, etc etc. You know what it's like to be excluded, and for that I am sorry, but you, as a man, don't know what it's like to deal with sexism and misogyny on a daily basis and how that affects every aspect of life for women. In the same vein, I've also been turned away from jobs and opportunities because I've my gender. You don't have to worry about being assaulted or murdered because of your blindness, I have to worry about those things happening to me because I am a women. I can't even go to a bar without being hyper protective of my drink. I have to carefully decline men and their advances because if I don't do it properly, one of them might just kill me for saying no. Let's not even get into the fact that I'm queer so being excluded and threatened based on that aspect is a whole other thing. 

 

Furthermore, after suffering from being excluded for years, shouldn't you want to make sure everyone else is included in the way you were not? Shouldn't you want to make sure everyone else has a place at the table too? 

 

 

I'm not sure why you think I don't have to worry about getting mugged or murdered because of my blindness. I've been attacked twice by strangers off their mind on substances, mugged, etc. As you can imagine, getting turned down for even basic entry jobs isn't a good way to get money, and I was poorfor the first 20 years of my life.

 

One of the interesting things about being blind is, you tend to know more about it than people who aren't. For example, historically if you were blind you either survived as a dead weight to your family, assuming they were kind and loved you, or you got put out on the street to beg. People threw things at you, thought you were diseased, and took advantage of you at every turn. If you were exceptionally lucky you might get shipped off to one of the exceedingly rare homes for the blind, where you might be taught how to read raised type books. This was before braille, which is a relatively new invention. 

 

Being excluded from nerd spaces? You have no idea how many times I've wanted to play a video game, but been told blind people can't do that. Even after all the advances made in that field, most people just don't think it's possible despite proof to the contrary. The first hobby I tried to get into, before 40K even, was Magic. Despite this being after all the fluff pieces wrote about blind players using coded tags to mark their cards so they could read them, I was told by my local magic community that they wouldn't want to play because they wouldn't know if I was cheating.

 

And so here's the thing. Yes, I do want all people to be allowed into the hobby. I love playing games with everyone. But when I joined I didn't demand that they make half of all my soldiers blind. I didn't demand anything at all. I just joined because I wanted to be here. Nothing is stopping female players from joining. This custodes things certainly isn't even addressing that. I'm annoyed that lore was changed, and I'm annoyed that it's tied into ongoing problems that have hit Comics, Video Games, Movies. The arguments and accusations you've been throwing out against me from the beginning are proof how explosive this issue is. Nobody just starts conversations with that tone from a dead stop.

[phandaal]

56 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

They put Female Stormcast in, they sold better.

They started making mixed sex units in other armies, they also sold better.

To the higher ups, this shows them that this strategy makes them more money, so that's where they're going.

 

Would have to see some real data for this one, because it is hard to separate "added females" from "new sculpts" that people love to buy. Space Marines have hard-carried GW for years, for example, and until they announce on X that Space Marines have also always been female, the model kits still only contain male sculpts. Not really pertinent to this discussion though.

 

46 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

I fail to see how people think reacting like this will have any positive outcome.

 

It is not the customers' responsibility to act in any particular way. It is the company's responsibility to act in the way that gets their customers to cough up the dough. Time will tell if GW will be successful in that, but so far they have been pretty good at it. Just remember which way the obligation goes - GW needs customers, not the other way around.

 

  

3 minutes ago, Marshal Valkenhayn said:

The arguments and accusations you've been throwing out against me from the beginning are proof how explosive this issue is. Nobody just starts conversations with that tone from a dead stop.

 

Honestly, I am surprised this individual has not been given a warning at least. Going full-throttle after people with no provocation and starting arguments that end up with threads locked is usually frowned upon, but for this person those rules do not seem to apply.

Edited April 16 by phandaal

[Captain Idaho]

I'm closing this down for a review and cool down. Attacking each other, discussing off topic subjects, condescension - oh the condescension. I'll raise the discussion with the B&C Moderation team as there's a lot that needs to be looked at and a way forward needed.

 

I'll of course raise the question "can the topic be salvaged, has it run its course, do we get benefit in the community to allow it to continue and escalation being a possibility. If it can be opened and the team decides it can, I'm sure it will.

Edited April 16 by Captain Idaho