If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Notch: There's no gender in Minecraft

Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson has answered criticisms of MInecraft's lack of official female avatars by saying the survival adventure exists in a genderless world.

According to Notch, the player character, nicknamed Steve, is representative of all human beings rather than a male human being. Not only that, but even the animals in Minecraft are mono-gendered.

The lack of gender seems to be not so much politically motivated as a response to the difficulties of distinguishing between character models with Minecraft's blocky graphics.

"I’m not saying this is a good way to deal with gender in all games, as the better your graphics are, and because of how quickly the human mind tries to identify the gender of other humans, you are going to have to make a decision as a developer about gender, but I felt we could get away with it in Minecraft," Notch said.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Sign in and unlock a world of features

Get access to commenting, homepage personalisation, newsletters, and more!

In this article

Minecraft

Video Game

Related topics
About the Author
Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

Contributor

Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

Comments