Fighting Games Friday: Tournament Commentators Are Not Ready for the New Seth or Ladiva

Capcom has previously thrown curveballs with the reveals of returning characters for Street Fighter V, with how those characters play differently compared to their previous appearances. But they pitched the biggest curveball yet with the reveal of Seth for the game. It’s true that Seth’s move set has been completely changed, providing the capability of using unique moves instead of relying on copied techniques from other characters. But the biggest difference is how the character’s primary appearance will be female, due to the original body being ravaged following the Street Fighter IV defeat. The original appearance will be available as an option through the premium Nostalgia outfit, however.

The new appearance is possible because Seth has no defined gender, and is more machine than human. Regardless of the story meaning, it’s an interesting idea on Capcom’s part to introduce a nonbinary character, even if they’re not specifically going that far. This is the same company that’s continued to dance around acknowledging whether Poison is transgender or not.

How the new Seth will play is one question, the focal point of the announcement post I made on Monday. There’s another key one: How in the hell will tournament commentators address the character now? Given how trans and nonbinary issues have and — perhaps more aptly — haven’t been addressed in the Fighting Game Community and the gaming community as a whole, there’s reason for concern.

Some commentators will address Seth properly with gender-neutral pronouns, given what kind of character Seth actually is. This shouldn’t be too difficult. The characters themselves are only referred to a few times during matches. When commentators describe actions happening on screen at a tournament, they usually refer to those the players participating in matches are making, and not the characters. But when they don’t, I’d like to hope they’ll take the sensitive approach, despite the number of players who will goad them in the other direction. They could also refer to the character as “she” or “he” depending on which outfit the player chooses, with the excuse from commentators for the latter being how they referred to the character in SFIV. That’s not a good excuse, but they might go with that.

There’s high potential for edgelord commentators, especially at tournaments not sponsored by big companies or organizations. They may not resist the chance to make tired transphobic jokes, like referring to the character as “it” or, considerably worse, saying “did you just assume their gender?” I’m cringing just writing this.

There’s almost a guarantee of this happening at smaller tournament settings, which have less rules and regulations. But if this happens at a larger venue where hundreds are participating and thousands are watching streams, what will the fallout be? The offender will ideally be banned for at least a short while, because they’ll know what they’re doing when they do it. But it wouldn’t be a surprise if some organizers take no action whatsoever. Being transphobic isn’t as large a grievance as being openly racist or misogynist when viewed through the lens of society, and that carries over to gaming communities.

It would be a crying shame if any offenders skated by with no repercussions, not only because of sensitivity issues from those watching, but also because of some participating. The Fighting Game Community has trans players, after all. Ricki Ortiz is the most well-known one, but Yohosie is another. The trans audience for fighting games is small, but it should go without saying that they should not be alienated.

Another character example here is Ladiva from Granblue Fantasy, chosen among the franchise’s plethora of characters to be among the eleven represented in Granblue Fantasy: Versus’ initial roster. She’s identified with female pronouns despite her masculine appearance, complete with a beard and male voice actor. Outside her belonging to the series’ Draph race, I couldn’t find an explanation regarding why her appearance is this way in the story from Japanese translations. But good on the localization team for going the extra mile to represent her with proper pronouns.

There could be easy slip-ups here among commentators, since GBF isn’t as popular among the English-speaking audience as Street Fighter, and GBVS’ character announcements haven’t received as much attention. This doesn’t mean bad “jokes” won’t be made about her, or the potential for commentators to refer to her as a woman in a dismissive manner. The chances of these intentional scenarios happening aren’t as high as they will be with Seth, but both will be equally embarrassing if (or, perhaps more likely, when) they come to pass.

Issues affecting the transgender community aren’t viewed with the importance they should be in society, including among people who should know better. See the incident with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling on Thursday for a good example, where she took the side of a researcher fired for being transphobic, fully cementing her status as a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist). Given how gaming communities tend to be with these issues (you know, bad), the reactions could be worse. I’d like to hope this fear is misplaced, but cynicism wins out too often. The FGC will have to confront this issue come 2020.