You Can Now Play As A Girl In ‘Minecraft’ Console Edition With Alex Skin

Minecraft, the brain child of Markus Alexej Persson, has been perceived as having a problem with gender. The Washington Post called it a “huge” gender problem. The problem quotes was centered around “Steve,” the default avatar for the Minecraft player.

While players of Minecraft on Windows and Mac OS X have been able to create and change their avatar’s “skins” for years with no cost, the players of Minecraft on dedicated video game consoles have had to pay around one dollar to purchase a new skin pack. This week, Mojang, the developer of Minecraft, is releasing an update for the game that will allow gamers to select between series icon Steve and the new default female avatar, Alex, who sports white skin and red hair. The update is part of the next title update, which the Inquisitr has more details on here.

The Alex skin, pictured left, originally made her debut in the PC version of the game in 2014. In that version, Alex is a randomly assigned skin, thus leaving the choice of playing as a girl in Minecraft out of player’s hands.

Mojang announced that the console version will be able to choose their player skin as either male or female for the console versions starting this week. The Alex skin will be free for all console players to download on Wednesday.

Minecraft itself is a game where gender is truly meaningless in terms of interaction with the game world. It is still four planks of wood to create a crafting table no matter if you are a girl or boy. Creepers will not give the girl avatar a few extra seconds to get away before exploding (in the middle of your in progress castle), nor will the Enderman give players with the Alex avatar the ability to look them in the eye. With console versions allowing gamers to play as a girl in Minecraft, we must ask if the game was truly sexist to begin with as several news outlets have said.

To to this we must go with the official word from Presson, who created Minecraft as a small project on his computer in 2009.

In his Tumblr blog he stated, “The human model is intended to represent a Human Being. Not a male Human Being or a female Human Being, but simply a Human Being. The blocky shape gives it a bit of a traditional masculine look, but adding a separate female mesh would just make it worse by having one specific model for female Human Beings and male ones. That would force players to make a decisions about gender in a game where gender doesn’t even exist.”

The animals and monsters in the game are gender neutral, as are the villagers you encounter. The simplicity of the game itself removes the need for any gender assignment outside of the gamer playing it. While it is undeniable that the Steve avatar in its current form is a masculine depiction, the original intent was not to make the experience a “male” one or a “boy’s only” club. This does not cheapen the feelings from gamers who want an avatar that they can closely identify and Mojang has long given PC gamers the ability to choose their own skins for free. Now that the console version will let you play Minecraft as a girl, hopefully we can all go back to building our castles, storming the Nether, and downing the Ender Dragon.

[Image Source | Mojang]