Developers of some of the world’s most popular video games are expanding the tools players use to create characters: downplaying gendered terms and untethering options for body types, voice and other characteristics from gender selection.

Why it matters: The shift is part of a trend by the industry to be more inclusive to a wider set of players by letting them see themselves in the games they play.

• Such changes are making these games more welcoming to trans and non-binary players and those who want to have such characters.
• They also allow more deviation from gender stereotypes.

Details: A pre-release update for next week’s World of Warcraft Dragonflight, which expands the Activision Blizzard massively multiplayer online game that launched in 2004, renames “male” and “female” terms in its character creator for “body type 1,” and “body type 2.”

• Earlier this year, EA’s The Sims 4, which plays out like a virtual dollhouse, began to let players customize pronouns — ”she/her,” “he/him,” “they/them” — for the Sims characters they create.
• SquareEnix’s Harvestella, a recently released game that mixes farming with sword-fighting, gives players three options for their character’s gender: male, female or nonbinary.
• The upcoming Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy is in the spotlight for its association, however distanced, with Potter author J.K. Rowling, who has repeatedly…