In the opinion of Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz designer Eric Lang, any and all critics of his latest project’s specifically progressive direction, no matter what the angle or reasoning, are nothing more than fragile “f–king manbabies”.
Co-developed by Lang and Calvin Wong Tze Loon and published by Modiphius entertainment in partner-ship with BioWare and EA, the Mass Effect board game is officially described as “a cooperative, story-driven game for 1-4 players” with “branching narrative and multiple outcomes ensure unique experiences with every playthrough.”
In service of these experiences, players are once again tasked with stepping into the role of either series protagonist Commander Shepard or one of his (or her, given Shepard’s customizable nature) squadmates, including Garrus, Liara, Tali, and Wrex, as they discover that, “on the remote world Hagalaz, a research cruiser from the terrorist organisation Cerberus has crashed directly in the path of a deadly storm.”
“With little time before the storm hits,” the game’s official summary explains. “Shepard must lead their squad through the cruiser to uncover its sinister secrets and keep them out of the hands of the enemy. However, the ship holds more dangers than just its former crew…”
Releasing to the public in early October 2024, upon the game’s various materials making it into the hands of players, it was soon discovered that the character sheets for the aforementioned quartet of Shepard allies all specifically highlighted their respective pronouns, therein noting that Garrus uses ‘He/Him’, Liara prefers ‘She/They’, Tali goes by ‘She/Her’, and Wrex prefers ‘He/Him’.
Meanwhile, both the male and female Shepard character sheets also list the hero’s pronouns as he/him and she/her, respectively.
Further, interestingly enough, though the game’s official trailer specifically highlights each squadmate’s character sheet, these previews notably lack the published version’s ‘pronoun descriptor’.
Upon this discovery, a number of critics took to social media to express their opposition to this change, many of them noting that this change was rather performative and unnecessary to the larger Mass Effect series, while a significantly tiny amount moved to leave the game a one-star review on the noted tabletop hub BoardGameGeek.
And it was in response to these very, very few reviews (though BGG has since removed any and all reviews wherein players cited ‘pronouns’ as the reason for their low score, a screenshot of the site’s ratings breakdowns at the time provided by Twitter user @taffyistough shows that the positive ratings far outweighed the 10 that were negative), that Lang publicly lashed out.
Taking to his personal Twitter account on October 21st, in response to the handful of negative ‘pronoun’ reviews left for the game on BGG, the game’s co-designer implored his followers, “I hate even talking about this on social media but: If you played Mass Effect [The Board Game], would you mind giving it a rating on BGG? To offset the *f–king manbabies* trying to tank the ratings with 1s because they can’t handle looking at pronouns on a character sheet.”
He would further reiterate this call to arms on his BlueSky account, sharing a screenshot of the Mass Effect board game’s ratings prior to BGG’s above mentioned ‘clean up’ and declaring, “I’m so proud of Mass Effect, and so endlessly tired of the F–KING MANBABIES who try and tank our BGG rating because…we took 10 seconds to add pronouns to the squadmates?”
“And yes,” he added, “I realize that reacting to them gives them oxygen but f–k off. I get to be mad about this stupid s–t.”
From there, Lang would continue to level insults towards his critics.
Met with a sympathetic, “I can’t imagine being upset with trying to make others feel welcome,” the board game designer bellowed, “I know exactly why the monoculture of ‘free thinkers’ is upset with it and don’t care. They can stay mad forever.”
In a separate interaction with Loon, in response to his co-designer explaining that he was unaware of whether or not BGG had taken action against the “waaaah pronouns” ratings because “none of the 1st have comments”, Lang likewise declared, “I feel perfectly safe in assuming the motivations. F–k them.”
A short time later, Lang would share an update screenshot of the game’s BGG ratings which showed that, since his initial post, over 40 more customers had left Mass Effect a negative review.
“This is what you get for letting your guard down for ONE SECOND and speaking in anger,” he lamented. “F–k me I’m just tired.”
Now facing further backlash from players, Land would eventually delete his initial anger-fueled posts (though curiously, not his follow-ups), explaining to Twitter, “Deleting the stupid post because…well, you know why.”
“I hate deleting posts that I stand behind, but f–k it,” he asserted. “Twitter sucks so f–king much.”
Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz is now available to purchase from most major board game retailers.