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.Its character creator, shown publicly earlier this month, lets players choose body types and voices independently of each other, then lets them select, without restriction, whether their character dorms with “wizards” or “witches.”What they’re saying: “It’s undeniable that there has been a recent inflection point in the way developers approach character creators, particularly in games with higher fidelity graphics and character models,” Blair Durkee, the associate director of gaming at GLAAD, tells Axios.- Customizable hairstyles have historically lacked options for Black characters, prompting one Twitter user to track whether new game releases do.But the series originally only offered players light color skin, forcing those who wanted their villagers to have darker skin to exploit the games’ system for suntans.The bottom line: The goal for developers isn’t to remove options, but to add more, Durkee says, and build a character creator that “understands all aspects of gender diversity.”- “We'd like to see an approach that continues to recognize men and women while including authentic options for trans men, trans women, and nonbinary characters at the same level of customization and quality,” she said."