At Zwift, we are passionate about making our platform inclusive to all! Previously, your avatar customization options were tied to the gender you selected during profile creation. With this update you will be able to customize your avatar however you’d like, regardless of the gender you selected!
As a part of game release 1.58, you will have the ability to select any head type for your avatar. Once you have selected a head type, you will be provided with masculine or feminine body types associated with that head style. If you select a male head type you will have the option to add facial hair.
We feel that every person on our platform should be able to represent themselves as they feel they are. This is one step towards making Zwift a more inclusive space as we continue to build a platform where everyone feels represented!!
To learn more about Choose any Avatar, check out the FAQ here
What abut us bald people? I can choose to have a shaved head, but it looks more like a very severe crew cut. OK, I’m not worried (my avatar has a better head of hair than I ever had in real life), but it would be nice to have the choice.
That is not an essential improvement, if improvement at all. To me, and I’m sure many others, training and improving my riding is what’s essential and why I use Zwift. If I want to open my soul to the world and share what’s behind my bearded face I go to other places online.
Now, what’s going to happen during races? There are still gender based competitions out there. It’s the next step to get rid of that?
Q: Does my avatar selection affect what events I can join?
A: No! Your avatar selection does not impact what events you can join (e.g., women’s-only events). Events are strictly based on the gender selection in your profile.
A good development. Have I interpreted right that you can only pick a ‘feminine’ head with a 'feminine" body? Like you can’t mix and match? Just curious why this is this the case rather than a completely customisable avatar, as you get in a lot of games these days. Likewise for the no beard on feminine head. Just seems an unnecessary thing to me.
My guess is that they aren’t letting perfect be the enemy of doing something good They are limited in programming resources these days (I suspect), and this change was likely flipping a few switches for the most part, as opposed to a complete overhaul.
Similarly, they could have waited to do this until there was some larger gender/racing ‘solution’ figured out, but they went ahead with an easy improvement because it helps. Not that you’re not making sense, fully customizable would be cool.
Yeah, fair enough. Sounds like racing is still male/female and the avatars are purely for visuals so allowing total fluidity makes sense to me (as a cis man, just a pragmatic one).
Zwift for sure has lots of serious technical issues that need to be addressed urgently instead of focusing on cosmetics.
You can’t make every minority happy and equally. There will always be someone complaining beeing underrepresented no matter how much Zwift will be doing for integration.
Fair enough, I apologize for mischaracterizing you. Your pushback wasn’t about it being useless, just that it shouldn’t be the priority. At least that’s how I’m reading your ‘there will always be someone’ comment.
But it is frustrating that changes like this–simple, but involving politically charged topics–can’t be made without after-the-fact pushback. Happens. Every. Time. There are always people questioning these decisions–questioning their necessity, questioning their utility, questioning why anyone should pay any attention to them at all. Always.
Notice that there are people suggesting grey hair, and I haven’t seen any pushback about that. No one is replying to the grey hair or bald people and saying “No, there should be other priorities”. Maybe there would be if that change was made to. But I’m skeptical.
EDIT: and that means (and I fully well realize I’m participating in it) that there can’t be a simple thread of people saying “hey that’s cool, I’m going to use that”. It always becomes a thread with others stepping in to say why it shouldn’t have happened. Kinda discouraging to some people, right?
This is one of those updates that some people will see as irrelevant, and others as extremely important. That’s normal, and part of balancing the portfolio of development projects means delivering features that some users care about and others don’t. For example racing is a minority activity in Zwift. So should they never work on racing? Big climbs are desired by a minority on Zwift. So should they never create big climbs? I say no to both questions. Once the user population gets big enough, it starts to develop a lot of minority interests and I would not want them to focus on majority crowd-pleasing work all the time, like every new route being another Tempus Fugit, so I accept that they develop enhancements that I don’t care about.
Gang - we’re getting into the weeds and I’m going to lock this thread while I clean up some of the personally-directed animosity. If you feel the impulse to say that you’re right and make someone else wrong - step away from this forum, go ride or run so you can be reminded that the people in our community are what makes Zwift special.
When I unlock this again - please stay on topic, thanks.
They are limited in programming resources these days (I suspect), and this change was likely flipping a few switches for the most part, as opposed to a complete overhaul.