Guild Wars 2

Does the word “ma’am” not exist in Tyria???

The word “sir” doesn’t necessarily mean male. It’s a tittle, a status symbol.

Also “ma’am” sounds awful. I know I could not stand anyone calling me that.

most do in real life armies too. You call a superior officer “Sir”. They don’t want to be treated any different than a male of their authority.

Uh…. No. In every branch of service in the United States military uses “ma’am”, because it makes sense. If you use “sir” to a female you will be getting blasted. I can’t speak for every other english speaking military as well but from what I’ve seen it is the exact same thing because saying “sir” to a female is just stupid.

If I’m not mistaken, “sir” in military terms is short for Officer, whereas Enlisted personal are often referred to by their rank (eg. Private, Corporal, Sargeant, etc). At least that’s how I remember it. Maybe it has changed over the years, but I think that’s the mentality behind why a female CO would want to be called “sir” in that regard.

Why? It saves money, time, and space (in more ways than one). When they have to record dialogue, they like avoiding anything that makes them do it repeatedly. If you factor in gender, you must do it twice. Military protocol or other rational aside, it is the easiest and cheapest way to make in game dialogue. Every chance they get to save on the massive amount of recording, they’ll take.

The wording choice can be justified. If you have ever watched Battlestar Galactica, you’ll see that they adhere to this protocol, it is purely for the setting. Some real organizations also adhere to this nomenclature. It is rational. If it is rational and saves the company money, expect it to be used. It is so very common in video games because it is such a money saver.

I think this touches on a deeper issue than what these forums can handle.

I’ve seen this come up many times in different game-related forums, and it always seems to devolve into a fight between a few different people in various branches of the military who refuse to accept that someone else may have had a different experience than them. Suffice it to say that, while most military outfits address their female officers as ma’am, there ARE some females in the military (or other positions of rank, such as civilian police) who insist that their subordinates address them as sir. In any case, as a subordinate, you are to address your superiors however they prefer to be addressed.

It’s about equality, using “sir” instead of “ma’am” serves to keep soldiers from thinking of female officers as somehow inferior to their male counterparts. Additionally, it’s an issue of tradition, in most armies men are the norm with very few female officers, so by tradition an officer is called “sir” and that sticks – change is slow and not always desirable.

At least, those would be my arguments. Aside from that, as someone else said, it saves money on voice acting.

I’ll be sure to let every female officer I worked with in the fleet know they should have chewed mykitten for calling them ‘sir’ after I was explicitly told to, Josh.
Now, maybe some are more lax; most of the ones I met didn’t care: ‘Sir is fine.’ Maybe you found some hardasses or something. I don’t know.

Just curious, but where did you see this in Tyria?

Edit: Please give specific examples.

I thought they were saying “ser” not “sir”.

Ser is a gender neutral form of “sir”

“Sir” is a pretty gender neutral term nowadays. GW2 is hardly based in realism (otherwise there wouldn’t be any women soldiers at all, and if there were you’d see a lot of sexism) so whats the problem?

Please keep this discussion productive and on topic.

AMonkey.2385:

“Sir” is a pretty gender neutral term nowadays. GW2 is hardly based in realism (otherwise there wouldn’t be any women soldiers at all, and if there were you’d see a lot of sexism) so whats the problem?

I dunno where you come from, but where I live, the military accepts plenty of women and it works out just fine.

Joshua.9346:

Uh…. No. In every branch of service in the United States military uses “ma’am”, because it makes sense. If you use “sir” to a female you will be getting blasted. I can’t speak for every other english speaking military as well but from what I’ve seen it is the exact same thing because saying “sir” to a female is just stupid.

This is not true. So using that as a basis for the reason of the thread, Anet did it right already.

Hieronumous.3541:

I’ll be sure to let every female officer I worked with in the fleet know they should have chewed mykitten for calling them ‘sir’ after I was explicitly told to, Josh.
Now, maybe some are more lax; most of the ones I met didn’t care: ‘Sir is fine.’ Maybe you found some hardasses or something. I don’t know.

Totally agree.

But what is “chewed mykitten”?

Edit: nvm. Filter places kitten instead of censored or some other word.

I think it is not that wrong. In Germany I think we use Frau or Mann(Mrs. or Mr.) + the military rank while the rank title itself does not have female variations(technically this would be possible cause we often just add an -in at the end for female versions).

Probably something similar with “Sir”.

I think the conclusion is that it varies by culture. Since ANet made up the cultures in GW2, they can set whatever rules they want.

I’ve only noticed it happen during the charr story, but honestly it makes sense there. It would actually be weird if female officers were not addressed as “sir” in charr society, given their history.