Tabletop RPGs have seen a massive surge in popularity in recent years. Once written off as “freaky nerd shit,” much like video games were decades ago, they’ve become more socially acceptable resulting in new creators subverting the genre with their ideas.

In some cases, we’ve seen malicious corporations licensing out their gaming IPs and franchises, only to have them blatantly ruined for niche woke dollars in the form of inclusive board games.

We’ve already seen how the Embracer Group and Crystal Dynamics pawned off their legendary Tomb Raider franchise to the political activists at Evil Hat Productions. They produced a racially inclusive tabletop version featuring amputee characters, all in an attempt to scrub Tomb Raider of its so-called “colonialist roots.”

Now, Electronic Arts and the soon-to-be-defunct BioWare are following suit by licensing out the ever-popular Mass Effect franchise, with a board game called Priority: Hagalaz, published by Modiphius Entertainment and produced by Eric W Lang.

Mass Effect is set in a sprawling galaxy filled with diverse species and factions, offering a rich foundation for storytelling and role-playing in a tabletop setting.

A well-designed board game could let players explore different planets, engage in inter-species diplomacy, or even participate in space combat. If executed properly, I believe Mass Effect could translate well to a board game format.

However, the Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz has already stirred up backlash among fans of the franchise, particularly after the inclusion of gender pronouns for its characters, which has been seen as pandering rather than an authentic extension of the franchise.

Character sheets for Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz feature gendered pronouns for various characters, including Commander Shepard himself. Despite Shepard’s overtly masculine design, he’s still assigned “he/him” pronouns, as if it wasn’t already obvious that he’s a man.

Just like in the video games, players can choose a female Shepard, who is accordingly assigned “she/her” pronouns.

What’s more intriguing is the inclusion of “she/they” pronouns for Liara T’Soni, one of the franchise’s most iconic and beloved characters.

Liara, an Asari, belongs to a mono-gendered alien species with feminine characteristics, and she’s known for her extraordinary intelligence and unique racial background. Over the course of the Mass Effect trilogy, her character arc evolves dramatically.

Initially a somewhat shy and naïve academic, she matures into a confident, morally complex figure by Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, playing a crucial role in Shepard’s mission, particularly in her research on the Protheans and the Reapers.

The choice to give Liara “she/they” pronouns in the board game adds a layer of modern identity politics that fans are at odds with given her established portrayal in the series.

Liara T’Soni’s character journey from a naive scholar to a powerful broker of information underscores themes of growth, trust, and loyalty. She stands as one of Shepard’s most reliable and capable companions, and despite not conforming to conventional beauty standards, she is one of the most beloved characters in the franchise.

Liara is also a romance option for both male and female Shepard, thanks to the Asari’s unique biology. The Asari can reproduce with any gender or species, but their relationships are more profound than physical reproduction; they involve a mental and emotional connection through a process called “melding.” This makes Liara’s romance arc in Mass Effect more than just about attraction, it transcends traditional human boundaries.

Liara is a particularly popular romance choice due to her consistent and genuine affection for Shepard throughout the trilogy. If players choose to pursue a relationship with her, they experience a deep and emotionally rich arc, culminating in a powerful bond by the series’ end.

From a lore perspective, the use of “they/them” or “she/they” pronouns for Liara or any Asari in a Mass Effect tabletop adaptation feels misplaced. While the Asari are a mono-gendered species, they don’t identify as non-binary or gender-fluid in the human sense.

The Asari’s gender-neutral biology is tied to their reproductive and emotional capabilities, not to modern gender identities. So the choice to assign Liara “she/they” pronouns doesn’t seem to align with established lore, making it feel more like an unnecessary nod to current sociopolitical trends, which it is.

On a more nitpicky note, the visual design of Liara’s character card in the board game also raises some eyebrows. It seems like the team at EA, BioWare, and Modiphius, along with co-designers Eric Lang and Calvin Wong Tze Loon, may have intentionally reduced her breast size to avoid “sexualization” or pandering to the so-called “male gaze.”

While it could just be the angle of the artwork, the change seems in line with modern media’s tendency to desexualize female characters under the guise of avoiding objectification and boosting “inclusivity.”

The bigger issue is the ongoing trend in modern media to inject sociopolitical gender terminology, such as pronouns, where it doesn’t naturally belong.

This insistence on catering to a niche, vocal minority often alienates a much larger audience. The push to remove terms like “male” and “female” and replace them with pronouns under the guise of inclusivity seems unnecessary, especially in franchises like Mass Effect where the lore already has clear gender dynamics.

Activists claim it’s “not a big deal,” yet if it truly wasn’t, why the need for the change in the first place? This shift often feels like corporations bending over backward to accommodate a small, vocal group, rather than staying true to the source material or the preferences of their broader audience.

Critics took to social media to voice their opposition to the gender terminologies used in Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz, with many calling the change performative and unnecessary for the larger Mass Effect universe.

Despite the majority expressing these concerns through posts, disgruntled people left one-star reviews on BoardGameGeek (BGG), citing the pronouns as the reason for their low scores. However, BGG swiftly removed most of these reviews, flagging them as irrelevant or inappropriate.

In response to what was at the time, a minor wave of negative feedback, designer Eric Lang lashed out on social media. In a now-deleted Twitter post, shared by game designer Grummz, Lang expressed frustration, explicitly stating that he “fucking hates” discussing such matters online.

Lang, who notably includes his own pronouns (“he/him”) in his Twitter bio, urged actual players to leave positive reviews on BGG to offset what he referred to as “fucking manbabies” upset by the inclusion of pronouns on character sheets.

He called for support to counter the dip in the game’s rating, attributing the low scores to these critics who, in his view, couldn’t handle seeing pronouns in the game.

The topic of “review bombing” is a tricky one because it goes both ways. Those who criticize a product often get accused of tanking the score, while an influx of overly positive reviews may be just as misleading. Sites like BGG struggle to verify whether reviews, both negative and glowing are from actual consumers.

So who’s to say a flood of 10/10 reviews isn’t as hollow as a slew of 1-star ones? The real issue here is that consumers’ power has been largely reduced to one thing: expressing their thoughts through reviews, which are supposed to reflect honest feedback.

Platforms are increasingly clamping down on this power, and we’ve seen multiple examples of this censorship. YouTube’s decision to remove public dislike counts was supposedly made to “protect small creators,” but many recognize that it conveniently hides the massive backlash against corporate content pushing DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) agendas.

This has been especially evident with game trailers like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows and BioWare’s upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which have faced criticism for pandering to woke ideology, including pansexual romances and options for transgender top surgery scars.

The removal of dislikes serves to shield these projects from visible scrutiny.

Similarly, Rotten Tomatoes began filtering audience reviews through a “verified” system, and Crunchyroll, a platform notorious for censoring Japanese animation and pushing translations with western slang, disabled comments likely to prevent pushback against their controversial localizations and censorship.

This censorship trend strips consumers of their ability to push back against corporations. Review bombing, while imperfect, has been one of the few remaining methods of protest left.

We’ve seen its effectiveness, too. For instance, when Sony faced backlash for requiring PC players to create and link PlayStation Network accounts with Helldivers 2, hundreds of thousands of gamers bombarded Steam with negative reviews. Sony eventually relented, removing the PSN requirement, at least for that game, since they’ve since enforced it every PC port following, even for single-player titles.

This just underscores the power of collective consumer pushback, which corporate entities are trying to stifle at every turn.

Eric Lang, after deleting his original post where he called critics “fucking manbabies,” continued to vent his frustrations, this time shifting his focus to the changing atmosphere of Twitter.

Now that the platform no longer serves as the left-leaning echo chamber it once was, Lang expressed his disdain for it, complaining about the environment not being as friendly to his views. Like many other “they/thems” and far-left activists, Lang “abandoned” Twitter for the fediverse, a decentralized network of social platforms, with BlueSky emerging as a favorite for those seeking a left leaning ideologically aligned space.

Lang chose BlueSky to further express his true opinions, essentially turning it into a containment field for the same group of activists who would champion identity politics.

In a subsequent post on BlueSky, Lang revealed that, after his initial comments attacking critics and drawing attention to the game, the number of one-star reviews on BoardGameGeek (BGG) had jumped from 10 to 52.

He admitted that giving any reaction to the outrage “gives them oxygen” but concluded by telling detractors to “fuck off,” showing he was more frustrated with the “fucking manbabies” who were criticizing his politicized game than addressing the actual concerns of fans.

As of now, the number of one-star reviews on BGG has ballooned to 164, while the 10-star reviews have also risen to 49. Despite this, the game’s overall rating remains dismal at 4.4, with many comments hilariously slamming the game without directly referencing the pronoun controversy to avoid getting flagged by BGG admins.

Instead, reviewers label the game as a “boring cash grab,” devoid of originality, the worst game they’ve ever played, or recommend playing the Mass Effect video games instead.

While review bombing is often cited as a problem by corporations and developers, it’s clear that it’s only an issue when it works against their interests. The same people crying foul about one-star reviews are conveniently silent when it comes to the equally suspicious flood of 10/10 reviews, praising the game purely as a counter to what they call “manbaby outrage.”

What these companies and developers don’t seem to realize is that fans who are critical of their beloved franchises being hijacked by identity politics are just as fed up with the hollow praise as they are with the politicized content itself. In the end, review bombing is one of the few ways consumers can express their dissatisfaction with the subversion of their favorite IPs.