Notch: There's no gender in Minecraft

Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson has answered criticisms of MInecraft's lack of official female avatars by saying the survival adventure exists in a genderless world.

According to Notch, the player character, nicknamed Steve, is representative of all human beings rather than a male human being. Not only that, but even the animals in Minecraft are mono-gendered.

The lack of gender seems to be not so much politically motivated as a response to the difficulties of distinguishing between character models with Minecraft's blocky graphics.

"I’m not saying this is a good way to deal with gender in all games, as the better your graphics are, and because of how quickly the human mind tries to identify the gender of other humans, you are going to have to make a decision as a developer about gender, but I felt we could get away with it in Minecraft," Notch said.

Thanks, Joystiq.