Assassin's Creed's female problems: Devs respond
Ubisoft says women are double the work, so we asked some developers for their insights
When Ubisoft technical director James Therien decided to explain why the latest Assassin's Creed title, Unity, had decided against including a female playable character he probably thought his response sounded reasonable, rational and sure to be nothing more than an addendum to a nice complimentary feature about visceral combat and stunning visuals.
"It was a question of focus and a question of production. Yes, we have tonnes of resources, but we're putting them into this game, and we have huge teams, nine studios working on this game and we need all of these people to make what we are doing here."
He was wrong.
In fact his discussion with Videogamer only highlighted how unimportant the issue was, to Ubisoft and the creative team. Nine studios worked together on the game to recreate every inch of revoltuonary Paris, to finely craft each sprout of stubble on each co-op character's chin. But a playable character with breasts? That's too much trouble.
Twitter erupted, with developers speaking out about the decision. We've collected some of those responses, as well as spoken exclusively to a number of industry insiders to find out if there's a truth to what Ubi is saying.
Use some money on a woman's rig instead of 10 CG trailers
— Joakim ‘konjak’ Sandberg (@konjak) June 11, 2014
If Saints Row can have female customisable characters then not having them isn't a 'reality of development' it's just a crappy decision.
— Rhi Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 11, 2014
Andrew Eades of Relentless was kind enough to talk about the problems they faced when developing characters for Buzz.
"We did have a strong female character in Rose who was the smarts behind Buzz in the first game. In the end we decided to drop her entirely as our publishers' only comments were to make her breasts bigger rather than develop her role in the game as we wanted to," he says.
"Our soon to be released new Murder Files game has a female protagonist, Hannah Dakota, voiced by Amy Shindler of The Archers and is written by award-winning writer Felicity Carpenter. It was not particularly hard to do as our teams at Relentless appear to be able to draw, animate and write female characters and male characters equally well."
guys i dunno, ubisoft games are so tight and restrained, so *minimalist* that of course female characters wouldn't be viable
— Anthony Burch (@_anthonyburch) June 11, 2014
Telltale pitched Fiona and Rhys from the getgo, never even had a discussion about it. They wanted 50/50 male to female ratio amongst heroes
— Anthony Burch (@_anthonyburch) June 11, 2014
Meanwhile Ansh Patel of Narcissist Reality got in touch to debunk Ubisoft's excuses, and suggested marketing could be the real cause.
"Animation and modelling a playable character doesn't require as much commitment and costs as Ubisoft says. In fact, a trend among many indie developers looking to cut on time and costs is to use the same rig (skeleton) for the model to create a common set of animations for both the male and female characters."
"Just wanted to call out Ubisoft because their ridiculous excuse doesn't make any sense even from the developer perspective. It clearly seems driven by a marketing decision, which is extremely unfortunate."
Um. I am working with real live actors on my current game and it still wasn't a hard decision to have a male and female protagonist...
— ℤoë “Kenny Logouts” ℚuinn (@UnburntWitch) June 11, 2014
Jon Ingold of Inkle explained that when he was making narrative game Sorcery! he felt a gender choice didn't make sense compared to other game features that would be seen by all players. A playable female character was added as a later update though, and it took only a fraction of the time that Ingold had expected.
"Obviously, for a game like Assassin's Creed, they'd have to re-record the entire dialogue set and couldn't just reuse the text like we did," he admits.
"But I suspect the developers there feel that 'maleness' is an important part of their storytelling simply because they've never actually tried making their stories work with either gender in the lead role. It turns out -- since computer game protagonists tend to be loners who don't form stable relationships on-screen, don't have kids, and are outside the traditional social norms of the game-period -- that gender doesn't really become relevant at all."
Whilst Ubi *should* have included female assassins in Unity, I'm not a huge fan of the implication that animation is somehow cheap OR easy!
— Daniel Lim (@asphaltOnline) June 11, 2014
We also heard from Nick Witcher, marketing director from RedBedlam. The lead character in its upcoming shooter, Bedlam, is female.
I think that it's a shame that the desire to have both sexes represented isn't higher up the list of game features from day one, rather than being thought of as a 'we'll do it if we've got the time' feature," he explains.
"Knowing how the big boys tend to stagger things these days I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being DLC later after a little bit of faux 'outrage' generates greater demand and therefore $. However all this being said I don't think games should automatically have both sexes playable if that's not the story or character, e.g. I don't need to play a Lara Croft game as Lance Croft or anything, nor do I expect to have that choice. But if a game is open and has no predefined lead character then having both male and female should both be a main feature to the design.
In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations. http://t.co/z4OZl3Sngl
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) June 11, 2014
We've reached out to Ubisoft but with the whirl of E3 and damage control no doubt happening behind the scenes, we've not yet had a company statement. But through Twitter we did get a response from Anna Megill, game writer at Ubisoft Quebec.
"The entire narrative team on my Ubi project wants more female characters," she says.
"I'd love to see more female characters in all games."
In an ideal world the press coverage will shame the publisher into adding a playable female character for co-op; a day one update that is an obvious afterthought is still better than no reaction at all.
Update: Ubisoft has issued a statement in response now, which you can read here.
In our case for Zeno Clash 1 we had to make our male and female characters use a same "androgenous" skeleton because it was a huge amount of overhead having to make animations for two different skeletons. We did get to create unique male and female skeletons for Zeno Clash 2, but it was a lot of extra work (considering the amount of animations we had to work on).
Obviously we are a very small studio, so decisions like this can have a great effect on our pipeline, but I don't agree with all the comments that seem to suggest that this would be trivial for Ubisoft's development team.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Andrzej Wroblewski on 11th June 2014 7:36pm
Assasins creed is tied to an entire story and mythology and maybe the inclusion of a female wasnt an important aspect in terms of multiplayer. Characters in multiplayer functions as avatars to move about the game world. As far as Im concerned multiplayers most important aspect is the gameplay itself, wether the characters are male or female is not the issue. I can jump into the multiplayer with a random character and i can play just fine.
I can see gender being a factor in story oriented content.
When you make a film a "small change" simply replacing a male character for a female character, would require the film crew to shoot everything all over again and change the entire dialog, secondary and supporting character to fit the gender change. This is no different for a game. And for what its worth how many woman play assasins creed games in comparision to boys? And if any woman is complaining, do they actually play assasins creed.
I think the lack of female characters in multiplayer sucks, since I liked Avelin so much, but then again the multiplayer portion is not story oriented. I dont think this is something that can justify overlooking the quality and great things the game has. Would it be any differant if you played a genderless character like some robot or cartoony creature?
Likewise we have a pretty incredible game with tomb raider, a new one is coming out, I really dont see a problem here. Now a days it seems that if you make a cast of characters all the same sex or you make female characters with big boobs its bad. But if you make woman with flat chests its bad too. I just think the person making the game should be the one calling the shots and people should just appreciate it for what it is instead of seeing something negative or bad everywhere. Somethings are not really an issue until someone who has nothing else better to do than make it an issue, just for kicks... because the cannot create anything themselves, they spend time criticizing the people that do with hopes that they can twist their arm hoping they do it their way.
And finally I respect the developers vision on what they want to create. While not having female multiplayer characters sucks, it doesnt make the game shine any less than it should.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 11th June 2014 8:03pm
There was a thing doing the rounds a few months back where someone had read The Hobbit to their daughter with a female Bilbo, they said the only change they had to make was switching male to female pronouns
I don't think it would be trivial for the development team, although that term rather obscures the fact that Assassin's Creed is the work of hundreds of people working from multiple studios around the world.
The point is, this seems like a weird line to draw in the sand for a series that has always gone above and beyond in pursuit of insanely detailed visuals. This the true next gen debut of one of the most successful AAA franchises around. They've recreated 18th century Paris, populated it with thousands of NPCs, no doubt even had people working on making sure the trees move in just the right way, that AI dogs and birds look natural as they fill in the background. And I'm certain that many hours will have gone into the animation, design and voice acting for the saucy Parisian courtesans that you'll no doubt be able to meet on the streets and use to distract your foes.
But the inclusion of a playable female co-op character is what would push this multi-million dollar game over budget, over deadline? Really?
@ Rick Lopez
Putting aside the idea that you could even have a "story and mythology" where the inclusion of a female "wasn't important", the fact remains that previous games in the series had female multiplayer characters. Liberation had a female lead character. This isn't some bizarre out-of-the-blue request for playable octopus characters or something.
Changing the character's gender goes much deeper than changing pronouns and anyone that says otherwise has never written a solid character before. You have to consider the character's personality, they're not soulless.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by J.K. on 11th June 2014 8:40pm
If playing as a female character is so important than I would look for another game, but in this case though it sucks that there is no female avatar, Im ok with it it, because what draws me in is the gameplay, wether it was male, female or genderless characters such as a mecanical or creature character.
In anycase I hope they reconsider and add female avatars to multiplayer, I mean the game is still in development. But Im pretty sure it will happen as I see no reason for it not to be that way.
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@Anthony Gowlend, @Andrew Ihegbu - I agree with both of your thoughts
Edited 3 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 11th June 2014 8:59pm
Not to be dismissive, but of course you're OK with it. The privilege of being a male gamer is that stuff like this can pass us by. We're very well represented. For female gamers who only occasionally get to see their gender represented in games, and very rarely done well, it's clearly a different story. If it was just about the gameplay, every game would have gender neutral geometric shapes and no story. But If you're going to allow players to customise a character, clearly you're hoping they'll identify with that character. Taking half of the human race off the table for that process is inevitably limiting and alienating. It's silly not to talk about that.
Boh. Didn't realise it was rhetorical. :p
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 12th June 2014 7:52am
I think you summed up my perspective as a female gamer nicely. I've played plenty of games that had male main characters and enjoyed them tremendously (Kingdom Hearts remains one of my all time favorite games.) But when that is the only option it gets old. I don't really care how shiny and wonderful the game is. Ubisoft made a conscious decision to put their resources into something other than even throwing female gamers a bone, and that means I'll take my resources elsewhere as well.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bianca Anderson on 11th June 2014 11:25pm
Actually as far as historical accuracy is concerned there were PLENTY of women involved in the revolution. One of the most famous assassinations (if not the most famous) to take place in the period was performed by a woman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Corday
So I'm afraid the historical accuracy argument doesn't hold water.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bianca Anderson on 11th June 2014 11:26pm
Here we are arguing, no demanding, that a third party puts a female character in a video game and getting all out of joint about it. Remind me, how much of the rest of the world is starving, living in fear of rape and death right now?
If you can even have an opinion on video game gender politics, you are privileged in spades. So lets just get the scale right on that moral highground.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Johnson on 11th June 2014 11:41pm
Well Dan, I really had no idea that because Im a male gamer im privileged. Ive played many games that have female characters that are the only character you can choose and others that have the option of choosing very cool female characters. Ive also played games that had lousy male characters.
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@Everyone else -
Because I am so sick of people seeing sexism everywhere im going to shift my perspective a bit and find valid reasons as to why they made this design choice. Remember I disagree as to why they didn't feature female characters, but for what im going to write I cannot think like that I am the developer now...
But for those that dont want to read alot, just know that the multiplayer character is in fact the same one you use in the single player game. Making it valid as to why the multplayer portion only features "him" as a playable character.
Going on to Assasins creed Unity REMEMBER Im going to shift my perspective as if I was the developer. There are lots of developers here, so read what I write and let me know if Im "off" or "unrealistic" in what I say. Diversity and representation is cool. But i think a developer should be the one to choose what goes in the game and what doesn't. And what ever they choose is not an attack on anyone, just a design choice. Since the folks at UBi have made great female characters for there assassins creed games and other games as well.
Its hard to discredit UbiSofts claims simply because unless your on the development end of things, you wont have a clear understanding on the reality of the situation and the purpose of their design choice. Ive been reading a bit and I can find some reason to their descision.
The multiplayer character is always going to be "ARNO" the main character in the single player campaign. And the level of customization is only left to the customization you find in the character in the main campaign, as with most assassins creed characters you can change their outfits and gear.
So what your left is with for multiplayer is color swapped versions of him.
So to"justify" UbiSofts claim if they make a female character that means they have to make a male customizable character and a robust character customization system and THAT TAKES TIME.
People seem to think that you can customize the character in the same way you do in games like Saints Row or Dragon dogma but no the concept is different. I did a little reading.... Your playing as ARNO the main character in the story, but in the multiplayer.
My opinion is that they simply didn't want to put too many resources in creating a customizable character option and simply wanted to focus on making the main character the best they could. INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON MAKING ASSETS FOR A INFINIT VARIATIONS OF A CUSTOMIZABLE CHARACTERS THEY CHOSE TO FOCUS ON SIMPLY MAKING THE MAIN CHARACTER THE BEST THEY COULD and save time by using those same assets for the multiplayer character. So no you don't have customizable female avatars, but you don't have a robust customizable male avatar either. Its the same character from the main game... equel to everyone.
Its also a valid statement when saying that the focus is on the gameplay and not how your avatar is designed. I believe they omitted the player customization process entirely and kept it to a minimal, reusing assets of the main character ARNO. And simply use a simple color swap to differentiate the players from one another. However your Arno will be represented normally to you on your game perhaps while other players are color swapped versions.
Its also valid to say that maybe gameplay wise you can be playing the story mode in co-op with other players in the story, Each using their own in game Arno, making it relevant to the story.
Also making a robust character customization system takes a lot of development time, so i think UbiSoft simply didn't want to focus on that and limited it to simply using the main character instead. or is anyone here telling me that creating all those character customization options in a game like little big planet is a walk in the park?
What Im saying is none of us really know the reason for it. And they must have a good reason for it, this is UbiSoft for crayon out loud. These guys created "Beyond Good and Evil"
Finally it seems now a days no matter how good of a female character you make now a days its not good enough,you have people crying out sexism for everything. Plenty of good female characters in games, ranging from fully clothed to half naked to big boobed and flat chested. Go play tomb raider, the last of us, Mirrors edge, beyond Good and Evil, Bayonetta, heavenly sword, Super smash bros or the large number of games that allow you to make a custom character anyway you like.
So we have a game that features mostly male characters for whatever reason. If its cool to have an all female cast which most people dont seem to complain about, until its done. I think it should be good to have an all male cast as well. however Im sure this game will feature good female characters as the installments before it have.
People are quick to point fingers and judge without knowing. The game hasnt even come out, and I doubt most people here are working on Assasins creed games let alone build a decent representation of paris with an obscene amount and diverse number of people in it that behave according to your actions.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 12th June 2014 12:00am
Hopefully Ubi will change their mind before release, mixing up the coop assassin characters to have different silhouettes could have the additional benefit of making it easier for players to identify each other..
Because I was in it.
Honestly "adding" female characters shouldn't even be a thing. It's as much "adding" as putting in male characters. We're half the world, we're half the audience. It should be obvious by this point that when choosing an avatar to represent themselves, some of your players are going to want an avatar that represents them.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bonnie Patterson on 12th June 2014 5:02am
Because *** all this. Imagine a world that isn't sexist as ****. Imagine a world where people don't debate adding female characters. Imagine a world where the decision, instead, is whether for purposes of the story, to leave one gender or the other out. That would be a fair world, a representative one, where the question asked is "Is there a valid reason not to have men or women in this story?"
Because WE ARE HERE. We have ALWAYS been here. We have ALWAYS been just as smart, just as capable of being strong, just as able to fight. Sure, it takes training to surpass an average man, and a top female olympic athlete might not beat a top male athlete; in physical things, you have a jump-start at the bottom and peak higher. But physiologically, we have higher pain thresholds, are capable of surviving worse injuries and more resilient to hostile environments because having two X chromosomes gives us genetic redundancy for a lot of important things. We are not an invalid choice for game-type activities.
It shouldn't be an effort to include us, it should be something you are doing anyway. "Oh hey, we are making a representation of the world; it's called a game." It should have women in. It should have women in that are not just there for you to fap to. It should be natural and if women aren't there when you're envisioning a world, there is something wrong with you.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bonnie Patterson on 12th June 2014 5:41am
Was nobody on twitter pointing that out? The article could have benefited from arguments in both directions. Why was everybody demanding that the approach of having a cinematic character narration found in AC be replaced by the RPG approach of substituting the main character with the player's choice? What's the hashtag for demanding a male Hanna Montana or female Dwayne Johnson?
The discussion is about female coop characters, not main characters. That drastically reduces the workload.
"Remind me, how much of the rest of the world is starving, living in fear of rape and death right now?"
No offense, but I'm tired of that statement; drives people off-topic and has no point. Please, tell me under what logic we don't have the moral right to protest against something because out there there are problems that are bigger?
We are free to protest and complaint about what we want. But answering to you: We are in gamesindustry.biz, not in the U.N. or International Amnesty websites.
I don't know about the rest but this is not the only front in the "war against sexism" that I'm fighting right now. I don't think I am the only one here that can say the same.
Long story short: we talk about this topic in an article about this topic in a website about the industry where this issue took place. As simple as that.
Dont you just love how all the comments after yours completely ignore everything you said and went back to arguing details?
You said it all.
"Whenever I see "privilege" my eyes kinda glaze over tbh., the irony is enough to melt any brain."
I wish I was a white man and could scoff at privilege.
Im lucky enough to be well educated and well paid, but do I scoff at the idea that I have it better than others? No! I fight for those who are less fortunate and I dont understand why others seem to be so afraid to do the same.
Seriously though, those of you arguing the details of the case of the publishers, what do you lose by supporting equality in games character representation? What do you personally lose?
If there was a choice of a female avatar in Assassins Creed Unity, what would you lose? You would gain a choice. And possibly a more realistic game, but you would not lose one thing.
Shared animations on male & female rigs, you either have pretty androgynous characters, a very odd storyline or maybe, just maybe, an art review is called for...
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Stu Johnson on 12th June 2014 10:40am
But you as the player, is this important to you?
Is equality important to you? Are the rights of women important to you? And if so, then are they more or less important than "less customization options for the existing characters, it might mean the game releases in winter instead of fall, it might mean that the game has to cost more on the shelves (which is unlikely), it might just mean the game would make less profits".
The fact is that if something is deemed important to the market, the publishers WILL go for it. Regardless of cost. Initially it might cost more, but in the long run, it will become just another part of the process, a natural one. Just as natural as...oh i dont know, the world consisting of men and women?
The original version had a lot more caps and swearing.
It just seems that no matter what is done some people are just not satisfied...
Nobody talks about the amount of woman who took stage at E3 or the Super Smash bros, tournament. I remember E3s where no woman took stage this year we saw a few during the conferences and the smash bros. tournament and... nobody said a word about it.
i highly doubt many woman were interested in playing FarCry4 from the get go and changing a co-op player to a female I dont think will change that. And for a single player game I doubt the Co-op aspect is that important. I myself dont play online much. I Dont blame UbiSoft for not putting too many resources their. multiplayer aspects of most games, unless its competitive multiplayer or MMO... usually fill out a niche hole in the game for the few that do care. i mean who plays Uncharted 2 or Ninja gaiden 3 multiplayer now a days?
You know alot of people come to post here not because of the games, but because of issues they have with themselves or their life. Wether its gender or sexual orientation issues, Its pretty sad, because Assasins Creed Unity and FarCry 4 look amazing, and some people cant see that because they are stuck up to their neck in their own mud.
Edited 3 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 12th June 2014 8:04pm
If someone else really cares, if they can't bring themselves to play ACU without having a female avatar in multiplayer, then they are perfectly free to not buy the game. If ACU vastly underperforms compared to previous entries and other next-gen exclusives then Ubi will recieve their message loud and clear.
Equality and the rights of women are important to me, but to associate this issue with equality and the rights of women does a gross disservice to the cause of equality and the rights of women. Women's rights are not being infringed here. Nobody has the right to having every product hand tailored to be exactly what they want it to be.
Oh, other news sites said words about it. About how disappointing it was how few women were on stage this year.
Edward R. Murrow would roll in his grave if he knew was a "videogame" was.