"Inclusivity always seems to end up on the cutting board"
A female engineer's insights on the gender discussions that happen behind closed doors
Assassin's Creed Unity divided journalists over the importance of including playable female characters, and now it's dividing developers. We collected some of those opinions yesterday, but with Far Cry 4's director also revealing that female characters were considered and dropped, this isn't a discussion that is going to die down overnight.
An engineer for one of the top studios in the industry (trust me, you've heard of it) got in touch with us to share her insights. She's asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals over speaking publicly, but explained how discussions about including female characters worked at her company.
"Authenticity is not an issue when the gameplay and the fun are at stake, but somehow female characters are less believable than absurd, over-the-top situations"
"The arguments offered by Ubisoft sound horribly familiar. I've heard the same ones internally in similar conversations: need to redo the voice over, need to redo the animations for it to be to quality, no time, no budget, etc. All those are technically valid: when you're pushing the tech so much, the differences do matter. It's about choices though. And inclusivity always seems to end up on the cutting board.
The 'authenticity' argument also came up. Thing is, sitting on authenticity is not an issue when the gameplay and the fun are at stake. But somehow female characters are less believable than absurd, over-the-top situations.
The actual reason is always the same though: male is the default, people assume female characters don't sell, and that the audience is mostly teenage boys. That's forgetting that as creators of culture, of media, arguably art, we have a responsibility to watch the message we send. If we reach millions of people, surely doing the right thing and opening their eyes can't be a bad idea!
Another argument was that 'it's not the right game to do it'. Then maybe the company is making the wrong game.
Luckily the mood in the company is amazing, and many people enjoy discussing those topics and pushing for a better effort. It feels that the tide is turning and there will be good things coming. But due to the time it takes to make a AAA game, it will still be three, four, five years before any of that becomes visible."
Sure, if you've got enough time, more options for the playable character are great. But I think that that sort of stuff should never come at the expense of making the game entertaining. And I think all these arguments over political correctness and stuff that have been happening over the past couple years are making people forget that.
To some, women in games affects entertainment and "fun" value. I hope Bonnie won't mind quoting a comment of hers from another thread:
(my emphasis)
Representation in games shouldn't be viewed as something separate and distinct from fun.
That's all. :)
It's about have more diverse characters in places (of which there are plenty) that make sense. Annoyingly, Assassin's Creed during the French Revolution is a primary example where female characters would've been ideal.
Look With Aveline featured in her own asssins creed game, i doubt this is the last we will see of a female assasin. So I assume UbiSoft has a good reason for not including a female assasin in Unity. UbiSoft also has Beyond Good and evil in there IP catalog that I hope they revive. And finally Far Cry 4... woman can complain about the fact that it doesnt feature a female character.... but will it make them play it if it did? After all is said and done, how many woman were really looking foward to playing farcry 4?
People seem to get mad because these games dont feature a female character, but forget that we have a new Tomb raider, Mirrors Edge, Bayonetta that allow you to play as very well designed female characters.
You know if you make a game you will have certain characters in mind. Before when technology didnt allow it, people had to chuck up whatever they got. Now a days since its possible to create custom characters people think it always has to be done. Creating customizable characters is seriouse work. All those assets from wardrobe, voice acting, character rigging, facial expresions have to be redone or adjusted. And the work is even more astronomical if there is a narrative involved. Unless you want a chik walking, talking and acting like a dude and being blamed for being sexist anyway, cause your chicks, behave like dudes I cant see how people think this can be done without it costing much more or being extra work.
The character creation in Saints row wasnt as robust as in other games. Sometimes you can get around making cloth for both by simply having the cloth wrap around the character model. But other times you cant. Same happens for larger or smaller builds.
And if we take a game like little big planet, that has a large amount of character customization. I cannot understand how people feel this is not extra work.
And I think now a days with games that feature customizable characters.... people are getting confused, thinking thats a feature that can be in every game. And thinking that adding it is just a walk in the park. When other games have a different focus on narrative or gameplay in which a customizable character is not as essential as those two things. And I think its wrong to scorn a company for leaving that feature out...
Not all games need or have to have customizable characters. In many cases it shouldnt because the game features and characters are tied to a narrative. And just like some games feature male or female only playable characters a developer should choose between adding or not adding customizable characters. It is work and those that say its not and it doesnt cost much extra and that it has no weight on beating a deadline or production resources probably dont make games themselves or dont understand the process behind making them. And even if they did, the conditions for which each game is developed are different from one another. So who knows what goes on behind the curtain.
Finally when making these AAA games like Watchdogs, Assasins creed Unity or FarCry4... considering the scale they are made in, I cant blame the developers for cutting as many corners as they can. And even more so when you consider assasins creed comes out yearly.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 12th June 2014 4:36pm
I could never bring myself to finish GTA4 and this is primarily because, despite being the same gender of the character and despite the occasional player choice (kill/spare), I couldn't relate to the character i was playing. Niko Bellic was just so not-me, i eventually lost interest in him and his story.
So yeah, I can say it spoiled the game to me.
Is Mario Kart more fun when everyone plays as Miis that look like themselves?
No-one would argue against more inclusivity, but the extent to which games and gamers are portrayed as fragile things that can't be reconciled unless what's on screen somehow reflects their lives is ridiculously overplayed.
Most games aren't really about characters in the same way narrative forms of entertainment are. Of course this also works as a strong argument FOR more diverse avatars.
It's not the individual game that's the problem, it's the medium taken as a whole.
I can give you a detailed breakdown why including a selectable male/female hero for the new AC game would really make the development A LOT harder. Perhaps not twice as much, but let's say 30%.
But I think that the extra 30% were not the reason for Ubisoft to not even consider a woman character. The real reason is, I think, that even if they did it, a few hipsters would applaud them and an angry mob would go down on them, complaining that:
- Their female hero does not represent women rightfully
- Her breasts are too big
- Her breasts are too small
- She is represented as a damsel in distress that needs men (because perhaps she was saved by a male character once in a cut-scene)
- She does not get enough space on the box cover and is not represented enough in marketing materials
- She is in the game only to cause scandals and sell more copies (because another character tries to rape her by touching her butt)
I totally agree with the Ubisoft's decision. That does not mean that women shouldn't be characters in games. It only means that if they decided they won't do it, they probably have a PRETTY GOOD reason... like... you know... this debate.
People will identify with a character regardless of race or gender. Looks are not the only way to make a person empathise with a character. Other ways include but are not limited toA well written character...
i read comments like that and its almost feels as if having a white guy in a game is a bad thing now a days.
That's imbalanced, and a continuation of the way women are almost universally portrayed across all kinds of media as there just for the male libido, which we are all currently hearing a lot of voices telling us they are so tired of.
Each game that comes out like this is getting attention because saying "Hey, games need to include more women" just had a bunch of people go "yeah, sure" and go straight back to designing tits and beer for the mancave, while waiting for someone else to do it.
Does this mean that developers aren't free to choose what goes in their games any more? Is a gun being held to their heads with a demographics cheat sheet (Here's one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_England) and the instructions "Follow this or else"? Nope, they're free to choose - they can design for the mancave all they want. And people can express their opinion of that.
For me, raised in multi-gender, multi-racial, multi-cultural world, I find it really disturbing when designers' imaginations don't come up with men, women, white, black, asian, straight, gay and trans people. You don't have to pack them all into one 10 x 10 room, but these people show up every single day in your life. Why does it break a finger to code them?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-11-assassins-creeds-female-problems-devs-respond
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All this commotion surrounding Assasins Creed unity yet people stay mum, about Tomb Raider, Bayonetta, Mirrors Edge, Splatoon, Valient Hearts, Ori and The Blind Forest... I was happy to see Palutena included in the smash bros. roster. Also for hyrule warriors Nintendo had a large focus on Midna, Zelda and Impa
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 1 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 12th June 2014 8:11pm
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-12-inclusivity-always-seems-to-end-up-on-the-cutting-board
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-11-far-cry-4-to-also-skip-playable-female-character-due-to-workload
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-11-no-female-assassins-creed-characters-a-reality-of-development
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-11-assassins-creeds-female-problems-devs-respond
Until publishers and developers see you voting with your wallet, all you're doing is playing damsel in distress waiting to be rescued by the men in positions of power in the industry. People who no matter how politically correct or inclusive they may or may not want to be, still have to take massive financial risks. If you make the games that do things right into hits (by buying and promoting them with at least wort of mouth), you'll at least remove more and more of the financial excuses.
If the developers of games like Remember Me have to fight hell and high water to even make the game, and then the support for the game isn't there when it's out (and it wasn't a bad game), then sadly... that is the WRONG GAME for them to make if it's going to cost them their jobs and studios.
In Mass Effect, what does FemShep add to the game?
Nothing, except millions of dollars in expense and thousands of man hours.
What did r inclusion of gay characters do to develop Shephard's gay relationship? Not much, but certainly more than FemShep
FemShep just repeats the same lines and actions as the male version, as has been indicated to me was the case with AC:U. There is no need for this, as it seves no purpose, except to entertain the 90% of the 15% that chose that option who just want to watch her butt wiggle for 40 hours.
If you're going to do a Fay, female, Martian character, do so with purpose. If you're unwilling or unable to create a unique experience that justifies the additional expense and effort, why do it? Create a DLC using the same assets with a tight storyline that expresses the female perspective. Live it! Craft a real gay storyline with great emotion. Being it on. But please stop the whining about swapping out gender neutral avatars.
Personally, I loved SR4 and never bothered with GTA, but it's worth noting that GTA sold, what, ten times as many copies? SR vs. GTA is hardly a lesson you want to highlight if your message is that gender inclusivity is a good thing.
Yeah, I just don't get this either. My big game lately is GW2, and I have nine characters in that game, one of which looks sort of like me, but he's one of my least played. My most played are both 3ft tall Asura, one male, one female, and half my characters are female. If it were impossible to make a human male at all in that game it wouldn't have hurt my enjoyment of it at all.
Yeah, but that's entirely beside the point here. You couldn't relate to the character, it had nothing to do with him being a white male. If you had the option of playing a character that acted exactly the same, but was an Asian female, it wouldn't likely change your mind about the game. The topic here is people who believe it would improve the game to a necessary degree if they could have the exact same experiences using an avatar of the opposite gender as the default, like if you could play through Tomb Raider as Alex instead of as Lara.
But all of that is true, and will remain true until white males make up less than half the intended market for the game in question. What is so objectionable about that? I should think it would be more objectionable if they were pandering to a specific audience in spite of the financial motivations to do so.
I'm tired. I'm just really, really tired.
Same with beyond Good and Evil and Mirrors edge. i thought both games were brilliant, but they didnt sell well. But i dont think its because of the female lead. Branding had more to do with it. They were new IP's that few people new very little of and because of that they suffered. Lots a people blame it because they had female characters. But the characters themselves were brilliant. I think sometimes it takes more than one game to establish a new brand. This is why i hope UbiSoft and EA dont give up on those brands just yet.
I own Beyoond Good and Evil, Mirrors and I also have Remember Me. And these discussions are really sad because they stop being about games and more about peoples existential issues. I only tell you these things cause you mentioned a few games that I personally love myself. And i never really gave much importance to the characters race or gender. I generally like characters who are well written regardless, thats why I like so many RPG's. So at times I dont understand why gender is an issue when i have played so many games featuring female characters and enjoyed them just the same.
But I dont know, Im really fed up myslf with this topic. I mean Id like to address games like Splatoon, Ori and the Blind forest and the New Zelda. I think the whole assasins creed unity thing is a none issue, because there are clearly lots a games with good female characters, just like there are games with very lame male characters. Its funny that Splatoon is one of the games Im looking foward to the most out of all the games shown at E3. Its a fun spin on the shooter genre. I wish i could talk more about that game.
But nothin man, just commenting a bit off topic here. Its just you mentioned those games and my mind went off.
It should be about the game.
I was watching a Rev3 video about their impressions of ACU and Farcry, and they did two entire 7 minute pieces just talking about the new features of the games! They didn't mention the lack of female avatars at all, and one of the reviewers was a woman herself! She actually seemed super excited about the game, even without being given the option of having virtual breasts!
[link url=""]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_XnN6v1zn8[/link]
1) We've gone out of our way to present both sides of this story. We've printed the Ubisoft statement and I had a meeting with Alain Corre, MD of Ubi EMEA this morning and we'll have his response to these questions printed as soon as possible.
2) This is not a witch hunt. This is addressing a topic which has clearly touched and affected a wide range of both consumers and developers. That is our direct and exact remit. It's what we're here for. If you agree with everything we write, we're not doing our jobs properly.
3) To everyone saying 'what about Lara croft, Faith, Jade.' What about the other 30,000 games with white male leads. What about if that was reversed. What if 99% of games had female leads and you'd just heard that a publisher had said that they weren't adding men because male character animations were hard work. You don't see a problem with feeling isolated and excluded because you're not. You're on the inside, by a nice warm fire, wondering what those people outside in the snow are complaining about being cold because, hey, they have a coat on, right?
4) Making your customers happy makes business sense. More and more of publishers customers, despite this alienation, are women. Maybe, just maybe, if we can help them to feel like they're not interlopers, they'd buy more games, we could grown the industry and we'd all be happier. Maybe the demographic is overwhelmingly male because the products are made for men. Maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe we should include the other 51% of the population in the demographic targeting.
5) No one is saying every game should have a female lead. No one is saying that Ubisoft is the sole perpetrator of this. No one is saying that they're deliberately trying to distance women from their products. It's a hugely widespread problem, Ubisoft have just popped up in the crosshairs because of current developments. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be asked to explain that decision. I think they're probably tough enough to take it - in fact I've experienced first hand this week their willingness to discuss it.
6) Guys, if you happen to notice that nearly everyone who's not affected by an issue is saying it's not important, but those that are think it is, perhaps you should take a minute to examine why you're dismissing perspectives which you have absolutely zero experience of. "Hey, I'm a white male, and I think that games represent diversity perfectly well, I've never felt alienated." Well, no shit.
7) And really, wanting more female leads, like maybe 20% instead of 2%, is indicative of a psychological disorder? Please, do me a favour.
Honestly though, it's not just you guys, a lot of people are reporting this story in a misleading manner. I mean, you use a phrase like "because [female] character animations were hard work," which would imply that they didn't do it because female animations were harder than male ones, which was not at all their point. Their point was that doing ANY second animation set would be hard work, doing a giant dude model would also be hard work, or doing a dog model or something. It doesn't mean they hate giant dudes or dogs.
There's no evidence to support this and plenty against. It's more likely that some games do appeal more to men, on average, than women (although plenty of women play them anyways, and do not need to be coddled by providing them a hand tailored experience in order to enjoy the game), and plenty of games that appeal more to women than men, and that trying to appeal to everyone with every game is a losing proposition, because it takes more work than you'd gain from it. Make the game how you want, let the customers come to it or not, along whatever gender breakdowns result.
Benghazi.
1) I noticed that as well. Someone here claimed that you weren't getting Ubisoft's side of the story, but I'm fairly certain their comment was one of the first stories posted. Some people just need to read more.
2)Yep, agreed on this point too.
3)THANK YOU. Not a single one of these people defending Ubisoft seems to understand their position. The warm fire analogy is literally perfect.
4)This is also incredibly true. And I'd add that Ubisoft can now enjoy (hopefully) fewer sales in response to their idiocy. By cutting out a character model, they decided that 50% of the planet shouldn't feel welcomed to play their game. Screw off, then. My wife will play DA3 instead (as Bioware understands the definition of empathy).
5)Another valid point. This entire industry needs to clean up its act. Ubisoft just stepped in the cow pie most recently.
6)Similar to your 3rd point. Totally agree.
7)I'd even argue that the opposition should be checked out for mental disorders. Irrational fears of minority groups (which women don't even qualify as) seems pretty far from high-functioning.
Wait, by "all those women," do you mean more than the dozen or two gaming journalists ranting about it at every opportunity, because I've seen zero evidence that any more women actually care. I mean, male-only games still sell quite well to women gamers, if it were a problem then women would only be playing women-only or dual-gendered games, and there's no evidence that the gender of available avatars matters at all.
Oh, and all the women in this and the other threads on the subject.
This is issue has always been there. ALWAYS. why now start to make a fuss? Why this game? Is it because the booth babe controversy is not news anymore? For crying out loud its ubisofts game, they can do whatever the hell they like. They could make the main character into a mushroom if they liked and thought it might drive sales. Its their choice. OUR ONLY choice is to buy the game or leave it on the shelf. I admit i was slightly put off myself by the fact that i didnt have input on the original Aliens movie but hey, such is life.
I would like to raise a few points of my own in this twisted and horrible world we live in. Why are there no world famous women composers? Why are all the worlds best chefs men? I want answers! I want equal representation!
I think this brings up an interesting point. If a female character is less believable in an 'absurd, over-the-top' situation, wouldn't that be a reasonable test to see if one needs to do some more work on the characterisation? I found the protagonist in Far Cry 3 rather jarring in his lack of real reaction to his change from 'nice kid' to 'killer commando,' and I think they really needed to spend a lot more time working on making the transition more believable. Perhaps putting a woman in that role would have highlighted the problem a bit better, and improved the writing over-all. (Admittedly, though Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot was better done, it still had issues with this, however.)
I think Laura Bailey did perfectly well as President of the United States in my playthrough of SR4, even while beating people to death with a giant glowing adult toy.
And thy were so sure we were going to byte and believe it, that they used that same excuse twice; both for AC U and FC4.
Bottonline: as a gamer I really feel like I was treated like an ignorant. And that is terrible. the minimum I deserve is a logical and believable explanation or a proper apology for such a poor excuse. If I don't get that I'll skip this two games since I will not be able to play them with peace of mind.
Seriously, it's happening now because you're seeing a wider cultural shift to equality than we've ever seen before. Previous shifts have been about specific points, and have been limited to specific parts of the community. With women: The Pill, Roe vs. Wade, the Right To Vote. With blacks: Segregation and Civil Rights.
The past 10 years have seen a shift that not only encompasses women and blacks, but other cultural and racial minorities. Women wanting equal representation in media, but also fairer representation in media (less Size Zeros on magazine covers), as well as issues outside of media. Fairer pay in the boardroom. More women as senior executives. The acceptance of Gay Marriage could not have happened 10 years ago. The slow acceptance of the Trans* community couldn't have happened 10 years ago. The shift away from racial profiliing, in stop-and-search and at airports. A growing number of women as creators/writers/artists in the comics industry.
The fact is, the world is (generally speaking) becoming more liberal, and with that liberality comes a desire to force equality in places that have so far resisted it - video-games and comics, especially, since they've always been male-dominated areas where there's an undercurrent of misogyny and "fapping to women".
In addition, it could be argued that people have been making a fuss for years. They just weren't being listened to by anyone.
Edited 4 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 13th June 2014 8:58am
At least if one were lobbying for characters representing the entire population rather than their own unique distinction I'd be able to take their claims of equality seriously, but all I see is ME ME ME, and that's not equality, that's something else completely.
Do your own polling. While 90% is probably a bit high! I will guarantee you it'll be a majority. As a gay man, I did not choose that path, because it was tacked on, and felt like what it was. An awkward, tacked on additional relationship put there by public, not the story's demand. I hope that whoever stars in ME4 will have an organic option for that oath.
CLICKBAIT.
Is there any other reason for flogging off articles like every two hours!?!
Please use for the next article this formula "[game title] has no female characters" - and boom, there we have our 50+ comments.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Julian Beck on 13th June 2014 11:20am
I can say that having played many games the playable characters I have felt the most emotional attachment too are the female ones like in the most recent tomb raider game rather than the generic male characters that populate most games. Heck. Mario has more unique personality than many of them!
And from what I can see it's angry men, who don't want the issue highlighted for various reasons, that have made up the majority of the comments. If it's not a subject that needs discussing then please, feel free to stop posting.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Rachel Weber on 13th June 2014 12:07pm
Rick, I think this every time I see (and skip) yet another of your comments-in-the-form-of-a-bad-novella on every subject, ever.
See how dismissing people works?
Yeah, so if you don't like Walmart, stop shopping there. I don't. But you can't complain about unfair practices when you know full well that the only reason you shop there is that everything is cheaper than elsewhere, which would be impossible for them to achieve if not for those unfair practices you're complaining about. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
You aren't allowed to like those things. You were given boy parts so you're only allowed to enjoy avatars that are assumed to have boy parts too. If the developers did not provide you with an avatar that had hypothetical boy parts then you aren't allowed to enjoy the game, and must instead complain about it until hypothetical boy part models are provided.
I could, but it would be just as meaningless as your own, anecdotal poling of an unscientific sample. I don't work for a gaming journalism organization though. Someone in such a position could do some actual journalism on the issue rather than just collecting some random quotes that are heavily stacked against the developers.
One could, for example, try to get access to some internal numbers. I'm sure the developers collect this sort of data, and they might be willing to share, but try to ask Ubisoft to find out how many women play their AC and Farcry games, even without female model options. Try to find out from them and Squenix how many male players played Liberation and Tomb Raider, even though they lacked male options. If you can make an evidence based case that women gamers as a group do not enjoy playing games with male avatars, and men do not playing as female avatars, and that all things being equal games with avatar choice outperform those without, then that would be some actual DATA, an actual story rather than an opnion-based hatchet job. Short of that, it's all anecdotal BS, 100% of the people you happen to know might be behind you, but might represent only .0001% of the total gaming population for all you know.
Nah, because I know a lot of female gamers, and they aren't sissies like that. If they had something that bothered them, they'd speak up about it.
No, because it tends to strike up controversy, which leads to the thread being clicked on numerous times by the same people. I consider the issue of gender in games to be a non issue. I find the issue of harassing developers about gender to be a very serious and destructive issue over the past year or so.
I can promise you I'll never write an article on the subject, and only hope that everyone else will agree to do the same.
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"In Mass Effect, what does FemShep add to the game?
Nothing, except millions of dollars in expense and thousands of man hours."
Hm, let's see, what did FemShep add:
-The option to be whoever you want to be (whether you're male/female). it was an RPG, after all.
-A break from mindless white-male defaulting
...now, if you don't value any of this, it didn't add anything FOR YOU. This ties into my second point:
How incredibly ironic in a very sad way is it, when people accuse others of lack of empathy, when they clearly can't empathize with anyone who is a bit put off by the white male default thinking and the imbalance in game protagonists?
Seriously, guys...
For myself the debate is in a way "closed", and my result is:
In avatar containing games, yes there should be both genders.
In story tightened games the gender which fits best should be taken by the developer.
And that's in fact all for me that I keep in mind in the end.
I'd like to mention, that I do very much enjoy some of the latest games with female main characters. Remember Me's Nilin has got a place in my mind for most exciting game character of last year, I'd love to see another game with her. And Tomb Raider's reboot Lara is also one of my favorite recent chars, so glad that they have "Rise of the Tomb Raider" in development.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Julian Beck on 13th June 2014 2:18pm
To me? EVERYTHING! The fact that I could play as my own gender meant I engaged in the game completely and wholeheartedly, I WAS Commander Shephard and as a result my loyalty to that franchise has been insane.
I also enjoyed my second playthrough as Male Shephard, but it was nowhere NEAR as moving and deep and insanely engaging as my Femshep playthroughs. Because she was ME, and not me playing AS a guy.
Let's say I hate Tomb Raider because I can't play as a guy. What are my options? The majority of games feature a male lead, so I could wave my hand around in a game shop, and what ever I pick up, I'd be sorted. Hell, I could play Uncharted if I felt that strongly.
But let's say a woman wants to pick up a game with a female lead. What are her options? Well there's Tomb Raider. Mirror's Edge, or Remember Me.
Men have thousands of options, women have around three. There's diversity, so long as you're male.
I also need to stress, that It's not a case that games with female leads don't sell, it's that some publishers are out of sync with the industry.
Years ago I interviewed American McGee, and he said "[Publishers] either make big bets or they don't make them at all," and that's as true today as it was when back then. Publishers only make bets that are a guaranteed payout. That's one of the reasons Resident Evil, inFamous, Force Unleashed, BioShock Infinite, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Watch Dogs, Dragon Age 2, CoD, and Red Dead Redemption all feature remarkably similar (brown-haired badass type) male leads, because publishers aren't willing to take what they perceive as risks.
The thing is, though, it's not a risk, or it's not as much a risk as pubs think.
The go-to games when discussing female leads (excluding indie games and only focusing on AAA) other than Tomb Raider are Remember Me and Mirror's Edge. Remember Me only shifted around 300K units. Why? It's not because it had a female protagonist, it's because it wasn't very good.
In contrast, Mirror's Edge sold around 2.8 million copies. Of course, that's not much when compared to other AAA titles, but keep in mind EA did next-to no advertising for it. Do you remember site takeovers for ME? How about TV spots? A YouTube video EA paid for featuring a freerunner? Nope.
So, ME - which now has a cult following - sold nearly 3 million copies with little help from EA. Imagine what could be achieved if a game featured a female protagonist and had a decent sized marketing budget? Would it flop if every gaming site advertised it? If there were TV spots? YouTube channels were covering it? I don't think it would.
Every game is a risk, yes, but if the game's good, and it's got a decent budget, it'll sell regardless, so why limit options by only having a brown-haired badass male lead? Why limit an RPG experience like Assassin's Creed (let's face it, it's an RPG) by only allowing people online to play as a cloned male assassin?
It's daft. And it's something Ubisoft hasn't shied away in previous games. In the other Assassin's Creed games, you can play as a female assassin online, now you can't, because, well, they can't be arsed/don't think it's important to anyone.
If it wasn't important, no one would read and comment on these types of articles. The furore that comes with this kind of thing, tells me the opposite; that these issues are important to many.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Wesley Copeland on 13th June 2014 3:05pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Justin Biddle on 13th June 2014 3:41pm
Let's rephrase:
You hate that the majority of games don't include you, or they do, but as an afterthought. But you like gaming. It's a social thing, plus it tests the mind, and you've met great people whilst gaming. So you play games anyway, accepting how crappy some of the imagery makes you feel, and accepting that "they're not for you". You hate that you're made to feel awful expressing your concerns, but what can you do? Not game? That would be the very modern definition of "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
This isn't about having your cake and eating it too. It's about having a restricted choice in what cake you eat, but because you like cake, you make do. And you're then told to shut-up, because, hey, you're eating the cake, aren't you? You don't have any right to complain.
Companies can get away with just using the coward's excuse of "well, it's hard rendering women!" because they can get away with it at the box office, so to speak. They can cut that corner, no matter who that pisses off, because they know that peoples' tears will not influence one sale, and even if it does, there are three more mouth breathers who *will* buy the game, in some cases specifically because they didn't include women. That's the audience. That's the reality. A vast portion of our audience is either mouth breathing chauvinists, or just don't give a crap about inclusion, or social rights. As long as they can blow shit up and get their primal jollies, they could care less.
I don't care how you play the game. You don't want to play as a woman, fine, I could care less how you, specifically, play. And I don't care how tired you are of talking about the issue because you're talking about it here. But this is a big deal to a lot of people. The key is making it a financially relevant decision and forcing Ubisoft, Nintendo and these other companies into pivoting. Until then, we're just talking heads. Follow the money.
I think it's called progress.
.. no shit... no shit... right?
I here comments like these alot and I am sick of it… about how privileged "white males" are.... and "being a White Heterosexual male" myself… I'm supposed to feel lucky, privileged, so we lack the ability to empathize and understand others just for the color of our skin and our gender?
I used to be a DJ, a professor teaching graphic design at a university, I have a master degree, travelled... I know people from all walks of life. I have family members like my sisters, nice, girlfriend and her daughters. They see me play games and Ive dealt with all these questions about female representation in some form or another, had sit down explain and show them its not as bad as they think … But I come here and I'm told that my opinion isn't valid that Im a white male who will never understand… So I'm privileged… good to know… "Dan", "Bonnie", "Helen"…
And seriously, we have more games featuring male characters, but are they even good representations of male characters? Are they even well made games, that anybody even male gamers care for?
Im gonna tell you something about people… and by meeting as many as I have I learned many things and among them is… it doesn't matter what color skin you are, what gender, how well off economically you are, your sexual orientation… everybody in some way or another suffers. And no matter how many people want to help you, no body can help you more than yourself. You cant expect people doing something your not doing, to do it in a way that you will be 100% fine with. this is why I hope to someday make a game of my own.
I only got one more comment to make here, before I either take a break or stop posting completely:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-12-the-lady-killers
I grew to appreciate some people on these forums, so please read my next post...
For example, a white guy doesn't have to worry about whether their boss is racist, because it won't affect him.
Another? On the internet, the white guy has less to deal with when compared to any other minority. Now, that doesn't mean that the white guy doesn't get any hassle online, it just means certain people will give them a pass because of their skin colour and sex.
Take reviews, there's exceptions obviously, but read a negative review by a guy, then contrast it with the same negative review by a woman. The guy will be told "He can't write," or "He sucks," whereas a woman might get "I hope you get raped," or "You look like a man."
Woman get it worse because gaming - especially online - is still seen as a boys club that doesn't want to let those pesky girls in.
So, privilege isn't about saying someone has a perfect, easy life, just that there's certain privileges that the straight white male gets over everyone else.
Make sense?
Anyone remember when Capcom and Tradewest had to take women out of Final fight and double Dragon because nintendo thought it encouraged domestic violence?
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Rick Lopez on 13th June 2014 8:25pm
Before you go claiming that male characters are overly sexualised, what with the muscles and tight tank-tops and sweat and deep voices, they're a male power fantasy, not a female sex fantasy. They're NOT marketed towards the female gaze. (You can look up false equivalence if you're trying to conflate the two. It's the same problem that the comics industry has.
I'm only pointing this out because it really starts to limit the games with good female characters once you start taking out the ones that are created for titillation rather than story or characterization. It's not really a step up.
Jan Goh points out a valuable observation as well. Nathan Drake isn't appealing to women. He's not their sex fantasy, so we can't say that women have those characters available to them. He's designed by men as a male fantasy. He's basically Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones or Star Wars; designed by Lucas to be something that Lucas views as attractive. I've yet to meet a single women who actually thought Han saying "I know" was attractive. It's just not appealing for their demographic.
Contrast that with most female protagonists, who are also made by men, for men. Pointing to Bayonetta as an example of female empowerment is just asinine, if I'm being generous. She's a pair of tits that her developers fapped to when they were 12. Ridiculous.
Is this really something people don't see? Really?
Hate to tell you, but TR didn't do fantastically. It eventually turned a profit, and did well enough to earn a sequel, I thought it was the best game of last year myself (in spite of my incompatible boy parts), but it did not do as well as the Assassin's Creed games, for example.
I agree, playing through as Femshep was much more fun, despite the fact that she had hypothetical girl parts while I have boy parts.
Why is that a "limit" though? The online avatar available doesn't in any way "limit" the human players that can play it. You can play that character whether you're male, female, straight, gay, white, black, whatever. It's not a "limit" to anything. Yes, it might not offer every customization option under the sun, but customization options don't come for free. Sometimes customization options are very important, like in an MMO, and the developers are well rewarded for having a variety of options and well punished for lacking them, but not all games need all possible customization options, in many many many cases it's just not worth the added costs, and that is not some horrible lack of empathy on their part.
I can't believe it either, because it's not a thing that is happening. Nobody is arguing against the desire to see equality in game protagonists. Nobody is really even arguing against actually having equality in game protagonists. The only thing I've seen argued against is the idea that a lack of equality is necessarily some universally evil thing, something that people should feel compelled to argue about even if they have no personal stake in the game, something that a company should be actively criticized for lacking, even when they have very good reasons for making the choice that they did. If you want to desire equality in game protagonists, that's fine, nobody is trying to stop you, it's just the constant whining about it that is getting a bit annoying.
I would say that if that describes you, then you should probably take a step back. You seem to be tying too much of your personal identity into gaming and it doesn't seem healthy. If you are playing a virtual character and it in any way makes you feel worse about yourself, then there is something seriously off going on with you, and perhaps professional help would be advisable. You should be able to pay games of any type, with protagonists that are male, female, or made of ground beef, and feel just as good about yourself the entire time.
Or "sanctimony."
I would actually prefer the latter. Those posts are nonsense, irrelevant to me and easily dismissed, while the first two comments were actually relevant to my work, and thus more hurtful. I'm in no way defending the people who make them, but if you let an anonymous rape threat on the Internet actually bother you rather than amuse you at their ignorance, then you're doing it wrong.
Yeah, this is my favorite one that keeps coming up, "attractive women are 'male gaze," attractive men are 'male power fantasies,' it's all men's fault either way." No, just no. There are plenty of male characters in games that appeal to female gamers, maybe not to you personally, but to plenty of other female gamers.
The fact remains, for them to have added playable female avatars to ACU, something would definitely had to give somewhere. That's just a fact, whether it fits your ideology or not. If they added something to the game, they would have to take something away elsewhere. Anyone who believe otherwise for even a second deserves no part in this discussion. So the question is, is the element lost worth the element added? Well we can't really judge that either, since we don't know what elements were on the bubble but made it in.
Lets say we were discussing AC4, and the option was to include these sorts of female avatars in multiplayer, OR add the animal hunting element. Would more players prefer the female MP avatars to the hunting element? Maybe so, maybe not, but you have no place to speak for what ALL women would have thought on the issue, and personally I doubt that ALL women would take the same side on it, so let's stop talking about ALL women, and just talk about our own opinions, what do Iwant, what do you want, and let's not assume what anyone else might want.
Nobody made any comments about not feeling empathy towards others, but feeling empathy for others doesn't mean that everyone can always get everything they want. That's just an unrealistic expectation. In AC4, I really missed having the "air drop assassins" capabilities that they had in previous games in the series. They chose not to include that feature. That made me sad, but I was not so entitled to believe that I deserved to get everything I wanted and nothing that I didn't, so I played the game anyways, and on balance I enjoyed it.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Tim Ogul on 15th June 2014 7:30am
If the descriptions we've read about this whole episode are true, everybody, early on in the design stages, unconsciously assumed that of course it would be a male-only role, because why would it ever be otherwise? That is the core of the complaint here: that this is not a "we considered this and decided against it" thing, but "we never even thought about it" thing.
This of course conficts so badly with your ideology that you are apparently not even capable of seeing that this it's a possibility, much less accepting anybody's reaction to it but your own.
Your whole, "it doesn't bother me so something's wrong with you if it bothered you" argument is not only tiresome, but it's actually a perfect example of the problem.
Edited 5 times. Last edit by Curt Sampson on 15th June 2014 3:50pm
There's nothing in the material we've gotten out of Ubisoft that would lead to that conclusion. All evidence so far indicates that this was considered relatively early in the process, but eventually cut because other features were deemed more important. It was a feature they considered, probably one of dozens of features that got cut for reasons of time and budget. I'm sure that there are people out there that would be upset to learn that any one of those features got cut.
This is not a case of "this doesn't bother me so it shouldn't bother you." If you want to feel bothered, go ahead, feel bothered. I'm just saying that this is also not a case of "this does bother me, so it should bother you." If someone else isn't bothered then they have n o reason to be just because you are, and more importantly there's no reason why Ubisoft should be bothered because they have made the choices that are most likely in the best interests of their game.
Trolls being trolls. The entire point of them is to pick something that (they think) will upset the targeted person the most -- it has nothing to do with privilege or a "boy's club"
This is getting into another topic entirely, but hey, let's roll with it.
'Trolls' - or 'psychopaths' as they lack basic-level empathy - are explained as 'Trolls being trolls'. "Oh, they're harmless. They just want a rise." When people are getting other people's addresses, sending them rape threats through the post, when people are having to go into police custody because of bomb threats - is that 'Trolls being trolls?'
It a quaint little notion the idea of them being kids who are just trying to annoy, but the reality isn't playful. It's dark, and often sinister.
Why should women have to "Just laugh it off?" Why if a women tells a troll to "Fuck off!" is she suddenly the bad guy?
If some of us choose to work online, we shouldn't just have to "Deal with it." If we worked in a shop, there's laws prohibiting degenerate behaviour, but online it's okay, because it's all about the LOLs.
Women are targeted online because they're women, and because women are seen as lesser than men. Gaming, and the Internet, is a boys club. Check the comments on here, a professional industry website with people's real names attached, the amount of angry men eclipses the amount of angry women.
As for privilege, it's easier - and less hostile - to be guy online. Is someone going to say "Make me a sammich!" and take the piss out of my gender when I comment? Probably not.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Wesley Copeland on 16th June 2014 11:57am
So I get your point and I agree, both genders are usually depicted to fulfill male fantasies (make us want to be the the guy/get laid with the girl), but I just don't think that excludes the possibility that women find those men attractive or those women identifiable. But yes, although it may happen, it's not intentional. In these cases, women's reactions toward these characters don't even qualify as an afterthought. They were put there for blokes to cheer at.
On a geek note, for the record, Lucas did write "I love you, too" as a reply for Han. It was Harrison Ford who said "No way he would say that".