Editorial: Omitting Women From Games Because "It's Too Hard" is Unacceptable

Sarah LeBoeuf

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Editorial: Omitting Women From Games Because "It's Too Hard" is Unacceptable

Ubisoft isn't the first publisher to leave playable women out of its games because they're not worth the effort, but hopefully it will be one of the last.

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Alterego-X

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To be fair, AC Unity is not a design-your-character RPG but a single narrative, and it's co-op is just the one protagonist reskinned.

But even if Unity would have just one female protagonist, and all the co-op characters would be differently colored copies of HER, that still wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole franchise. Even if the whole Assassin's Creed franchise would be specifically about female assassins, that wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole gaming industry.

So why complain that in "this particular case" they chose to have a male protagonist with all that infinite artistic liberty? Because even if individually it would be justifieable, it isn't happening individually. And even if their justification would be kinda-sorta not quite incorrect per se, it would still be just an EXCUSE used to avoid a tiny little step in the direction of equal representation.
 

Erttheking

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Really the whole "would take to long to animate" thing reeks of being a bold faced lie shoved out by executives who are extremely out of touch with their consumer base and truth be told, the very game that they're selling.
 

Amaror

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Not going to defend the stupid excuse, but you guys do know that even if they put a woman as one of the coop assassins you would never actually be the woman, right?
You see yourself always as the main character of the singleplayer game, just the other assassins that join your game will look like these other assassins to you.
Besides with the coats i saw in the E3 videos the characters might as well be women, they don't look particulary male or female. It's not like you can make out any body features of one sex or the other. The only thing giving away the sex is the face and with those really deep hoods it at least looked really hard to see under there.
Then again that makes the claim of the programmer even more stupid, so there's that.
 

Erttheking

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Alterego-X said:
To be fare, AC Unity is not a design-your-character RPG but a single narrative, and it's co-op is just the one protagonist reskinned.

But even if Unity would have just one female protagonist, and all the co-op characters would be differently colored copies of HER, that still wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole franchise. Even if the whole Assassin's Creed franchise would be specifically about female assassins, that wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole gaming industry.

So why complain that in "this particular case" they chose to have a male protagonist with all that infinite artistic liberty? Because even if indivisually it would be justifieable, it isn't happening individually. And even if their justification would kinda-sorta not quite incorrect per se, it would still be just an EXCUSE used to avoid a tiny little step in the direction of equal representation.
And that is extremely lazy. They're cutting out multiplayer too, which was very good at getting in a colorful variety of characters, so really this whole mess is just showing me how much the developers are phoning it in.

Like I said, then maybe the devs should stop being lazy and actually design more than one character model. Well, it has to start SOMEWHERE. And just avoiding it isn't going to make the problem better.

Because it's the French Revolution. Women played a massive part in the French Revolution, to the point where one of the most famous and influential acts of the revolution was performed by a woman. And it was an assassination. That would be perfect for an assassin's creed game but apparently Ubisoft decided that they weren't trying anymore.
 

Alterego-X

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erttheking said:
Really the whole "would take to long to animate" thing reeks of being a bold faced lie shoved out by executives who are extremely out of touch with their consumer base and truth be told, the very game that they're selling.
It's the exact same reply as to practically every controversy from Tomodachi Life marriage equality, to always online DRM complaints and even expectations of something like the Mass Effect ending.

And not just from the direction of companies, but apologist fans as well: "well, what you are asking for would involve development of the game, and therefore more than zero time and money, and therefore you are too self-entitled for wanting to force them to do something for you".

Yes. Asking for changes in gaming, usually involves games being deveoped, code being written, characters being animated. That's their job in the first place, and how much of it they did is totally not above criticism.
 

Alterego-X

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The Plunk said:
Creating female playable characters is a lot of work, and when you're on a very tight schedule you have to consider what to prioritise.
Like your own quote just said, making ANY character is expensive. Including male ones. This doesn't seem to stop the industry from churning them out by the thousands.
 

Sarah LeBoeuf

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Alterego-X said:
Yes. Asking for changes in gaming, usually involves games being deveoped, code being written, characters being animated. That's their job in the first place, and how much of it they did is totally not above criticism.
Beautifully put! Totally agree.
 

Floppertje

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I'm working on my thesis and I included this little gem in it.

?We had some [publishers] that said, ?Well, we don?t want to publish it because that?s not going to succeed. You can?t have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that,? he told Penny Arcade. ?We wanted to be able to tease on Nilin?s private life, and that means for instance, at one point, we wanted a scene where she was kissing a guy. We had people tell us, ?You can?t make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that?s going to feel awkward?? (Sterling, 2013).

Yeah, it must be because women are too hard to animate.

Thank God for Jim.
 

Legion

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There is also the fact that Assassins Creed Brotherhood, Revelations and III all had female assassins (Templars if you wish to be pedantic) in multiplayer and had no problems there. The argument that the co-op couldn't have it due to technical reasons is grasping at straws.
 

Scars Unseen

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#deadwomenaretoohardtoanimate

Demand equal gender rights for zombies antagonists(or protagonists if you want to get really crazy)!

Seriously though. Too hard? These people should talk to Team Ninja. They've been *cough* animating female characters for years.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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Wait, that's really the excuse? Women are animated just fine in games. It never would have occurred to me that'd be an excuse for omitting them.
I would have gone with a real one, like its a no win scenario. Either the character is attractive and people harp on you for over sexualizing them, or they're not attractive and people harp on you for implying women can't be attractive and competent at the same time.
But really game companies, jiggle physics and long hair/ make up are too hard to do? REALLY?!
 

Alterego-X

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The Plunk said:
Most protagonists are men for games like Assassin's Creed, so it isn't surprising that men make up the vast majority of the audience.
FTFY.

Besides, I'm not even sure that it is that predetermined even with a gender-based audience.

Men are watching most anime, and there is still a majority of characters are female, and not just the objectified ones.

"Each person can only identify with their own gender" is a baseless stereotype at best, and an arbitrary cultural artifact at worst, but it's certainly far from an inherent fact of life.
 

Pinky's Brain

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It would have been better if he had just said it didn't make sense from a cost benefit point of view. Even if it gets more women into gaming they probably wouldn't have a realistic option at getting paid back this decade ... and they have enough worries about staying profitable this decade.

If women want more women protagonist (options) their only real option is to make sure there are more women gamers themselves ... don't expect everyone else to subsidize the building of a market which will warrant it.