From BioWare's Problem with Scope to Ubisoft's Problem with Women

[Lindsey Joyce]

From BioWare's Problem with Scope to Ubisoft's Problem with Women

Hello, Escapist readers! As part of our partnership with curation website Critical Distance [http://critical-distance.com], we'll be bringing you a weekly digest of the coolest games criticism, analysis and commentary from around the web. Let's hit it!

In case you somehow missed it, this past week hosted the annual E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) trade fair.

One of the biggest media storms of the expo, however, began when Ubisoft Creative Director Alex Amanico said in an Rhea Monique [http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014/2014/6/10/5798592/assassins-creed-unity-female-assassins] refers backs on a time in the not-so-distant past (the late 1990s and early 2000s) when the inclusion of women was status quo.

Prompted by the trailer for the new Tomb Raider game in which Lara Croft is seen undergoing therapy, Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219074/What_did_they_do_to_you_Our_women_heroes_problem.php] notes the double standard in games whereby:

When you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first.
While Alexander is careful not to dismiss the importance of examining mental health or trauma in games or the importance of allowing female playable characters to show their emotional depth by being more than "strong," she laments that games are "still largely populated by men who feel unsure about how to write and build nuanced women."

Speaking of big news from E3, Ontological Geek's Bill Coberly [http://ontologicalgeek.tumblr.com/post/88683700745/dragon-age-apologies] worries that Dragon Age: Inquisition will fix all the wrong problems by conflating Dragon Age 2's liberal reuse of environments (bad) with its deliberate choice to reduce the game's scope (good).

Finally, Jesper Juul [http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/impostor-syndrome-in-video-games], ludologist extraordinaire, investigates the feeling of 'impostor syndrome' in games and how when our subjective expectations for a game are not met, we are more incentivized to seek flaws in the game itself.

Want more? Be sure to swing over to Critical Distance [http://critical-distance.com] to have your fill!

[http://critical-distance.com]

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[BloodSquirrel]

When you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first.

Yeah, because games never put their male protagonists through hell.

Marcus Fenix spent years in prison over trying to save his father.

Jason Brody's story starts with his brother being killed after both of them are taken prisoner by slavers.

BJ Blaskowitz watches a bunch of his men die, then gets put into a coma for 14 years.

And Lara Croft's father figure in the game bites it in order to give her drama.

It'd be nice if the people who keep making these generalizations would actually bother to check if they were true first.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Oh great, another article jumping on the bandwagon in thinking it's somehow a massive tragedy that the protagonists of a game set in 18th century France are all white men. It's France in the 1700's, do you people see the issue here? So Ubisoft made a whoops in the PR department. Name a publisher who hasn't. I fail to see why this is a big deal. It smacks of the Escapist trying too hard to be progressive.

 

[Slycne]

Speaking of big news from E3, Ontological Geek's Bill Coberly [http://ontologicalgeek.tumblr.com/post/88683700745/dragon-age-apologies] worries that Dragon Age: Inquisition will fix all the wrong problems by conflating Dragon Age 2's liberal reuse of environments (bad) with its deliberate choice to reduce the game's scope (good).

While I agree that the reduction in scope can lead to a tightening and focusing of the overall experience, I hardly want that to be the only method of which we make RPGs. RPGs are in essence an extension and exploration of stories, and stories can run the gamut. I think epic is just as important as intimate when looking across the full scope of settings.

Ultimately, BioWare's strength has always been characters more so than anything else. As mentioned in the article, it's true we remember say Garrus and Tali in Mass Effect more than the Reapers, but would Mass Effect be Mass Effect if it was instead a murder mystery confined to only the Citadel? That game sounds interesting and one I would play, but it's not what I would have wanted out of Mass Effect 2. Which I think was the real ultimate failing of Dragon Age 2, it wasn't that it was a bad RPG, sans some production related problems, it just wasn't a good follow up to Origins.

So I for one am looking forward to the return to a larger setting and scope.

 

[Mike Hoffman]

Oh great, another article jumping on the bandwagon in thinking it's somehow a massive tragedy that the protagonists of a game set in 18th century France are all white men. It's France in the 1700's, do you people see the issue here?

Actually, Assassin's Creed is the perfect game for this. If this was World of Bourgeois or Completely Accurate History from the Perspective of White Men.... Simulator, then you may have a point. But this is Assassin's Creed. A protagonist working in secret to topple the dominant societal power structures and being involved in massively significant historic events while staying out of the spotlight actually works logistically and thematically.

 

[Callate]

One of the biggest media storms of the expo, however, began when Ubisoft Creative Director Alex Amanico said in an Rhea Monique [http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014/2014/6/10/5798592/assassins-creed-unity-female-assassins] refers backs on a time in the not-so-distant past (the late 1990s and early 2000s) when the inclusion of women was status quo.

Promptly? Yes.

Deservedly?

Are we accepting volume of comment as a substitute for proof, now?

That a commentator is, again, referring to games of the 90s and 2000s as proof of the ease of doing things in 2015 as though nothing had changed in the expectations of graphical fidelity, the size of budgets, the size of staff, the complexity of hardware and so on is not a mark in anyone's favor. Quite the opposite- it suggests that righteous certainty has precluded any sort of fact-checking.

Now, again- and I'm certain I'm going to get tired of saying this before the whole thing blows over for a while- I'm not saying it wouldn't have been worthwhile to include female characters in AC:Unity. But could we please stop acting as though we have the code, the budget, the work assignments, the milestones, and the whole thing in hand in making our terribly certain pronouncements of wrongdoing? It's beginning to wear at my patience, and with it, my sympathy.

 

[Redryhno]

Oh great, another article jumping on the bandwagon in thinking it's somehow a massive tragedy that the protagonists of a game set in 18th century France are all white men. It's France in the 1700's, do you people see the issue here?

Actually, Assassin's Creed is the perfect game for this. If this was World of Bourgeois or Completely Accurate History from the Perspective of White Men.... Simulator, then you may have a point. But this is Assassin's Creed. A protagonist working in secret to topple the dominant societal power structures and being involved in massively significant historic events while staying out of the spotlight actually works logistically and thematically.

Except Assassin Creed is kinda exactly Completely Accurate Stab-Happy History from the Perspective of White Men Simulator. And seeing as every game has come out with you working in the shadows and then by the middle of the game everyone knows exactly who you are and what you do, your argument for having a female doesn't really matter. Whether or not a game has a female protagonist really shouldn't factor into whether or not a game is worth playing unless it's a game based around a female protagonist(s) or a mixed group. And the AC series hasn't really ever had that strong of a story or characters anyways, it's always been the environments, the killing, and the running around in pre-19th century Europe.

I'm not going to say that not having a female makes it a better game(Because it doesn't), but it seems any game that isn't equal in the number of jiggly-bits on both sides lately is lumped in the anti-progressive category of games and anyone that plays it is in favor of horribleness.

Besides, the AC series is kinda just in the same category of vidya gayms as CoD, they may as well be summer action movies, they can be pretty, but if you're complaining about something called Super-Space-Aliens-From-Outer-Space-Wrecking-Indiana not having fully-fleshed out characters, then maybe you shouldn't enjoy it for the probably shit story, but for the explosions and manic Nick Cage acting in it.

Edit: And thematically the series has always been to me progressing from one finding enlightenment through punishment in AC1, classic Italian Revenge in AC2, more Revenge in AC3, and it hasn't been until AC4 that the series has even broached the subject of bringing down the false powers that be, and even in that one, it felt like Kenway was just in it because he was in the wrong place at the right time and it was very much in his interests to go along with it because of his own goals.

 

[Ickorus]

Prompted by the trailer for the new Tomb Raider game in which Lara Croft is seen undergoing therapy, Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219074/What_did_they_do_to_you_Our_women_heroes_problem.php] notes the double standard in games whereby:

When you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first.
While Alexander is careful not to dismiss the importance of examining mental health or trauma in games or the importance of allowing female playable characters to show their emotional depth by being more than "strong," she laments that games are "still largely populated by men who feel unsure about how to write and build nuanced women."

Aren't the writers for the Tomb Raider reboot both female? Heck, I think the person doing the comic tie-in is also a woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_(2013_video_game)#Sequel

Yep, yep, aaaand.. yep.

The new Tomb Raider seems like it's trying to be more story driven with believable and relatable characters that can and do break at times and I don't really see how it could be done any other way.

People keep saying that all they want is more varied characters and yet when one comes along you get upset that it isn't the same old shite with a different lick of paint.

 

[Tony2077]

Prompted by the trailer for the new Tomb Raider game in which Lara Croft is seen undergoing therapy, Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219074/What_did_they_do_to_you_Our_women_heroes_problem.php] notes the double standard in games whereby:

When you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first.
While Alexander is careful not to dismiss the importance of examining mental health or trauma in games or the importance of allowing female playable characters to show their emotional depth by being more than "strong," she laments that games are "still largely populated by men who feel unsure about how to write and build nuanced women."

Aren't the writers for the Tomb Raider reboot both female? Heck, I think the person doing the comic tie-in is also a woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_(2013_video_game)#Sequel

Yep, yep, aaaand.. yep.

The new Tomb Raider seems like it's trying to be more story driven with believable and relatable characters that can and do break at times and I don't really see how it could be done any other way.

People keep saying that all they want is more varied characters and yet when one comes along you get upset that it isn't the same old shite with a different lick of paint.

there are tropes they can use to make it work if done right broken bird
break the cutie
despair event horizon
heroic bsod
i'm all for characters that are more human

 

[Squeaky]

Oh great, another article jumping on the bandwagon in thinking it's somehow a massive tragedy that the protagonists of a game set in 18th century France are all white men. It's France in the 1700's, do you people see the issue here? So Ubisoft made a whoops in the PR department. Name a publisher who hasn't. I fail to see why this is a big deal. It smacks of the Escapist trying too hard to be progressive.

This is pretty much what I was going to say, Alex Amanico should have thought about the repercussions of a lazy statement.

I thought PR people were meant to know how to promote their product.

 

[Azahul]

Aren't the writers for the Tomb Raider reboot both female? Heck, I think the person doing the comic tie-in is also a woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_(2013_video_game)#Sequel

Yep, yep, aaaand.. yep.

The new Tomb Raider seems like it's trying to be more story driven with believable and relatable characters that can and do break at times and I don't really see how it could be done any other way.

People keep saying that all they want is more varied characters and yet when one comes along you get upset that it isn't the same old shite with a different lick of paint.

That's what I was thinking. I was sure I remembered reading that Rhianna Pratchett had been the writer on the first game as well. "Men who don't know how to write women" is one criticism you can't really lay at the feet of the new Tomb Raider series.

 

[Seracen]

Dunno how I feel about "reducing the scope" in DA3. I thought the scope for DA2 was already pretty minimalistic and limiting. If they are talking about avoiding a 10-year span of decisions and consequences, I can understand (esp considering DA2 didn't really display all that many changes anyway).

IF they are talking about further paring down the story and characterizations into really short vignettes...I will be less happy. I like the intimate character development afforded by a more honed scope of vision, but not at the expense of a grand, sweeping, and compelling story. I want the endgame to be epic!

 

[MrPhyntch]

When you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first.

Yeah, because games never put their male protagonists through hell.

Marcus Fenix spent years in prison over trying to save his father.

Jason Brody's story starts with his brother being killed after both of them are taken prisoner by slavers.

BJ Blaskowitz watches a bunch of his men die, then gets put into a coma for 14 years.

And Lara Croft's father figure in the game bites it in order to give her drama.

It'd be nice if the people who keep making these generalizations would actually bother to check if they were true first.

You know, based on her comment there, I did a check of my own games to see how true that was. So I looked through all of my games, looking for story-driven games with a male "hero" whose heroism could be attributed in any way to the rescuing of a female. This is a game collection that I feel represents a wide diversity of games, both AAA and indie. And when judging, I took any nuance out of the DID trope, solely I asked "was a woman harmed in any way relating to this person becoming a hero?" (say, I included Halo 4 because of the drama over Cortana's impending demise, as well as WItcher 2 because of Triss's kidnapping). I also excluded Choose your Own Gender games, simply because you could be a female in those games and that would work against her argument as well. Total number of games I own that fit the bill?

20.

My game collection (remember this dates back to NES days) contains over 300 games, across multiple generations and platforms, and I could only find 20 games that meet this description. If we include the Zelda and Mario games I own, that number does almost double (it goes up to 37), but Mario games it's questionable if they count due to lack of hevy story, and Zelda games basically being the same plot over and over again. But included, we're talking maybe about a tenth of my collection have a Male hero who becomes one by saving a Female.

Interestingly enough though, she is right about one thing. Any game that stars a female hero, the first and foremost person to be harmed is herself, before anyone else. Every single game I own with a female protagonist (again, excluding CYOG games) starts with a female who cannot become a hero without some kind of personal damage. This does include her own Tomb Raider game, though.

 

[The_Scrivener]

The only thing that would be more refreshing than an AC game with someone besides another industry-standard white guy would be if a forum of white guys wouldn't get instantly defensive when someone calls them out for being the most unoppressed, overrepresented whiners on the face of the Earth.

No, you're right. This is The Escapist trying too hard to be progressive. There were zero women of consequence during any of the AC-era (read: most of history at this point) games.

You're the same group of overly-catered to donkeys who thinks a misspelling of a character name on Page 25 of an Anita Sarkheesian essay invalidates the other hundred pages of her accurate and perfectly founded arguments. What percentage of game covers have black men on them? Now what percentage of those black men aren't Lebron James? Go turn on your TV and tell me what percentage of the popular media you consume is pre-packaged for your nerf ball on-demand air conditioned life and not the lives of millions of non-white male minorities that are sick of playing YOUR idea of a protagonist for the ten-thousandth time.

 

[Falterfire]

Promptly? Yes.

Deservedly?

Are we accepting volume of comment as a substitute for proof, now?

That a commentator is, again, referring to games of the 90s and 2000s as proof of the ease of doing things in 2015 as though nothing had changed in the expectations of graphical fidelity, the size of budgets, the size of staff, the complexity of hardware and so on is not a mark in anyone's favor. Quite the opposite- it suggests that righteous certainty has precluded any sort of fact-checking.

There are reasons that can justify the lack of a female protagonist. There are simple reasons why none of the coop characters are female (The most obvious being that they are all the same guy). None of these are the reasons the Ubisoft guy actually gave for why we don't have a female protagonist.

To say that the reason a female protagonist can't be included is because the studio can't include it is still BS even if there are other more sensible reasons.

I'm still not convinced there's a good reason to explain why none of Ubisoft's major titles features a female character, but that's a separate issue entirely.

 

[Scorpid]

Yeah I'm worried about that too. Dragon Age 2 for me was the stronger game all in all because at the end of the day I really cared about nearly every character in my party and more uniquely the city I actually LIVED in. DA:O for me with the exception of Alistar I never really connected with the companions and being wondering murder hobos is something I've done a hundred times for years. Furthermore Dragon Age 2 actually felt like the mature complex story that Dragon Age Origins was advertised as but wasn't really. Dragon Age 3 is probably going to be an over correction after alot of the fans lost their shit waaay too much... poor Hepler she didn't deserve that bile thrown at her.

 

[Scorpid]

Promptly? Yes.

Deservedly?

Are we accepting volume of comment as a substitute for proof, now?

That a commentator is, again, referring to games of the 90s and 2000s as proof of the ease of doing things in 2015 as though nothing had changed in the expectations of graphical fidelity, the size of budgets, the size of staff, the complexity of hardware and so on is not a mark in anyone's favor. Quite the opposite- it suggests that righteous certainty has precluded any sort of fact-checking.

There are reasons that can justify the lack of a female protagonist. There are simple reasons why none of the coop characters are female (The most obvious being that they are all the same guy). None of these are the reasons the Ubisoft guy actually gave for why we don't have a female protagonist.

To say that the reason a female protagonist can't be included is because the studio can't include it is still BS even if there are other more sensible reasons.

I'm still not convinced there's a good reason to explain why none of Ubisoft's major titles features a female character, but that's a separate issue entirely.

Unless there is a story reason why the guy HAS to be male and white, I think the devs should of made him female or him black or something just to make him stand out on the face of the character against the background of their other protagonists.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Wait a minute; The four guys in Assassin's Creed... they're the same.

The... same.

OH MY GOD, you people are getting your knickers in a twist over a motherfucking PALETTE SWAP!?

*incoherent rage* Just when I thought games journalism didn't suck enough already, now they're getting their knickers in a twist over a cost saving measure that's been part of video game development since the industry's inception, and has never been controversial at any point until now.

Why do I still come here?

 

[Callate]

There are reasons that can justify the lack of a female protagonist. There are simple reasons why none of the coop characters are female (The most obvious being that they are all the same guy). None of these are the reasons the Ubisoft guy actually gave for why we don't have a female protagonist.

To say that the reason a female protagonist can't be included is because the studio can't include it is still BS even if there are other more sensible reasons.

I'm still not convinced there's a good reason to explain why none of Ubisoft's major titles features a female character, but that's a separate issue entirely.

Specifically, the article said the Internet called BS on the female character being costly- and I don't think anyone has convincingly and conclusively proven that not to be the case. There are a lot of apples-and-oranges comparisons, and one seemingly exaggerating quote from a possibly grudge-holding former animator who last worked on Assassin's Creed 3.

If anything, the fact that all the multiplayer characters do appear to be relatively simple reskins of the main protagonist ought to buttress the point that the resources weren't allocated to do more elaborate characters. Even if a studio was intentionally excluding female characters (or simply failed to consider adding them), a game that wanted to individualize avatars would want to include more options than "guy in green" or "guy with slightly different facial hair". They would differ faces and builds at the least.

Not including female characters may be "BS" in the sense of "You're not giving us female characters? That's BS." That cost- in time, money, staff- wasn't the deciding factor in failing to do so? That's something that shouldn't be bandied about with such certainty.

 

[Creedsareevil]

Yeah I'm worried about that too. Dragon Age 2 for me was the stronger game all in all because at the end of the day I really cared about nearly every character in my party and more uniquely the city I actually LIVED in. DA:O for me with the exception of Alistar I never really connected with the companions and being wondering murder hobos is something I've done a hundred times for years. Furthermore Dragon Age 2 actually felt like the mature complex story that Dragon Age Origins was advertised as but wasn't really. Dragon Age 3 is probably going to be an over correction after alot of the fans lost their shit waaay too much... poor Hepler she didn't deserve that bile thrown at her.

DA2 got shat on because of the obvious corner cutting.
Paying full price to scour the same areas a hundred times... yeah no.

It did have its upsides, i loved playing snarky hawke and having the events revolving around him and his clique and it not beign a save the world again plot, but a more localized "wtf is this shit again?!" story (i did dislike the dead mommy plot though: hawke acted liek a total retard and i hate when a writer slaps me with a moment like that and all i can think is "I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN YOU DUMB FUCK AND SO SHOULD MY PROTAGINIST BECAUSE HE HAS SEEN THE SAME FUCKING EVIDENCE I DID YOU DUMB ASSHOLE! AND YET YOU MADE ME GO THROUGH THIS BS TO MILK DRAMA WHICH EVEN THE FUCKING PROTAGONIST RECOGNIZES AS BS AND CONSEQUENTLY DOES-NOT-GIVE_A-SINGLE-FUCK SO ALL YOU DID WAS WASTE MY TIME!").

Having the story confined to the city and surrounding area was fine, but the corner cutting and resulting stupid situations that sprang from that corner cutting were what ruined it.
The city is loaded wih veritable ARMIES of bandits and thieves that jump out in the night and GET SLAUGHTERED BY THE HUNDREDS!!! Why in the world is there ANYONE in that city that even so much as sneezes at hawke after he/she spent several nights MASS MURDERING armys of THUGS?!
I now realize why the city has only a hand full of locales to visit: All the other locales are stuffed to the brim with all the DEAD GUYS the protagonist has piled up.

Not to mention that the story became rather silly once anders went all osama - again a development so unsurprising i went to take a piss for the pivotal "what have ya done!!" scene...





So, DA2 had a good start, a decent middle and then went straight into stupid.
It had its ups: combat was fun. Snarky hawke was fun. Not having to save the world was fun. Lapses in storytelling aside, characters were fun.

But the fckn corner cutting....



i forgot where i was going with this.... hey bioware need a writer?