Brink : No Girls Allowed

[Justin Gooch]

And in all honestly, if you don't like looking at a male avatar, there are plenty of pieces of clothing that completely cover the face and body of said character, so cover your avatar completely up, and pretend it's a flat chested, more masculine female.

 

[WanderingFool]

Here's my problem with this. Lots of people are citing female body structure or narrative gender choices, when that isn't the issue here at all. The devs flat out stated that the only reason they didn't include females was to provide more options for the male avatars.

So essentially what they've said is that a couple extra t-shirt models are more important than an whole gender, and that's where I start to get a little worried by the whole thing.

Imagine, if you would, this logic was applied to other scenarios. "Sorry, the rogue class only has half the number of abilities because we found more people played fighters and we wanted to give them more options." People would be rightly a little confused or upset at that, and that's how I think people should be viewing this situation.

We aren't talking about game breaking mechanics though. If there was a class that had half the abilities of any other class, it's breaking mechanics of the game. Female avatars being in a game isn't going to completely change the mechanics of the game then if they were. Splash simply wanted to have that many more options for the male type. Or they could pull a valve and have everyone bitching and moaning that their DLC is pointless and stupid cause it adds extra clothes.

Oh... oh, God... I think I found that much funnier than it probably was...

 

[Snotnarok]

Also, all these fancy moves were made with a male skeleton in the animation so to put a womans body to it would make it look awkward. This means with all these parkor moves they'd have to spend more time re-motion capturing these things which takes a long, long time. The effort into the game would have been doubled. Adding new skins and whatever is easy in comparison to what they'd have to do with another gender.

Femshep uses most (or all - she might have a different walk anim) of Maleshep's animations. "Budget" is not a good excuse, because if they really wanted to save money they'd cut out cosmetic character customization entirely. The decision to include only male protagonist options is a design decision.

Except that's wrong. Men move differently from women, so not only do you need to hire a female for motion capture, you need others for voices, and all the women would need their own models, mo-cap,voices and customizable gear. This would literally double the workload.

Having a all male game means 1 guy for mo-cap and you can have a short staff for voice and just run some filters on their voices to make it sound like more people. There's a large article on this whole thing in game informer with the developers talking about why it's hard to get females in and its all down to time, money, need, publisher. And publishers aren't so much concerned with extras as they are with meeting deadlines and making money.

Draw designs, have meetings on what ones get picked, model them in 3D, motion capture, clean up motion capture, add custom animations, apply to character, test and debug.

Things aren't as easy as everyone here makes it out to be, it takes lot of time and development to make things in games, it's not right click and it's finished.. It's a lot of work and asking them to double it isn't always a great idea. Chances are we'll see females in a sequel where they can just reuse the motion for the men and add extra content.

A lot of games start out male only, hell Saints Row 2 and Gears 3 are adding women into it and that's pretty amazing. Let's just hope this becomes more of a trend because I really prefer using a female in shooters. Not saying it's a bad thing TO have it, just understand it's an ass load of work.

 

[Corkydog]

Yeah...I don't much care if my character model in a first person shooter has boobs or not...maybe that puts me in the minority.

So seeing as the only benifit I would get from females in the game would be the option to kill women as well as men, I have to say that I really don't care. At all. And I wonder why so many of you would like to shoot at girls.

But hey, maybe I'm missing the whole artistic point of it.

 

[Vault101]

as a female It does annoy me a bit HOWEVER the game still seems interesting

Ill just go and make the most effeminite charachter possible ;P

 

[AlexNora]

Now spend a few seconds thinking of a girl that big. Sure they exist. Does anybody want to play as that?

Fem!Heavy is credit to thread. Srsly, people, it's like 2011. Women are allowed to have muscles.

Where can I buy that game?

 

[jaketaz]

I didn't even realize people still made games with no women in them

 

[Slycne]

Here's my problem with this. Lots of people are citing female body structure or narrative gender choices, when that isn't the issue here at all. The devs flat out stated that the only reason they didn't include females was to provide more options for the male avatars.

So essentially what they've said is that a couple extra t-shirt models are more important than an whole gender, and that's where I start to get a little worried by the whole thing.

Imagine, if you would, this logic was applied to other scenarios. "Sorry, the rogue class only has half the number of abilities because we found more people played fighters and we wanted to give them more options." People would be rightly a little confused or upset at that, and that's how I think people should be viewing this situation.

We aren't talking about game breaking mechanics though. If there was a class that had half the abilities of any other class, it's breaking mechanics of the game.

Not necessarily. For instance, you could have 2 fully function class a rogue and a fighter. The fighter can later specialize, with individual skills associated to each, to be a paladin, berserker or a weapon-master, but the rogue can only specialize into a bard. The bard could very well be equally balanced against a paladin, berserker or weapon-master, but the rogue still has far fewer options.

Still, the point of the comparison was simply to highlight the logic of the decision as it applied to another area of game production.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Besides, maybe they'll add female characters in the sequel. They did it in Fable, yah? You always gotta do the rough draft before you do the masterpiece.

 

[Snotnarok]

Except that's wrong. Men move differently from women, so not only do you need to hire a female for motion capture, you need others for voices, and all the women would need their own models, mo-cap,voices and customizable gear.

Unless you're Bioware, apparently, because the male and female versions of Shepard have basically the same animations (with occasional hilarious results), and most of the same gear. And honestly, unless Brink is dumping a lot of its budget on voicework (which, for all I know, it might be), adding a couple models to a game where literally everything you look at needs modeling seems like kind of a flimsy excuse to me.

Have you ever made anything in 3D? At all? I know a guy that does it professionally, and he'd tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to do so. There probably was plans to do so but it was probably cut because of the extra work required. People are very hard to model and animate, and basically doubling the effort required just wasn't enough to justify something that wouldn't really add anything to the game.

Don't just toss around the term "Just adding a couple of models" because that's more work than you know.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Did Halo have female charecters in IT'S multiplayer? What about Section 8? I don't know why Brink is the upset. Of course, it is a little more jaring since there isn't power armor for everyone. Despite Spartans in Multiplayer looking male, it doesn't take much to imigine one as a girl.

Halo was created while it was still relatively uncommon to have such options. Many developers have gotten a lot better about this since then. Standards have changed. The fact that old games weren't great about this doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect new games to be.

Also guys, we need to have a word. When you say it doesn't matter so long as the gameplay is good, you look like a dick, which is I suppose reasonable because I imagine about 90% of the people espousing such views have one. It may not matter to you personally, but let's not pretend like everything's just fine and dandy with gender options in games (especially games touting robust character customisation).

As for the "oh but it's so much work" point: it's work to make robust character customisation in the first place. And it's the kind of work that should be done. Complaining that it takes too much work is like defending a game that's only an hour long because adding more hours would take so much more work.

 

[Snotnarok]

Except that's wrong. Men move differently from women, so not only do you need to hire a female for motion capture, you need others for voices, and all the women would need their own models, mo-cap,voices and customizable gear.

Unless you're Bioware, apparently, because the male and female versions of Shepard have basically the same animations (with occasional hilarious results), and most of the same gear. And honestly, unless Brink is dumping a lot of its budget on voicework (which, for all I know, it might be), adding a couple models to a game where literally everything you look at needs modeling seems like kind of a flimsy excuse to me.

Have you ever made anything in 3D? At all? I know a guy that does it professionally, and he'd tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to do so. There probably was plans to do so but it was probably cut because of the extra work required. People are very hard to model and animate, and basically doubling the effort required just wasn't enough to justify something that wouldn't really add anything to the game.

Don't just toss around the term "Just adding a couple of models" because that's more work than you know.

Yeah, of course it's work - but so's every other model in the game. If you're a dev and customization's a big part of your game, including customization would probably be a worthwhile use of your time.

Yes, and they added a lot and it's far easier to just have men, than to have men and women. Trust me, women were probably on the board for things to be done, there probably was even some models made, but they probably got cut. Same thing happened with crackdown, they actually had women modeled but because of some problems and the added cost, they were removed.

It costs too much to add them in so they're doing something else.

 

[Ensiferum]

That really sucks. Granted most shooter-esque games restrict you to being male but it would've been nice for Brink to break ground in that department. Here's to hoping ladies are included in patched/DLC versions of the game.

 

[cystemic]

the best character customization was in saints row 2, hands down. everything else doesn't even come close and how many other games have i had to play as a dude? nearly all of them. im gonna let this slide

 

[CapnDork1337]

Okay, I got a few things to say. To the guy who asked if Halo had women then said Not Reach every time it was brought up, I have to say good on you for sticking to your guns and saying you meant other than reach, but since reach and 3 were the only ones with customization in their multiplayer they are the only ones you can compare it to. No the other halos didn't have female spartans in multiplayer, they also didnt have any customization options beyond color in ffa.
To BigKush, cause I have made extra sure I remember your name(sorry halo guy)
It's your kind of backwards logic and sexism that society grabs a hold of and says "look they're all ignortant, spoiled, inmature boys". Thanks for trying to put us back twenty years. When you can start treating the other half of this world's population fairly maybe they wont be "complaining" as you put it. Well you didn't put it quite like that but I would prefer not to be as rude as you.
And on this whole Brink issue (is it sad that the OP is my third point?)
I understand where the devs are coming from, but at the same time if they had tried it could have been done. Their reasons ring of half truths. When saving money and doing less work are the key reasons behind not adding females, it makes me worry in general. What might be cut from the next game I'm looking forward to cause it would save them money and wasn't "nessecary". I'm sorry but you can't build something up on customization when you cant customize your gender. That's kinda silly. And I'm sure it was the first question that was asked by people when the developers started touting this game for its customization.

Dev: We've got loads of customization, we got so much its coming out our asses. Any questions?
First person to raise hand: so we can play as a woman then?
Dev: uhhh, no.
second person to ask a question: well then how is it customized if I always gotta be a dude?
Dev: look at all the pretty clothes we have!!!!!

I mean hell, Halo could do it. And I know most of the escapists' stance on Halo. So if a mediocre, average, run of the mill, same as halo one knock off can do it, why the hell can't a new franchize that's selling itself on customization.

(also let it be known I fucking love halo, I was just using some of the words I have seen escapists use to describe it in their oh so lovely halo flame threads )

 

[Snotnarok]

Except that's wrong. Men move differently from women, so not only do you need to hire a female for motion capture, you need others for voices, and all the women would need their own models, mo-cap,voices and customizable gear.

Unless you're Bioware, apparently, because the male and female versions of Shepard have basically the same animations (with occasional hilarious results), and most of the same gear. And honestly, unless Brink is dumping a lot of its budget on voicework (which, for all I know, it might be), adding a couple models to a game where literally everything you look at needs modeling seems like kind of a flimsy excuse to me.

Have you ever made anything in 3D? At all? I know a guy that does it professionally, and he'd tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to do so. There probably was plans to do so but it was probably cut because of the extra work required. People are very hard to model and animate, and basically doubling the effort required just wasn't enough to justify something that wouldn't really add anything to the game.

Don't just toss around the term "Just adding a couple of models" because that's more work than you know.

Yeah, of course it's work - but so's every other model in the game. If you're a dev and customization's a big part of your game, including customization would probably be a worthwhile use of your time.

Yes, and they added a lot and it's far easier to just have men, than to have men and women. Trust me, women were probably on the board for things to be done, there probably was even some models made, but they probably got cut. Same thing happened with crackdown, they actually had women modeled but because of some problems and the added cost, they were removed.

It costs too much to add them in so they're doing something else.

I think it's a question of priorities. Let's put it this way: you don't see that many games that were going to have a male and female PC model, but only had enough money to animate the female model.

The publishers don't care, manly men running around shooting things sells, a lot of people from what I gather don't want to play as a 'weak girl' and want to play as a serious dood shooting shit up. A lot of people put down Heavenly Sword for having a woman as the hero, despite her kicking a lot of ass. ...Armies of asses were kicked.

I'm not arguing, I really think it would have been great to have both genders playable, I'm just telling you what probably happened. Even Fable had women in the works I think before they dropped them and decided to put them in 2. It's extra work that...well really adds nothing to the game technically. Would have been really good though

 

[LuckyClover95]

I can't imagine it would take so much TIME and HARD WORK to add a female character. Yeah, more guys than girls game but so? More girls than guys.... I dunno, wear make up but that doesn't mean it's not available to you.
I can't believe games would be this far behind
Also, I think women game a lot more than you think, they apparently make up for roughly a third of all gamers, maybe we just don't notice because for whatever reason there are less girls like myself who go on gaming websites and forums to discuss stuff? I'm not sure though.

 

[nicholaxxx]

Well I could argue the same for non-male games. Mirrors Edge, Portal, Tomb Raider, Metroid Prime, Beyond Good & Evil, Diablo 1&2 (I wanted to have a male Sorceror or a female Necromancer, Buuuut NOOOOOOO says Blizzard), Eternal Darkness, Heavenly Sword, ect.

But in this case...yes...Brink is just being lazy

on a side note, Diablo 3 is letting you pick your class AND your gender.

OT: yeah that's pretty lame, too bad I wasn't planning on getting it anyway.

 

[CapnDork1337]

I can't imagine it would take so much TIME and HARD WORK to add a female character. Yeah, more guys than girls game but so? More girls than guys.... I dunno, wear make up but that doesn't mean it's not available to you.
I can't believe games would be this far behind
Also, I think women game a lot more than you think, they apparently make up for roughly a third of all gamers, maybe we just don't notice because for whatever reason there are less girls like myself who go on gaming websites and forums to discuss stuff? I'm not sure though.

I like to think that you don't notice all the woman playing cause they're always the players that don't have mics. I mean it makes sense, that way they don't have to deal with the bullshit that is male gamers

 

[Reaper195]

I like playing as a female character in games that allows me the option since I'm fucking since of playing as dudes. There is only so many times I want to save the universe as some bad ass guy with muscles. It's almost like the appearance of these characters is actually aimed at women....