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

[Rebel_Raven]

Reward the people who get it right with your custom and your money. Don't buy from the ones you don't agree with, and keep your controversy for the ones who really deserve it. If enough consumers do this, we'll get the games industry that we want. If not, we'll get the one we deserve instead.

There's a flaw with voting with one's wallet, IMO. In theory it should work, but there's people that hate Pepsi, and won't drink it. That said, Pepsi's still thriving.

Basically, voting with one's wallet won't make a dang if the industry can stay afloat with it's existing customers. the game industry likely feels they can, despite though with the bankruptcies, layoffs, etc.

Provided you have multiple systems, you might be able to get by with a decent variety as far as modern releases go.
If you just have one system, though? Good luck getting a steady supply of games with female protagonists, and get comfy buying old games, and playing the heck out of the ones you can get.

Still, We're getting a decent surge lately, but I'm looking at it through the lenses of someone who's been pretty well starved of the games I want, has multiple systems, and researches.

Frankly, I don't believe people should have to own a dozen systems, or have to research heavily just to find the games with female playable characters in a variety of games.

I agree in a way... I for one would like to see of the more "un-masculine"-focussed PS-Vita games on PC, because I sure as heck aren't going to be buying a Vita any time soon.

I think my point is more that people should pick their targets with care and remember that "not enough non-white-male protagonists in games" does not automatically equate to "specific developer who only uses white male protagonist in game needs to be stigmatised." In some circumstances, yeah, I'd agree completely, but it's very much dependant on context. Sometimes a factually or contextually incorrect defence of a position is worse than no defence at all.

Heck, I'd like to see them come to more systems/platforms, myself. I mean, who's going to have an Xbox 360, XB1, PS3, PS4, a WiiU, and a 3ds just to enjoy the kinds of games they like with any hope of doing it remotely often?

I'll grant you that Ubisoft has been diverse across it's playable protagonists. Honestly, games with all male casts in and of themselves, don't bother me. They generally just get ignored unless they're pretty interesting.
It's the lack of female protagonists that bother me. It's the incompetence (Ubisoft really should've budgeted better, IMO not jut in ACU, but FC4, too), how often these lame excuses happen, etc., too.

Ubisoft might not have been as huge of a target if they'd just not mentioned that they botched allocating resources to female characters in 2 of their biggest games, IMO. Of course people would've been upset, but they might've gotten far less heat. Heck, they redid Liberation, and released Child of Light which might've gotten them some extra lee-way since there's other companies that couldn't make a female lead if they bought a franchise with one.
Honestly, this makes me suspicious of Watch_Dogs, now. Bad enough their ad campaign irritated me with that "We know how you game" line, when they obviously frikking don't, but could we have been female hackers in multiplayer?

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

I'm a bit sick of devs/publishers being so fucking stupid when handling such matters. Responding at ALL is always their first mistake, and then they respond in a stupid manner that's guaranteed to piss people off. Why would a publisher/dev shoot themselves in the foot like this when it can EASILY be avoided by simply not responding, or at least being careful with words?

Instead of standing by their product and their decision to stick with male characters, they are coming off as apologetic and making excuses which OF COURSE people are going to call "bullshit and weak". Because they already placed themselves on the back foot. Showing any signs of weakness in this industry results in people tearing you apart and that's exactly what happened here.

Developers and publishers need to seriously grow some balls (no pun intended, I swear) when it comes to handling accusations of sexism, racisim, homosexuality, etc anything that's the "controversy hot topic" these days.
This is not the first time something like this has happened, IO Interactive also did a similar mistake with their handling of Hitman trailer controversy and came off as sounding apologetic and making weak excuses.

I thought companies hired PR experts for the express purpose of stopping this shit from happening. Do they not have the slightest clue about how to handle consumers? Are the PR guys even doing their jobs, are companies letting them?

A developer should be able to say "I designed my game this way. Buy it or fuck off." (politely of course). It's heartbreaking to see them trying to make excuses as if they need to defend themselves.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I'm a bit sick of devs/publishers being so fucking stupid when handling such matters. Responding at ALL is always their first mistake, and then they respond in a stupid manner that's guaranteed to piss people off. Why would a publisher/dev shoot themselves in the foot like this when it can EASILY be avoided by simply not responding, or at least being careful with words?

Instead of standing by their product and their decision to stick with male characters, they are coming off as apologetic and making excuses which OF COURSE people are going to call "bullshit and weak". Because they already placed themselves on the back foot. Showing any signs of weakness in this industry results in people tearing you apart and that's exactly what happened here.

Developers and publishers need to seriously grow some balls (no pun intended, I swear) when it comes to handling accusations of sexism, racisim, homosexuality, etc anything that's the "controversy hot topic" these days.
This is not the first time something like this has happened, IO Interactive also did a similar mistake with their handling of Hitman trailer controversy and came off as sounding apologetic and making weak excuses.

I thought companies hired PR experts for the express purpose of stopping this shit from happening. Do they not have the slightest clue about how to handle consumers? Are the PR guys even doing their jobs, are companies letting them?

A developer should be able to say "I designed my game this way. Buy it or fuck off." It's heartbreaking to see them trying to make excuses as if they need to defend themselves.

I kinda wish they'd grow some balls, and make games with female leads, and LGBT leads, and POC leads, and mix, and match.
I mean, diluting the endless stream of white guy leads would more than likely lessen the commonality of these stories, wouldn't it? You can't just keep denying the people complaining and expect them to shut up, right? It's unreasonable, IMO.

Thing is, they didn't design the game omitting women entirely, they "tried" to get them in, but screwed things up, which lead to them not adding them which is a big difference from just not planning for them, IMO.
In this day, and age, yeah, they'd still have gotten some heat, but likely nowhere near as much.

I agree that developers should be able to make the game they want. Hell, if they did, we might see women as playable in AC Unity, and Farcry 4, and we wouldn't be having this issue in the first place. I wonder who didn't plan well enough, or decided they just didn't have the "budget" to be inclusive?

 

[GalanDun]

I'd like to draw everyone's attention to Yahtzee's weekly podcast/hour long gameplay sample that he posted this week.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pukzwCC4xkc
Contained within, he and his friend Gabriel Morton talk about this issue. I feel it could give rise to some excellent discussion. I like the way they pose this in a way that I as a games designer can sympathize with.

 

[Orc Town Grot]

Personally,

I usually create a female character if one is available, and it is not a matter of fetish or wish-fulfillment. A character is after all just that: a character. It is not the player.

It is fun to watch a tough competent female 'Hawke' or 'Shepard' kick ass. Such a female protagonist is a very attractive archetype of femininity.

In an assassin game, you NEED female protagonists 1000%, since in the real world many assassins ARE female. The male tendency to dismiss female strength and intelligence gives females many advantages in the spying game. For taking out male targets, female spies and assassins are often the weapon of choice.

The biggest problem with AC games has always been the lamentable 'time-travel' angle of the story, which is frankly stupid, cloying sci-fi nonsense that just confuses (or ruins) any immersion in the game. Not surprised to find the developers are still making bad calls, since they started out with the granddaddy of crappy plots to begin with.

Orctowngrot

 

[the December King]

Personally,

I usually create a monster character if one is available- the less human/humanoid the better. I am not interested in exploring human gender types nor shattering them- I'd rather try and avoid them altogether, or make up roles for my creatures as I wish, at my whim, free of the restrictions of men/women/mammals.

...

I'm usually very, very disappointed in my options.

 

[Weaver]

There was an interesting post on Reddit about this that TotalBiscuit Tweeted about recently: http://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/27ut97/distinct_lack_of_female_characters_due_to/ci5z8i7

Spoiler

"Sorry for the hijack/piggyback. Most of this post isn't directed at you, but is more general ranting I need to say.
Producer/Project Manager with more than a dozen shipped titles across every major platform chiming in, including more than a couple with 8-digit budgets.
Different words get used with different context within the game industry that have a different flavor internally than it might to the general public. Words like "cost", "expensive", and "feature" can mean ENTIRELY different things depending on who you're talking to.
Something "costly" could mean it takes up a lot of bandwidth cycles within a game engine. Something "expensive" could mean that the project manager feels it's going to take a lot of work/effort/complexity during a particular release cycle. Something that's a feature could simply be a particular requested item from a designer (could also be called a story, an epic, an ask, an item, or whatever terminology that team is using at the time, often depending on the methodology the team is using for production).
On my current team, EVERYTHING that is requested by the EP, CD, or designers is a "feature" - regardless of what it is. Want a new animation? That's a feature. Want a new weapon type? Feature. New character archetype? Feature. Anything new that does not already exist within the game is a feature. Anything that is involved in the work necessary to create the feature is a task or subtask. A collection of features is either a theme or an epic (depending on the flavor of the collection).
This shorthand exists for teams of developers to work efficiently together. My production staff does all the wrangling so that the designers, engineers, artists, animators, and QA can do more work and still get home to their families while their kids are still awake.
Features all have costs. To the project. To the company. To my team members. If I have to make a call as to whether or not this product of entertainment includes a feature that leaves someone somewhere feeling a bit left out OR whether or not my development staff has to put in some weekends (a staff that includes significant numbers of women - many of whom are mothers or even grandmothers, mind you), then I'm going to want to weigh those costs against their work/life balance...and your personal feelings on the subject aren't nearly as important to me as the well-being of my team. Sorry if that offends. Actually, no I'm not.
Building out a new female character is just as difficult as creating a new character. It means new concepts, models, rigging, storyline changes/additions, script changes, VO, and cut scene changes/additions. All of these additions now live in the game code alongside everything else, which might already be getting pretty crowded depending on what platforms you're delivering to. All of these additions make the code base larger and even more complex. All of these additions create bugs and technical debt that needs to first be found through additional QA (sorry guys, you're in this weekend because of the new character cut scenes) which then result in more work from the engineers (sorry guys, you're in next week till 10 PM mandatory because of the expected bugs from the new cut scene that QA will find over the weekend).
Because it's a console title that has a firm ship date (release date for AC5 is October 28th), you want to be submitted at least 8 weeks in advance to first party approvals (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have to approve the code you want to put on their systems before they allow you to go to manufacturing - the RTM, or Release to Manufacturer is required before you can put your disk in a box). Once you have your approval, you have a scheduled and contracted run at one of the THREE approved manufacturers allowed to take your production run within the U.S. Miss your RTM date and too fucking bad - EA or Activision or Majesco or whoever has the time scheduled immediately after yours and they're not in a mood to negotiate with you for Q3/4 sales numbers. Once you DO get through your manufacture period, you have to get the units on the shelves at Target, BestBuy, Fry's, GameStop and anyone else you've contracted shelf space with. What? You think those end caps and front facing shelf spaces are just free and randomly put together by the store staffs? That's cute.
Bottom line to the above? AC5 is already well into alpha (feature complete) and possibly already into beta (asset complete) if they want to hit that late August/early Sept submission date they have looming ahead of them.
Best estimates I've heard from people I know at Ubi are that the additional female character was prototyped out very early but sidelined as the game itself is massive and requires an inordinate amount of work just to get the co-op working in the first place. They wanted to get back to the female character, but after costing her out, discovered it would take between 25-50 days of work to get her added in properly (that's the important word, by the way - will get back to it in a bit).
That 25-50 days isn't something you can just throw money and people at by the way. Character pipelines don't work that way. You can't start rescripting or animating new cut-scenes before you have the new rigged model. You can't rig the model till have the model. You can't build the model till have the concept art. You can't record the VO for the cut scenes and in-game play till have the script written. You have to then find the actress who will record the voice, and another actress to record the mocap.
All of this takes time. Time from someone already working late into the day/night and possibly on weekends. Because they're working on OTHER parts of the game. Because the game isn't done just because you saw a trailer at E3. Chances are the trailer wasn't done by ANYONE on the team and likely was outsourced out to a cinematics house.
The game date was likely set a year or more in advance by people setting up the contracts I mentioned above, so you may as well consider that date damn near sacred. That means to get the new character in, something had to give...or rather several somethings. Because unlike many other things in life, game development really can be zero-sum. To gain X cost of features, you have to give up X. But some execs don't think that way - they want X and don't want to give up shit. So they'll grind your team into the dirt to get there (if they're not all that worried about tech debt piling up or in keeping the team together after shipping). Other execs get it - at least to a point. They might ask for lower quality on this or that or may only "suggest" that you extend your team's hours.
However, most teams on AAA don't want to give up quality for anything. Why? Because that means lower Metacritic scores for one thing...a thing that most studio bonuses are inextricably intertwined with. Busted your ass for 2 years on a project and it's expected to bring in a 90 Metacritic so you can get your 20% IC bonus? Wait, you only got an 88% because some jackass kid who gets paid in pagecounts and free games decided you did a half-assed job on the animations for the female character compared to the male and the side-quests weren't involved enough (because your team threw those out to work on the female characters)...no bonus for you, sucker!
This whole subject makes my stomach turn to shit. I know a LOT of people on those teams. Good people. They WANT to bring in more features - female characters definitely is part of that. They hate being called sexist. They hate upper management telling them estimates for their work that they KNOW is wrong ("only a couple of days worth of animations" might as well read "fuck you every other animator who can't do as well as I think I can as fast as I can on new tech").
I know very few devs who are true asshats (yeah, lots of brilliant jerks, a handful of outright assholes, most are just great people who do this for love, not money - they could stop making games and go build tax software tomorrow and double their paychecks in some cases). It's personal when I see people I know and respect called liars or sexist.
I hope the post helped you see a bit into our lives as much as it helped me to get some of this off my chest."

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. When only a small segment of your target audience is going to care about not being able to play as a female character, it makes more sense to focus on something else.

INB4 "muh 45%". That falls under the latter category of "lies, damned lies, and statistics."

This is really the best response in the thread, IMO. I'm a software developer and I develop games as a hobby.

People think "You just take a female character and hire a voice actor for a day and you're done!" but it's really not that simple. It's highly annoying to me all these game journalists who have never worked a day in a tightly bureaucratic software environment under absurd deadlines (in my case it was health science) and have never written a line of code in their life decide they know better than some of the best studios in the world how everything should work.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

I mean, diluting the endless stream of white guy leads would more than likely lessen the commonality of these stories, wouldn't it? You can't just keep denying the people complaining and expect them to shut up, right? It's unreasonable, IMO.

The complaining phase only lasts from the game's announcement to the game's release date, that's where PR and marketing has to play things carefully and avoid doing/saying anything stupid and digging themselves into holes. Once the game is released all controversies surrounding it go out the window and the journalists/gamers move onto the next one. Seen it happen every time with every game that involves anything controversial.
The only complaints that stick around are typically related to gameplay issues or if the game generally sucks.

Controversies are rarely linked to the game's actual sales (if anything they boost sales), reviews, buyer feedback, etc - the stuff developers should be worried about because it shows how well their game is doing. Not pre-release controversy.
I don't think I've read any review that marked-down a game for lacking a character of a certain gender or race as if some kind of "inclusivity quota" needed to be ticked. The occasional review might mention it, but it won't affect the score. If the game is fun to play, the story makes sense, character(s) are somewhat interesting and the aesthetics are beautiful...it will sell like hotcakes.

Once this AssCreed comes out watch all the controversy vanish.

Thing is, they didn't design the game omitting women entirely, they "tried" to get them in, but screwed things up, which lead to them not adding them which is a big difference from just not planning for them, IMO.
In this day, and age, yeah, they'd still have gotten some heat, but likely nowhere near as much.

Did they admit "trying" to get them in? Then that was their own fault for even mentioning it, digging their own grave lol. Or are you referring to the female character model(s) that are already in game? But that wouldn't classify as an attempt to have playable females.

IMO from a developer/publisher perspective, any statement that raises more questions than it answers should be not be spoken to begin with. This is key when responding to game journalists (or others) who are digging for controversy and asking all sorts of questions in an attempt to put the devs on the back foot - after all, that's their job. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I love when Jim digs into things.

I agree that developers should be able to make the game they want. Hell, if they did, we might see women as playable in AC Unity, and Farcry 4, and we wouldn't be having this issue in the first place. I wonder who didn't plan well enough, or decided they just didn't have the "budget" to be inclusive?

Indeed. We can probably all agree that publishers stopping developer freedom is definitely crossing the line.
Sadly the relationship between publishers and devs is not particularly easy to find out more about. Devs value their jobs, studios want to survive and it's in their best interests not to reveal much.
Yay for indies :S

I'd like to draw everyone's attention to Yahtzee's weekly podcast/hour long gameplay sample that he posted this week.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pukzwCC4xkc
Contained within, he and his friend Gabriel Morton talk about this issue. I feel it could give rise to some excellent discussion. I like the way they pose this in a way that I as a games designer can sympathize with.

Could you please say roughly what time in that video Yahtzee starts talking about it? Sorry but it's over an hour long :S

 

[Signa]

So, based on what I've been reading about development, catering to these interests is probably just going to make games suck more as devs will be given less time to make what matters: better games.

I swear, I saw this coming when that Anita chick started running her mouth off.

Please explain to me ...

Also, please explain to me ...

No thanks, I said my piece. I'm not here to argue.

 

[Redd the Sock]

snip

Look, I said I wasn't interested in hearing the old excuses again. I'm just trying to illustrate how they can come off. Ubisoft has gone on record as saying Beyond Good and Evil's poor sales is behind a lot of their decisions on this front, and it met the same thing. I didn't know about it. The game sucked (though reviewers disagreed). I can't buy everything. Individually it's justified, but over time, covering the Parasite Eves, the Mirror Edges, and a sizable number of JRPGs that meet the same excuses, it's hard not to see all the anger as somewhat disingenuous. That Ubi is trying to find a tactful way to say "oh do you mean it this time?"

I mean, having the excuse is fine, but what do we take away from it? As a player, do you look at something like this as a missed opportunity and strive to try and be more knowledgeable of lessor known titles in the future? Does someone as a game journalist look at this as a failure in providing knowledge to their readers about anything that isn't AAA easy page views? Or do both learn nothing and just blame game companies for not changing to meet their desires? So much of the gender debate tries to ignore the possibility that the state of the industry is in part due to the buying habbits of the consumer base, and we can't expect developers to change if we aren't willing to meet them part way.

You act like I don't buy anything, I've got plenty of underground JRPGs. You ever hear of Knights in the Nightmare? Radiant Historia? Suikoden V? I buy what I can when I can, but I can't frakking be everywhere at once. It doesn't help that while I still play games, I don't play them as much as I used to, so I overall buy less games.

Kinda, yes. I can't really comment on that seeing as I'm not a journalist. I'd like to think I can keep an eye out for underground games, AND criticize publishers. I mean, the games that I never would've found and played if online PC game sales hadn't advertised them, Hotline Miami, Papers Please, Shadowrun Returns, Expeditions Conquistador, Broforce, Endless Space, low budget games that I found because someone gave them a spotlight. Big publishers could learn a lot from that. It doesn't help that even if I was to look for games with female characters that I really like and buy them, on my own I wouldn't be able to make much of an impact. Games need a spotlight if they're going to get any kind of stable sales.

I'm not trying to single you out, but it begs the question of how many other people are giving the same rationale if pressed about their buying habits. It stops things from happening collectively if everyone thinks they won't make an impact.

Though if you truly believe that, perhaps blaming publishers is a bit off the mark. Just about any game short of very small indy titles gets some form of promotion like screenshots and a trailer, and there is nothing stopping websites from giving things more coverage, but who needs to give Drakengard 3 a push when the escapist wants to talk about TV shows and comics, or Kotaku wants to bring up weird cultural shit from Japan. I mean, I personally find the idea problematic and destructive as it encourages the idea of sales coming from shouting "buy me" the loudest rather than the quality of the game, but if that's what we accept, maybe we need less finger wagging at the industry, and more trumpeting of the games that do things we like.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

So, based on what I've been reading about development, catering to these interests is probably just going to make games suck more as devs will be given less time to make what matters: better games.

I swear, I saw this coming when that Anita chick started running her mouth off.

Please explain to me ...

Also, please explain to me ...

No thanks, I said my piece. I'm not here to argue.

To be fair Anita wasn't the problem. There are MANY like her in the corners of online feminism blogs. They can continue existing and doing their thing, doesn't really matter.
It only became a problem when idiots decided to attack her and put her under the spotlight, which ultimately resulted in people handing over $160,000 just to make a statement for feminism (which ironically went nowhere).

But that's another story

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I mean, diluting the endless stream of white guy leads would more than likely lessen the commonality of these stories, wouldn't it? You can't just keep denying the people complaining and expect them to shut up, right? It's unreasonable, IMO.

The complaining phase only lasts from the game's announcement to the game's release date, that's where PR and marketing has to play things carefully and avoid doing/saying anything stupid and digging themselves into holes. Once the game is released all controversies surrounding it go out the window and the journalists/gamers move onto the next one. Seen it happen every time with every game that involves anything controversial.
The only complaints that stick around are typically related to gameplay issues or if the game generally sucks.

Controversies are rarely linked to the game's actual sales (if anything they boost sales), reviews, buyer feedback, etc - the stuff developers should be worried about because it shows how well their game is doing. Not pre-release controversy.
I don't think I've read any review that marked-down a game for lacking a character of a certain gender or race as if some kind of "inclusivity quota" needed to be ticked. The occasional review might mention it, but it won't affect the score. If the game is fun to play, the story makes sense, character(s) are somewhat interesting and the aesthetics are beautiful...it will sell like hotcakes.

Once this AssCreed comes out watch all the controversy vanish.

Thing is, they didn't design the game omitting women entirely, they "tried" to get them in, but screwed things up, which lead to them not adding them which is a big difference from just not planning for them, IMO.
In this day, and age, yeah, they'd still have gotten some heat, but likely nowhere near as much.

Did they admit "trying" to get them in? Then that was their own fault for even mentioning it, digging their own grave lol. Or are you referring to the female character model(s) that are already in game? But that wouldn't classify as an attempt to have playable females.

IMO from a developer/publisher perspective, any statement that raises more questions than it answers should be not be spoken to begin with. This is key when responding to game journalists (or others) who are digging for controversy and asking all sorts of questions in an attempt to put the devs on the back foot - after all, that's their job. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I love when Jim digs into things.

I agree that developers should be able to make the game they want. Hell, if they did, we might see women as playable in AC Unity, and Farcry 4, and we wouldn't be having this issue in the first place. I wonder who didn't plan well enough, or decided they just didn't have the "budget" to be inclusive?

Indeed. We can probably all agree that publishers stopping developer freedom is definitely crossing the line.
Sadly the relationship between publishers and devs is not particularly easy to find out more about. Devs value their jobs, studios want to survive and it's in their best interests not to reveal much.
Yay for indies :S

The complaining is near constant, IMO, release date, or not. I get reminded of it all year long since I keep up with game releases.

People can't really mention the lack of gender in a game without getting mauled by a bunch of people defending the game industry. If a reviewer marked a game down because of lack of inclusiveness, then they'll be screamed at, called bias, called an "SJW" and other stuff.
Not too surprisingly, there's people out there that don't take kind to people talking equality, especially in a game review.
There should be no inclusive quota, IMO, but when a developer wants to include something, they should be able to do it. Especially LGBT, POC, and gender select.

I think you're overestimating what it takes for a game to sell like hotcakes, looking at sports games, and most famous FPSes.

The controversy around this game, and FC4 might die down some, but it'll arise anew with the next wave of games, no doubt, and it'll be the same song, and dance again. I'd rather it not happen because people's voices were heard, and the industry decided to be more inclusive, though.

They did admit to trying:
http://gamerant.com/ubisoft-excuses-for-no-females-in-assassins-creed-unity/
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2014-far-cry-4-nearly-let-you-play-as-a-woman-in-co-op/1100-6420406/
The story's blown up.

I do agree this would've gotten less heat if they said nothing, but there's always a chance this would come out later.

Indies aren't exactly my savior as I don't like PC gaming, personally, and consoles, and handhelds are slow to catch on. Plus Indie games rarely have the power of a more mainstream game behind them, and I like that now and then.
Don't get me wrong, I like indie games. Still, I don't expect an indie game to change the way the mainstream industry sees LGBT, PoC, or gender select, nor do I expect high grade games from the Indie game makers.

 

[Something Amyss]

For punditry the title and the article itself is acceptable, but to try and pass it as real journalism it would very much fall under yellow journalism. It's acceptable for punditry because all the work is is statement of opinion on matters, but for core journalism it's unacceptable. This was a one sided article looking at a complex issue that's a lot larger then just one game development studio not wanting to use a female character model for their game.

While I saw the article begging the question, I didn't see the devil's advocacy.

You're attempting to artificially distinguish branches of journalism.

 

[Something Amyss]

People can't really mention the lack of gender in a game without getting mauled by a bunch of people defending the game industry. If a reviewer marked a game down because of lack of inclusiveness, then they'll be screamed at, called bias, called an "SJW" and other stuff.

Not just "mark down," but "even mention."

And, of course, mentioning diversity is now the same as calling a company a racist/sexist.

 

[FalloutJack]

*Wonders if perhaps they're just afraid of flak from feminists who then find their characters offensive*

What? It wouldn't be too surprising...

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

The complaining is near constant, IMO, release date, or not. I get reminded of it all year long since I keep up with game releases.

It's impossible to stop the complaining until every game has every type of character as playable :/

But it still matters that controversy for X game stops when X game comes out - it means devs/publishers need to work with marketing to sell the game, generate hype, etc and steer clear from saying/doing anything that could become controversial. You won't see the statement "we asked them and they didn't comment" making headlines or stirring controversy. The dev/publisher has to have done something dumb from their end.

I didn't hear a peep about Hitman's sexy nuns, Tomb Raider's "rape" scene, Dragon's Crown's art style or Last Of Us front-cover once people started buying and playing those games. At least not in these forums. It's an interesting cycle.

People can't really mention the lack of gender in a game without getting mauled by a bunch of people defending the game industry. If a reviewer marked a game down because of lack of inclusiveness, then they'll be screamed at, called bias, called an "SJW" and other stuff.
Not too surprisingly, there's people out there that don't take kind to people talking equality, especially in a game review.

Hmm yeah really depends on the game and how much of a difference adding genders/races will make. If it's sounding like purely something the reviewer wants added out of their wish/want and it affects the final score, then people will definitely flip-out over it. Then there's the question of whether the reviewer is more interested in political correctness more than anything else, and the internet/gaming community isn't exactly a fan of political correctness

But in case of Assassin's Creed I think it's fairly safe from being penalized for such a thing.

There should be no inclusive quota, IMO, but when a developer wants to include something, they should be able to do it. Especially LGBT, POC, and gender select.

Yep, absolutely.

I think you're overestimating what it takes for a game to sell like hotcakes, looking at sports games, and most famous FPSes.

You're right I was fixated on RPG's for some reason. Most games can get away with fun/interesting gameplay alone, as that is the first and foremost priority. Looking at many mobile and indie titles that are selling on gameplay alone and nothing else.
For RPG's I'd say gameplay is still the most important, but story and characters also go a long way in increasing sales e.g. Half Life and Bioshock series.

The controversy around this game, and FC4 might die down some, but it'll arise anew with the next wave of games, no doubt, and it'll be the same song, and dance again. I'd rather it not happen because people's voices were heard, and the industry decided to be more inclusive, though.

Yeah the FC4 situation was equally idiotic. Or are they purposefully making it like that to make controversy increase sales...who knows

They did admit to trying:
http://gamerant.com/ubisoft-excuses-for-no-females-in-assassins-creed-unity/
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2014-far-cry-4-nearly-let-you-play-as-a-woman-in-co-op/1100-6420406/
The story's blown up.

I do agree this would've gotten less heat if they said nothing, but there's always a chance this would come out later.

Urgh, dumb Ubisoft. But remember there is no "later"...once the game releases that's the end of it. If Ubisoft had to open their mouths on the matter, they could've said something generic like:
> "We may add it as DLC or in future installments" (with no plans of ever doing that, but this is about avoiding controversy)
> "We'll see if we can get the art/design team to look into it" (see above)
> "It didn't fit with our vision for the game" (a bit more risky to say this)
> "Hmm you'll have to ask the XYZ person/team that one, that wasn't up to me" (knowing there is no hope of contacting XYZ person/team)
I don't even freaking work in that area and yet I can think of so many non-stupid replies to easily squash any chance of controversy.

 

[Strazdas]

creating a protagonist of two different sexes means you need to:
create two different hit detection models
create two different animation sets
create two different cutscene sets (unless you like your character clipping through other characters)
create two different soundbases for each character
create two different models that work with animations
create two animation sets for each weapon (unless you like clipping)
many many more things.

On the other hand, creating a single protagonist without costumization requires only one set of it to be created. by creating a single sex character they are saving millions in developement. regardless if they are creating only male or only female protagonist.

And Assasins creed was always about a genetical line of a male assasin. in fact the original went back to his ancestors memories, which sort of implies that genetic memory gets passed down. and historically how many assasins were women? so far in the series we go 20%. is real life data more than that?

Then, there is a fact that every AAA game with female protagonist that didnt have option for male protagonist is a financial failure. so they tried, failed, went back to what actually sells.

Sure, it wouldn't be too surprising to find someone offended by it, just like someone was offended by TLoU, but I don't really think we should consider the lone, obscure, only-known-because-people-bitched-about-it opinion as "flak from feminists." Maybe "flak from a feminist."

Unless they really fear the mean words of that one person out there, I think the developers can rest easy knowing that if they don't go about female characters like idiots, they'll be fine.

well, a single feminist that does not understand the subject can still do a lot of damage. something something anita sarkaasian.