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

[Rebel_Raven]

I'd say you're right on that. I mean, hey, I'm not calling ubisoft sexist, or anything, I'm just saying I hate their decision.

Not sure if a game review would even matter short of giving the vehement defenders of the status quo ammo. That'd pretty much be akin to Ubisoft's excuse, IMO.

Honestly, when I hear a game has character creation, I don't bother with the reviews, I just try and find footage of it on youtube. Saved me some hassle with the Dragon ball game with create a warrior, among other games.

I honestly don't know where this decision comes from, so I can't say they're sexist, either. I mean, maybe they are? But the fact that asking for diversity is now immediately portrayed as calling someone sexist/racists is really disturbing.

And I would rather have playable women as an option. That doesn't make them sexist or even my preference automatically correct. But now it's got to the point where even asking is apparently a bad thing.

Or, in Jim Sterling's case, making a crack about Assassin's Creed: The Clone Wars.

I agree completely. It's annoying seeing a humble request, not a call for quotas, and check marks be clubbed to death (And I don't mean the tune from Matrix) just on impulse alone, not just by people who actually believe it's wrong for some reason, but by bandwagon jumpers.
At least one good thing, IMO, comes from it. If we all just said "I agree" these threads wouldn't be as long, or as common, I guess. This needs to be talked about, and hopefully the game industry'll catch on, and get their heads out of their butts.

 

[Elberik]

Ubisoft shows their contempt for their customers over and over again. The "double the work" line is such an obvious lie, designed to give them an acceptable out because their marketing department thinks a game with a female lead won't sell.

It's cute to see someone who has no idea how game development works talk as if they're an expert.

 

[Strazdas]

I agree with CloudAtlas here. You dont need to do that much work, you dont need to create a new skeleton or drastically different animations (although it would be nice if they did it anyway for the different male leads for some variety). You can use the same skeleton, ya know why? Because not everywomen is shorter, medium-large boobs, narrow waiste to large hips with slim shoulders, you can have a female character with the same rough skeleton build of any of the other male characters. This is also ignoring that they HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE IN PREVIOUS ASSASSIN CREED GAMES!
Now in terms of hit boxes, why are you two even arguaing about this? Its Assassins Creed. You can two similar (but different skeletons) but still have the same hitbox in this game, for example look at the multiplayer or killing random civillians. Heck lets look at Halo Reach, you can choose male/female Spartans and they have slightly different builds.... with the same animations and hitboxes.

You need a lot of work to make unique characters. you dont need that much to make a copy-paste ones. having skinner box characters isnt any better than those 30 minute mods though and isnt good enough to make two protagonists.

The female character in AC game was on iOS. significantly lower fidelity even in its HD version, hence also significantly less work required. Also it was nowhere as close narative driven as the other AC games.

I already pointed out that in Halo its easier to get away with same model just different texture for face because they all wear power armor that shapes them and not their actual shape, and why it wouldnt work in AC game. Altrough you do have a point that hitting precise locations arent important in AC due to game simply warping you to the place you need to be to do the animation regardless where you aim.

If the chracter looks distinctly different then that's generally enough for them to be considered a different protagonist in a co-op mode. You are probably the only one who believes that they would be the same thing. They are all assassins still, so there is gonna be some similarities in play style anyway. But all of the characters in Black Flag's multi-player mode have slight differences when you start out because in general they use different weapons. Some to my knowledge can blend in with the crowd better as well. The differences are not drawn along gender lines.

The hitbox thing is just you being both paranoid and anal. But either way why would it be any different from the slight differences between characters in a fighting game? There are two possibilities. Say the characters are just reskins. Well, I don't remember any complaints from folks that played with the Black Flag multiplayer. The only complaint I can think of is that ship battles were not included for multiplayer mode. And honestly, if anyone in this thread had any complaints or negative experience with it I wish they would speak up. I found that it worked just fine. Relatively fine I should say, there is always something off in these games now, part of why I don't pre-order. But I don't remember a wealth of glitches specific to the multiplayer characters like what you have described. So the whole animation not matching up thing is a moot point. And then maybe...just maybe, they didn't reskin the characters. So that's why there were not a whole lot of glitches. Did you watch the video I posted? They at least(the women I should say. The men were more static) all have different resting poses(fighting generally deepened on what weapon your chracter uses). So maybe they did do all the unnecessary work to make the male and female models distinct. Either way they have had a prior success so anything less feels like a step backwards.

I never said that differences are drawn along gender lines, that was CloudAtlas. what i said is that differences exist in 2 unique protagonists, regardles of their sex. in fact i stated that multiple times in this thread already so not sure why you still keep ignoring it.

The way new Coop is suppsed to work is that no matter which of the players you are, you see yourself as the main protagonist and others as generic spies with cloned bodies. the animation is identical as the other players also see themselves as protagonists. Its like having 4 identical characters with a skin mod.

Reskins for multiplayer do not garner much complaint because multiplayer players know that unique characters often bring inbalance and the less useful ones are going to be dropped anyway. meanwhile in singleplayer these things matter much more because singleplayer players arent alawys going for 100% efficiency.

When it comes to gliches, how many cinematics are there in multiplayer? i doubt there are even 10% of what is in singleplayer. not to mention that you wont see these problems when your just using a reskin. but you also wont have unique characters either.

I didnt watch the video because i dont really do youtube at work for obviuos reasons, well if resting poses were unique then they really put at least some effort in it it seems.

Ubisoft Resources and time are most certainly not limited.

thanks for a good laugh. unless Ubisoft invented a time machine and can print thier own currency, it most certainly is limited.

If you added a playable female to a game with a huge established fanbase that releases a new installment every year like say Call Of Duty, or Assasin's Creed it wouldn't affect sales at all, so I don't think Ubisoft has much to lose by adding playable females. If anything they have something to gain from adding female assasins, since if they had done so in the first place they would have branded as progressive, garnering good PR, as opposed to their ineffectual attempts to stave off bad PR.

thats kinda the point here isnt it. sex of the protagonist does not really matter in term of sales, so its going to sell just as well with what they are doing now than if they changed things. the ONLY reason ubisoft is ever going to add anything to their games if if they believe it would increase sales.

 

[Something Amyss]

As a work of art it's up the makers to add or remove features. It's their baby.

As a product, it's their choice to add or remove things and benefit or suffer in sales as a result, it's their property.

It's something they're selling to the masses. It's something commissioned by another body. It's not their baby nor their property. This was not an artistic decision made by the makers of the game[footnote]I suspect crab people[/footnote].

Regardless, they should listen to potential customers and adapt as necessary, it's good business, but why should they give into such demands that are rooted in a social agenda?

Suddenly, wanting things is social agenda. I wish we had these silly buzzwords back when everyone and their grandma was demanding online multiplayer in everything[footnote]Online Multiplayer leading to online content locks, a sign of the end times[/footnote]. It seems they only come in to play when we don't want something, though[footnote]Or when our crab overlords are displeased[/footnote].

Critical response is. The issue here is the cries sound more like demands from people to put in things into a game they feel should be there. It reeks of the whining around Mass Effect 3.

The distinction is an artificial one. Sort of along the lines of saying "I don't have a problem with lesbians, it's just all those women who want to have sex with other women I have a problem with."

If there's a lack of diversity in a market then I'm all for encouraging others to fill in the gaps, not tell others what they should and shouldn't do with their property.

That's a reskin of the "do it yourself" argument. Unless there's something about wanting something that immediately gives you the time, toolkit, and resources to do it, it's still inane[footnote]One method to gain such abilities is a pact with the crab people[/footnote].

People whine so much about the state its in, but they keep buying the products acting as if they're powerless.

Well, I would partially agree there. The problem is, you can't generally draw a line between the people complaining and the purchasers. I mean, if this game sees a decline in sales, would you attribute it to gender issues? I wouldn't. In fact, I'm betting that this sees weaker sales, as this is the trend in recent AC games. Oh, they still sell well, and AC is still one of the big franchises, but I'd be shocked if co-op brought enough people back into the fold to offset AC fatigue. But, you see, there's no one single point of causation for sales.

I mean, CoD: Ghosts had female avatars in it. Did it sell worse because of that? Well, I doubt it but can't preclude it. Was it gameplay? Eh, I thought it was shittier, but that doesn't mean it turned off fans. Was it more of the same? I would guess at this, but I don't rightly know. I think people are just tiring of the CoD machine to an extent[footnote]But in the end, aren't we all just cods in the machine of the crab people?[/footnote].

Coerce them with money, not with social crusading.

Except when games don't sell, they blame piracy or close up shop. Have you ever read a fiscal report from a company with a bad product? A game could literally cause the gates of Hell to open, causing Armageddon, and you'd still have excuses made during the financial reports about how the market was shifting, or they didn't advertise right[footnote]It's a certainty that business meetings will continue well into the unholy reign of Sistiggaroth, our great crustacean overlord[/footnote] Not to mention, "voting with your wallet" is pointless unless you can pinpoint why it didn't sell. I wonder how they would know why that's an issue. To again use the CoD argument, Activision's answer to a decline in sales is to continue making the same games, but to add another developer to the cycle. Probably the least liked developer to have touched the franchise. Does it really sound like they're listening?

EA/Bioware did listen with Mass Effect. Nintendo did listen with Tomodachi Life. The only time Valve listens is when people get all "social crusadey[footnote]What? That's a totally cromulent word![/footnote].

I actually don't buy into the notion that it's ineffective. I completely don't buy into the notion that "voting with your wallet" is.

 

[Gerardo Vazquez]

Ubisoft Resources and time are most certainly not limited.

thanks for a good laugh. unless Ubisoft invented a time machine and can print thier own currency, it most certainly is limited.

If you added a playable female to a game with a huge established fanbase that releases a new installment every year like say Call Of Duty, or Assasin's Creed it wouldn't affect sales at all, so I don't think Ubisoft has much to lose by adding playable females. If anything they have something to gain from adding female assasins, since if they had done so in the first place they would have branded as progressive, garnering good PR, as opposed to their ineffectual attempts to stave off bad PR.

thats kinda the point here isnt it. sex of the protagonist does not really matter in term of sales, so its going to sell just as well with what they are doing now than if they changed things. the ONLY reason ubisoft is ever going to add anything to their games if if they believe it would increase sales.

They could make their own time machine with the cash they put into these babies on a yearly basis, but when it comes to for playable females "Guys do you think we're made of money? It's not like we're some sort of big successful company in one of the most profitable industries in the modern world.", but hey, to be honest I'm not really interested in the new Assasin's Creed so I'm probably gonna skip out on the lates- OH MY GOD! Citizens eat glistening HD Baguettes in real time! Now I'm sold on this baby. It's a good thing Ubisoft doesn't waste resources, and ONLY puts things into their games that increase sales. Ubisoft, you just one yourself a costumer.

 

[mecegirl]

If the chracter looks distinctly different then that's generally enough for them to be considered a different protagonist in a co-op mode. You are probably the only one who believes that they would be the same thing. They are all assassins still, so there is gonna be some similarities in play style anyway. But all of the characters in Black Flag's multi-player mode have slight differences when you start out because in general they use different weapons. Some to my knowledge can blend in with the crowd better as well. The differences are not drawn along gender lines.

The hitbox thing is just you being both paranoid and anal. But either way why would it be any different from the slight differences between characters in a fighting game? There are two possibilities. Say the characters are just reskins. Well, I don't remember any complaints from folks that played with the Black Flag multiplayer. The only complaint I can think of is that ship battles were not included for multiplayer mode. And honestly, if anyone in this thread had any complaints or negative experience with it I wish they would speak up. I found that it worked just fine. Relatively fine I should say, there is always something off in these games now, part of why I don't pre-order. But I don't remember a wealth of glitches specific to the multiplayer characters like what you have described. So the whole animation not matching up thing is a moot point. And then maybe...just maybe, they didn't reskin the characters. So that's why there were not a whole lot of glitches. Did you watch the video I posted? They at least(the women I should say. The men were more static) all have different resting poses(fighting generally deepened on what weapon your chracter uses). So maybe they did do all the unnecessary work to make the male and female models distinct. Either way they have had a prior success so anything less feels like a step backwards.

I never said that differences are drawn along gender lines, that was CloudAtlas. what i said is that differences exist in 2 unique protagonists, regardles of their sex. in fact i stated that multiple times in this thread already so not sure why you still keep ignoring it.

I mentioned differences along gender lines because of your random talk about advantages and male characters being abandoned for the female ones.

The way new Coop is suppsed to work is that no matter which of the players you are, you see yourself as the main protagonist and others as generic spies with cloned bodies. the animation is identical as the other players also see themselves as protagonists. Its like having 4 identical characters with a skin mod.

It's not like having 4 identical characters with a skin mod. It is four identical characters with a skin mod. That's part of the point. The players are just supposed to play as their own customized version of Arno Dorian. the only thing that makes them look like random assassins is the assumption that most people would have customized their version of Arno differently.

Reskins for multiplayer do not garner much complaint because multiplayer players know that unique characters often bring inbalance and the less useful ones are going to be dropped anyway. meanwhile in singleplayer these things matter much more because singleplayer players arent alawys going for 100% efficiency.

When it comes to gliches, how many cinematics are there in multiplayer? i doubt there are even 10% of what is in singleplayer. not to mention that you wont see these problems when your just using a reskin. but you also wont have unique characters either.

Considering that all this talk is ONLY about the new multiplayer mode for Assassins Creed Unity what's the problem then? No one is even concerned with inserting a female option in the single player mode. They are just wondering why it can't be an option for the multiplayer mode. I believe that the desire for a female chracter would exist regardless. But remember, it was the a representative from the company that said that they wanted a playable female but couldn't have one because of the amount of work it would take. Which is what is making people feel that they are lazy. I don't think most assume that the process is a piece of cake. but they have had female characters in the multiplayer mode in previous games (not just in Black Flag. But in AC III and Brotherhood as well). This will be a deviation to what they have done before. And any issues with programing surely would have encountered in the creation of previous games? Would they not now have the knowledge to make the processes smoother?

I didnt watch the video because i dont really do youtube at work for obviuos reasons, well if resting poses were unique then they really put at least some effort in it it seems.

I don't think they built every chracter from the ground up, but I think they at least did more than just reskin them.

 

[Strazdas]

They could make their own time machine with the cash they put into these babies on a yearly basis, but when it comes to for playable females "Guys do you think we're made of money? It's not like we're some sort of big successful company in one of the most profitable industries in the modern world.", but hey, to be honest I'm not really interested in the new Assasin's Creed so I'm probably gonna skip out on the lates- OH MY GOD! Citizens eat glistening HD Baguettes in real time! Now I'm sold on this baby. It's a good thing Ubisoft doesn't waste resources, and ONLY puts things into their games that increase sales. Ubisoft, you just one yourself a costumer.

your FUD and non-arguments are not impressive. you keep creating strawmen and think their made of iron. People buy what they like. Since AC sells well, obviuosly there are enough people that like it.

Considering that all this talk is ONLY about the new multiplayer mode for Assassins Creed Unity what's the problem then? No one is even concerned with inserting a female option in the single player mode. They are just wondering why it can't be an option for the multiplayer mode. I believe that the desire for a female chracter would exist regardless. But remember, it was the a representative from the company that said that they wanted a playable female but couldn't have one because of the amount of work it would take. Which is what is making people feel that they are lazy. I don't think most assume that the process is a piece of cake. but they have had female characters in the multiplayer mode in previous games (not just in Black Flag. But in AC III and Brotherhood as well). This will be a deviation to what they have done before. And any issues with programing surely would have encountered in the creation of previous games? Would they not now have the knowledge to make the processes smoother?

erm, so people demanding that ubisoft makes a female protagonist is only about multiplayer? i dont think you understand what the article said.

 

[Otakun]

We have a bunch of armchair game devs complaining that a big name company didn't want to add a "feature" they wanted and assume they know the actual time and money it takes to add such thing when the company says "it's too time consuming and expensive." Who cares what they say cause they have money to do so, right? Why? Adding a female model and animating it takes time and money (feel free to take classes on it like I have to prove me wrong) which in the end will result in no extra money being made on the game. Ubisoft adding female models may not hurt sales but it wont increase them to make up the cost in development. You can call them greedy and money grubby all you want but business is business, no other company would go out of their way to spend more money for no gain.

 

[mecegirl]

Considering that all this talk is ONLY about the new multiplayer mode for Assassins Creed Unity what's the problem then? No one is even concerned with inserting a female option in the single player mode. They are just wondering why it can't be an option for the multiplayer mode. I believe that the desire for a female chracter would exist regardless. But remember, it was the a representative from the company that said that they wanted a playable female but couldn't have one because of the amount of work it would take. Which is what is making people feel that they are lazy. I don't think most assume that the process is a piece of cake. but they have had female characters in the multiplayer mode in previous games (not just in Black Flag. But in AC III and Brotherhood as well). This will be a deviation to what they have done before. And any issues with programing surely would have encountered in the creation of previous games? Would they not now have the knowledge to make the processes smoother?

erm, so people demanding that ubisoft makes a female protagonist is only about multiplayer? i dont think you understand what the article said.

Really? Demanding? Now I have to wonder if you even read the article. This whole conversation, even the article, was sparked by statements made from a Ubisoft representative. You can't shift things over to gamers. Ubisoft is the one who said that they wanted a female player chracter. The main point of the article is that idea that female characters are too hard, or expensive, to animate is bullshit. The writer even goes out of her way to say that she doesn't think that all games have to include a female chracter just that the lame excuses need to stop.

Don't get confused, of course people would like an actual AC game with a female protagonist that wasn't a side story or made for the Vita. But in the context of the arguments you are having with people in this thread, how many are talking about more than the multiplayer mode of AC Unity? I don't even think a player will be able to have more than one player character in this game expect for the multiplayer mode, so what else would they be talking about?

 

[Gerardo Vazquez]

your FUD and non-arguments are not impressive. you keep creating strawmen and think their made of iron. People buy what they like. Since AC sells well, obviuosly there are enough people that like it.

Not entirely sure what you're getting at. I never once once suggested that people don't like Assasin's Creed, hell I like Assassin's Creed, love it even. To get right to the point, the claim that adding female character/protagonist is a process that cost too much time and money for ANY studio much less the video game giant that is Ubisoft seems pretty unbelievable , especially when you have other people in the industry going on about how the process isn't that difficult, and even Ex-Ubisoft, and Ex-AC directors saying that the process isn't very difficult, and should take "days". With all that in mind I'm having trouble taking Ubisoft's side.

 

[Something Amyss]

I agree completely. It's annoying seeing a humble request, not a call for quotas, and check marks be clubbed to death (And I don't mean the tune from Matrix) just on impulse alone, not just by people who actually believe it's wrong for some reason, but by bandwagon jumpers.
At least one good thing, IMO, comes from it. If we all just said "I agree" these threads wouldn't be as long, or as common, I guess. This needs to be talked about, and hopefully the game industry'll catch on, and get their heads out of their butts.

It's actually sort of weird responding to someone who says "I agree," because usually there isn't much to talk about. This stuff does kind of need to come up, though. And it needs to be pointed out that nobody (or virtually nobody, because there's always one) actually wants checklists or quotas. In this case, it's not even about the protagonist per se.

I'm still not sure why they thought this model of co-op was a good idea in the first place. Ignore women (like they're already doing!), this still strikes me as lazy and kind of dumb. I kind of wonder where everything went. I mean, they took out competitive MP, with all its distinct characters and animations for co-op that seems like significantly less effort, and they apparently cannot even include a "planned" female model. So much has been removed from a game with multiple teams working on it and there doesn't seem to be much added.

I kind of hope the detractors gain some self-awareness, but I doubt it'll happen any time soon.

 

[Grahav]

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."

Thank you for this post. It is cool to see the perspective of the workers slaving away from behind the scenes of CEOs, critics and entitled brats.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I agree completely. It's annoying seeing a humble request, not a call for quotas, and check marks be clubbed to death (And I don't mean the tune from Matrix) just on impulse alone, not just by people who actually believe it's wrong for some reason, but by bandwagon jumpers.
At least one good thing, IMO, comes from it. If we all just said "I agree" these threads wouldn't be as long, or as common, I guess. This needs to be talked about, and hopefully the game industry'll catch on, and get their heads out of their butts.

It's actually sort of weird responding to someone who says "I agree," because usually there isn't much to talk about. This stuff does kind of need to come up, though. And it needs to be pointed out that nobody (or virtually nobody, because there's always one) actually wants checklists or quotas. In this case, it's not even about the protagonist per se.

I'm still not sure why they thought this model of co-op was a good idea in the first place. Ignore women (like they're already doing!), this still strikes me as lazy and kind of dumb. I kind of wonder where everything went. I mean, they took out competitive MP, with all its distinct characters and animations for co-op that seems like significantly less effort, and they apparently cannot even include a "planned" female model. So much has been removed from a game with multiple teams working on it and there doesn't seem to be much added.

I kind of hope the detractors gain some self-awareness, but I doubt it'll happen any time soon.

Is creating co-op specific missions actually less effort than re-hashing a basic deathmatch-with-a-twist mode that got old a few incarnations ago though?

Not trying to be contrarian or play devils advocate here, but I think this looks like the best Assassin's Creed of the lot. I would definitely love more robust customisation options, but I'm still looking forward to this game. I'll take executing missions with my friends over the MP that was in past games any day of the week.

 

[goliath6711]

Seriously? Are overblown controversies just going to become a "thing" at E3 now? Because the response to this is starting to remind me of last year's "Xbox One has to be online all day, every day to play games. Don't like it? Stick with the 360" and the year before's "You'll want to protect Lara". All of which ultimately results in "blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-grrrr-anger-rage-forum rants-everybody hates them-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-pr groveling-everybody likes them again-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-you couldn't force me to remotely give a shit even if you held a loaded gun to my head!"

So until a game company and/or corporation decides to directly insult me by name, I think I'm gonna sit these things out.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I agree completely. It's annoying seeing a humble request, not a call for quotas, and check marks be clubbed to death (And I don't mean the tune from Matrix) just on impulse alone, not just by people who actually believe it's wrong for some reason, but by bandwagon jumpers.
At least one good thing, IMO, comes from it. If we all just said "I agree" these threads wouldn't be as long, or as common, I guess. This needs to be talked about, and hopefully the game industry'll catch on, and get their heads out of their butts.

It's actually sort of weird responding to someone who says "I agree," because usually there isn't much to talk about. This stuff does kind of need to come up, though. And it needs to be pointed out that nobody (or virtually nobody, because there's always one) actually wants checklists or quotas. In this case, it's not even about the protagonist per se.

I'm still not sure why they thought this model of co-op was a good idea in the first place. Ignore women (like they're already doing!), this still strikes me as lazy and kind of dumb. I kind of wonder where everything went. I mean, they took out competitive MP, with all its distinct characters and animations for co-op that seems like significantly less effort, and they apparently cannot even include a "planned" female model. So much has been removed from a game with multiple teams working on it and there doesn't seem to be much added.

I kind of hope the detractors gain some self-awareness, but I doubt it'll happen any time soon.

I can't help but agree, again, as it is weird to respond to someone who agrees.
I also agree that it needs to be talked about, and that it is true that most people wanting equal rep don't want checklists, quotas, etc. Frankly if it gets bad enough for that, then they must think there's a problem, too.

You raise a good point. They have removed a ton, which likely significantly lightened their work load. heck, a co-op focus makes the game appealing to me as I generally shy away from PVP. why they couldn't allow women in is pretty hard to reasonably understand in any positive way.

Yeah, I don't always get why people are against women's representation. Their mysterious ways of thinking make me doubt they can be convinced, too. They just don't seem reasonable to me most times.

 

[Darwinism]

What's funny is that if you look at a dude parkouring and a lady parkouring they do it essentially identically because regardless of effectively minor differences in skeletal and muscular builds there's only so many ways the human body can do athletic activities and it's not a matter of MEN PARKOUR LIKE THIS AND WOMEN PARKOUR LIKE /THIS/ because that's stupid. Models are the only reason, the animations are easily shared, and saying that your AAA group of ten plus studios can't work up female models because ~effort~ is a dumb excuse and they deserve to be called on it rather than them just coming out and saying, "Well, we really don't want to put any effort at all into this feature."

 

[Strazdas]

Really? Demanding? Now I have to wonder if you even read the article. This whole conversation, even the article, was sparked by statements made from a Ubisoft representative. You can't shift things over to gamers. Ubisoft is the one who said that they wanted a female player chracter. The main point of the article is that idea that female characters are too hard, or expensive, to animate is bullshit. The writer even goes out of her way to say that she doesn't think that all games have to include a female chracter just that the lame excuses need to stop.

Don't get confused, of course people would like an actual AC game with a female protagonist that wasn't a side story or made for the Vita. But in the context of the arguments you are having with people in this thread, how many are talking about more than the multiplayer mode of AC Unity? I don't even think a player will be able to have more than one player character in this game expect for the multiplayer mode, so what else would they be talking about?

read comments here and then say they are not demanding. go on, ill wait.

Ubisoft said its too expensive for them to add a female character at this point in developement. then a bunch of people misinterpreted that as ubisoft claiming females developing is mroe expensive than male developing and started a riot. you right here confirm this misinterpretation.

Well i dont know, everyone throwing around phrases like "Female protagonist" is talking more than a multiplayer mode. and thats quite a lot of people. Yes, you will only have 1 main protagonist, yet people have the audacity to think they can demand 2 main protagonists just because the 1st one isnt female.

Not entirely sure what you're getting at. I never once once suggested that people don't like Assasin's Creed, hell I like Assassin's Creed, love it even. To get right to the point, the claim that adding female character/protagonist is a process that cost too much time and money for ANY studio much less the video game giant that is Ubisoft seems pretty unbelievable , especially when you have other people in the industry going on about how the process isn't that difficult, and even Ex-Ubisoft, and Ex-AC directors saying that the process isn't very difficult, and should take "days". With all that in mind I'm having trouble taking Ubisoft's side.

Its only unbelievable if you know aboslutely nothing about designing games, as you have proven to be. people that ARE game designers have already pointed here that your talking bullshit (and by you i mean everyone claiming that developing chracters are cheap).

Oh yes, a disgruntled fired employee is saying stuff that makes former employer bad. hes being very honest of course! why would he lie!.

You dont need to take ubisoft side, their PR is pants on head retarded when it comes to these things. does not autmatically mean you need to take the side of false claims and lies.

Seriously? Are overblown controversies just going to become a "thing" at E3 now?

wait, you mean they E3 at some point wasnt overblown contraversies? when was this gloriuos time you speak of?

 

[mecegirl]

Really? Demanding? Now I have to wonder if you even read the article. This whole conversation, even the article, was sparked by statements made from a Ubisoft representative. You can't shift things over to gamers. Ubisoft is the one who said that they wanted a female player chracter. The main point of the article is that idea that female characters are too hard, or expensive, to animate is bullshit. The writer even goes out of her way to say that she doesn't think that all games have to include a female chracter just that the lame excuses need to stop.

Don't get confused, of course people would like an actual AC game with a female protagonist that wasn't a side story or made for the Vita. But in the context of the arguments you are having with people in this thread, how many are talking about more than the multiplayer mode of AC Unity? I don't even think a player will be able to have more than one player character in this game expect for the multiplayer mode, so what else would they be talking about?

read comments here and then say they are not demanding. go on, ill wait.

Ubisoft said its too expensive for them to add a female character at this point in developement. then a bunch of people misinterpreted that as ubisoft claiming females developing is mroe expensive than male developing and started a riot. you right here confirm this misinterpretation.

Well i dont know, everyone throwing around phrases like "Female protagonist" is talking more than a multiplayer mode. and thats quite a lot of people. Yes, you will only have 1 main protagonist, yet people have the audacity to think they can demand 2 main protagonists just because the 1st one isnt female.

Why the fuck should I read the thread again? I've already read what everyone has had to say because I've been keeping up with the conversation since the thread started. You are the one saying that people are demanding something. Show some proof and quote someone.

They never said anything to suggest that they couldn't add a female character "at this point in development". This isn't about them dropping everything and adding a female chracter right now. It's about them not planning well enough to add one at all while creating the game, even though they said they wanted one. It looks like they just pushed it back, and pushed it back, until it was too late to do at all because it was low on their priority list. I'm gonna quote from the original article. http://www.videogamer.com/pc/assass...te_but_a_reality_of_game_development_ubi.html

"It was on our feature list until not too long ago, but it's a question of focus and production," Therien explained. "So we wanted to make sure we had the best experience for the character. A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation, a lot of costumes [inaudible]. It would have doubled the work on those things. And I mean it's something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision... It's unfortunate, but it's a reality of game development."

When pressed on the issue, specifically that we didn't think his excuse would wash with the community given the amount of resources at the studio's disposal, Therien continued:

"Again, it's not a question of philosophy or choice in this case at all I don't really [inaudible] it was a question of focus and a question of production. Yes, we have tonnes of resources, but we're putting them into this game, and we have huge teams, nine studios working on this game and we need all of these people to make what we are doing here."

Nine whole teams for one game eh? Somewhere an independent developer died a little inside...

People are using the term female protagonist. And? That still doesn't change the context of the conversation. They are still talking about more than one protagonist for the multiplayer mode. How audacious! Wanting player characters with differences in design other than the color of their cloak!

Right now, clones or not, there are four dudes in the multiplayer mode doing shit that effects the outcome of the game. Four dudes that will be controlled by four separate individuals in the real world. That makes them all protagonists.

 

[Strazdas]

snippity snip

if you want to represent and sum up the public opinion, its a good idea to first know that opinion, hence, read the comments.
as you can see from the quotes, the response from Ubi was quite level headed stating that female character would mean extra time and resources they did not have because they already blew everything on what they had.meanwhile everyone was raging about them being a lier and demanding a female protagonist. the problem is, they werent lieing, you do need extra time and work for female protagonist.

Ninte teams does not say much. you would need to know team size. for example CCP has close to 20 years working on a single game, yet the teams themselves are rather small. On the other hand Wargaming has only few, but large teams. Its all about the inner structure of the company and not the size od developement.

Protagonist means the main person in the storyline. there are no protagonists in multiplayer. saying female protagonist you mean a singleplayer main character. granted, some people may be using the term wrong (like you just did), however i am not a midn reader and i can only see the term they used and not the term they meant.

Protagonist will be you, and they will be in thier own game. the 3 other "dudes" will be supporting characters, the difference is that each person will think himself the main character.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I agree completely. It's annoying seeing a humble request, not a call for quotas, and check marks be clubbed to death (And I don't mean the tune from Matrix) just on impulse alone, not just by people who actually believe it's wrong for some reason, but by bandwagon jumpers.
At least one good thing, IMO, comes from it. If we all just said "I agree" these threads wouldn't be as long, or as common, I guess. This needs to be talked about, and hopefully the game industry'll catch on, and get their heads out of their butts.

It's actually sort of weird responding to someone who says "I agree," because usually there isn't much to talk about. This stuff does kind of need to come up, though. And it needs to be pointed out that nobody (or virtually nobody, because there's always one) actually wants checklists or quotas. In this case, it's not even about the protagonist per se.

I'm still not sure why they thought this model of co-op was a good idea in the first place. Ignore women (like they're already doing!), this still strikes me as lazy and kind of dumb. I kind of wonder where everything went. I mean, they took out competitive MP, with all its distinct characters and animations for co-op that seems like significantly less effort, and they apparently cannot even include a "planned" female model. So much has been removed from a game with multiple teams working on it and there doesn't seem to be much added.

I kind of hope the detractors gain some self-awareness, but I doubt it'll happen any time soon.

I can't help but agree, again, as it is weird to respond to someone who agrees.
I also agree that it needs to be talked about, and that it is true that most people wanting equal rep don't want checklists, quotas, etc. Frankly if it gets bad enough for that, then they must think there's a problem, too.

You raise a good point. They have removed a ton, which likely significantly lightened their work load. heck, a co-op focus makes the game appealing to me as I generally shy away from PVP. why they couldn't allow women in is pretty hard to reasonably understand in any positive way.

Yeah, I don't always get why people are against women's representation. Their mysterious ways of thinking make me doubt they can be convinced, too. They just don't seem reasonable to me most times.

They nerfed a very insubstantial and tired multiplayer component. Your assumptions about their work load are just that... Assumptions. They've built something big, with far more explorable interiors than ever before... And we don't yet know how much content they've actually crammed into the thing. They might have phoned it in, that's yet to be confirmed. From what I've seen... It doesn't really look like they did.

"I don't always get why people are against women's representation". Are you saying that people are saying that women shouldn't be in games? 'Cause... I don't think people are saying that.

"Their mysterious ways of thinking make me doubt they can be convinced, too. They just don't seem reasonable to me most times."

I see a lot of people write sentiments like that. You might be being playful, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. That kind of talk does smack of self-involved, angsty teenage bullshit though... Is what I will say. Honestly, if you're reading this and you're going through life constantly unable to fathom other people's opinions and reasoning... You might have a problem. You might BE the problem, if we're working from this modern perspective that seems to think we should all agree and that it's a big "problem" if we don't.