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

[Olas]

Now that I think about it, didn't Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Revelations[footnote]I didn't play any of the games after Revelations, so this may be true of later ones as well[/footnote] let you recruit female assassin's to help you out? And aren't female characters playable in the multiplayer mode?

It seems like a small stretch to go from that to having female characters be playable in the game. But what do I know?

The funny thing is I don't think Ubisoft even needed to make themselves an excuse. Having 4 male characters is a little odd, usually developers will want to have at least 1 female in the mix, but not ridiculous. The fact that Ubisoft has already made a game centered on a female assassin shows they aren't scared of doing it. It's because of this bullshit excuse that now they're getting so much heat.

 

[Something Amyss]

Anyway, you've taken one comment that I made, interpreted it incorrectly, applied your interpretation to another one, and consider it a good point. I'd say try harder, but I kind of want you to back off.

Well, no. You've reinforced the notion in this thread. Why is it different when you complain? Your excuses seem arbitrary. It's wrong to criticise the lack of Irish heroes, but totally okay to criticise fake turtles? Far as I can see, the only reason one is acceptable is because you did it. If you're going to say "why don't you do it, then?" the same logic should apply to you.

 

[Something Amyss]

Now that I think about it, didn't Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Revelations[footnote]I didn't play any of the games after Revelations, so this may be true of later ones as well[/footnote] let you recruit female assassin's to help you out? And aren't female characters playable in the multiplayer mode?

It seems like a small stretch to go from that to having female characters be playable in the game. But what do I know?

And in those future games you didn't play.

And there will probably be female assassins/templars in this one.

 

[wulf3n]

Those were strawmen more than sarcasm. Nobody that I can see is saying they absolutely cannot relate to a male character. But in the end, what does that change? And why does desire for female characters (in multiplayer only, at this point) bother you so much you have to misrepresent those who want it? And how are you any different?

Why do you think it's the desire that gets this type of response and not the reaction itself?

We need a social experiment. Next time there's an issue around the lack of gender/sexual/racial representation in a game, only have positive threads, stuff like "Wouldn't it be great if..." etc.

If the reaction is the same, with the same frequency then we can conclude that it is the desire that people are upset with. My money however is on the notion that people are upset with the reaction, not the desire.

 

[wulf3n]

My point about the turtles was more like the following

Your point about turtles was not apart of this quote chain.

Getting a bit defensive are we?

 

[wulf3n]

Not really.

Oh really? Is that why you retorted an argument that was never made?

Give up on your own arguments because you realized that you are wrong?

Is that a statement or a question? It's written like a statement, but it ends with a question mark.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I just hope that Ubisoft, and other companies that make these excuses aren't surprised by this sort of backlash. I'd like to think anyone that follows gaming (You'd think a gaming company would?), and has their head out of their ass knows this is the general response to omitting women, never-mind omitting them, and admitting them for a lame reason. And admitting it with a crappy excuse that could've been rectified with some better planning.

It might've been nicer if they had thought about adding women AND came up with a reason that didn't expose their own ineptitude.

But in the end, I'm nowhere near as mad at Ubisoft as I would be if they didn't give Liberation and Child of Light a chance. Still, omitting women from FC4 (For lack of finding a female voice actor), and ACU was still a bit of a BS move made for BS reasons.

Captcha: For the gipper
I guess so?

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Hey so, if you know so much about character design, maybe you should make your own game and animate your own female characters, or just not buy the game if it bothers you so much.

I hope that whenever you have a complaint about a video game, you immediately run out and start your own development company. You wouldn't want to have a double standard, right? And this is a web-site whose sole function is to discuss video games. Why are you so bothered that people are discussing a video game on it?

I do feel like there should be a feminist agenda lead game studio out there. Doing something indie. Clearly there is a demand for it. Clearly they're are women oppressed in the industry.

Frankly, I don't know why it's so hard to animate a female character compared to a male one. Like take Watch Dogs, throw some tits on Pierce and there you go. Lady character.

I mean cause thats all it is right? Its not like any of the assassin's are ever naked. They're all wearing flowing garmets. "Oh but we want it to look pretty!!!" Not every female character in games has to be hot. Oh but I suppose its so important to the metacritic score for Badboy17 to be wearing tight jeans and a low cut dress to show off her tits.

That Reddit someone posted, the job sounds like hell. Why would you want to work for Ubisoft when you can be doing your own shit creatively? Oh well.

Oh I'm sounding pretentious about my love of indie games, so I'll STFU now.

 

[wulf3n]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I think I clicked to quote you instead of the guy who searched stuff I had said about the turtles.

So it would seem, as the quote I referenced, nor any in it's chain referred to your points around the turtles. Hence why your clarification to me made no sense.

(have you) Never encountered a sentence with an implied subject? It's fairly common in, you know, writing. Most people can figure them out pretty well with punctuation alone.

Not one that jumps between past and present tense.

 

[IndieForever]

This is one of those topics that I'm a little loathe to get involved in, simply due to the entrenched positions and arguments that result, but I would like to add some information that I am qualified to do:

I am a dev for a studio in Scotland, a proper one. Not someone dabbling in Unity or thinking about maybe, possibly, signing up for a coding course. I write games. I am a programmer and work closely with artists and animators, although I sadly display no signs of artistic creativity and would never be able to do what they do.

Tim Schafer was being a little disingenuous with his (admittedly cute) gif showing a gender-neutral base character adorned with a different hairstyle and clothes. If your art style is this simplistic then, yes, it is a trivial task to have both a male and female protaganist for very little additional effort.

If, however, you are cooking up a latest-gen game for PC or console, then we are at the point when you absolutely have to employ mo-cap to get the animations right. Whilst it is a simple task to substitute a female character mesh over the skeleton of your male character and re-use the animations I can assure you that the end result just looks... wrong. I can't honestly put my finger on why this is the case and, as I previously mentioned I am not an animator, but it's the Uncanny Valley of animation. Males and females walk differently - the differences are tiny and subtle but we're good enough at spotting unexpected patterns to be able to see it looks odd without being able to identify precisely where it's not working.

Result: Two actors needed for mo-cap studio for all animations. Twice the cost, twice the time.

Everyone expects voice and lip-synching in animation, regardless of the game genre. Although we have tools that automate a lot of the synching, much of it needs to be adjusted by hand and there is no way two voice actors are going to deliver the same lines in some kind of Pacific Rim synchronisation. Can't be done.

Result: Two voice actors and twice the amount of time required to perform synching and tweaks.

If you are going to include both genders as your lead character then, as someone pointed out previously, it has to be a design decision at the start of the project. NPC dialogue needs to be gender neutral, unless you have the resources to do two sets of said dialogue and, if you do this, you'll then need two sets of localisation text for subtitles for each language you localise in.

Result: Agghhhh.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point and this is going to be a wall of text as it is.

Now...

The thing is, it has been done and done successfully. Mass Effect and Skyrim spring to mind, pretty much every MMO I've played, and they also had to add additional clothing/armour meshes for each gender but they put the work in. I wonder if the Bioware team thought the effort was worth it though:

ME1 - 18% of players played FemShep - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-20-bioware-18-percent-play-mass-effect-as-femshep

ME3 - by the third installment, this number had gone up to a staggering 20% - http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/25/mass-effect-3-infographic/

I would say it is worth it. AAA studios really have no reason for developing single-sex protagonists unless it is an integral part of the story. I'm struggling to think of a game where this would be the case.. perhaps something like LA Noir is a suitable example, but they're rare. However, the lame-ass excuses from Ubi are essentially invalid because what I've mentioned above would only add a small percentage to the overall development costs. They should have done it, even if just for that 20% of players, because that number will grow and grow and grow; if you get a set of people on your side, that is banking up goodwill and future sales.

If your fave indie game only has a male or female character, perhaps you now understand a little better why this is the case. I suspect my friends over at Rockstar North are breathing a sigh of relief that no one ever fired this complaint across the bows of their GTA titles... imagine how much fun it would be to have a female sociopathic bad-ass and the dialogue that could go with it... The buggers can afford to do it, too!

Missed opportunities everywhere.

 

[Voulan]

I still cannot fathom why we still have people regurgitating the whole "it's just the way things are, shut up and deal with it" idiom. It's been proved time and time again to be a false statement throughout history. Or do people still believe in the right to have slaves these days? That was the same argument people put forth then too.

Times change, as do tastes and demands from the audience from the products they consume. The very fact that this has become a much debated issue shows that there is a demand for more female characters from the market, and it's clearly not meeting that change. If people don't speak up and ask for these changes, then how can you expect them to be satisfied with the industry and for it to evolve? There may still be a majority of male players in the audience, but clearly some of that majority are happy with the notion of playing as female characters. After all, if we are capable if playing as animals and monsters, raging psychopaths and even women identifying with male characters, how is including more female characters such a stretch of the imagination? If there's a controversy, people are obviously demanding a change.

Especially when Ubisoft apparently intended to have one character be female, but decided not to in the end because it was "too hard". That's utterly pathetic. They have female character models and animations from previous games, so it's not a question of it being too difficult. They simply decided that it wasn't important enough. I think the fact that they have proven that they are capable of animating female characters with a similar budget and timeframe in the past and have come up with this excuse now is why there's an outrage.

 

[wulf3n]

I still cannot fathom why we still have people regurgitating the whole "it's just the way things are, shut up and deal with it" idiom. It's been proved time and time again to be a false statement throughout history. Or do people still believe in the right to have slaves these days? That was the same argument people put forth then too.

This is different. It's less "it's just the way things are, shut up and deal with it" and more "it's business, getting up in arms over it won't do anything if sales aren't affected."

 

[IndieForever]

This is different. It's less "it's just the way things are, shut up and deal with it" and more "it's business, getting up in arms over it won't do anything if sales aren't affected."

I agree with your analysis of the argument.

I would argue, however, that it *is* good business to be as inclusive as possible, especially if you have the resources of Ubi/EA/Rockstar et.al. Adding the female option is a tiny, tiny percentage of your development costs when you're talking about the amount they throw at a title; I still think the suits think short-term, saving a few dollars here and there today, instead of spending a little to reap the benefits of goodwill and loyalty in the future.

What we can't do is cater for every group out there. I don't want to derail this into another topic but we can't write every possible gender and sexual self-determination into a game. I don't think people are asking for this though - they're simply asking for the option to be able to play a female character in an interactive environment.

They have my vote for this and although some people are jumping on the 'I'm outraged, even though I have never played a video game nor understand what is involved in making them' bandwagon, the gist of the argument is correct. A lot of noise has been made this time - perhaps it will result in some change.

Captcha: cherry on top.

I'm looking at you, Rockstar. Add the cherry on top!

 

[Kingjackl]

Great article, couldn't have put it better myself.

It begs the question whether Ubisoft seriously thought people would buy these excuses, since it's completely ridiculous if you stop and question if for more than 5 seconds. Like, how can animating female characters be hard when you've got the budget to make a perfect photo-realistic depiction of Revolutionary Paris? Or why it's so hard to animate female assassins when they all wear the same loose-fitting unisex robes anyway? There's no shortage of female voice actors and mocap people out there looking for work, so that's out. And lest we forget that plenty of game with smaller budgets and lesser technology at their disposal have been able to do it pretty handily.

 

[RA92]

Snip

No, it is not a valid point, I might even go so far as to call it anti-intellectualism.

You might go so far as to call it anti-intellectualism, but you'd be wrong.

No, he wouldn't be. The "If you don't like it, why don't you make your own video game" response is made by people who want to shut down conversations.

Is it really? I mean, you're the second person to say that, but since that wasn't my intention, I find it hard to believe you. Maybe you should stick to discussing the issue rather than trying to figure out the intentions of others.

Stick to discussing the issue? Your like-it-or-leave-it attitude is purposefully designed to exclude people who might have criticisms from the conversation. You don't want a discussion. You want an echo chamber.

That is, except, if you believe the research, gamers tend to buy more when there are male protagonists. That's a fact that seems to completely undermine your position.

If there were actually a comparably large number of AAA games with female protagonists that didn't sell well, then you would have had a point. When the percentage of female characters in video games hover at around 15%, of course you'll end up with data that people buy games with male protagonists more. It'd a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You could still compare them, you'd just have to control for factors other than the gender of the main character, like budget, general metascore and things like that. I'm not going to do it, but it's not impossible.

Now you are moving the goalpost. It's not just the gender that dictates the sale of games - it's also the quality, marketing, sheer chance, etc. The problem with the smaller sample size is that one underperforming game would cause a much larger shift to the overall numbers than an underperforming game in the larger sample. That kind of number crunching is almost worthless.