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

[DOOM GUY]

Ahhh, more BS over stuff like this in games. There's like, one set character in this game, and the coop characters are just reskins (sure, they're cutting corners, but still, probably gonna be a fun mode, just like coop in DR2, which you just play as another Chuck), I mean, they could of added a female coop character, but they didn't, oh well. They should of just refused to talk about it, or just said something along the lines of "this what we had in mind for the game, so it's what we're going to include"

 

[Something Amyss]

I just find it amusing that as a product people are whining about it and as a work of art they're doing the same.

You'll have to elaborate on that.

It's even more amusing to think of modern consumers as on the level of patrons to artists.

I suppose, though it hardly reverses the point.

I guess what ti comes down to me is people trying to tell product makers what to do instead of buying the products they want, not buying those they don't like and not looking for things to be outraged at.

Critical response, response from the masses, has long been a viable deal. It's not as though it's a novel idea.

Further, your concept only truly works if there's already diversity in a marketplace. Otherwise, there would be no problem with internet service in the US, for example.

 

[ThePurpleStuff]

I'm not against games having just male characters, or female characters optional. If they didn't word it the way they did there would be no arguments going on at all. This is why you should be extra careful with what you say... Since it will be blown out of proportion. The fact this issue is still being discussed shows there hasn't been any positive changes made. The triple A gaming industry hates to change. Their dislike of change is going to kill themselves off. I left gaming behind because of this amount of hatred, bile and ignorance toward me, the customer. The sole person helping to keep the industry alive. Without me, without us supporting them, we would not even be here. The escapist would not exist. It's just sad and depressing, over something that was apart of my childhood. But then by the end of the day I remember I don't need games, when the world out there also has things to offer. So I feel better.

This issue has no effect on me... but I can see why it would for some people. People will find their niche to make their opinions and morals heard, even for something I now consider so insignificant as video games. I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing with anyone. Say what you want, I am not the one either who is saying to just stop complaining. If you have faith in this industry that I no longer possess then keep making your voices heard. Its no different than any other medium and its share of concerned consumers.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Still, omitting women from FC4 (For lack of finding a female voice actor)

What, what? Women aren't going to be in Far Cry 4 because they couldn't find a female VA?

If thats true, its a worse excuse than this. Its Ubisoft Montreal. They're in fucing Canada, in Montreal, which is highly populated and quite a few other game developers. Eidos Montreal didn't seem to have problems finding VAs who were women when making Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Didn't have a problem for previous AC games either. Its not uncommon to fly a VA over to do their lines, or have a studio rented out further away - some even do it at home. Thats like saying "I shit my pants because I don't know how to flush the toilet".

http://www.vg247.com/2014/06/12/far-cry-4-director-we-did-our-best-to-put-playable-women-in-really-depressing-to-have-failed/

Among a dozen other google results for "Farcry 4 female" which, possibly ironically, is pretty much the same thing that happened in farcry 2.

Deus Ex? Pfft. Invisible War had gender select using a gender neutral name in "Alex," IIRC.

Honestly, Ubisoft hasn't had the greatest track record with playable women, now that I think about it. I was just hoping that with Liberation, and Child of Light, they might've started changing. I gues I was wrong, but it was nice while it lasted, I guess.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

while i agree the excuse might be bullshit

including every race, gender and ice cream flavor in a game just to avoid affending anybody is also bad in my opinion

 

[Sanunes]

These big publishers really need to get the staff they have talking to people media training so they don't make comments like this, for I am really not sure what they intended to say, but the statement seems to be a "remove left foot from mouth and insert right foot" style of comment. What I don't understand about this Ubisoft statement is they have had a female protagonist in AC4 with the Freedom Cry DLC and on the Vita/PC with Assassin's Creed: Liberty, so at some point they felt it was worth the money and worth more money to make more content based on Adewale.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

My God this article is beyond dumb.

1: 'I'm not a game designer, so even though Ubi's excuses reek of bullshit, I can't say with 100% certainly that animating women is too hard. I can say that it's time to get over it and make it work, whatever it takes'

In other words "I know literally nothing about game design or what animating characters actually requires, but I don't care, I'm mad and I'm going to throw a temper tantrum until you do what I want. Oh and I don't care since it's not my money or job on the line".

2: 'So what? That's your problem, publishers; it's time to do your jobs. Include women characters in your budget. Allocate resources to bring these characters to life. Just make it happen.'

Translation: "It's not my money or job on the line, so you better spend additional money, resources, and push back your schedule to accommodate what I want, and I don't care what your so-called "marketing" people have to say about it not being worth the additional time and resources. What do they know? They only do this for a living, I write articles on the internet!"

Here's the end all, be all solution for "lack of __________ characters" in games.
If you like what a game has to offer, buy it.
If you don't like what a game has to offer, don't buy it.

It's not rocket science, if there's a profitable market for a game, companies will find a way to cash in on it.

 

[Zontar]

EDIT: And question. If you dislike her journalism so and you clearly know enough about it to know what's wrong, why don't you start writing your own articles? I'm just using your own logic here.

I know I'm not part of this argument, and that I really don't care enough on the matter at hand to feel I should voice my opinion on it, but this edit you made I take offense to.

Not for your tone with ccdohl, but for calling this journalism.

As a student of journalism, it infuriates me that websites like this and others such as IGN are given the title. I'm not saying this as a means of degrading the work the people who do so are accomplishing, but it isn't journalism, and games journalism does not exist. It's punditry, and though that doesn't degrade the value of the work, it is something that annoys (and, given the right context, can infuriate if the mistake is made after a controversy which journalist never would have gotten into) us, mainly because it does in some ways degrade the value of our own work by having people continually mix up the two very different forms of mass media (though both existing in all the same medium doesn't help, but such is life).

It's a complicated issue, but if I was to edit her article to be one that a journalist (well, one who isn't yellow anyway) would have published, everything would need to be changed, even the title. Ironic as it may sound, it's unacceptable to use "unacceptable" in a title unless it is a quotation.

 

[Erttheking]

snip

Ok...so basically you're taking offense to me describing her with the word "Journalist"? Offense? Well...that's kind of what she is. You can go on until the cows go home about how she isn't a good one, but she's a journalist.

Also, isn't an editorial supposed to be an opinion piece?

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

I really don't get why every single time these arguments crop up, there's a dedicated group of people dedicated to telling the complainer to shut up. Not arguing against them, not disagreeing with them, just telling them to shut up.

1. In the article, the author quotes several game devs calling Ubisoft out on their bullshit. Such as a dev from Naughty Dog, the creators of last of us, who said they could animate a female character in 2 days. That kind of debases your argument

Oh, so are you only allowed to criticize people if you're in the industry you're criticizing? And you can't really say the author is throwing a temper tantrum without analyzing any of her arguments or saying why they didn't work.

2. How is a customer asking for a company to give her what she wants unreasonable? I thought that was their job And I thought it was agreed that marketing departments were run by morons, or have we forgotten the tidal wave of "Appeal to a wider audience" (Translation, appeal to COD fans) games that came out not to long ago, along with the death of horror games. Also, I find it kind of ironic that you're mocking her for not knowing anything, when I hardly suspect that you're in the know of the inner workings of the gaming industry, so how would you know if she's right or wrong?

The gaming world isn't in black and white. A game is not completely good with everything you want or bad with everything you hate. You can buy a game with plenty of things you like in it but one thing that drove you up the wall. Like Metro Last Light. I love that game, I love it to death. It is sadly sexist as all hell though, with the way it treats it's female characters being abysmal in a way I will never stop complaining about, but I still love the game and am considering buying the remastered version when it comes out.

Then why did publishers decide out of nowhere that horror wasn't viable when it was? Let me answer my own question. Because publishers are stupid. It'll be hard for a company to figure out what gamers want if gamers aren't allowed to complain about it.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Bayonetta and Tomb Raider prove it is nearly impossible to make games with women in them.

Was gonna say, might wanna tell Square that. I mean, Terra and Celes from Final Fantasy 6 would almost certainly prove that, too. Same goes for Yuna and crew from FFX-2.

As would Alex Vance.

And Samus Aran.

And Ripley from Aliens.

And don't even get me started on Touhou. If a certain poster was still here, they'd have PLASTERED every single female's name from the Touhou series.

OH, and Popful Mail.

....and I remember Legend of Mana having a few female protagonists, as well.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Sorry about the wait.

There's still the fact that people didn't even know what the game was. I mean, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle got a 7 on Metacritic, just below Remember Me, but I doubt many people bought it because they had no idea what it was or what it was about. Games are coming out a mile a minute nowadays and a developer needs to work to make theirs stand out, or else it's going to get swallowed up. As a matter of fact, I just realized that while I did know remember me was a thing, I didn't even know what kind of game it was until I heard the combat system described in the Zero Punctation on it, so that's a pretty good indicator of how badly it was advertised. Sure it might get good reviews, but in a day in age where EVERYTHING gets good reviews they kinda lose meaning. It doesn't help that while a 7 is supposed to be a good score, the current rating system doesn't treat it as such. (Worst game ever, 6/10) See the whole Kane and Lynch debacle for that.

Because companies can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and I can't afford to spend sixty. Well I can afford to spend sixty. Here's the thing though, I can't afford to spend sixty dollars on every single game that comes out on the thin hope that it is good, because I need to have three thousand dollars in my bank account at the start of every semester and my job doesn't pay that well (And I'm trying to save up for a new computer so I can play PC games besides the ones designed for macs). I can still afford to buy video games, but I have to be picky. And you know why I didn't buy remember me? It looked boring. Extremely, god awful boring. It didn't help that for all the ok scores, just about everyone I heard give their personal opinion on it told me that it was kinda meh and forgettable (How ironic). It's the same reason I haven't picked up any of the Final Fantasy XIII games, because I've heard awful things about them (That and I refuse to play any game where I play dress up with the "strong" female main character in the middle of battle) and they look boring. I'm not going to just throw money at anything with a female lead, because I'd be a hypocrite if I did, I can't criticize companies for saying that heterosexual straight white men sell copies if I go out and buy anything with a female lead. It's like being an anti-conformist, you're still conforming, just to a less mainstream norm. A game needs to stand up on its own and look interesting enough for me to want to play it. Like Long Live the Queen. A game about a princess becoming the Queen of her nation and avoiding assassination, an indie game I just bought on the GOG.com summer sale because it looked interesting. I take leaps of faith every once in awhile. I just don't do it with every last game that I see because I don't have those kinds of funds. Expeditions Conquistadors for example. An under the radar indie game where you control an expedition to the new world, and can even have female soldiers. I rather enjoyed that and I like the game a lot. The survive ten turns missions are fucking impossible though, but that's neither here nor there. I also got Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams, but I'm kind of a dead end there because the mac port is taking absolutely forever. Also Lttle Dew. (Between you and me, my backlog is out of control and I really shouldn't be adding to it.)

Also cause is a strong word. I think I'm allowed to be concerned about problems without them being the center of my life.

I'd like to see that. Until then, that, whining at publishers is all I really got. It's not a completely lost cause. We've gotten Walking Dead, Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite. Leading Ladies that I loved and were well received. Granted a few people criticized them, but the day we get a thing that no one criticizes is the day the human race reaches enlightenment.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Snip

I really don't get why every single time these arguments crop up, there's a dedicated group of people dedicated to telling the complainer to shut up. Not arguing against them, not disagreeing with them, just telling them to shut up.

1. Funny. I could've sworn that in the article themselves, the author quoting several game devs calling Ubisoft out on their bullshit. Such as a dev from Naughty Dog, the creators of last of us, who said they could animate a female character in 2 days. But that would imply that your argument is baseless mockery.

Oh, so are you only allowed to criticize people if you're in the industry you're criticizing? And I do love how to described the author as throwing a temper tantrum without analyzing any of her arguments or saying why they didn't work.

2. Oh no, how DARE a customer expect a company to cater to them. Her, expecting a company to do their job, how unreasonable of her. And I thought it was agreed that marketing departments were run by morons, or have we forgotten the tidal wave of "Appeal to a wider audience" (Translation, appeal to COD fans) games that came out not to long ago, along with the death of horror games. Also, I find it kind of ironic that you're mocking her for not knowing anything, when I hardly suspect that you're in the know of the inner workings of the gaming industry, so how would you know if she's right or wrong?

The gaming world isn't in black and white. A game is not completely good with everything you want or bad with everything you hate. You can buy a game with plenty of things you like in it but one thing that drove you up the wall. Like Metro Last Light. I love that game, I love it to death. It is sadly sexist as all hell though, with the way it treats it's female characters being abysmal in a way I will never stop complaining about, but I still love the game and am considering buying the remastered version when it comes out.

Then why did publishers decide out of nowhere that horror wasn't viable when it was? Let me answer my own question. Because publishers are stupid. It'll be hard for a company to figure out what gamers want if gamers aren't allowed to complain about it.

Ok, some other devs 'called Ubisoft on their BS'. So what? Ubisoft is it's own company and can make whatever decisions it wants, it's up to consumers to reward or punish Ubi based on their decisions by buying or not buying their product. In this case, the editorial writer can show her discontent by not purchasing the game. Of course, if the game sells 15 million copies in the first month, Ubi probably won't give two shits that she didn't like the lack of a female protagonist.

"Oh no, how DARE a customer expect a company to cater to them."
There's a strong difference between "If the company did this, I'd be more likely to buy their product" and "I demand a company do this, despite a complete lack of understanding of how games are developed or how companies are run, because it fulfills some sort of arbitrary social justice quota that I am demanding, even though I'm one person out of hundreds of millions who play video games".

'Also, I find it kind of ironic that you're mocking her for not knowing anything, when I hardly suspect that you're in the know of the inner workings of the gaming industry, so how would you know if she's right or wrong?'
I don't pretend to be in the know about the gaming industry, I simply buy games based upon whether I like them or not. The difference between me and the editorial writer is that I don't write articles telling game developers to (essentially) "reconfigure your budgets to meet what I want" and "just make it happen". The companies create the games, and I decide whether I want to buy them or not. It's really not much more difficult than that.

'...just telling them to shut up.'
I didn't tell her to shut up, I said her arguments were dumb, but she can scream them from any mountaintop she wants to.

"And I thought it was agreed that marketing departments were run by morons, or have we forgotten the tidal wave of "Appeal to a wider audience" (Translation, appeal to COD fans) games that came out not to long ago, along with the death of horror games."
Agreed by whom? You might not like CoD games (I don't either, for that matter) but I can't deny how insanely successful they are. So if we measure a company's success by profit (which is how companies generally are measured) then those "morons" are doing quite well by selling millions upon millions of copies of CoD. And they could really care less about a handful of folks on the internet who think modern military shooters are somehow beneath them, when there are tens of millions who enjoy said shooters.

As for the death of horror games, while I think such a sentiment is premature (Outlast, Alien: Isolation, etc.) I certainly love horror games, but I understand that the industry moves where the money is. I also miss space sim games like Freespace 2, TIE Fighter, etc. but I understand that the industry has moved on. Too bad, so sad, but demanding that companies "just make it happen" and make Freespace 3 doesn't do much good, and displays an incredible ignorance on my part by demanding that companies put their jobs and money on the line to satisfy a tiny minority of people.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

And people can feel free to comment on how stupid they are. As I have said before, games are not black and white. It is possible to really REALLY not like something about a game yet like the rest of the game, like the relationship I have with Metro Last Light. And if you decide to not buy a game, the dev isn't going to know why you didn't do it unless it is made unambiguously clear. That isn't going to happen. Pure and simple.

Please point out the quota, because I've heard people talking about this quota yet I've never seen anyone establish how many female characters need to be in the game to meet the SJW quota. When a game is made with co-op in mind and from a series that had had a lot of female characters in its multiplayer, not having female characters in its co-op feels like a massive step backwards. And I know it's all the same person but it just reeks of laziness nonetheless. Plus I think Ubisoft could've avoided half of this mess if it could've come up with a better reason for not including female characters than "It's really really hard."

So truth be told, you have no idea whether her arguments are completely logical or completely baseless, yet you insulted her for them anyway?

I'm sorry the "Buy games you like and don't buy games you don't like" line you ended your post with made it sound very much like that should be the only thing people should be doing. Combined with the rest of the tone of your post it had a very "Stop whining" presence.

Yes, they're successful. And every last publisher and their dog is trying to imitate them and the creativity in gaming is suffering because of it. No. COD is successful at being COD. Everyone trying to copy them isn't. To quote a professor of mine "You can't become successful by copying someone else's success story because the role for that success story has already been claimed by the person you heard it from" COD is successful. How successful was Dead Space 3? How well received was Syndicate? How many people even remember Medal of Honor Warfighter?

Horror did indeed die, it just so happens to be going through a bit of a rebirth right now. And that's the problem with the industry. Entire genres die because companies are too busy making generic shlock for a mass appeal crowd that won't even like it that much. How many people are buying the new Thief? Not the people who didn't know what it was, because they still don't want it, and not the fans, because they hate it. I'm not going to just shrug my shoulders and say "Well, what are you gonna do"

Cept here's the thing. Ubisoft has already done female characters, both in their multilayer and in a campaign. They have the resources to get it done, a heck of a lot easier than bringing an entire genre back. They have the absolute PERFECT set up to have a female assassin, the most famous assassination of the French Revolution was done by a woman. But they're not doing it. Because it's too much work.

Fucking...lazy. Assassin's Creed was already starting to bore me with the snore fest that was 3, but this can't be bothered attitude threw out any interest I had with the Ass creed series. Maybe I'll pick up black flag for the sailing, but since there seems to be a lack of ships in Unity, the one interesting thing they had is gone.

 

[wulf3n]

To quote a professor of mine "You can't become successful by copying someone else's success story because the role for that success story has already been claimed by the person you heard it from"

Actually you can. Take a look at Mass Effect. The first was a unique Sci-Fi RPG with shooter elements and it did ok, critically and financially, the second was a gears of war knock off and it was received better in every way.

Copying the popular kid seems to work.

edit: Saint's Row did fine as a GTA clone. Hell CoD itself was little more than a battlefield clone, yet now it's the baseline.

How successful was Dead Space 3

Successful enough to be the top selling game in both the US and UK. at the time of its release.

How many people are buying the new Thief? Not the people who didn't know what it was, because they still don't want it, and not the fans, because they hate it.

Quite a lot actually it's a chart topper [source [http://www.pcgamesn.com/thief/thief-scales-uk-charts-smashes-first-week-sales-deadly-shadows]][another source [http://www.digitalspy.com.au/gaming/news/a554973/thief-tops-chart-with-75-percent-sales-on-xbox-one-ps4.html#~oHffXAelUY5p6p]]

 

[HannesPascal]

But even if Unity would have just one female protagonist, and all the co-op characters would be differently colored copies of HER, that still wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole franchise. Even if the whole Assassin's Creed franchise would be specifically about female assassins, that wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole gaming industry.

Actually the probability of the protagonist being female in the Assassin's Creed franchise is not statistically different from 50%.
Proof:
Assume that the number of female protagonists are binomial distributed (either female or male) with a 50% probability. In total there has been 7 protagonist (including the French guy).
What is the probability that one or less of the protagonists are women:
P=(7 over 0)*0.5^0*(1-0.5)^7+(7 over 1)*0.5^1*(1-0.5)^6=0.0625
Normal practice in science is to reject the hypothesis (that 50% of the protagonists are women) if P<0.05. Since P>0.05 it is said the probability of the protagonist being female in the Assassin's Creed franchise is not statistically different from 50%.

More about binomial distributions [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution]
Without calculation I can say that it's likely you're right about the whole gaming industry though.

 

[Floppertje]

But even if Unity would have just one female protagonist, and all the co-op characters would be differently colored copies of HER, that still wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole franchise. Even if the whole Assassin's Creed franchise would be specifically about female assassins, that wouldn't come close to equal representation when looking at the whole gaming industry.

Actually the probability of the protagonist being female in the Assassin's Creed franchise is not statistically different from 50%.
Proof:
Assume that the number of female protagonists are binomial distributed (either female or male) with a 50% probability. In total there has been 7 protagonist (including the French guy).
What is the probability that one or less of the protagonists are women:
P=(7 over 0)*0.5^0*(1-0.5)^7+(7 over 1)*0.5^1*(1-0.5)^6=0.0625
Normal practice in science is to reject the hypothesis (that 50% of the protagonists are women) if P<0.05. Since P>0.05 it is said the probability of the protagonist being female in the Assassin's Creed franchise is not statistically different from 50%.

More about binomial distributions [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution]
Without calculation I can say that it's likely you're right about the whole gaming industry though.

Yeah, nice try. What that says is that IF the genders are equally distributed, this outcome would happen in six percent of all cases, and you say that that percentage is not low enough to reject the hypotheses that genders are equally distributed. Which is like flipping a coin 7 times, getting six heads and one tails and saying 'well, I don't think that's weird enough to assume the coin is unbalanced.'
But, first, this isn't blind chance, there are many factors contributing to the decision of the gender of the protagonist. Second, you take only the AC games as data. If you take all games, all games this year or even all games presented at E3, there would definitely be statistical evidence that there are way less female protagonists than male, and there is no reason at all to pick assassin's creed exclusively. very few games have so many entries that you would be able to get any hard statistical evidence(n should be 30). So your proof is bogus.

 

[HannesPascal]

Yeah, nice try. What that says is that IF the genders are equally distributed, this outcome would happen in six percent of all cases, and you say that that percentage is not low enough to reject the hypotheses that genders are equally distributed. Which is like flipping a coin 7 times, getting six heads and one tails and saying 'well, I don't think that's weird enough to assume the coin is unbalanced.'
But, first, this isn't blind chance, there are many factors contributing to the decision of the gender of the protagonist. Second, you take only the AC games as data. If you take all games, all games this year or even all games presented at E3, there would definitely be statistical evidence that there are way less female protagonists than male, and there is no reason at all to pick assassin's creed exclusively. very few games have so many entries that you would be able to get any hard statistical evidence(n should be 30). So your proof is bogus.

It is normal practice to not reject a hypothesis if the probability of random chance is higher than 5%. And yes that includes coin flipping, this is the entire point why you:
A) Do many repetitions of the same trial.
B) Do a statistic test like I did.
So if I would flip a coin seven times like you suggested I would not reject the hypothesis and instead preform more trials and redo the calculation.
In some cases like drug trials you don't reject the hypothesis that the drug is dangerous if the probability is 1%.

I seriously don't see the problem with only picking the Assassin's Creed games as data when discussing the Assassin's Creed franchise. It doesn't make sense to include Call of Duty in a discussion about the Assassin's Creed franchise.

When it is gaming as a whole:

Without calculation I can say that it's likely you're right about the whole gaming industry though.

It's like you didn't read my post.

Capchta: too bad

 

[Karadalis]

First off... that excuse has nothing to do with reality... we know it... the devs know it... the publishers know it.. just the stupid idiot who made that statement cause he needed a fast excuse believed it was a good thing to say at that moment.

Second:

Please stop throwing around this nonsensic "50% of gamers are female" number around as if it has any relation to tripple A gaming. Most of these female gamers are on the casual,tablet,iphone market and couldnt care less for titles like assasins creed or GTA since they would never play them anyways.

Aslong as no one actually takes the time and disects this 50% number its completly useless and everyone who uses it to make a point has no idea what they are talking about.

Now dont get me wrong... female gamers are still a multi million dollar market.. thats allready being catered to... however it simply is not the big AAA one and thus the suits think that catering to a non existing audience is wasted time and money and i do sorta have to agree with them. How many of the millions of call of duty copies or GTA copies that where sold where actually bought by female gamers that enjoy these kinds of games? It would be like farmville now introducing shooter elements to cater to the male audience or those search picture games introducing overly musclebound heros that rip apart minotaurs while also solving picture puzzles because you know.. we need to market it more towards males... wich really arent the audience for these titles and it would be wasted dev time and wasted money to cater to.

 

[Floppertje]

Yeah, nice try. What that says is that IF the genders are equally distributed, this outcome would happen in six percent of all cases, and you say that that percentage is not low enough to reject the hypotheses that genders are equally distributed. Which is like flipping a coin 7 times, getting six heads and one tails and saying 'well, I don't think that's weird enough to assume the coin is unbalanced.'
But, first, this isn't blind chance, there are many factors contributing to the decision of the gender of the protagonist. Second, you take only the AC games as data. If you take all games, all games this year or even all games presented at E3, there would definitely be statistical evidence that there are way less female protagonists than male, and there is no reason at all to pick assassin's creed exclusively. very few games have so many entries that you would be able to get any hard statistical evidence(n should be 30). So your proof is bogus.

It is normal practice to not reject a hypothesis if the probability of random chance is higher than 5%. And yes that includes coin flipping, this is the entire point why you:
A) Do many repetitions of the same trial.
B) Do a statistic test like I did.
So if I would flip a coin seven times like you suggested I would not reject the hypothesis and instead preform more trials and redo the calculation.
In some cases like drug trials you don't reject the hypothesis that the drug is dangerous if the probability is 1%.

I seriously don't see the problem with only picking the Assassin's Creed games as data when discussing the Assassin's Creed franchise. It doesn't make sense to include Call of Duty in a discussion about the Assassin's Creed franchise.

When it is gaming as a whole:

Without calculation I can say that it's likely you're right about the whole gaming industry though.

It's like you didn't read my post.

Capchta: too bad

This is a problem with the whole gaming industry, so why should you only use assassin's creed for statistics, especially when you know that you can never do enough repetitions because you just don't have enough cases. The discussion is about AC because it was an AC dev who said animating women is too much trouble. The problem of gender balance in games is an industry-wide one, so picking one franchise to do statistics on doesn't make sense and the test you're doing doesn't mean anything.
Also, I think you're being a bit too by-the-book with the probability. yes, you're right, 5% is the standard and 1% in cases where you want to be very certain, but in essence these are still arbitrary lines, the 5% is just the limit of what is generally acceptable, but you could just as easily say 'I reject the hypothesis that it's balanced if the chance that I'm wrong is 10%'.

But this is all a moot point because you don't use enough cases so you shouldn't be doing the test in the first place.

And yes, I DID read your post, but if you're going to do a test with too little data, I can point that out.