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

[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.

 

[Nion]

Today I've learned that the internet isn't going to let something as unimportant as facts get in the way of a good outrage. Amazing how things have shifted from "We went with a customizable main character instead of selectable characters for co-op" to "There are 4 main characters, they are all white males" to "There aren't even female NPCs". What's next, Ubisoft have barred women from playing the game?

 

[Floppertje]

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.

Did you ever consider that maybe AAA titles aren't bought by as many women as men exactly because they're designed for men? games are designed for men, women don't buy them because they don't feel welcome and then men go: see, we don't need to design games for women, they don't buy them anyway. That's circular logic at its finest.
But apparently women DO buy these kinds of games, or at least want to, because if they truly didn't care there wouldn't be such a fuss about it every time.

 

[bdcjacko]

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.

Thanks for taking a simple quip and turning into a I know a lot of character names ramble.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm surprised that they're still happening after the Xbone implosion last year.

You notice how politicians still say stupid things on camera after all these years?

I honestly suspect it's the same phenomena. I think they're as out of touch as the old white dudes who think of the internet as a series of tubes.

As a student of journalism, it infuriates me that websites like this and others such as IGN are given the title.

As a student of journalism, you will almost certainly work at worse places in your life. Unless you change your field. And there's a lot of stuff likely to offend you that falls under the banner of journalism.

well, one who isn't yellow anyway

I thought you weren't out to degrade her, yet you're using a derogatory word.

Additionally, Ert correctly identified this as op-ed. It's labeled as such, so it wasn't hard to identify. Opinion and Editorial have their place in journalism. Even with words like "unacceptable" in their titles/headlines. There is even use for punditry in journalism.

 

[Sarah LeBoeuf]

But? you DONT get to pick your character in assassins creed. your just arno thats it? the other guys there arno too. No one would get to play as this female character anyway?

Why is everyone willingly ignoring this fact?

Two reasons. First, if Ubisoft had just stuck to that simple point instead of making excuses about how difficult it would be to add women into the game (which I agree it would be AT THIS POINT), the internet wouldn't have responded with a collective "NOPE!"

Second, this isn't about Ubisoft specifically. Like I said, I love their games--especially AC--but Ubisoft is the latest in a long line of publishers to make this lame excuse and I'm tired of it.

 

[Erttheking]

Three Ad Hominems? Please point them out for me. If you do I will apologize for them. Just for the record this is what I consider an Ad Hominem to be. Person A makes claim X. Person B makes an attack on person A. Therefore A's claim is false. They need to meet these conditions for me to consider them Ad Hominems.

You're right. That might be the case, at least in part. I wouldn't put it past publishers to create their own problems by misjudging their audience.

Ad Hominems apply to author circumstance as well as his or her character or morality. When you say that I made an argument just to shut people up, it's an ad hominem.

My claim was hardly baseless, and ad hominem's are based on irrelevant facts, while everything I brought up was very relevant to your flawed arguments.

 

[Erttheking]

Today I've learned that the internet isn't going to let something as unimportant as facts get in the way of a good outrage. Amazing how things have shifted from "We went with a customizable main character instead of selectable characters for co-op" to "There are 4 main characters, they are all white males" to "There aren't even female NPCs". What's next, Ubisoft have barred women from playing the game?

Please point out where anyone made that last claim, because I'm pretty sure you're making things up now.