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

[Erttheking]

Ah yeah, the usual entitlement rant. I just have seen too many of those already.

I admit that Ubisoft's defense is plain stupid, but in the end it's their decision if they include more female protagonists.

And let's be honest, SJW's are never happy.

When they start including more female protagonists, you can count the hours till someone complains about them being too sexy and objectified. Others will whine that they're all white and heterosexual, and that they feel discriminated. When they start replacing well written characters with generic TES style modular-silent-protagonists, people will complain about the lack of atmosphere and so on.

When it really bothers people THAT much, simply don't buy it. If enough people give a shit to not buy it, Ubisoft and others will reconsider their stand. But when it's just hot air like the infamous "Boycott COD till we get our dedicated servers back" group, their desinterest in the matter is more than justified.

Spoiler

Changing something demands sacrifices. So you can either do your part and skip games from companies whose policies you find inexcusable or stop whining about it.

Yes, people are entitled to good games. This is what we expect from companies. I feel like you're misusing the word here.

First of all, don't use insulting short term to describe people you disagree with. Second of all there needs to be actual progress in the depiction of games for people who care about it to actually be happy, and apart from a good (Rather good) games, we're still coming up short.

Yes there will always be people who complain about the depiction of women in video games. But answer me this. Name one aspect of video games that isn't criticized by anyone. People are always going to complain about everything. Are you saying people shouldn't try because of that? I know we all like to remember how the Last of Us was criticized for being sexist, but it was by one or two people and all of the people on the Escapist who normally complained about sexism immediately jumped on it and said it was a load of hogwash. Yes people are always going to complain, but you're acting like the complaints are going to be the majority, and that's simply not true.

I really don't like the whole "Just don't buy it" argument, because it comes with a second unspoken claim of "Stop complaining" And here's the thing. Let's say the Assassin's Creed Unity sales were half of what Ubisoft was expecting. If people didn't complain about the decisions made, the devs would have no idea what causes the sales to drop, therefore we could not achieve the changes we want.

As I've said before. It's not black and white. You can dislike one aspect of a game and like the others. Not to mention, boycotts have a history of not being rather effective. "Whining" on the other hand, has a history of working quite well.


Speaking of which, why is it whenever someone has a legitimate complaint about sexism in the industry it's "Whining" When people counter the sexism complaints, why is that never "whining" Why is what the author doing whining but what you're doing not?

 

[KDR_11k]

Why do people keep using Charlotte Corday as justification for a female assassin? She stabbed a cripple in the bath, whihc in the context of AC doesn't make you an assassin, particularly because she got caught.

The historical assassin order did not flee after an assassination, the assassin would just stand there and be killed by the target's guardians to show that they have no fear (and presumably get their 72 virgins). So complaining about history with Assassin's Creed doesn't help anyone.

 

[NortherWolf]

Rampant sexism and misogyny in a Escapist thread about women and gaming? I...I am appalled. Shocked to my core, yes, my loss of faith in humanity is devastating!
Oh, wait...Business as usual. Nothing on this site surprises me anymore :/

 

[Something Amyss]

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!"

I'd also add that the people who are against this sort of thing are part of the problem. They lobbed a preemptive strike before there was even an issue with complaints about how they're sick of racism and sexism before anyone had ever mentioned it. It seems like a variation of "suspiciously specific denial [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpecificDenial]."

Intentional or not, the people who are "sick of" these controversies largely astroturfed one.

Why do people keep using Charlotte Corday as justification for a female assassin? She stabbed a cripple in the bath, whihc in the context of AC doesn't make you an assassin, particularly because she got caught.

The historical assassin order did not flee after an assassination, the assassin would just stand there and be killed by the target's guardians to show that they have no fear (and presumably get their 72 virgins). So complaining about history with Assassin's Creed doesn't help anyone.

Also, to scare the Bajeezus out of their enemies.

Of course, history and AC are only casual acquaintances. Bringing up the historicity of Assassin's Creed is kind of like calling Star Wars hard sci-fi. The whole Corday thing might not have been a big deal were it not for the detractors. People tried to come up with excuses as to why there shouldn't be a female PC in ACU, and they came up with historicity. Naturally, anyone who knew more about the French Revolution than "it was in France" (or had access to Google) brought her up. Bringing her up in this article also makes sense, since it's addressing a similar topic as to whether or not female assassins make sense for the period. But now I'm rambling.

I just find it weird that a game series where da Vinci successfully discovered human flight leads to concerned with how the Marat assassination ended. They've thrown in ancient aliens and space magic artifacts and played fast and loose with the rest of history.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

If these guys had just kept their mouths shut, perhaps saying "We'll be looking into doing so for future titles" then maybe the backlash wouldn't have been so bad. But nope, they had go and say something stupid due to clearly lacking awareness.

The funny thing is they go on about it "being too hard" but then on the showfloor you have Nintendo showing off half a dozen games with female characters available or even as the face of the game. Bayonetta 2 (main character is a woman), Hyrule Warriors (in which Link is outnumbered 3 to 1 currently and No Right Answer's Chris Pranger stating that around half the playable character are women), Xenoblade Chronicles X (with being able to customize your character and the first named character is a girl named Elma), Super Smash Bros. (with the Wii Fit Trainer and Animal Crossing Villager having alternate gender costumes and a huge number of female characters), Splatoon (the E3 site having the female Inkling on the front page), and even the incredibly macho Devil's Third allowing female characters in multiplayer. This really shouldn't be that difficult now and considering how games are so damned skewed towards men despite almost have of gamers being female isn't a good business strategy in the long term. The more demographics you're able to get as a business, the more stable you'll be in the long run.

 

[Zontar]

well, one who isn't yellow anyway

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

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

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

 

[Redd the Sock]

snip

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

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

 

[Loonyyy]

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.

It's worse than that, it's like flipping a coin six times, getting six heads and one tails, and then saying you got 4 heads and 3 tails.

Yes, this outcome is possible in a random distribution. But "Science" doesn't say P>0.05, depending on the situation, there's different P's your going to use. Particularly when there are multiple hypothesis we could test. If we test P(M)=.85, I guarantee we'll get a much higher value than .0625. P>0.05 happens to be common to a lot of statistical analysis, but P>0.05 doesn't mean "SCIENCE". Particularly when the P>0.05 figure is not used to say that something is science, or that it's true, it's saying we can reject the Null Hypothesis, not accept the Hypothesis. It's about measuring something above what can be reasonably assured to be nothing. Additionally, Rejecting the Null Hypothesis is provisional acceptance of the Hypothesis at best, not confirmation.

Plus, it doesn't change the distribution. If they have less female protagonists than male, they have less female protagonists than male. So, we've still got more male protagonists than female, which is what people are taking issue with, not that it's possible for this to occur more than 5% of the time. So this is a simple red herring (Apart from the absolute failure of statistics and probability, which I intend to bust up completely). Which really shouldn't be tolerated in any applications of formal logic (Which the following is).

And it's retroactively assuming that the distribution overall is 50%, which anyone who's looked at games should know isn't true for gaming overall, and there's no reason to assume it for Assassin's Creed. If we take a P(M)>0.5, P(ACD) increases, P(ACD) is actually more likely if the P(M) is more than P(F). P(ACD) jumps to 15.9% for P(M)=.6, P(ACD) jumps to 32.9% for P(M)=.7, 57.7% for P(M)=.8, and 85 for P(M)=.9. To anyone doing any actual science: That indicates that the probability of the pool being biased towards male protagonists is higher than the pool being equally distributed or towards female protagonists. P>>>0.05. Which again, just says that it's probably not nothing. Not that it's science. We'd be more justified to suppose that the sample is biased towards male protagonists. By a lot. A conclusion Hannes has themself rejected, without validity of their rejection. The hypothesis that male protagonists are more likely is as much as or more suppoted than the hypothesis that they're equivalent. Additionally, I'm not going to ignore the fact that when social pressure does change perception, Ubi will change their act. You can't just say that the distribution was binomial when they finally cut their shit and it approaches something balanced.

Where P(M) is Probability of a Male protagonist overall, P(F) is likewise for female, and P(ACD) is the probability of the Assassin's Creed Distribution (Or a 100% distribution, as Hannes included, which actually makes his figures worse, but credit for the honesty) occurring in a Binomial model.

Which would mean that the hypothesis that the distribution of assassin's creed protagonists is biased towards men is greater (A conclusion that anyone could come to without math) probability, and more likely than that the distribution favours men and women equally. Because some people are too lazy to do all the maths beyond what they mistakenly think confirms their worldview and justifies obvious discrimination (A position which is profoundly unscientific). I suppose we're going to move on to practicing Homeopathy or skull measurements for intelligence to justify racial bias next (And oddly enough, in something like 70% of random data sets (IIRC), Researcher DOF can create a positive correlation out of white noise (Of course, this doesn't apply here, but it's a poignant critique of the P>0.05 nonsense).

Additionally, I'm not even sure I'd label the distribution binomial, since I really don't think that game developers are thinking that way. It's still the best model to my mind, but I'd hazard more than a guess that having a female or any other "Minority" protagonist decreases the odds of another for a few trials. Eventually, I'm sure they'll change their tune as well, which further weakens the binomial model. Applying it at that point would be completely dishonest.

That post really needs to go back to the 101 section of probability and statistics, they're really not ready for the binomial distribution yet. Also, protip: That's not a proof. That's not what we mean by a proof in maths, that's not proof of the principal you want to prove anyway (Since a proof does not show a possibility. Otherwise I could dismiss all manner of math based on the fact that simpler techniques or numerical techniques of varying complexity often provide the answer. Screw Cubic Splines, a Newton Polynomial will work if the function I'm modelling is a polynomial QED lololol).

 

[josemlopes]

Wow Tim Schafer is being a right prick there, like I agree with his message I suppose, but his little gif really makes him come off as a douche.

Why? All he's doing is showing the difference between men and women can be as simple as a re-skin.

If I do a ball with eyes, animate it jumping up and down and then change the eyes to girly eyes does it really mean that animating females is simply a re-skin? Hell, they dont even have to change the model, just the texture.

That character is simple as fuck, games that try to have realistic proportions and animations can't just simply re-use all the animations like that (you sure know that everyone would complain that they just made a male character with tits).

The excuse of taking too much work still doesnt hold up but that Tim Schafer example was a really bad one to prove that point.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wow Tim Schafer is being a right prick there, like I agree with his message I suppose, but his little gif really makes him come off as a douche.

Why? All he's doing is showing the difference between men and women can be as simple as a re-skin.

If I do a ball with eyes, animate it jumping up and down and then change the eyes to girly eyes does it really mean that animating females is simply a re-skin? Hell, they dont even have to change the model, just the texture.

That character is simple as fuck, games that try to have realistic proportions and animations can't just simply re-use all the animations like that (you sure know that everyone would complain that they just made a male character with tits).

The excuse of taking too much work still doesnt hold up but that Tim Schafer example was a really bad one to prove that point.

But isn't that exactly what they did with male/female Shepard?

 

[Erttheking]

snip

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

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

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

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

 

[SecondPrize]

Whatever stupid shit publishers and devs say when their asked why they don't have more female characters, the reason they don't is because they believe that games with male leads will sell better. They think that the young male audience will buy less copies if their game has a female lead and they think female gamers won't buy enough to make up for it.
You literally have to put your money where your mouth is on this, and not by refusing to buy asscreed (though you can) but by going back in time and buying Remember Me on launch, and buying Mirror's Edge 2 on launch day, and demanding another Beyond Good and Evil and buying the shit out of that.
You want publishers to publish games with stronger female characters? You've got to prove there's a market for them. Until then, you're just gonna get retarded statements like Ubi's.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

No offense, but if you want to convince me that I'm wrong then you're going to need a more convincing argument than "You're wrong"

 

[Signa]

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

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

 

[IndieForever]

But isn't that exactly what they did with male/female Shepard?

No. I've just had a quick look in the assets for ME1 and it clearly shows two sets of skeletal animation files, one for female, one for male: BIOG_HMF_* (femshep) and BIOG_HMM_* (male shep). If they did it back then, I make the reasonable assumption they did it for 2 & 3.

I've referenced this in an earlier post but, to summarise, you can't put a male mesh over a female animation (and vice versa) and expect it to look 'right'. It doesn't. Males and females walk, run and move differently and the subtleties of that make for another descent into Uncanny Valley if you're aiming at current/next-gen hardware, rather than a cartoony kind of game.

We've had an actor and an actress separately in the mo-cap studio for our current project, the output being used to animate one selectable protaganist. It's not inherently more difficult to do one sex or the other, but doing both consumes the time of expensive animators and artists. Not really sure how many different ways I can put this forward as being, honestly, true!

 

[josemlopes]

Wow Tim Schafer is being a right prick there, like I agree with his message I suppose, but his little gif really makes him come off as a douche.

Why? All he's doing is showing the difference between men and women can be as simple as a re-skin.

If I do a ball with eyes, animate it jumping up and down and then change the eyes to girly eyes does it really mean that animating females is simply a re-skin? Hell, they dont even have to change the model, just the texture.

That character is simple as fuck, games that try to have realistic proportions and animations can't just simply re-use all the animations like that (you sure know that everyone would complain that they just made a male character with tits).

The excuse of taking too much work still doesnt hold up but that Tim Schafer example was a really bad one to prove that point.

But isn't that exactly what they did with male/female Shepard?

Actually no, they have different animations, either way everyone knows that the animations in Bioware games are terrible so they barely move like real people at all.

Also, just because a game did it doesnt justify the practice of re-using the same animations, Deus Ex HR doesnt have reflective mirrors and its still shit that only a handfull of games go the extra mile to have them for the sake of autenticity. Since we should always try to move forward having especific animations for each gender/body-type (ex: skinny or fat) is something that shouldnt be avoided. We cant all be stuck in 2001 where animations were very lackluster and you could much easily see where an animation ended and another one started. We need to keep making them feel dynamic and natural where everyone doesnt move the exact same way and animations look fluid.

Assassins Creed Unity certainly has the budget for the female character though.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wow Tim Schafer is being a right prick there, like I agree with his message I suppose, but his little gif really makes him come off as a douche.

Why? All he's doing is showing the difference between men and women can be as simple as a re-skin.

If I do a ball with eyes, animate it jumping up and down and then change the eyes to girly eyes does it really mean that animating females is simply a re-skin? Hell, they dont even have to change the model, just the texture.

That character is simple as fuck, games that try to have realistic proportions and animations can't just simply re-use all the animations like that (you sure know that everyone would complain that they just made a male character with tits).

The excuse of taking too much work still doesnt hold up but that Tim Schafer example was a really bad one to prove that point.

But isn't that exactly what they did with male/female Shepard?

Actually no, they have different animations, either way everyone knows that the animations in Bioware games are terrible so they barely move like real people at all.

Also, just because a game did it doesnt justify the practice of re-using the same animations, Deus Ex HR doesnt have reflective mirrors and its still shit that only a handfull of games go the extra mile to have them for the sake of autenticity. Since we should always try to move forward having especific animations for each gender/body-type (ex: skinny or fat) is something that shouldnt be avoided. We cant all be stuck in 2001 where animations were very lackluster and you could much easily see where an animation ended and another one started. We need to keep making them feel dynamic and natural where everyone doesnt move the exact same way and animations look fluid.

Assassins Creed Unity certainly has the budget for the female character though.

And they have, you play as a woman in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation or however it was called.

 

[Vareoth]

Representation argument aside, the only thing that really bugged me was the cheap argument made by Ubisoft (as if they don't have the budget). They could have said they just didn't want to do it and I would have been "okay" with that (still a bit disappointed though). If you really disagree with a developer then I would advice you to not buy their final product. Money speaks infinitely louder than words.

Nevertheless, what people do need to understand is that some things which seem insignificant to them might be very important to someone else. And to demote their general importance based on ones own priorities is a very unthinking and lazy way of forming an opinion (see the "Why does group X need thing Y if I don't find it important?" cheap bullshit fallacy).