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

[Grimrider6]

It just baffles me when people get upset and tell others to shut up. This kind of reaction itself IS the feedback mechanism between audience/consumer and content creator. The fact that there is some kind of backlash at all indicates that there's a market for more female models/characters. Maybe not a big one, but when doing planning for the game, it's not too far out there to just include one. Plan ahead, put it in there. The majority of the models will be dudebros so the manly men can avoid feeling too threatened, and there can be something for the rest of us too.

Consumer demand can dictate trends, yeah, but mindlessly following trends, and focus testing, and playing to the market isn't the only way to make a game. If games are art, and I like to think they can be, then sometimes they can challenge the consumer, do something new, and maybe create a trend instead of following one.

 

[Me55enger]

Somewhat undermines your, your article's and The Escapist's position on the matter when, in the opening paragraph, you explain how hard it was to give AC:Unity - the posterboy on this whole sexism debacle - an award considering it's laconic and inexcusable stance and yet gave them an award anyway.

You giveth with one hand and taketh form the other, and I find it hard to take form one hand when I can look over and see their trophy. Because showing how wrong they are on women needs to be done one award at a time, apparently.

 

[Alterego-X]

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.

Or we could just complain about it online.

And if you don't like that, you could set up your own forum or not come here if it bothers you so much. /s

See?

It's not wrong or sexist, it's just business.

Why not all of the above? Excluding half of the world's population from being represented in the wide majority of popular culture, *is* wrong.

It's just happens to be one of those wrongs that can also be justified by business.

Most of them can. Especially the ones done by corporations. By your own logic, the only wrong thing those could do would be to earn less money, everything else is justified by being "just business".

 

[blalien]

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?

 

[Dominic Crossman]

Okay, say females r 2 hard to animate, what about anyone who isn't white? Hell just change the colour of a white characters face, they're covered up everywhere else anyway. The 3 non-main characters r unimportant, so do they all have to be white, 30, with dark hair. Hell give one of them blonde facial hair, please.
More ot, don't they already have assests for female assassins from liberation and mp modes. Wouldn't the work already be half-started?

Edited for typos and elaboration.

 

[Rozalia1]

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.

Anyway everyone here is missing the real problem. Why is there no hermaphrodite characters in the game, and also not in large amounts of other games...in fact they are in so few that its like they are saying that they don't exist...like how the gays didn't exist until they did...where are my women with bulge physics? Does no one want women stacked everywhere?

 

[Vrach]

To be fair, AC Unity is not a design-your-character RPG but a single narrative, and it's co-op is just the one protagonist reskinned.

This is what I was thinking the whole time I was reading the article. I could've missed out on the major plots of this shitstorm though. Am I right in thinking that the complaining part is about the main character not being a female? It's not a "there's multiplayer and it's all male characters", is it (seeing as they had female characters in MP before as far as I know)?

Tbh, Battlefield and similar games are a far bigger offender on this in my opinion. You have generic character models that don't mean squat or have any story (ie. all you need is an animated female, and as mentioned in the article, that's not THAT much work) and you can't be arsed making a female counterpart. That's a problem. A team usually choosing a male protagonist... you might not like it, but that's not much of a problem, it's just the story they've written. I wouldn't mind seeing a female protagonist in an AC game at all, but I also wouldn't try to cram the idea down an entire team's throat and call them sexist for not liking it.

 

[JET1971]

And all those games have female NPC's in the game world and that right there proves the excuse of "too hard to animate" to be bullshit. Then there is the myth that male players do not want to play female characters. Ever play an MMO? Seriously any MMO proves that males have no issues with playing a female character.

 

[blalien]

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?

Well, to be honest, I don't complain about video games very often. I either enjoy the art, or I don't, and I don't buy what I don't enjoy, or what I think that I will not enjoy.

Further, I am unencumbered by a need to have main characters in games look like me, so that really broadens the games that I can enjoy.

Finally, I'm not bothered. I'm just responding.

Why does my discussion bother you so much? It doesn't? It's just part of the discussion? You don't say!

I never said your discussion bothered me, I just asked a question. I'm going to assume you're a dude from your profile photo, so I'm sorry if I'm wrong. Have you considered that you don't have a need to have main characters that look like you because you already have so many that look like you? It's like walking up to a starving child and saying, "Well I'm not encumbered by a need for food, I don't know what your problem is."

I mean yeah, E3 had some female protagonists, but they were in the vast minority and most of them were from Nintendo. Do you not see why some women would consider it a kick in a teeth when a high profile developer tells them, "We were gonna have female PCs in our game, but we had to cut something. What were we gonna do, delay the game a week? Naaaah."

 

[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.

OP: Didn't Ubisoft already have a female protagonist in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation?

 

[Floppertje]

I find it ironic that this is the same team that always includes a preface to their game saying it was developed by a diverse team of various etnicities and religious faiths and beliefs. we're totally cool with everyone. except girls, girls are yucky.

 

[Max_imus]

Man, Ubisoft's PR guys need to do a better job briefing their spokespersons. Seriously, had he said anything other than what he did, and there would have been no argument. Or it at least wouldn't have blown up in their faces like this, though a discussion about why it's still the norm to have male leads as the standard would be worth having.

It also shows a disturbing degree of ignorance on the side of AC:U's publishers concerning the issue of gender diversity in gaming. Someone needs to sit these guys down at a table and calmly explain to them why saying things like this isn't gonna help them get their sales numbers up.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So where are those $250 million budgets going, anyway? Oh, right, advertising.

The thing here is that they're trying to give the illusion of "oh, we'd have loved to, but it just couldn't be done because of reasons", but the reality is "we just didn't care until we got called out for it and now it's too late, so here's some bullshit excuses we hope you'll buy, along with our game". What I really don't get, though, are the people who are saying "Well, it doesn't bother ME, so why are YOU complaining?". I can't tell if they're trying to defend their favorite franchises from criticism, or really just don't care about anyone's concerns but their own.

 

[Erttheking]

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 hate this argument. It never fails to infuriate me. If you ever criticize any aspect of anything ever, you would be pissed if someone jumped out and shouted at you "If you don't like it, why don't you make your own?" Because it's not really an argument, it's something that sounds good and is designed purely to shut other people up while completely ignoring all the arguments that they made. I'll call out Ubisoft for whatever the Hell I like because they're putting out a product that they want me to buy and I'm under no obligation to keep my mouth shut. I'll call them lazy all I want because I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary in this entire mess. And if I don't buy it, pray tell, exactly how are they supposed to know WHY I didn't buy it if I'm not allowed to complain about it?

Please stop trying to shut people up just because you don't like what they're saying.

 

[Alterego-X]

Well, actually, right and wrong don't really apply to the content of media, in my opinion. Sure, they can portray things that, in the real world, would be wrong, but the media itself isn't wrong, barring abuses in the creation of it of course.

Then why do you tkeep replying to my posts? After all, they are also just cotent in media, and therefore they can be neither right or wrong, and neither can yours be.

Maybe because media is speech, and speech is one of the primary things that can be moral or immoral, based on what influences and what states of mind it reflects on.

Entertainment media is public speech, both holding a mirror to the assumptions of our society at large, and influencing the behaviors of the future for many.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

They design a game without trying to appeal to women in anyway and the sales for women aren't as great as they are for men so they don't try to appeal to the female audience? This is called a self fulfilling prophecy. Also, while not as many female gamers buy Assassin's creed, I saw a chart that pins the number of women who play mainstream games like Halo and Assassin's Creed etc at around 20%. And that's not the majority, but it's still a damn big chunk. And I just have to say, if you can't take into consideration the demographic that makes up a significant portion of your consumer base than you just suck at your job.

 

[Kilo24]

It would be very good to have women as playable characters, to treat them as equal to men, and to bring them into the main line of a popular AAA game series. I agree quite strongly with that notion and hope that we will see it in the future.

What I'm pissed off about is the assumption that the reason that they didn't include the female characters is "bullshit". Unless you want your female character hovering a foot off the ground with her breasts rammed through the victim when assassinating someone (all the while making masculine grunts) it *will* be a lot of work. You need new models, new textures, new voice acting, and trivializing that extra work needed by reducing it to "It's too hard!" is insulting -especially since Assassin's Creed is a franchise that has always had a large amount of high quality animation (unlike the editorial's example of KOTOR).

I didn't read a single counterargument against that claim in this editorial - nothing like "It becomes much easier with proper asset management" or "You don't need to make the animations as detailed since the player's model that they themselves control will never actually be female". There's only this: "But let's pretend for a second that the "it's too hard" excuse wasn't total bullshit. So what? That's your problem, publishers; it's time to do your jobs." In other words, "I've decided that you should double your 3D artists' and voice actors' workload because I want other players to have a random chance of seeing me as a female character when I want to play multiplayer."

My issue with this controversy (which this editorial exemplifies) is that it doesn't even attempt to address the reasoning for the design decision, and instead just handwaves it away. Promoting women in games is a very important matter, and this absolutist demagoguery portrays the whole issue as being the invention of people who have no idea of the costs of actually making a game. The author may even be on the right side (and I personally think that she is), but the editorial does more harm than good to its own argument.

The result of this controversy is not going to be that the costs of implementing women in games properly are going to evaporate. It may, but is unlikely to, persuade more developers and publishers to support women in games. What it will do (and has already done) is to discourage developers from talking about why they made development decisions for fear of PR reprisal, and it will also mean that developers shouldn't even consider putting women in games if they're not certain that they can keep them. And you know what? With the inadvertent PR firecracker the stray developer comment lit, they're entirely justified to do so.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Well said. Ubisoft did come away with some absolute nonsense this past week.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

No, it is not a valid point, I might even go so far as to call it anti-intellectualism. Because what if someone dislikes trends in video games AND music? Is he supposed to make his own video game and balance that with an indie band? Oh, so I'm allowed to complain now? I thought that if I had an issue I was supposed to go out and start my own game company.

If there's not a demand for female characters, then how come we go through this song and dance every time the topic comes up? And obligated? You make it sound like we're trying to bully people. And when you're making a game about a conflict that consisted of tons of women doing important things to the point where one of the most important assassinations of the conflict was done by a woman, you would think that female inclusion would be expected. But there I go expecting standards from video game companies.

Then don't use anti-intellectual comments that demands some impossible feat, usually including a person leaving their job and learning an entirely new skill set just because they wanted to make a complaint.

And that's one of the big problems I have with video games. It's all about money. Money above making a good game. Why make a fun exciting game when you can make another Call of Duty. This is NOT a mindset we should be defending. We should be defending people making good games and not companies trying to maximize profits.

Ubisoft isn't obligated to make anything, they are under no obligation to make a good game. But as a consumer, they are here to serve me, not the other way around, and if they want me to keep buying their knock off sequels then they need to put a little effort in. It really baffles me when people have complaints and other people try to shut them up because "They're not obligated to do anything for you." They're not obligated to patch bugs out either, but I doubt you'd be defending them if they decided that was too hard.

I'm calling bullshit. There's a big difference between knowing when someone is lying about programing and knowing how to program herself. And you know how she knows this? The opinions of professional programers, located IN THE ARTICLE who are calling out Ubisoft on it's bullshit. So no, she just did her research and got professional opinions on it. She doesn't know how to program, hence she can't go out and make her own game, and even if she could, I doubt she would want to throw her journalism career away.

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.

 

[KaZuYa]

I only excuse I can see for excluding female characters from games is a historical point of view. I don't mean just because you wouldn't have a woman in that position or commanding any kind of respect in that society for the sake of it, I mean trying to portray woman as equal and respected in a historical setting is insulting and downright unacceptable. Woman were mistreated, abused and treated as almost subhuman until quite recently in many countries and still are, and have protagonists which just a clone of the male one but female ignoring all of what more this protagonist would have to face is worse than just not having her there in the first place.

This is just a fly in the ointment what about gay protagonists and interracial couples, we need to show these as well but showing them without showing their struggle is beating the objective of equality.