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

[deshadow52]

I am really conflicted by this whole issue. On one hand I can understand why women feel unrepresented in video games on the other hand I feel like at this point Ubisoft just can't win. When it comes to characters in video games, books and movies, I don't look for great female characters I look for great human characters. The problem I have with the whole we want more female characters movement is I just feel like they are so picky. Seriously, if a female character is not exactly what they think a great female character should be, even if they show characteristics of being human, they consider it sexist, misogynist and the best part they will consider it a personal attack on their entire gender. You can't win with these people, we are talking about the kinda people that said Lara Croft going to therapy makes her look weak, the kinda people that say Female Shepard is just too similar to Male Shepard and if any character shows any sort of cleavage, looks weak or is influenced by men of any sort despite any context given, it is thrown in the bad female character pile. If I was a writer of any kind, making a female character would scare the hell out of me because I feel like making one is like getting zero on a roulette wheel. The zero is a female character people want and all the others are condemned.

At this point, if Ubisoft put in a female character it would be half assed and the people that were crying for would then end up unsatisfied and would start complaining all over again and would say well it was better off without the female characters.

well I am looking forward to getting all the replys on what a horrible person I am, but I believe there is a lot of truth of what I said. I want more diversity in games too, but not in the same way most people are, at least what I seen on twitter anyway. I am also not saying that developers shouldn't put female characters in games nor do I think what i said was the only reason female characters are not put in games because I know there many reasons/excuses.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

Here's the thing: I watched the story of Watch_Dogs. Apparently, not only are women too hard to animate, but also white males are apparently too hard to write without using a bunch of cliches.

Doesn't mean the effort shouldn't be made.

 

[RealRT]

Creating female character option is a lot of work? Maybe. And you know what? I don't give a fuck, it's not my problem, it's the publisher/developer's problem.

 

[T_ConX]

I actually understand where all this anger is coming from. I am literally unable to play any game that doesn't feature a white male protagonist. I just cannot relate to a character that doesn't look like me.

I'm just fine playing any Grand Theft Auto, except for San Andreas. I also had to skip all the missions in GTA5 that made me play as Trevor.

In Heavy Rain, I got Madison killed off the first chance I got so the rest of the game being a guy.

A friend gifted me Tomb Raider 2013 on Steam a few months ago, but the game just wasn't interesting until I used a mod that replaced Lara with a really bad stock 3D model of a guy.

Assassins Creed? I bought AC3, but just ended up replaying the Haytham part over and over again.

Ok, enough sarcasm. If playable female characters are that important to you, then, well, FINE! You have every right to not buy the game, and instead use your dollars to support a developer that makes the games you want to play. I'm too interested in gameplay to give much of a damn what gender/race/sexuality/religion/whatever the main playable character is, but that's me. I'm more than willing to give a

As for Ubisofts 'Animating females is hard' excuse... I don't know enough about their production pipeline to challenge that. I know an animator from the AC3 team said that converting the ~8000 male animations to a female skeleton would have taken him two work days, but... come on! That's three animations a minute, with no time for food or sleep. Maybe that's two days for HIM, but I assume it would make a lot more work for the QA team.

The game is going to sell millions of copies, just like the other six major AC titles before it. This issue isn't going to hurt that, because most people are willing to overlook identity politics in favor of gameplay. Maybe the next (major) Assassins Creed will have a female protagonist. I'd still probably buy it...

 

[RA92]

Snip

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Mistilteinn]

-snip-

Nah, you're pretty much spot on. The more something is scrutinized, the more likely people are to complain about it. And right now we have a lot of scrutiny directed towards game developers and publishers about the inclusion/depiction of women in games. So it makes sense that everyone's going to find something to complain about, because everyone's focusing on the same thing. And, as anyone who's ever met any other human should know, there's no pleasing everyone. Meanwhile, male characters and their inclusion/depiction is pretty much ignored because it's just standard-fare at this point. There will be a male character, and that they'll look and act like a male character (whatever the heck that actually means, when you think about).

Eventually, I hope things calm down because, while it's interesting to read topics on these issues (even pretty damn educational at times, which is always a plus), it's also feeding into the selfsame issue in ways that aren't particularly positive. Things aren't black-and-white, as others posters mentioned, but a lot of the time we look at the issue in that way: you're either for or against, and there's no wiggle-room. Rather than get pissed at the devs because they said "it's too hard" after the fact, when evidence shows that in fact, yes, it is very time-consuming and resource-consuming to create new characters from scratch, what we should be asking is why the topic of adding a female character wasn't brought up sooner during development--which it appears to have been. If we can better understand why they shut down a female characters development early on in the game, then we won't be stuck arguing over a poorly-worded excuse.

Basically, my point is that we ought to look at the source of the problem rather than the aftermath. When we can fix the source of the problem, then we can hopefully solve the underlying issue and we won't be having these arguments anymore, because by that point male and female characters will be looked at in the same light: as characters rather than their genders.

 

[deshadow52]

-snip-

Nah, you're pretty much spot on. The more something is scrutinized, the more likely people are to complain about it. And right now we have a lot of scrutiny directed towards game developers and publishers about the inclusion/depiction of women in games. So it makes sense that everyone's going to find something to complain about, because everyone's focusing on the same thing. And, as anyone who's ever met any other human should know, there's no pleasing everyone. Meanwhile, male characters and their inclusion/depiction is pretty much ignored because it's just standard-fare at this point. There will be a male character, and that they'll look and act like a male character (whatever the heck that actually means, when you think about).

Eventually, I hope things calm down because, while it's interesting to read topics on these issues (even pretty damn educational at times, which is always a plus), it's also feeding into the selfsame issue in ways that aren't particularly positive. Things aren't black-and-white, as others posters mentioned, but a lot of the time we look at the issue in that way: you're either for or against, and there's no wiggle-room. Rather than get pissed at the devs because they said "it's too hard" after the fact, when evidence shows that in fact, yes, it is very time-consuming and resource-consuming to create new characters from scratch, what we should be asking is why the topic of adding a female character wasn't brought up sooner during development--which it appears to have been. If we can better understand why they shut down a female characters development early on in the game, then we won't be stuck arguing over a poorly-worded excuse.

Basically, my point is that we ought to look at the source of the problem rather than the aftermath. When we can fix the source of the problem, then we can hopefully solve the underlying issue and we won't be having these arguments anymore, because by that point male and female characters will be looked at in the same light: as characters rather than their genders.

Thank you, I think developers should try to make female characters, but I think the attitude of female characters needs to be changed by both developers and gamers. Also going around and asking each developer why there is no female character and then going on twitter and going into a rage fest about the answer is not going to make any progress; or at the very least it does more harm then good.

 

[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.

I think it's pretty disingenuous to be honest. Maybe it's possible to use the same models and animations for male and female characters using Costume Quest's stylised, heavily simplified art-style, but it's a completely different matter when creating characters in a photo-realistic art-style.

I dunno, isn't female Shepard just a re-skin of male Shepard with another voice actor?

 

[wulf3n]

The "If you don't like it, why don't you make your own video game" response is made by people who want to shut down conversations.

Partially. It's also said by those who want to see a new wave of Developers who actually want to make more diverse games, that actually have a passion about it, and would do it justice.

Eventually someone who cares about these issues is going to have to start making games, otherwise we'll at worse continue to see the same trends and at best see shallow renditions of "diversity"

 

[Callate]

Ngehh.

I'd agree that adding female player characters to games is well worthwhile, and I'd certainly be for more game companies giving such a thing the consideration that would allow it to make it into the early stages of development.

But could we please not suggest that it's cost-free, let alone that the costs of adding a character that the customers will spend the majority of the game carefully scrutinizing hasn't changed in the last ten years? It has, and fudging the argument like that undermines it.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

No one needs to walk with a sway, just don't center your feet under your body ... it's inefficient and more cultural than a result of body mechanics.

 

[WindKnight]

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.

General myopia, lack of empathy, never having had to deal with actual prejudice slapping them in the face and affecting them in a very negative manner.

Some people just can't look outside of their own experiences and understand that things aren't as easy or nice for others who aren't just like them.

 

[Rabidkitten]

I'm not sure what the controversy is all about. Ubisoft is a business and modeling, texturing, and animating a new character costs money be it a peasant, a dragon, or a female assassin. They want to spend X money on Y project that will return Z projected revenue. If adding something to project Y that increases X more then Z they WILL NOT DO IT. That is the short of it. That's all they need to say, we don't believe that female playable characters will make us more money, and ALL we want to do is make more money.

 

[Nurb]

There's also the fact that whatever female character is put in games, it will be over-analyized and never good enough for whatever vocal group doesn't like it...

Remember when one group was getting nasty because Ellie from "the last of us" wasn't "strong and independent" enough despite being a great zombie killer at 14 years old? The developers were called sexist for it

Just because a small group complains doesn't mean anything. Groups of people complain about games all the time.

 

[Dark Knifer]

What's the deal, this is all co-op and multiplayer complaining right?

Hasn't reskinning the main character for co-op been successful since the first halo and no-one complained.

I mean, this is ubisoft after all, one of the more by the books action type studios, do we really look for them for social progression or expect for it to play it safe.

It would be cool to play as a female assassin but I don't see ubisoft really bothering, not with a famously lazy series like this. Hence the backlash. But we will get progression, but it's probably not going to start in a place like this.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

Because AC games have indicated pretty much every assassination was the work of an Assassin or Templar. Also, probably because the historicity of women/people of colour has been brought up a lot in tandem.

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.

Yeeeeeeeeah. It sort of sends a mixed message.

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

A business can be a business and be sexist. Or a lot of other things. Just being a business doesn't make it ethical.

If there is such a huge market for games with female characters, take your obviously immense knowledge of character design and capitalize rather than just complaining.

I agree we should only complain about things we're in a position to do better ourselves.

Hey that's really impressive! I didn't think that they could make it look any worse, but they topped themselves with this!

Hey! Laird agrees with like, everyone else in the world. Time to can these crappy CGI turtles and dust off the awesome looking rubber ones from the 90's.

When does your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie come out?

 

[Something Amyss]

Well there was a person who once commented on a Zero Puntucation video with "Why does Yahtzee say 'Fuck you, got mine!' like its a bad thing?"

I'm really surprised there's only been one. "Fuck you, I've got mine" is pretty much the Internet's Creed.

 

[CloudAtlas]

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.

General myopia, lack of empathy, never having had to deal with actual prejudice slapping them in the face and affecting them in a very negative manner.

Some people just can't look outside of their own experiences and understand that things aren't as easy or nice for others who aren't just like them.

You can add to that list that many dudes here just hate feminists and other "social justice warriors" for... reasons... and consequentially, as soon as they see one of them speaking up about some issue, they'll grasp at any and all straw to argue against what they have to say. No matter how flimsy the straw.
Well, at least I want to believe that those people don't honestly believe all their bullshit arguments are actually true... but since you usually only hear these bullshit arguments in one specific context, I'm fairly "optimistic" here.

 

[AgedGrunt]

I'd of called this a strawman fallacy, but if it's the angle some companies are coming from then I suppose all that's left to consider is whether they want to make playable females or whether they should for appeasement.

Tucking aside artistic integrity, perhaps the biggest mistake people can make is to think this "it's too hard" logic is actual, conventional reasoning explaining the industry's relative lack of playable females. Sounds like this is being blown out of proportion.

 

[sneakypenguin]

I'm still curious why ACU is getting slammed for this. Everyone is playing Arno... This is like judging halo 123 cause the 2nd player could only be masterchief... In this context yes creating a new model animations and v/o then making sure it works with everyones outfit is too much work.. Cause its essentially meaningless, I mean what would the game auto force someone's character to appear female?

Keep beating this horse guys really doesn't come across as petty at all. /s

Using the same criteria you guys are using to judge ACU you have a massive backlog to write about
starting say 2 gens ago with halo 1.