If You Are Going to Hate on a Game Company, Do It For the Right Reasons

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

If You Are Going to Hate on a Game Company, Do It For the Right Reasons

Tomodachi Life isn't about homophobia, and Assassin's Creed Unity isn't about misogyny.

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[Evonisia]

Yeah I'd say I agree with this. I do find it odd that FarCry 4's racism affair didn't really catch on, because if we must jump to conclusions based on pretty much nothing then I could easily say that Homophobia and Sexism are somehow worse things than Racism.

 

[Coolblue]

Fucking THANK YOU, Yahtzee.

 

[castlewise]

And while one could certainly find individual cases of misogyny in action, I think the broader explanation is that less women are game designers for the same reason that less men are fashion editors: they are less likely to consider it an option because of societal gender roles. Which are ingrained into us from birth because of instincts we have retained from our evolutionary history that we may no longer require.

People say this about a lot of things, from math and engineering to housekeeping, to the finance market, to e-sports. I've never been comfortable with it as an argument. Sure societal pressures, and even evolutionary ones, exist. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be challenged or changed though. The way you change them is to correct individual instances and hope that eventually it builds up to a critical mass. There are times when "everyone does it" and "its always been this way" are valid excuses, but they don't always work.

 

[BrotherRool]

I think this really underestimates the way societal roles are informed by media. They're really not fixed, the research shows they can change really easily and better representation leads to equality. In societies where maths isn't thought to be a 'male' skill, women are frigging good at maths. In fact just allowing them to write a male name on their maths test will result in a women performing better in that test. That's how much representation affects the people around us.

Look at it this way, black people are under represented in lots of professions and media because the inequality of slavery created a cultural norm that didn't provide cool role models to inspire people and let them know as kids they're capable of anything they put their minds to.

The answer is not 'people who are black aren't equally represented because of ingrained social norms created by evolutionary needs'.


You were trying to be reasonable and appreciate it. But this isn't what the science supports and its this kind of attitude which prevents change, not because we're bad people but because it gives us reasons to not change a status quo that doesn't obviously effect us. As long as we believe it's out of our hands and there's nothing we can do to improve other people's solutions then we can shrug and say, why should we?

Which unfortunately is what this article ultimately says. But believe me, I can link you to the research, we can make a difference.

 

[WildFire15]

We'd love to hate you for your murders, Yahtzee, but they were so imaginative and twisted it's hard not to be in awe of you.

 

[Catasros]

Gaijin Goombah made a good point about Tomodachi Life two months back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50f8mLfTzwQ

 

[Zombie Badger]

We'd love to hate you for your murders, Yahtzee, but they were so imaginative and twisted it's hard not to be in awe of you.

And those prostitutes had it coming anyway.

I think what would be good for gaming now would be for publishers to work more like major movie studios, having separate divisions for mainstream big budget stuff (Transformers, Call of Duty and so on) and smaller, artier projects made by auteurs trying to push boundaries (and hopefully win awards when we get a game version of the Oscars).

 

[Covarr]

So no, you can't play as a woman, but neither can you play as a black guy or Peter Lorre or indeed anyone other than this one specific beardy French ponce.

Would I play a murder mystery point-and-click adventure game starring an impression of Peter Lorre? Yes. Yes I would. Someone get on that.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. I'm pretty sure Otto the Boat from Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside is a Peter Lorre impression, but it certainly isn't a good one.

 

[Falseprophet]

No, I'm going to hate on Ubisoft for sheer laziness. AC: Brotherhood had a diverse range of characters in multiplayer, and I'm not just talking gender, I mean size and shape. You had big people, skinny people, a range in the middle--you know, like how people are in real life. Unity's four MP protagonists are all the exact same guy. Same height, same build, same stance, same gait. Other than some bits of clothing and small variation in the chin and facial hair, they're identical.

So this is what the steeplechase pursuit of higher graphical fidelity has led to: devs are effectively palette-swapping player characters like they're sprites from the 8-bit era.

 

[Voltano]

That's pretty much the catch-22 of the games industry and female protagonists: If we want to see more female protagonists, then maybe these games should be made more by women. But in order to get women in the games industry, there has to be some kind of interest FROM the women to get into the games industry.

Although another issue that Yahtzee talked about awhile back is that a lot of these games are not recognized by an actual creator, an "author" or a "director" that is recognized on the front-cover of the game. We have our Cliffy-B, Peter Molyneux and Keiji Inafune. But we don't recognize a lot of names related to games (or the publishers don't allow this for their 'franchises'), and that means we may not see more games made by women.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Bashing on Tomodachi Life wasn't legitimate to begin with.

Here's an inconvenient truth - gay marriage is not legal in Japan. Do you really think Nintendo was going to depict *illegal* activities in their game that was rated E for Everyone? Your problem isn't with Nintendo - it's with Japanese culture. Get that changed first, then you can rail on Nintendo.

Remember, Nintendo never really intended to even localize the game, but lots of people asked for it so they did so reluctantly. Only to have it thrown back in their face by the over-sensitive.

Nintendo has learned their lesson - don't even localize weird Japanese games ever again. Don't release them outside Japan and no one will care.

So if you're wondering why games like Fatal Frame 4 are never going to be localized ("It's a murder simulator!" - FOX News) you can thank the people who pointlessly raised a stink about Tomodachi Life.

 

[blalien]

I think in these two cases, the companies' statements are what garnered the controversy. Tomodachi Life had relationships between two men but Nintendo patched them out because they weren't "whimsical" enough. And Ubisoft made that stupid statement about how animating female characters was too much work. The moral of the story is that if you're not going to be inclusive, then you should keep your mouth shut.

 

[Bke]

No, I'm going to hate on Ubisoft for sheer laziness. AC: Brotherhood had a diverse range of characters in multiplayer, and I'm not just talking gender, I mean size and shape. You had big people, skinny people, a range in the middle--you know, like how people are in real life. Unity's four MP protagonists are all the exact same guy. Same height, same build, same stance, same gait. Other than some bits of clothing and small variation in the chin and facial hair, they're identical.

Point of order though, I have to agree with Yahtzee on this because remember one of the major selling points of the AC franchise has been its lifelike animations. This is vital fort the single player part of the game but not the multiplayer. Having experienced both for extended periods of time I can tell you that the multiplayer animations would simply be unacceptable in singleplayer and would have probably generated more controversy for it.

That said, ubisoft is amazing at making turn around in game worlds*, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the next protagonist of AC were in fact female, or if they at least if they over corrected by adding buttloads of female models for their integrated multiplayer.

*every time we ***** about something, except DRM, ubisoft makes short work of our complaints by addressing them in new games. AC itself saw shitloads of side quests added in AC2 just because we complained that AC1 was a bit repetitive



ASIDE: I just saw now that "DRM" is in my browser dictionary; auto-corrected to all caps, how sad

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I called this ages ago. It's just...i didn't really post it on here. Not that i want credit at all. *Ahem*

People aren't understanding; the last 2 AC games have a whole seperate disc for competative multiplayer with a variety of customisable characters to please any self rightious arsehole. Unity won't be any different...it's just they will feature an added co-op option for story mode...which is where they only have the male protagonist. Now please settle down you angsty children!

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Oh and it's good to see a two page column again. Even if it was necessary for this topic.

 

[dcro123]

I disagree with Yahtzee on the whole not-having-different-models-for-climbing-etc. They have female models, and more to the point there was a female protagonist for Assassin's Creed: Liberation. I do however feel they left out certain game mechanics that female characters can have, such as choosing between personas like in Liberation. And if I would be a bit more conspiracy oriented, I would suggest this whole thing is a smoke screen for a new type of DRM, and that is cooperative on line only single player.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

I think Ubisoft has a STORY POINT for Ass Creed.
Now I only played 1 and 2, but I seem to remember them saying that only the *men* in that one family line get passed the genetic memories. So... how can you then play as a woman? Maybe women helped out a lot, but the character you play would have been a guy. Cause the really dumb sci-fi nonsense said so.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

Thank fuck someone with an at least noticeable amount of internet authority (maybe that's not the right word, maybe influence?) said this. I'd also like to point out that with the FC4 racism thing, I am going to say right away that everyone who thought is was racist is a colossal idiot. First of all, the argument that the protagonist had his hand on the Asian guy's head was stupid because he was always clearly the bad guy, and if you didn't see that, then you clearly have the perception of a damp sponge, secondly, everyone who complained about the protagonist being another 'white saviour/straight, white, American kid' before his picture emerged clearly paid not even the slightest bit of attention because they said ages ago that the protagonist was from the country that the game is set in.

Now that I got that off my chest, I agree with everything in this article, and was saying pretty much exaclty the same thing in a conversation earlier with some of my friends.