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

[Thanatos2k]

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.

Not true at all. Nintendo never "patched" it out - it was a bug in the first place that allowed it. It was never coded in. It was never in a released version of the game.

This misinformation still persists.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9198-Tomopology-Life

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Amalgamations of people can only be unilaterally guilty of the common factor that brought the individuals together in the first place to make a group, which is very rarely the pursuit of exclusion and persecution of a different group. Ubisoft and the like certainly don't hate women, they probably don't hate anyone because, as Yahtzee said, hatred has nothing to do with their goals. However, what they are, is short-sighted, creatively bankrupt, and woefully out of touch with anyone who isn't superficially 'like them'. What I saw (and admittedly I can't claim to have seen all of it) of the AC: Unity backlash, was less about crying sexism, and more about grabbing Ubisoft by the lapels and screaming "STOP JUST GIVING US MORE OF THE SAME AND THEN FOBBING US OFF WITH LAME EXCUSES!"

I don't particularly care if the homogenisation of the AAA industry is motivated by prejudice or simply an unwillingness by anyone to leave their comfort zone for 5 seconds. The fact that it is homogenised is the problem, and until it is no longer a problem, I'll keep right on up here on this soapbox calling them out for it.

 

[themilo504]

I disagree with the idea that you should never ask the author to change the story because you dislike it, because if you stop buying you?re still sending the message to the people who fund the art that you don?t like it and would like to see it change, but now the people who fund the art don?t know what your problem is.

 

[ayvee]

While Yahtzee is usually on point with these things, there is a lot of strawmanning going on in this article.

First of all, maybe he didn't write that tagline, but no one thinks that Tomodachi Life is about homophobia, or that AC: Unity is about misogyny. Furthermore, criticising a company for doing something stupid is not the same thing as hating that company, though I can see how it's easy to lose this distinction when you're up to your neck in critical tweets, articles, forum posts, and tumblr reblogs. And he doesn't even address the thing that really set people off in both cases, the way that each company responded to the initial concerns.

 

[Sticky]

Thank you Yahtzee for pretty much putting my arguments on this whole matter into a single article. Maybe now people will actually read them instead of continuing to ignore what should otherwise be obvious facts of the matter. I'm really sick of arguing with people who's entire knowledge of the Tomodachi Life incident was a Kotaku article that got everything wrong about a game-breaking bug, and the continued argument that Nintendo are bigots because they didn't plan for their Japanese shovelware game about miis to be released in North America.

EDIT:
I must add:

but throughout the most recent show I felt like the gaming press and social media were playing a game of politically-correcter-than-thou

I think this has been going on for the better part of five years now. It's understandable that not many people would notice it if they didn't have their faces buried in video game news. Sometimes I think I would be happier if I just cut myself off from games journalism and played the games I thought looked fun.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

Political Correctness Gone Mad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE], Mr. Croshaw?

I'm pretty sure it's not about hatred. It never really is.

I'm sure that during the most of the twentieth century, it wasn't that white Americans hated non-white Americans at all, it is just that seeing people of color on their streets distended their comfort zone too much. It made them uncomfortable. Too uncomfortable. That's not hatred, that's just wanting things to be back to normal again, right?

And gay marriage, for those of us who grew up seeing marriage as a union between two people of opposite sexes (just like in the storybooks), this notion that people of the same sex could marry just looks wrong. I mean wrong. Lopsided. It doesn't mean we hate gays. I mean we're not really wanting to deny to gays all the legal rights tied to marriage. It means we're just not comfortable with the notion that society would actually legitimize something as icky as two guys hooking up. For the love of Jesus, we're still getting used to the idea that a white woman might actually fall in love with a non-white man. That's still too weird.

But that's not homophobia. That's discomfort. See?

My instincts tell me that I should stay away from gays, avoid engaging gays, not live in a neighborhood in which gays live, and certainly not let my children near gays, that's not homophobia, is it? I mean it's not like I'm throwing rocks at them (even though my instincts tell me to do that too). If I said I didn't hate gay people, that they just make me uncomfortable, that's not homophobia is it?[footnote]My instinct also tell me the same things about black people, that I should stay away from them, not let my children near them, chase them out of my neighborhood and throw rocks at them, but that's not racism, that's just because I'm really like the people near me to look like me and talk like me and behave as I do and worship the same gods as I do. I don't hate the other people. I just don't want them to exist.[/footnote]

So it is with the game industry and their obsession with white male heroes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85M3LnoHz6o]. I mean if we made a game with a woman protagonist (that wasn't Lara because she's been around and boobs) it would be uncomfortable to our shareholders, our administrators, our developers and our players (especially the 60% of them who are, in fact, not women). And we don't want all those people to be uncomfortable. If we made them uncomfortable, they might not buy our game.

And in this economy, why would we expect a major entertainment player to take risks? That is why we only develop brown military shooters that are about male-empowerment wish-fulfillment. Maybe we'll try something new next year in 2025. Gamers like games that are comfortable, that don't do new things or expose them to strange places or ideas or situations. Gamers want stories that follow a specific story format in which the white dude kicks a lot of zombie / alien / Nazi / terrorist / savage butt. ...And then gets sexual favors from the girl as a prize for all the killing he did. That's the game story.

And so it is with Nintendo and Japan. I mean, we can't expect them to develop a social conscience, can we? It's Japan. It's Nintendo. They can't help themselves. That would be like expecting black guys to not rape white women. Or, for that matter, like expecting gays not to rape little boys. Good luck with that.

238U

 

[Lazule]

To be honest all this controversy can be ended with little words.

"let the market decide" This argument is perfectly fair imho.

personally I find the lack of variety of characters boring and I won't be buying this Assassins Creed for that minor thing and many other more important major reasons related to Ubisoft. If companies want to be lazy that's their problem, they will lose consumers.

I'm not affected in the slightest by Ubisoft's lack of interest and I find absurd that some people are going political because of it. This is not a political issue, its a market issue, a market we don't own.

So don't go political because it isn't worth it. Its a product, its just a video game made by a half-assed company with deadlines.

 

[Deadman]

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.

your missing the point of the animations, just cause a company has the models for females doesn't mean they can just magically place them in the game as protagonists. theirs remolding for the outfit, reanimation cause a trained assassin would walk differently to a female civilian in the 18 century, and having to make from scratch climbing animations. true its probably not as time consuming as ubisoft might make it out to be, but the fact remains that time and money are going to have to be wasted. and even if they say brought over the female animations from ac brotherhood or something theirs still remodeling and the such that needs to be done. now i would like it if they had a playable female protagonist but considering how far in development they already are, and more importantly how fun it seems the game play would be then i can forgive them with a fond slap on the wrist, and a telling off that they include a female protagonist in the next game and that they not give weak excuses to there potential customers and just be fucking honest.

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.

i think you have a solid argument here but again the article wasn't really about this it was about how people should not make such a fucking crying hissy fit over something that they potentially don't really understand, and instead point out and try to rectify the bullshit of lies that company's have placed over themselves as a protective layer to make sure they can sell there games. or more to the point it was ultimately a games journalism article, not a social journalism article that just so happened to be backed by very legitimate social background points. again your argument is very valid but i just think that this isn't really the article to be discussing it in, though i would argue your point on the fact that though media does in fact inform about social identity a) people should not rely on majority say and instead should find out about social issues and how to correct them by actually talking to the people that are affected by them and b) the media itself has in fact been very often wrong and generally unhelpful when getting the general populace to understand gender identity. however since most of the general populace unaffected by these issues myself included are workshite cheaters who cruise by in life with almost everything handed to them by simple virtue of being in the right place at the right time, social change wont happen cause why should we lower ourselves from our nice comfy palace just to accept the *lower caste* and potentially get dirt stains on our nice clean carpet. sadly true social equality will only happen once the playing field is leveled and sadly enough it still isn't. women still are minority when it comes to powerful high paying jobs, black people have this strange caste on them that people assume that they will automatically have to go to, even people of such diverse culture like India and china have been sledgehammered into the assumed roles of the overachievers and the gas station jockies. now did the media help in casting these roles, yes. did peoples already inherit programming take over and lock people into the one mindset of how things work, yes. can we as people change this by first changing ourselves, yes. can the media help, in its current model and with the current people in charge, no. it will only change if we as people become more accepting and treat anyone we come across as people not a dude or a chick.

 

[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.

Not true at all. Nintendo never "patched" it out - it was a bug in the first place that allowed it. It was never coded in. It was never in a released version of the game.

This misinformation still persists.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9198-Tomopology-Life

I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. There was male-male marriage, then Nintendo got rid of it. I am aware it was a bug, but that doesn't make their first statement about gay marriage any better.

 

[sageoftruth]

Political Correctness Gone Mad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE], Mr. Croshaw?

I'm pretty sure it's not about hatred. It never really is.

I'm sure that during the most of the twentieth century, it wasn't that white Americans hated non-white Americans at all, it is just that seeing people of color on their streets distended their comfort zone too much. It made them uncomfortable. Too uncomfortable. That's not hatred, that's just wanting things to be back to normal again, right?

And gay marriage, for those of us who grew up seeing marriage as a union between two people of opposite sexes (just like in the storybooks), this notion that people of the same sex could marry just looks wrong. I mean wrong. Lopsided. It doesn't mean we hate gays. I mean we're not really wanting to deny to gays all the legal rights tied to marriage. It means we're just not comfortable with the notion that society would actually legitimize something as icky as two guys hooking up. For the love of Jesus, we're still getting used to the idea that a white woman might actually fall in love with a non-white man. That's still too weird.

But that's not homophobia. That's discomfort. See?

My instincts tell me that I should stay away from gays, avoid engaging gays, not live in a neighborhood in which gays live, and certainly not let my children near gays, that's not homophobia, is it? I mean it's not like I'm throwing rocks at them (even though my instincts tell me to do that too). If I said I didn't hate gay people, that they just make me uncomfortable, that's not homophobia is it?[footnote]My instinct also tell me the same things about black people, that I should stay away from them, not let my children near them, chase them out of my neighborhood and throw rocks at them, but that's not racism, that's just because I'm really like the people near me to look like me and talk like me and behave as I do and worship the same gods as I do. I don't hate the other people. I just don't want them to exist.[/footnote]

So it is with the game industry and their obsession with white male heroes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85M3LnoHz6o]. I mean if we made a game with a woman protagonist (that wasn't Lara because she's been around and boobs) it would be uncomfortable to our shareholders, our administrators, our developers and our players (especially the 60% of them who are, in fact, not women). And we don't want all those people to be uncomfortable. If we made them uncomfortable, they might not buy our game.

And in this economy, why would we expect a major entertainment player to take risks? That is why we only develop brown military shooters that are about male-empowerment wish-fulfillment. Maybe we'll try something new next year in 2025. Gamers like games that are comfortable, that don't do new things or expose them to strange places or ideas or situations. Gamers want stories that follow a specific story format in which the white dude kicks a lot of zombie / alien / Nazi / terrorist / savage butt. ...And then gets sexual favors from the girl as a prize for all the killing he did. That's the game story.

And so it is with Nintendo and Japan. I mean, we can't expect them to develop a social conscience, can we? It's Japan. It's Nintendo. They can't help themselves. That would be like expecting black guys to not rape white women. Or, for that matter, like expecting gays not to rape little boys. Good luck with that.

238U

Such a pity to see such a hefty argument get utterly destroyed by it's final paragraph.

 

[Thanatos2k]

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.

Not true at all. Nintendo never "patched" it out - it was a bug in the first place that allowed it. It was never coded in. It was never in a released version of the game.

This misinformation still persists.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9198-Tomopology-Life

I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. There was male-male marriage, then Nintendo got rid of it. I am aware it was a bug, but that doesn't make their first statement about gay marriage any better.

You are intentionally misconstruing their intent, implying that they added it and then took it away. They never added it. It was a bug. This bug caused other problems. From Day One their design was that characters could only marry the opposite gender. They did not fix the bug in order to "get rid of it" - they fixed the bug to fix problems it was causing in their game. The problems it was causing was not "gay marriage."

 

[90sgamer]

Yahtzee, you silly rogue! How were you able to publish this article without your SJW overlords, The Escapist, noticing?

 

[Pogilrup]

I know that Ubisoft doesn't have an explicit hatred of a women or female characters. But what they do have is a collective prejudice they might not even be aware of.

Besides explicit hatred is easy to identify and resolve because is so visible, but the unconscious prejudices are spread out and thus much harder to target. Tell me what is easier to move, 1 ton of sand in a pile or 1 ton of sand spread across a 10 mile radius?

 

[cynicalsaint1]

You know I don't disagree with any of Yahtzee's arguments, per se.
No I don't think Ubisoft or the group that worked on AC:U are purposefully sexist, or anything like that, and I think at worst they are guilty of being lazy and unoriginal.

But where I disagree is that I still think they deserve to be called out on it.
Regardless of the reason this sort of thing keeps happening over and over and over and over and over and over again.
And fact of the matter is it continues to contribute to cultural problems.

Is it a reason to avoid Ubisoft games? Maybe - really that's up to you, I would probably say no. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth discussion or awareness.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

Such a pity to see such a hefty argument get utterly destroyed by it's final paragraph.

My satire is falling flat.

But also I conflated stereotypes.

The one I used was from the '50s through '70s black men were (often falsely) accused of raping white women. We'd learn from statistical analysis in the nineties that rapes were usually by people familiar to the victim, and more often assailants and victims would share race, religion and other demographics.

The one I should have used was our excuse for gangsta culture maltreatment of women (chattelizing them, sexually objectifying them, calling them bitches / hos, treating them like a commodity) which mainstream culture excused because they're rap artists. They're were savage gangstas.

These days we're seeing some activism within Islam in which they defend their treatment of women as cultural license.

Oh yeah, and the recent Hobby Lobby ruling. Women can't have birth control because it's against the religion of their employing corporation. So this is a thing not going away.

When we decide that Japan will Japan (and to be fair America America'd a lot more until only very recently) we not only do a disservice to fringe groups (whether racial minorities, sexual minorities or fringe hobbiests as gamers have been for a while) by not supporting their right to live and let live, but we also do a disservice to Japan ( slash America, slash gangsta-culture) by dismissing them as incapable of improvement (and therefore lesser creatures).

We're human beings, and yes, intolerance was great ten thousand years ago when it kept infectious diseases from spreading, but we have germ theory and centralized disease control these days, and the greatest threat to our civilization now is bigger, more internally cohesive civilizations. The greatest threat to our culture is more popular culture. So tolerance and inclusive culture really is in our best interests, even when it means that a group with more power (white males) relinquishes some of that privilege to other demographics (non-whites, females).

Japan, stop being a dick.

America, stop being as much of a dick.

AAA Game industry, stop being a big box of dicks.

And in the future I will try to construct my satire better when I'm less agitated.

238U

 

[hickwarrior]

Such a pity to see such a hefty argument get utterly destroyed by it's final paragraph.

And in the future I will try to construct my satire better when I'm less agitated.

238U

That's a good thing. That entire post was just flame bait waiting to catch fire.

As for OT, I do agree that we should hate people for actually good reasons. But I also agree with BrotherRool, since there is something we can do, we're just too lazy about it or don't think it's worth it. I'm just too lazy. I'll keep playing dynasty warriors for now.

 

[Sticky]

Maybe the juxtaposition I was using was a bit too sophisticated for the Escapist audience. I do have a habit of sometimes overestimating my readership, etc etc

Yes, I'm sure the reason your analogy fell flat wasn't because you were, and still are, comparing real-life oppression and racism to a video game that a company released for profit in the year 2014.

The real reason no one got it is because they aren't as sophisticated as you. Not because the two have nothing in common with one another and are not linked by any kind of causality, but because your audience is merely too stupid to see your genius. Everyone simply dismissing you isn't doing it because you made one of the biggest leaps of logic that we have seen in one of these threads to even remotely compare the two, but because they are mere plebeians who cannot see the worth of your valuable opinion.

Once again, Thank you for sharing, because I'm sure there is at least one other person out there who think the two are in any way related to one another or that your ranting has any relation to the topic in this thread.

Such a pity to see such a hefty argument get utterly destroyed by it's final paragraph.

My satire is falling flat.

Yes, and the reason it's falling flat is not related entirely to your message and point being rubbish that is no way comparable to video games. The problem is that your audience is too stupid to understand you, not that you don't have any point to stand on in this issue and are merely parroting talking points in hopes of someone taking that as an argument relating to video games.


tickyS

 

[Redd the Sock]

Careful there, this kind of rational thinking might cost you your job as flamewars are needed for hits.

I'll only disagree with one thing: we should blame someone. Ourselves. The "too much work" line is recognizable business shorthand for "the effort won't bring in enough extra sales to merit taking on the work." It's business basics. Don't spend $1000 to gain $500 in sales. Companies make what we will buy, and generally have the IQ of a really stupid box of rocks, so a few sleeper hits made when that rare opportunity arises would have us more diversity that we realize exists because that's all they do, make what they see selling.

Sadly, a lot of gamers won't compromise on this, and their insistence on only buying the best AAA games they see marketed past the point of saturation keeps this from happening. Sorry Remember Me, I know you fought for us, but you didn't score high enough so it's not my fault I'm not buying you. Sorry Drakengard 3, I'm too busy looking up cat videos to even know you exist. Tales of Xillia, aaargh, anime, it burns. It isn't that companies don't want to take risks, but we aren't giving them a market that says the risk we want them to take is a smart one.

If I sound bitter, it's cause I am. All this talk about more variety from people that seem to only want it in the one area. Genre, setting, art style, game mechanics, all things that would offer more variety than the group of pixels/polygons that make up the main character. People jumped at the thought of Link being female, but to me, it was a purely cosmetic thing that would leave us at the same fetch quest with the same sword fighting, the same item hunting, the same puzzles, and power ups, etc.

And I can't hate you for your murders until I know who you killed. I might be supportive.

 

[Darth_Payn]

"a game of politically-correcter-than-thou" sums it up really well, though I'd probably call it a pissing contest.

I think that game's been going on with some of the Escapist's own staff and contributors.

 

[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.

Not true at all. Nintendo never "patched" it out - it was a bug in the first place that allowed it. It was never coded in. It was never in a released version of the game.

This misinformation still persists.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9198-Tomopology-Life

I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. There was male-male marriage, then Nintendo got rid of it. I am aware it was a bug, but that doesn't make their first statement about gay marriage any better.

You are intentionally misconstruing their intent, implying that they added it and then took it away. They never added it. It was a bug. This bug caused other problems. From Day One their design was that characters could only marry the opposite gender. They did not fix the bug in order to "get rid of it" - they fixed the bug to fix problems it was causing in their game. The problems it was causing was not "gay marriage."

Dude, my whole point is that Nintendo stirred up controversy because of their dipshit statement that gay marriage wasn't "fun" or "whimsical." The actual order of events doesn't matter.