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

[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.

 

[AntiChrist]

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.

I'm a little confused here. Do women not consider game development a thing they might want to try out because of societal gender roles - i.e. a behaviour and way of thinking internalized from society at large? Or is there a primordial instinct at play? Those two points don't really mix, I think. Am I reading the "ingrained from birth"-part too literally? Is the point instead, that today's socialized gender roles have their origin in biological impulses felt thousands of years ago which may or may not make them - the gender roles that is - obsolete? Or is it the biological instincts - still felt today - that may or may not be obsolete?

 

[Zombie Badger]

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.

Zelda games (all but two of which have E ratings) fully endorse destruction of property and theft of other people's money.

 

[fight me in space]

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.

This is a recurring trend in any topic involving representation in any media. It's not enough that there are comics with majority black casts, we need a black Batman. It doesn't matter that there are plenty of action movies with female protagonists, we need a female James Bond. It doesn't matter that [indie game] has a female protagonist, we need a female protagonist in [AAA game].

These people don't give a shit about being represented, they just want a big game they can plant their flag on and shout "Nigga we made it!".

 

[Sticky]

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.

Oh I'm sorry, I thought you were just farting.

Oh, sick burn. Do you get it? I farted, over the internet, and this somehow was visible to you. I'm so glad this added to our conversation and wasn't a "no u" level personal insult that I would expect from a ten year old.

The reason that the comparisons I made were invalid is why?

Please elaborate, big boy. Show us your immense genius, studmuffin.

238U

Talking seriously now, the reason none of your arguments work is because you're not only making such pitched comparisons that have no relation to one another, but also because you're trying to find a thread of racism that extends back as you pour and over-analyze these games for reasons to hate them.

And you're overthinking them, Tomodachi life is a shovelware game about playing with Miis. It doesn't have gay marriage, not because the people developing it are hateful Japanese bigots like you laughably suggest, but because it's a little Miiware game that a small team probably made in a few months and they didn't think to include gay marriage in.

What I find funny about your no-tolerance policy is how your argument immediately jumped to 'People need to stop forgiving Japan for being bigots' when you didn't even bother looking at the other side of the issue: it's a shovelware game like hundreds of shovelware games before it that didn't have much thought put into the mechanics and was otherwise made as a cheap dollar for the ten or so people in the world who actually care about Miis. In fact, the person who seems to have brought 'Lol poor ignorant, racist Japan' into the equation seems to be you, not Yahtzee who was discussing the feasibility of it, or the initial discussion that was based around the argument of the bug that was found in the game.

Yet, here you are, railing against this one particular game. Let's be realistic, you're really only doing it because it's made by Nintendo, and therefore fits perfectly within your talking points of the industry being evil and oppressive and not actually because you care.

Same of Farcry 4, and Assassin's Creed. The first thing I heard about Farcry 4 was that there was a white guy on the box. Not actually how it played, or what it was about, or what the guy on the box's role in the story even was. Just that, Oh no! There's a White guy! There's an oppressed maybe-white-can't-tell guy! Not another White male in a video game!

When the reality is: Racism didn't exist in the equation of this video game until the internet came along, started analyzing skin colors, and started crying 'racism'. This is why no one takes your argument seriously: at the end of the day, this is all imagination, and if the first thing you jump to is the suffering of others when thinking about video games, then it seems like the problem exists with you. Maybe if you want to forgive the past, you can start with yourself instead of immediately assuming the worst of people and assuming that you, personally, are the good guy in your story.

tickyS

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

[I'm a little confused here. Do women not consider game development a thing they might want to try out because of societal gender roles - i.e. a behaviour and way of thinking internalized from society at large? Or is there a primordial instinct at play?

Actually while the gender ratio in development is far from equal, female participation in development is significant. (I think about 30% but I'm too lazy to look it up right now). Certainly much better than NASA during the moon shots (about 5%).

But women are not typically being put into positions where they have governing influence on gender roles in AAA games. We see some exceptions in the indie sector, and we're seeing there at least more awareness of the gender stereotypes (e.g. The selectable damsel in Spelunky can be male, female or canine). And we can't ignore those games that do have full featured customization of their characters, such as the Saints Row and Elder Scrolls franchises.

I really think that the reason we see so many white male protagonists in AAA games is not because the decision-makers dislike women, but are extremely risk-adverse, and thus don't want to vary the formula from prior games too much, ergo (for example) a GTA game with multiple characters before we have a GTA game with a female character. The problem is that developers have to worry more about covering their own butts than making a relatable game.

It is why, comparably, we got the movie Battleship based on the Milton Bradley game. A known franchise, even one that doesn't translate well into movie form, is easier to justify than attempting to make a good navy movie.

And then this extreme internal conservatism is left to the PR folks to spin, which they do poorly.

238U

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I personally take the view that the over-representation of male game protagonists stems from an over-representation of male creators in the triple-A industry. 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.

I made this, and many other of the points in this column in a thread on this site not long ago [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.852858.21097545] and got challenged and called out for it.

Frankly, I don't care much about the endless debate. I loathe feminism, I believe firmly in equality and have no issue with playing the role myriad protagonists be they male, female, white, black, red indian, elf, alien, mammal or whatever. But I don't think blaming the industry for everything is right either. If there is ever to be more women in the industry, more girls need to pursue that academic and career path.

As for the games, I won't be buying Unity. Not because it is or isn't sexist, but beause it's a bland rehash of the same game released year on year that's tedious as hell. I didn't play Tomb Raider reboot (tho I own it), not because it stars a woman, but because it's a game consisting almost entirely of QTEs. I don't buy CoD or any MMSs because they're done to death, thoroughly uninteresting and I don't buy the same game year on year. I loathe the practice of corporate IP milking with annual re-releases that write-off prior installments and keep the cash machine dispensing. Re-release game, sell DLCs for a year, abanadon, repeat. F**k. That.

I thought Watch Dogs was about mediocre, no more than 5-7 out of 10. Dull, shitty driving, crappy story, homogenised gameplay copy/pasted straight out of other Ubi IPs. I think these games sucked, not because of lack of diversity but because they were mass-market, blockbuster garbage. Entertainment products to please the masses, marketed and hyped disproportionate to their actual quality.

And frankly, if games starring elderly, disabled, black, female war veterans would sell better than generic white dude, we could be certain that they would be getting made. The industry makes what sells, not what we say we want. If games with female protagonists were sure-fire winners that outsold games starring a male, we'd be moaning that there's too many generic, female protagonists and not enough men.

 

[pspman45]

I was originally confused by the Assassins Creed thing, because they usually have female models for multiplayer, but then I found out it's because the coop characters are supposed to be the same guy. Who thought that was a good idea at all is simply beyond me, but know I know it wasn't just them being lazy, ect.

 

[Sticky]

[I'm a little confused here. Do women not consider game development a thing they might want to try out because of societal gender roles - i.e. a behaviour and way of thinking internalized from society at large? Or is there a primordial instinct at play?

Actually while the gender ratio in development is far from equal, female participation in development is significant. (I think about 30% but I'm too lazy to look it up right now). Certainly much better than NASA during the moon shots (about 5%).

You're thinking game playing, in which female players, as a whole, make up almost 45%.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf

Game development has staggeringly low female participation rates.

http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567

Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the wage gap, but the fact of the matter is that it's plainly obvious why more women aren't in auteur roles in video games: because statistically, there aren't many to begin with.

EDIT: Something else to remember: the wage gap category in that image doesn't take into consideration years of experience, it's a straight average of the total participants in the survey. Which would be important if we want to get into the discussion on why the gap exists.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

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.

I'm going to go ahead and mention there's a difference between narrative co-op characters and derpy multiplayer characters.

Some kinda need characters. OF COURSE, Ubisoft did that well already with Conviction and Black List, but whatever, what do I know?

 

[Sticky]

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.

I'm going to go ahead and mention there's a difference between narrative co-op characters and derpy multiplayer characters.

Some kinda need characters. OF COURSE, Ubisoft did that well already with Conviction and Black List, but whatever, what do I know?

I would buy that argument if it wasn't for the fact that Ubisoft has made unique assassins in the past that all co-existed in the same era.

Right now it's just four guys who all have Ezio's movesets (seriously Ubisoft, did you think no one would notice that they all most just like him?)

The worst part about it is that in the glorious age of 3D, they could have taken 3 people, all dressed and shaped the same way, and given them COMPLETELY different animations and made them their own characters without having to change who they were.
Maybe it would have resulted in them having to actually spend money on their fucking games, who knows. What I do know is that won't stop people from defending their laziness with 'but it's only a beta! they can fix it.. honest..'.

To me, I will never be able to think of an Ubisoft product at E3 again without also thinking 'I wonder what features they're going to cut from the final product?'

 

[AntiChrist]

- snip -

Hi Uriel-238:

That's a really good summary of the issue you've made there, I think. The statistics on females working in game development notwithstanding, since I'm in no position to judge that.

The part you quoted me on however, concerns Yahtzee's point about gender roles, which left me slightly puzzled. I was trying to find clarity with regards to what those sentences meant and how they fitted together. Did you seek to quote the other paragraph?

 

[gridsleep]

Larry Croft? Lawrence of Acroftia? Might work, if you give him gorgeous blue eyes to swim in. Uh...uhoh. Excuse me. Is this thing on?

Oh, now I know why Australia. Bigger desert easier to dig lots of shallow graves, than tiny murky, mucky old England.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I wonder if you see the irony of accusing me of this:

What I find funny about your no-tolerance policy is how your argument immediately jumped to People need to stop forgiving Japan for being bigots

And in the same sentence deciding this:

it's a shovelware game like hundreds of shovelware games before it that didn't have much thought put into...[whatever]

My point was that "forgiving Japan for being bigots" on the grounds that it's Japan is, itself, bigoted. It would be like saying we should forgive the US for hating black people because Americans are too dense to rise above our cultural prejudices. That's bullshit. Every nation has its prejudices, its racial and sexual biases and we should all strive for better. Including the US. Including Japan.

And so should those people who make shovelware. Even Ed Fucking Wood[footnote]May not be is actual full name[/footnote] took immense pride in the films he made. I'm pretty sure the devs of shovelware are looking to make something in the hopes that it isn't called shovelware on release. Even the folks who made Dungeon Keeper did it thinking they were making a playable, enjoyable game that wasn't designed to entrap whales. Most of the devs at least.

Just because we expect a particular behavior from a particular sector doesn't make that behavior right or tolerable. We see a lot of inexcusable behavior in the name of tradition or common practice or cultural bias. In the game industry, it's due to best practices, franchise conventions or expected features.[footnote]Guess the one from which we get QTEs.[/footnote] It's all bullshit, no matter what kind of polish you apply.

Now, yes, gay relationships in Tomodachi Life came about by accident (or through an exploit) but I'll address that in a later post so that you can fling poo at me about it separately, as is evidently your joy in life.

I hadn't discussed the other games on this forum because Tomodachi Life is the topic here. I'm sure you could predict that I have plenty to rant about regarding FC4 or AC:French Connection or whatever.

238U[footnote]We're starting a trend! Why doesn't everyone sign their posts this way?[/footnote]

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

The part you quoted me on however, concerns Yahtzee's point about gender roles, which left me slightly puzzled. I was trying to find clarity with regards to what those sentences meant and how they fitted together. Did you seek to quote the other paragraph?

Um...maybe?

This happens when I have multiple conversations at once.[footnote]...and too little coffee.[/footnote]

238U

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I loathe feminism, I believe firmly in equality...

It's odd seeing those statements together non-ironically. Most feminism is about equality, but like any other major social equality movement it features a wide range of sub-divisions in which opinions differ regarding either approach or intended outcome, or the rate at which change is instigated.

A good comparison would be the difference between Dr. King (who was an avid integrationist) and Malcom X (who was a staunch segregationist). They both had the same general ambitions, but very different approaches.

238U