Going to take fire for this, but what the hell.
Jim, I have ultimate respect for you, so please do not take this comment as malicious. I am here for discussion value. I wouldn't have minded if there were female characters or characters of varying ethnicities in Unity.
However, I felt that you missed out on some important factors in the video:
-You yourself have stated that publishers suffer from tunnel vision; they only speak in sales figures which are provided by people who have no clue what gaming is to executives, investors, etc. , who also see gaming as nothing more than pure business. It can be said that because Assassin's Creed Liberation (and HD) didn't sell all that well, they considered that it was because of the female protagonist(which was one of the strengths of the game included in the marketing and the blurb).
In that case, I feel it would be unfair to criticise the developers. I feel that the fault is the publishers, because Ubisoft is generally quite a diverse company(first game had an Arab protagonist, 3rd had a Native American, IV had Freedom Cry where you play as a former slave out for justice, Child of Light featured a little girl for a protagonist, Rayman has quite the varied cast, Beyond Good and Evil is always used as an example for its well-written female lead etc.), and I feel that it is because of the executives that they are making such decisions. Consider Watch_Dogs, one of their most successful and heavily-marketed IPs: white male protagonist. Assassin's Creed: white(r) male protagonist(s). They showed that they can pull off games with well-written and diverse characters, but they are playing safe for their key franchises, because the publishers don't want to take any risks(see successful games as having only white male dudes for protagonists) to maximise profit.
-It isn't expensive for a smaller studio to animate and well, create a female protagonist, because those studios are small. The fact that several teams are working on Unity means that the co-ordination alone becomes costly; getting all those people to work together to create a new set of models, animations(because there are clear biological differences, especially in a game where the protagonist is as active as Assassin's Creed) is costly in itself.
-From what Ubisoft have done recently, the 4-identical co-op partners are there because I think they want to do the same sort of 'seamless' multiplayer that they did for Watch_Dogs. The way it was done there was that only the skin of Aiden Pearce changed, and only towards other players(the principal player, the observer saw themselves as Aiden Pearce, and other players as random NPCs, and vice versa(depending on perspective)). This means that they would probably require another campaign just for the female character, or a GTA V sort of affair where you have multiple protagonists. Basically, if this sort of Co-op is what they are going for, then it makes sense that they would have to spend a lot of money(in co-ordination as well) just to write another campaign.
Don't get me wrong, I am really tired of white male dudes in all of gaming as of late. It's why, when given the choice in RPGs, I tend to prefer playing a female character, because I am interested in how differently the game will play from that perspective, dissimilar to my own.
I just don't think that the devs themselves were this malicious as to outright cut out female characters because of laziness and other suggested reasons. It's important to know that in large enough groups, "you shouldn't mistake ignorance for malice".
I am doing this for the sake of argument and fair representation. I am not some paranoid "eugh, women in games" dipshit, so please do not judge me as such, as I know people on the internet have a tendency to pile on at the slightest sign of quasi-opposition.
Thank You.
