Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

[DTWolfwood]

So why is anyone excited for this game? the hand to hand combat still looks boring as hell. It looks like the same invincible parry system they've had since forever?

At the least 4 had the naval stuff, whats Unity got? besides the lack of female assassins?

 

[MCerberus]

This is a country where "equality" has become a slur.

Well it's not exactly unique to the US. It's actually really common for countries with creeping oligarch control of the news (Hai there Murdoch, Kochs) to turn the public against equality by framing it as an attack against the people already with a more than fair shake.

We're talking everywhere since ancient slave abuse to modern Russia/Middle East.
It's actually... pretty frightening that it's happening here again. Although you can say it never ended, due to the current sociopolitical conservative movement being largely created through the "Southern Strategy", which, quite frankly, was and is racist.

 

[Jesse Ron]

F'ing rights Jim, I stand by you all the way on this. I am tiring on the same games over and over. It would be nice if game developers would really listen.

 

[Weaver]

It's the art team to design an interesting character.

We had like five games with Desmond, who was not interesting in any sense of the word.

But more to the point, the cost in time has already been addressed. In fact, the video kind of addresses it. At the very least, Jim references other people who have addressed it.

Please take the time to read this. I'm really tired of non-developers telling everyone how they're so lazy and sexist and don't know how to do their job from people who have never written a line of code in their life.

http://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/27ut97/distinct_lack_of_female_characters_due_to/ci5z8i7

Long story short "I could animate a character in a few days" does not mean "I can ship the game with that character in it in a few days". We're talking like 25 - 30 days to add a character like this.

And by "interesting design" I mean artistically interesting, I avoided writing all together.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

ug.... just ug....

Games are art, they can make whatever art they want, i wish they did not make the lame excuse at all. Honestly, they do not owe anyone an excuse.

Then shouldn't you be complaining about the company that limited them? Remember, it was resource constraints that supposedly kept women out. They claim that they had intended for there to be a playable female character. "Games are art" is a ridiculous defense in the first place, but here it's a non-starter.

What are you talking about? I am not defending ubisoft, my entire standpoint is that they do not need to explain their artistic decisions to anyone, including myself. No defense necessary, they can make WHATEVER THEY WANT.

The idea that they need to explain why their creation does not cater to someone's aesthetic or political taste, is completely ridiculous in my opinion.

I wont be buying the game, but that is because of uplay, not the characters involved in the game. I would not mind female assassins or anything like that, in fact even if i found the game deeply offensive on some level, i would make the same point.

 

[Weaver]

The problem is it isn't just "Some animations and a voice actor".

It's the art team to design an interesting character.

Then why didn't they just say that? Why didn't they just say that instead of pulling out these half assed excuses about how programing a female character is too hard?

And Ubisoft is supposed to give us an interesting character? The same people that stuck us with Connor for 3 and Desmond for five games?

I mean interesting as the character should look cool. Why would the art team, which is a team that creates concept art, be writing a script for a co-op character?

They don't try to tell people for the same reason you thought an art team was writing a character: people just don't get it. This includes the PR people who are talking to everyone. so they tried to encapsulate their argument with "It's too hard to program" which was likely some poor person who has no idea what goes on, really, on the ground floor being told to perform damage control.

 

[timeformime]

First off, some really interesting responses here.

To play devil's advocate for a bit, I completely understand the outrage, but, before we criticize let's walk a mile in their shoes. If any studio has the right to make this claim, it's the studios behind a behemoth like AC. They're on a yearly release schedule and that shit needs to be done, polished, and as bug-free as possible. Above all they have to make sure the thing's finished first, and, all things considered, playable females are just extra animations and voices.

Literally every game ever made has to cut some feature for lack of time and resources even though everyone has been pushing for it, and, even though it would be the right thing to do, a great inclusive feature, and win them some good PR, it's not an unreasonable call to cut the female characters because they couldn't spare the extra weeks (thanks for that reddit thread that helped clear up how much time it takes for development). It's easy for Jim to fall back on his rhetoric of "they think we're fucking stupid", which is definitely part of his outrage shtick, but the fact is that the publishers know that the general public IS absolutely ignorant of these issues. They simply won't notice, and drawing a few days of heat from us gaming enthusiasts is a small price to pay. They WILL notice if Unity is a broken, buggy mess like AC3 was.

Assuming it would actually make the overall game experience worse (and whether or not it does we will never know), I choose polish over crowd-pleasing inclusiveness, though it may not be popular to say. It's why I've spent so much more time with GTA than Saints Row. Instead of seeing females added into AC Unity at the last minute, I'd prefer another really fantastic, well thought out AAA game with a fleshed-out female main character to pick up the torch from Bioshock Infinite and Last of Us. It would be more meaningful than slapping boobs on a hooded assassin you'll never get to know anyway.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

So why is anyone excited for this game? the hand to hand combat still looks boring as hell. It looks like the same invincible parry system they've had since forever?

At the least 4 had the naval stuff, whats Unity got? besides the lack of female assassins?

Well, the co-op game play i think would be the biggest draw? In a perfect world i would hope for some kind of Monaco style infiltration missions, where you need to coordinate with your companions to be successful.

 

[DeepReaver]

I really think people are blowing this out of proportions given another ubisoft game, the division, does have a playable female model. Take a good long look at AcU for a moment. Everyone in the co-op plays the same guy with varying levels of customizability. Yes being a female character at start would have been an interesting thing but given that at this point it would require a total overhaul of the game's story, player model, cut scenes, voice overs, etc etc it is just not viable.

I do not wish to defend their choices in the early stages of development, they could have easily gone with a female assassin for the main basis of the story, but to look at it from a marketing standpoint. Assassins Creed Liberation did not sell nearly as well as the other assassins creeds. Yes it was not as good of a game but large companies tend to go with the 'safe bet' on things and female characters proved to not be a safe bet in past experience. It is not good logic, and it is harmful in the long run but it at least comprehensible.

Yes they made the poor choice with not having a female pro-tag, but people demonizing a company for not deciding this at the start of the development cycle is really not something people should do. Assassins Creed is still after all one of the few games that continues to explore new and interesting environments with a, i think, still truly unique setting and story.

TLR Every character in co-op is just a variation of the same guy, decided early in the dev cycle, replacing them all with female really IS too much work at this stage.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

it kind of reminds me of some 90s cartoons that tried to be all famility friendly and inclusive, most of the time this lead to poorly made characters in which race and gender and not part of their character is THEIR character and they become walking stereotypes

And if they did that, we'd miss out on the amazing depth of characters like....

Ummmm....

Oh, I'm sure there was at least one character in the Assassin's Creed series who actually had some depth....

Honestly, your rationalisation isn't any better than the one you're saying is a bad excuse.

snake, adam jensen, etc

i havent played any AC game so i cant comment on them, i dont have anything agaisnt a good character, i dont care if its male, female, white, black, hispanic, asian, gay, straight, etc

but i dont want male, female, white, black, hispanic, asian, gay and straight to exist simply to not offend anybody, is freakin' stupid in my opiniona dn it can end up affecting the quality of the characters in a game

 

[Sanunes]

I don't think my problem is the lack of a female protagonist if that was the story they wanted to tell, for they have the Vita/PC game Liberation and the Assassin's Creed 4 DLC Freedom Cry featuring Aveline. Its how they decided to justify it to us, that I find to be what frustrates me.

 

[Erttheking]

The problem is it isn't just "Some animations and a voice actor".

It's the art team to design an interesting character.

Then why didn't they just say that? Why didn't they just say that instead of pulling out these half assed excuses about how programing a female character is too hard?

And Ubisoft is supposed to give us an interesting character? The same people that stuck us with Connor for 3 and Desmond for five games?

I mean interesting as the character should look cool. Why would the art team, which is a team that creates concept art, be writing a script for a co-op character?

My bad, but that how hard could it really be for them to make a female character look cool, when their methods to making a character look cool is to always throw them in the same cloak and hood? Ones that they've put on female character models in Brotherhood I might add.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

There are two thinking i dont know about Unity is:-

1. Are you all playing the same level as the main character but working together with others thus the cutscenes will show your character?

2. Are you just acting as backup to player one - and all the cutscences show Player ones character?

Also from what i gather people seem to be confusing an actual game whose main character is a female assassin with what i think is just a generic female avatar for multiplayer. For me if its just standard multiplayer like other AC games then they should have a female character. Also i think it would be safe for Ubisoft to create an assassins creed game with a female character. Would lead to more interesting elements if you add disguises to it and add commentary to how woman were treated in those eras as well. Lots of interesting things can be done with it.

 

[Callate]

So Child of Light and Beyond Good and Evil and Assassin's Creed: Liberation and its HD remastering never occurred, then?

I don't think this reaction is teaching game companies to be more inclusive; I think its teaching game companies not to respond when people complain.

Look, I agree that Unity might have done well to include a female character, especially in multiplayer, where they've demonstrated an ability to do so in the past. And I agree that their response was probably ill-stated at best.

But the fact that the visible assassins are four re-skinned versions of the same model makes me wonder if we might not be willing to consider taking them at their word, at least in as much as adding another character model would have its own set of difficulties and costs? If nothing else, this "oh, we could have done it in a couple of days" thing is as much bullshit as any of the claims it's addressing. No one follows up to ask Naughty Dog if they really could have whipped up a character like Ellie in a couple of days. No one asks if maybe a character who only has to react to getting shot or run through scripted cut-scenes might present different obstacles than one that has to move smoothly through crowds of other characters and interact with all of their models without clipping. No one even seems to say, "Gee, y'know what, all those games we're comparing AC: Unity to were last generation, and aren't we noticing how much the costs inherent to producing things on every new generation seem to be skyrocketing?"

So, yeah, they should have included a female character. Maybe Jim's even right that the budget is bloated and inefficient. But maybe we could stop all the armchair quarterbacking about the alleged triviality of coordinating the interactions of different skeletons, keyframing hundreds of different animations, lipsyncing a new model with a new vocal track, and so on? The willingness to pile on to the topic says more to me about the enthusiasm to seem self-righteous than a careful examination of the realities.

 

[Weaver]

The problem is it isn't just "Some animations and a voice actor".

It's the art team to design an interesting character.

Then why didn't they just say that? Why didn't they just say that instead of pulling out these half assed excuses about how programing a female character is too hard?

And Ubisoft is supposed to give us an interesting character? The same people that stuck us with Connor for 3 and Desmond for five games?

I mean interesting as the character should look cool. Why would the art team, which is a team that creates concept art, be writing a script for a co-op character?

My bad, but that how hard could it really be for them to make a female character look cool, when their methods to making a character look cool is to always throw them in the same cloak and hood? Ones that they've put on female character models in Brotherhood I might add.

I don't know, you'd have to ask an artist. This highlights the problem when an animator says "Yeah this will take a week", they mean the part they see will take a week.

Keep in mind concept art isn't just one picture you throw to a modeler, it's stuff like this:

Spoiler

 

[YoungZer0]

I don't think the devs could do right with an attitude like this. You want the truth? They probably couldn't be bothered. They didn't want it. The end.

It was never an officially confirmed feature, so they don't owe you any apoligy. And yet you demand it and then you're insulted when you get one.

They don't OWE you features they never promised in the first place, the only thing they owe you is a game that works and Ubisoft already had trouble delivering that in the past. Yet you want them to waste (yes, waste) resources and time (probably already crunching), so you can see female avatars next to you?

Stop spreading misinformation. You don't see yourself as a different avatar, you see yourself as the main character. Only your coop partners see you as a different avatar. So why would it make sense to have the people next to you running around as female when they are actually playing a male character?

It made sense in Watch_Dogs as you had to hide as a random NPC and limiting that to only male characters would break the gameplay.

This is not even a gender issue, it's an entitlement issue. And before any of you tell me how women feel about this (because you all asked a woman about her opinion on this first, right?). I asked my female gamer friends about this. Guess what? They were all insulted and mad ... until I told them that they don't see their avatar. They (4 of them) didn't see the point of "controversy". I wasn't mad when I first heard it. I thought it was a missed opportunity, but when I heard the details about the story, I couldn't help but side with the devs. 'specially after the ridiculous reaction this supposed controversy got.

What upsets me the most is that you guys are biting the hand that feeds you. You, the Political correctness crowd, Ubisoft is pandering to you guys. That's why their games are so boring and so afraid to make a statement about ... anything. They are afraid to hurt your little feelings as anything that might offend you, offends you.

You had an arab, italian, native-american, african-french woman, irish and an african-american man and you dare say Lieversity? How much more diversity can you get?

Better "check your privilege". Before this new assassin, there was an equal amount of black and white assassins. But you wouldn't write about that, right?

Right now, you're on the same level as the people who demanded DmC: Devil May Cry to be changed.

Erm...have you played Assassin's Creed? Unless later titles have greatly deviated from the previous ones, the entire game is third person. You spend literally the entire game, excluding cutscenes, with your avatar in the middle of the screen.

Yes. Your point being? Don't you understand what I mean when I say you don't see your avatar? The entire time, even in coop, you're only the main character. That's what I mean when I say you don't see your avatar. You only see the main character.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

It's France in 1790. Well of course you're not going to get a 'diverse group of people that are apparently super necessary for a game's story.'

 

[timeformime]

So Child of Light and Beyond Good and Evil and Assassin's Creed: Liberation and its HD remastering never occurred, then?

I don't think this reaction is teaching game companies to be more inclusive; I think its teaching game companies not to respond when people complain.

Look, I agree that Unity might have done well to include a female character, especially in multiplayer, where they've demonstrated an ability to do so in the past. And I agree that their response was probably ill-stated at best.

But the fact that the visible assassins are four re-skinned versions of the same model makes me wonder if we might not be willing to consider taking them at their word, at least in as much as adding another character model would have its own set of difficulties and costs? If nothing else, this "oh, we could have done it in a couple of days" thing is as much bullshit as any of the claims it's addressing. No one follows up to ask Naughty Dog if they really could have whipped up a character like Ellie in a couple of days. No one asks if maybe a character who only has to react to getting shot or run through scripted cut-scenes might present different obstacles than one that has to move smoothly through crowds of other characters and interact with all of their models without clipping. No one even seems to say, "Gee, y'know what, all those games we're comparing AC: Unity to were last generation, and aren't we noticing how much the costs inherent to producing things on every new generation seem to be skyrocketing?"

So, yeah, they should have included a female character. Maybe Jim's even right that the budget is bloated and inefficient. But maybe we could stop all the armchair quarterbacking about the alleged triviality of coordinating the interactions of different skeletons, keyframing hundreds of different animations, lipsyncing a new model with a new vocal track, and so on? The willingness to pile on to the topic says more to me about the enthusiasm to seem self-righteous than a careful examination of the realities.

Armchair quarterbacking pretty much sums it up. I think Jim jumped the gun here without knowing enough about the dev cycle to make the call. He's going entirely off the casual estimate of one animator, and it's kind of silly to assume that a feature in Assassin's Creed should take the same amount of time to implement this late in their dev cycle as a feature in a Zombie Studios game would from the beginning. Sure, in hindsight, any feature should be simple to implement, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.

 

[DrOswald]

There are two thinking i dont know about Unity is:-

1. Are you all playing the same level as the main character but working together with others thus the cutscenes will show your character?

2. Are you just acting as backup to player one - and all the cutscences show Player ones character?

Also from what i gather people seem to be confusing an actual game whose main character is a female assassin with what i think is just a generic female avatar for multiplayer. For me if its just standard multiplayer like other AC games then they should have a female character. Also i think it would be safe for Ubisoft to create an assassins creed game with a female character. Would lead to more interesting elements if you add disguises to it and add commentary to how woman were treated in those eras as well. Lots of interesting things can be done with it.

The game has a fixed narrative and protagonist. You can only play as Arno.

The Co-op works like this: Each player sees them self as the Arno and each of the other assassins as generic assassins. In this way each of the players is player 1, and when it transitions to a cutscene each player sees Arno in the cutscene and therefore they see themselves. This is why the generic assassins all look very close to Arno, because they are all literally generic brand Arno. It is basically a clever way to get co-op into a single player game without compromising the single player.

Including a female playable co-op character would require them to make a gender swapped version of Arno for the entire single player experience.

 

[Colt47]

Well, for a moment lets say they had only female characters and we couldn't pick a male character for the same reasons they stated at e3...

... and it actually holds. There wouldn't be much of a difference in the situation outside of the lack of gender politics to throw on the fire. o o;