Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

[Erttheking]

Oh hey! Zelda's a playable character in the Dynasy Warriors style Zelda game? That's pretty cool, who else do they-MIDNA! Yes! Midna is back! (Mourns lack of Wii U)

Pretty much Jim. The AAA industry is pretty much sticking their fingers in their ears and going "LALALALALALALALALALALA" when it comes to people making complaints about their games. Because as I always said "people will bite, kick, scream, and let their lives fall apart before they admit that they were wrong."

 

[Abnaxis]

You think an INTERACTIVE medium has a fixed, completely linear narrative? 0_o I would say you have no grasp of the issue people take of excluding women from gaming but it actually just looks like you have no grasp of gaming.

Depends on the game, and the story the devs want to tell. Yes, you can make a game that is completely agnostic to what the player looks like or what sort of character they have made--a la Skyrim or Saints Row--but there's no requirement that every single story has to not care what the protagonist is like. You can also try to write a story about a specific person, and let the player live in their skin for a while. Assassin's Creed is (and always has been) trying to achieve the latter, and in that case it works a lot better if you start with a predefined protagonist.

 

[Erttheking]

I disagree with one point. Those that say, "Dur... Social justice warrior" as if it were an insult is an idiot.

Are people really dumb enough to use something as a slur when it just makes them look way worse and way more bigoted?

I live in a house with Tea Party supporters who seem to think saying someone is Liberal is a good reason to dislike them, so I can say from experience, yes, yes they will.

 

[lukesparow]

While I'd love to see more variety in protagonists, it doesn't bother me too much.

The funny thing is, that even when I get the option to create my own character out of many diverse characteristics, I usually end up with a steriotype white male at the end of the day.
So yeah, not a big deal to me.

I do hope more variety is implemented for people who do want to see it though.

 

[otakon17]

Still feeling ill, Jim? Sounds like it in the intro and outro.

Yeah, bit of a relapse. I did the middle bit feeling great, then a few days later I had to do the intro/outro, and started losing my voice and stuff.

Gonna be going back to the doc this week to find out what happened. Got a sneaking suspicion whatever demonism I picked up on holiday turned into an infection.

You know Jim I said the same thing on your second point at the end of the video in another topic here. Just that publishers don't want to take even the slightest chance of losing revenue on something they haven't tested/focus-grouped/whatever. Bastards need to trim the fat, so to speak.

Off topic of trimming the fat, man your podium is getting REALLY crowded. And did I see a Johnny Test figure on there? You need to burn it man, that show is hot garbage.

 

[10BIT]

As one of these people that has thrown the "SJW" term against you, I think if there was anything wrong with your rant, it was because you were being too soft on Ubisoft. If it weren't for uPlay, there attitude towards this would have been the thing to turn me off the game. Even if you were to ignore the "political" issue and there asinine reaction to it, there are still clear benefits to a game that diversity can bring. There are the tangible benefits of being able to tell what skills a character has at a glance (are they best at stealth, duelling, crowd control, etc.), but also the intangible benefits of having a more charismatic cast than Blandy McGruff and his clones.

 

[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 the modeling team to model it. The texture artists need to texture it. Then the animation team to animate it and rig the skeleton. Then the QA team to test to make sure all the grabbing animations when climbing the feet and arms hit the same locations and don't bug out. Then the dev team to fix the bugs that are obviously going to happen, then the QA team to make sure all the bugs are sorted, then the build team to make sure it gets into the final product before the RTM which with game publishers is incredibly inflexible.

The cost and expense was not money, it was time.

 

[Something Amyss]

People will buy the excuse, even defend it. That's why.

Well I didn't say it was a valid excuse, I just said it was more valid than saying it was too expensive.

Well, no. The historicity argument is utter crap. Not only do we have evidence of female assassins, not only did Ubisoft add them into other games, but Ubisoft chucked historicity out the window with the very first game and got worse with time. That excuse doesn't fly at all. But the excuse that maybe Ubisoft so poorly manages things that their games with huge Hollywood budgets and three-year dev cycles still can't manage to make a woman possible?

I'd say that's a more valid argument. You still have to ignore them animating women before, even women with voices, even women with voices doing assassiny things. But it's still the more likely reason.

and this is the same game where mayans built a holographic projector using a crystal cube that somehow holds blood plus a matching skull.. The same game where a pirate could afford to plate his entire ship in iron long before it became the norm and long before a shipwright would have been able to do it. Yet every harbormaster has an army of expert blacksmiths on hand.

The same game where the very same pirate melted down gold to make his cannons, his guns, and his mortar. On an incredibly tiny ship that can hold shit loads of cargo and have loads of crew members.

Don't forget that da Vinci discovered man-powered flight in AC2, something he not only failed to do but we can't really do even to this day using his methods. I mean, we sort of have man-powered flying machines, and his designs led to a lot of modern ideas about flight, but Ezio flying through the air like a bird was pretty freaking unhistoric.

But then, it seems feminism is harder to believe than sci fi for a lot of people.

But even then, women have already had positions of power within both the Assassins and Templars by this point in history, AND we've already had a female main character by this point, so it doesn't jive with their own rules either.

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.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

 

[ex275w]

The excuses they use are so flimsy... I can come up with a better one: "The main character can only be a white, male because Xaspect of the plot wouldn't make sense otherwise" or the lore justifies that decision.

For the Social Justice Warrior thing, the episode wasn't really about that only about lies. Social Justice Warrior behavior is about bullying and shaming people and company for not sharing the exact same political agenda as you. Basically calling someone racist/sexist/ableist for trite reasons like a Powerpuff girls drawing or the Harry Potter books being books (these are actually real examples).

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

i dont really think adding every gender, every race, and every ice cream flavor just to not offend anybody is the right way to go, 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, if the dev thinks they can pull it off, great, but i dont think most devs have the talent to do so

that being said, this excuse is bullshit, if you, for whatever reason, dont want to add female characters to the game, dont freaking do it, dont make up dumb excuses

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

Well, in the case of AC: Unity, do the extra protagonists actually have any impact on the story?

The original "it is too hard" quote came from a dev. Ubisoft PR actually came up with a pseudo rational response: everyone, even when joining in as co-op, is still playing as the main character Arno, so the model should stay male anyways. In this manner, "Yes" there could be an impact on the story, but it's the other people needing to stay as the main character.

This reason makes sense, but it still is a bit silly, because if we all play as the same character, THEN THERE'S FOUR OF THE MAIN CHARACTER. Also, why do we get to fully customize armor, weapons, facial expressions, and body shape? I mean, we can customize the Arno to the point he no longer looks like Arno, but god forbid anyone actually wants to make this no-longer-Arno character female

However, whether their defense is logical or not, I'm just getting tired of staring at the same man-bro character design for a 7th year running. Variety is the spice of life, and currently there's just so little of it.

 

[Rabidkitten]

I think it would blow your mind if you knew just how much money it costs Ubisoft to do anything. A corporation that big? Just the meeting alone to consider something costs 1000s.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well I guess that answers that then. Some people are just eh.... not quite there I guess.

Maybe it's just not as common outside the US. But here, yeah. This is kind of a big thing. And things like "Social Justice Warrior" are just terms used to shut down the conversation. "You people are bad because you're like these other people who are bad!"

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

 

[Jupiter065]

I look forward to Ubisoft releasing a selectable female assassin model for multiplayer as paid DLC (probably part of a number of new models, but still) in 3-4 months.

"They wouldn't do that! The multiplayer is supposed to be seamless!" except for the part where you walk into a bar, see another version of you sitting at the table and then teleport to the middle of the mission this other you is doing. Adding a character select screen in between that won't break immersion cause immersion's already in pieces all over the floor.

 

[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?

 

[VonBrewskie]

I think it would blow your mind if you knew just how much money it costs Ubisoft to do anything. A corporation that big? Just the meeting alone to consider something costs 1000s.

Yeah but that was Jim's point. These guys have a ton of capital and they are always interested in expanding their customer base. They spend thousands on meetings alone and somehow the idea that making female protagonists an option for gamers is dismissed. This is a point of conflict for a lot of gamers and game journalists. Ubisoft (and a lot of other big developers for that matter) hasn't/haven't really tried to appeal to female gamers in a significant way so there's no way to tell if there's a viable market for them.

 

[yellost]

Well, this is sad when I feel I have to go to Ubisoft's defense when I don't care either for the company (not until they give us that sequel to BG&E anyway) nor the Assassin's Creed series.

But here is my pick on it : From What I've played (mainly the first two, though I haven't finished either), that series has always been mainly story driven.
So the way I see it, they started writing a story with one character in mind (I suppose I could be completely wrong about the quality of the writing but we won't know until it comes out). That character being a white male dude, Arno. Since each game seems to focus of one set of ancestral memories, I can totally see them not going the mass effect route where you create your own character (which isn't really the point of the game). So the whole production team would concentrate on making the character work and so on.

Now people complain about the lack of choice in co-op mode, But from how that co-op mode seems to work, each player plays as the main character and sees the other one on his screen as someone else. People can't choose what they will look like and wouldn't even see it anyway, so I can totally see why the developers didn't think it would be that big of a deal not to implement "playable" female characters (I put the quotation marks there because players wouldn't even actually play them, since to them, they would be playing the main dude, it's only on the others' screen that they would show as female).

So for once, I think this is one of the very rare times where the developers have actually been honest as to why they didn't put the feature in the game instead of having some PR statement that doesn't say anything (like most of what came after it, including the PR rep always present to shut the dev down whenever they're asked about the issue). And the actual bullcrap thing that has been said is the stupid quote from that Jonathan Cooper about it being a two-day work. That thing has our entire animation department climbing the curtains because it makes it sound like everything can be done with the snap of a finger when it actually takes hours upon hours of work (and it certainly isn't just about animating the damn thing anyway).
They never said anything about it being just a money issue, it's all about workload and time frame, here.

So yes, they could totally have planned it better from the beginning or written the story from a female character's point of view but I can see why it all happened that way. I haven't heard anyone complaining about Liberation not giving the opportunity to play as a dude and I assume that's because the story is about Aveline, not some random character created by the player.

And comparing that to any open world game with character creation features and where it's more about the sandbox than the story (or where the gender doesn't matter, I guess, which is why that whole argument could fall flat right on its face when we finally get to know the story) seems a bit unfair to me.

I am totally all for more diversity in playable characters, but I still want it where it makes sense and to be about strong and interesting characters more than just generic blank skins so some people can feel better about it.

Anyway, just my two cents. But it happens so often that stuff need to be cut from development for purely logistical reasons and then they're called racist/sexist etc...

Mow don't get me wrong, I completely agree that there is something wrong with female representation in the game industry (the whole story about Dontnod trying to sell their Remember Me pitch is quite a good illustration of that) but I don't think this particular issue is the best place to fight for it. It reeks more to me about escalation due to misquote and PR fuck up than actual sexism on Ubisoft's part.

At least now I know why developers can't be honest about why they don't include some features. But then, I shouldn't be surprised, after all, this is the internet...

And to conclude, I'm going to repost that quote that was mentioned in the editorial discussion because that guy deserves a high five:
http://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscreed/comments/27ut97/distinct_lack_of_female_characters_due_to/ci5z8i7

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

I think it would blow your mind if you knew just how much money it costs Ubisoft to do anything. A corporation that big? Just the meeting alone to consider something costs 1000s.

Hell, it costs them about 60 grand in caviar alone just to run the planning meeting to decide which endangered whale's blubber they should use to fuel the fires that light power their development castle.

 

[Something Amyss]

"They wouldn't do that! The multiplayer is supposed to be seamless!" except for the part where you walk into a bar, see another version of you sitting at the table and then teleport to the middle of the mission this other you is doing. Adding a character select screen in between that won't break immersion cause immersion's already in pieces all over the floor.

Well, yeah, but the three identical dudes is perfectly normal. It's the idea that one of them might be a chick that breaks my immersion.