Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

[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;

 

[Neverhoodian]

Meanwhile in Nintendoland...

*Palutina revealed for Super Smash Bros.. Also create-your-own fighter with Miis.

*Playable female characters in Splatoon.

*Peach a playable character in Mario Party 10 (along with all the other Mario Party games before it).

*Four confirmed playable characters in Zelda: Hyrule Warriors, THREE of whom are female.

All this from a company that less than a year ago people were prophesizing doom for. How hard can it be, Ubisoft?

 

[Thanatos2k]

As usual, Ubisoft's only mistake here was screwing up their response.

The actual response is: "There are not 4 protagonists. There is 1. He is male, just like most, but not all, of our other AC games. When you play co-op, on their own screen, they are controlling that one protagonist. We will not be changing the gender or race of our 1 protagonist at this time."

They should be ashamed of their feeble lie responses, but they should not be shamed by people claiming they had to have a woman protagonist.

Instead of making a knee jerk ass-pull response when someone asks these kind of stupid questions of them, they need to take a bit, get the facts from their own dev team, then respond with the truth.

I think Jim jumped the gun on this episode because he clearly made it before Ubisoft clarified themselves:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2014-ubisoft-clarifies-assassin-s-creed-unity-s-lack-of-playable-female-leads/1100-6420397/

 

[Floppertje]

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.

nonsense. Ubisoft is rich enough to take the hit on that. this is a BILLION dollar company. you're not telling me that it's too expensive to take some extra time and effort to add female animations and voice acting. And even if it was, Ubisoft should just be open and say 'look, here's our budget, here's what we're doing with the money, here's how much it would cost and as you can see, it's prohibitively expensive for us.' except they don't, because it isn't. They are the ones with the problem and they are the ones who are refusing to give a proper answer when they're asked to explain themselves, so they have no right to complain when people start speculating.

 

[Frission]

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.'

Revolutionary France had alot of women take an active role in history. Besides there was an actual women who assassinated Marat, so that excuse doesn't really hold.

 

[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.

nonsense. Ubisoft is rich enough to take the hit on that. this is a BILLION dollar company. you're not telling me that it's too expensive to take some extra time and effort to add female animations and voice acting. And even if it was, Ubisoft should just be open and say 'look, here's our budget, here's what we're doing with the money, here's how much it would cost and as you can see, it's prohibitively expensive for us.' except they don't, because it isn't. They are the ones with the problem and they are the ones who are refusing to give a proper answer when they're asked to explain themselves, so they have no right to complain when people start speculating.

I'm sorry, but you're arguing from a position of ignorance - that ship date that's been set for a year or more is not nonsense. Take a look at the dev process for a 1000 strong team, then tell me it's a piece of cake to include females with a snap of your fingers.

 

[DrOswald]

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.

nonsense. Ubisoft is rich enough to take the hit on that. this is a BILLION dollar company. you're not telling me that it's too expensive to take some extra time and effort to add female animations and voice acting. And even if it was, Ubisoft should just be open and say 'look, here's our budget, here's what we're doing with the money, here's how much it would cost and as you can see, it's prohibitively expensive for us.' except they don't, because it isn't. They are the ones with the problem and they are the ones who are refusing to give a proper answer when they're asked to explain themselves, so they have no right to complain when people start speculating.

They did give a proper answer. It costs to much. Your response has, essentially, been "But you have infinity dollars! Prove me wrong or your are sexist!"

 

[SilverUchiha]

While I was hoping this "controversy" was self-explanatory and didn't need a full episode to really jump into, I'm happy that you, Jim, get it and are willing to call out the bullshit Ubisoft thinks it can get away with. They've made some great games that I do like, but the minute this controversy game up, i immediately pointed to Saints Row games and stated if they can do it without bleeding money for the past three games, surely Ubisoft's "lack of resources" are indicative of another problem since Volition isn't anywhere near as big as Ubisoft and I doubt Saints Row is anywhere near as big as Assassin's Creed (sadly).

 

[WildFire15]

Way I see it is they're trying to cover up a bit of laziness on their part. They've said there's only 1 actual playable protagonist, Arno, and whenever you're in co-op, you see the other players are different to you, which really translates as the protagonist in a different colour coat.
It's a rather cack-handed way of diverting the question and makes everyone look stupid, especially those hoping we believe it's the actual reason they've not done it.

 

[Necromancer1991]

Animating and finding VAs for female characters is too much work?

Oh, so that's why Beyond Good & Evil still doesn't have a sequel! It all makes sense now!

If only I could thumb up this comment!

Really I covered this in my facebook comment on the issue, the supposed cost of animating women has never stopped them from including them in the Assassin's Creed Multiplayer in the past or from including one in Far Cry 3's co-op mode. Is animating women on the next gen systems really that expensive? Is that where all of Destiny's ridiculous budget went, into animating female PCs on next gen consoles?

Way I see it is they're trying to cover up a bit of laziness on their part. They've said there's only 1 actual playable protagonist, Arno, and whenever you're in co-op, you see the other players are different to you, which really translates as the protagonist in a different colour coat.
It's a rather cack-handed way of diverting the question and makes everyone look stupid, especially those hoping we believe it's the actual reason they've not done it.

That's my biggest problem with the response, no matter how you look at it like Jim said it just makes Ubisoft look incompetent.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

The worst thing about all this, is there are real feminist issues in the world, and reasonable feminist activists trying to make real progress, and all this manufactured controversy serves to do is paint them with a broad stroke as silly, and ridiculously demanding.

Does the word Feminazi sound familiar? because this kinda crap is the reason that degrading term exists.