Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

[Model_Omega]

The way I got Ubisoft's excuse, they were basically just admitting to being lazy, in other words, telling us the truth, I'd like to see more of that if possible!

 

[zombiejoe]

Really, why can't a company just say "we wanted to make the player characters male?" Why do they need to make an excuse? If they wanted to make them all identical guys because that's just what felt right when they were making them, then that's fine. No need to stumble over yourself trying to appear like it was some sort of impossibility.

But anyway, just saying this as a general statement, not directed towards the video's message in anyway, but for anyone who thinks that Ubisoft is racist or sexist for not having a non white male or female as one of the player characters, remember the fact that Assassin's Creed Liberation had you as a black female, and Assassins' Creed Freedom Cry had you play as a black man freeing slaves.

EDIT: And a Native American main character for AC3

 

[Ickorus]

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.

Games are only art when it suits their narrative, hence why I despise a lot of this stuff; it's all about throwing people under the bus and betraying your own morals, values and opinions in order to get ahead in whatever cause is fashionable at a given date.

It seems to me that it is more about appearing to care than actually genuinely caring.

If people really cared they would be a bit more critical of the bad parts of their cause rather than blindly supporting people because they claim to be in the same group.

 

[Lilani]

Really, why can't a company just say "we wanted to make the player characters male?" Why do they need to make an excuse? If they wanted to make them all identical guys because that's just what felt right when they were making them, then that's fine. No need to stumble over yourself trying to appear like it was some sort of impossibility.

In this case I don't think even that would work, because it's still pretty clear they were just being lazy. If they wanted their player characters to be male AND wanted to spend the time and money to make them properly then they wouldn't have used the EXACT same model for all FOUR of them. They would have individually designed them, given them different heights and builds, and perhaps at least even switched around their hair and skin color. But no, it's a combination of them not seeing acknowledging that people other than white males exist in the world AND them not wanting to spend their resources properly.

But anyway, just saying this as a general statement, not directed towards the video's message in anyway, but for anyone who thinks that Ubisoft is racist or sexist for not having a non white male or female as one of the player characters, remember the fact that Assassin's Creed Liberation had you as a black female, and Assassins' Creed Freedom Cry had you play as a black man freeing slaves.

I don't think they're sexist, however I think they are trying to appeal to obsolete demographics and it's going to continue to eat away at their positive press and gamer goodwill like a cur until they address it in some way. Ubisoft is trying to earn as much money as they can by staying squarely inside their little box of appealing to only the white male 18-25 demographic, and it's all so obvious it just hurts. I'm not only offended as a female by such a stupid and transparent excuse, but I'm also offended as a computer graphics artist at the fucking laziness of a company that has so many resources at its disposal. I imagine their programmers and animators and concept artists must sometimes have puking fits over how insultingly and painfully obvious the shortcuts they're ordered to use are. Because it's not them who are doing this, it's their higher-ups who are telling them to re-use the same models again and again.

 

[weirdee]

counterpoint 1: if the other characters are just faceless nobodies to the point that it doesn't matter if they are men or women, they could have proved this by putting female voices on two of the faceless nobodies and nobody would even know who would be which because they all are each character in somebody else's game anyway

counterpoint 2: they could have all been women if they are equally devoid of character

unless the main character's gender in the situation and their actions are actually important to the story, in which case they could have just said the main character's a guy for story reasons

but they didn't say that did they

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

I forget, did we get this whole controversy when Zelda: Four Swords Adventures came out?

4 player co-op, all white males, no controllable females. Where was the outrage?

There was not any because Nintendo did not lie to our face about why there were not female protagonists.

This whole "controversy" happened because someone asked them the question to begin with. Why did someone ask the question? I don't think anyone was asking that question about Four Swords Adventures. Why not?

As we've seen with Tomodachi, Nintendo is perfectly able to botch the response to the question, so that means no one asked them.

Wait, you're going to blame the person asking the question? Please, there will ALWAYS be people asking questions like that. But it's 100% up to the developer/publisher to decide what response to give.
Who do you think should be the smarter people here, the ones who are creating the game and working for big companies, or some random game journalist?

As I said earlier, Ubisoft could've given any one of the following responses:
> "We may add it as DLC" (with no plans of ever doing so, but this is about avoiding controversy)
> "We'll see if we can get the art/design team to look into it" (see above)
> "It didn't fit with our vision for the game" (a bit more risky to say this)
> "You'll have to ask the XYZ person/team that one, that wasn't up to me" (knowing that XYZ person/team is not contactable)

Instead those Ubisoft made an epic fuck-up by going into the details of animation/costume costs and revealing how a female character was in the works but ultimately ditched. I won't be surprised to find out if someone gets fired for this.

In this case I don't think even that would work, because it's still pretty clear they were just being lazy. If they wanted their player characters to be male AND wanted to spend the time and money to make them properly then they wouldn't have used the EXACT same model for all FOUR of them. They would have individually designed them, given them different heights and builds, and perhaps at least even switched around their hair and skin color. But no, it's a combination of them not seeing acknowledging that people other than white males exist in the world AND them not wanting to spend their resources properly.

It would've helped Ubisoft if they had kept their mouths shut about the matter or thrown out a generic controversy-free response (see examples above). All this could've been easily avoided.

This initially broke because of an interview done with a single dev at E3 by Videogamer. It's not uncommon for people to respond to questions they have not been briefed on poorly. Even Reggie gave a terribly damaging answer to a question about the possibility of Wii-u twitch integration when he wasn't expecting it.

True, but then that raises questions about why that person is even there at E3 representing the game. They are there to answer waves of questions thrown at them from all kinds of journalists/media - shouldn't it be someone who's been goddamn TRAINED (or at least prepared/briefed) on dealing with press? Questions like those because they are BOUND to come up.
Even saying "I don't know the answer to that" would've been a million times better than nervously stammering out excuses/lies.
Hopefully companies learn from this.

 

[Wilco86]

Jim seems to be trying to blame the low sales of games with female protagonists on the lack of marketing, rather than accepting that the reason they sell badly is that gamers prefer to play as a man.

For me this depends on the type of game I'm playing:

I play my own gender (a man) in games that give me truly options to play a character that behaves and does things like I would, and has more skills than mere combat/healing: the Fallout series, Mass Effect (although I also played FemShep as a secondary character), etc. (Non-combat skills like repair, speech, science etc. are important to me, and in real life I even won't hurt the vipers around my family's summer cottage but try to find a way to catch them alive and take them in another location. Pacifism FTW.)

*But* I like to play a female character when there's little similarity with myself and the player character, and the game is mostly about killing stuff with combat-focused skills and abilities. Examples of this are the Elder Scrolls series (where you can be the grandmaster of assassins and next to Jesus at the same time!), NetHack, Dragon Age: Origins, etc.

Edit: Well, Mass Effects are combat-focused games, but my friend told me to play them "as if I really was Shepard and doing the decisions".

 

[Ickorus]

Really, why can't a company just say "we wanted to make the player characters male?" Why do they need to make an excuse? If they wanted to make them all identical guys because that's just what felt right when they were making them, then that's fine. No need to stumble over yourself trying to appear like it was some sort of impossibility.

In this case I don't think even that would work, because it's still pretty clear they were just being lazy. If they wanted their player characters to be male AND wanted to spend the time and money to make them properly then they wouldn't have used the EXACT same model for all FOUR of them. They would have individually designed them, given them different heights and builds, and perhaps at least even switched around their hair and skin color. But no, it's a combination of them not seeing acknowledging that people other than white males exist in the world AND them not wanting to spend their resources properly.

But anyway, just saying this as a general statement, not directed towards the video's message in anyway, but for anyone who thinks that Ubisoft is racist or sexist for not having a non white male or female as one of the player characters, remember the fact that Assassin's Creed Liberation had you as a black female, and Assassins' Creed Freedom Cry had you play as a black man freeing slaves.

I don't think they're sexist, however I think they are trying to appeal to to obsolete demographics and it's going to continue to eat away at their positive press and gamer goodwill like a cur until they address it in some way. Ubisoft is trying to earn as much money as they can by staying squarely inside their little box of appealing to only the white male 18-25 demographic, and it's all so obvious it just hurts.

Hold on a second, not acknowledging that anyone other than white males exist? Only appealing to that demographic? Did liberation, 1, freedom cry, and 3 stop existing?

Assassins creed is an incredibly diverse game series, it's disingenuous to try and paint that picture otherwise.

 

[Lilani]

Hold on a second, not acknowledging that anyone other than white males exist? Only appealing to that demographic? Did liberation, 1, freedom cry, and 3 stop existing?

Assassins creed is an incredibly diverse game series, it's disingenuous to try and paint that picture otherwise.

Yeah, about Liberation: Remember that black female zombiejoe said was playable? Well, he was completely correct. Which means they do have assets for fully playable female characters, and not very long ago it was perfectly within their power to do such a thing. So why is it a problem now? Did those assets suddenly stop existing? Did they fire the only female voice actor in the entire world?

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

So why is it a problem now? Did those assets suddenly stop existing? Did they fire the only female voice actor in the entire world?

It's not a problem now. The person who was asked the question was either too nervous or really stupid and decided to stammer out a lie/excuse under pressure. Even if he had just said "I don't know" this would've gone a lot better.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

Yes, and Desmond isn't artistically interesting. The fact that I said "in any way" was supposed to indicate that.

And the rest doesn't change anything I've said. At best, you've put words in my mouth. And maybe in the mouths of others. I'm not sure anyone's saying that three days is all it would take to actually make the game work. At the same time, you're seeing all sorts of people pointing out that the overall effect is trivial (edit-with relationship to the whole).

I do find it interesting that they've been able to animate, voice, and even make playable women before, but I'm not sure that's particularly here nor there (with respect to this).

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.

And my point was that this decision had more to do with the constraints externally than their artistic vision. Remember the part where they claim that they totes had planned to include a female playable character?

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'm neither contesting that, nor do I particularly care. Had you not brought "art" and artistic determination into this, I wouldn't have even taken note. These guys were on a commercial deadline.

Assuming, of course, their excuse is true, but I'll take it at face value.

But no, for the record. They're not obligated to offer an excuse. They're not obligated to be nice. They're not obligated to do anything, really. And that has nothing to do with the intro of "games are art."

I don't hear it here in Norway at least, but I might just be hanging out in the wrong circles I suppose. We have enough countrymen bringing us shame as it is. So we don't need this kind of stupidity too.

Yeah, I can't speak for Norway. I see it in British and US news (the Brits often being a better source for US news), and I hear about it from Australia sometimes (I don't know how widespread it is). There are other regions, too (McCerebreus pointed this out), but I'm just not as familiar with them.

I live in a country where a sitting Congressman just called veteran's care an unnecessary entitlement and we've currently got issues with whether or not the right to vote should even be protected (often in the name of non-existent fraud), though, so it's muuuuuuuuch easier for me to see.

 

[Lilani]

So why is it a problem now? Did those assets suddenly stop existing? Did they fire the only female voice actor in the entire world?

It's not a problem now. The person who was asked the question was either too nervous or really stupid and decided to stammer out a lie/excuse under pressure. Even if he had just said "I don't know" this would've gone a lot better.

But this wasn't really started by a candid Q&A session, was it? I was under the impression these were statements made by Ubisoft and published through gaming news sites. Statements which were pre-written and pre-approved by people.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Two things, I have no reason to believe adding female characters is not a massive amount of work including writing, cinematics, customisation options and voice acting, even if they don't put much effort into the animation changes. I also think it's a poor excuse for an unanticipated criticism. I don't think they were originally going to have a female option and cut it later, I think they thought massive costs to time and money would sound like a better excuse than that they chose a male protagonist and stuck with it, but that's all unfounded speculation. The second thing, from what I know the 4 characters are the same person, just customised differently by different players, in which case you're really only discussing one design choice, not 4. Lastly, by allowing the player to customise gender or race you end up either removing references to those in the game, or planting little alternative conversations and interactions everywhere, and while the latter is a nice touch, in Black Flag there were quite a few conversations that were better for being able to assume the protagonist is the white male that he is. They can still explore themes of race and women's rights and whatnot (and I partially expect them to) while having a white male protagonist. There will probably be a number of good female characters in the game. I don't know of course, but it seems pretty likely.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

So why is it a problem now? Did those assets suddenly stop existing? Did they fire the only female voice actor in the entire world?

It's not a problem now. The person who was asked the question was either too nervous or really stupid and decided to stammer out a lie/excuse under pressure. Even if he had just said "I don't know" this would've gone a lot better.

But this wasn't really started by a candid Q&A session, was it? I was under the impression these were statements made by Ubisoft and published through gaming news sites. Statements which were pre-written and pre-approved by people.

Oh, wow. In that case they are even bigger idiots than I thought. Sounds like hammering nails into their own coffins lol.

 

[Zak757]

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.

All the more proof that, for one, Ubisoft needs to stop furiously pumping out these games as fast as humanly possible, and two, adding diversity to games needs to stop being an afterthought to be thrown in at the last minute and be included from the get-go.

 

[the December King]

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.'

Welcome to the thread, person who did not read the rest of the thread.

There have already been other posters who also know nothing about the French Revolution and also tried to pull out the "but women spent the entirety of the French Revolution underground or in the kitchen or something probably" excuse. They were corrected. For fun, try typing "French Revolution assassin" into Google.

...

I don't want to harp on it, women were crucial in the Revolution, and her contribution WAS totally revolutionary, as it were, and was more like the actual work of a real assassin, but it wasn't romantic or exciting- certainly not like in a game such as Assassin's Creed. The assassin in question didn't tae- bo her way through a bunch of manly-men guards to arm-bar/naked -choke/beat up the evil lieutenant of Evil until he dies, and spout a one- liner about women being macho too, or something. She stabbed a sick dude, who thought she was a friend, in a tub. But that was what assassinations were like, really, and not about being able to ninja dozens of well armed but momentarily confused historically accurate portrayals of soldiers or guards.

You know, as an aside, I'm starting to have alot of pity for guards in my escapisms- it never, ever seems to end well for them!

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Alternate title could have easily been, "The continued owning of Ubisoft by the righteous James Sterling and anybody with a bloody working brain in their head."

**slow clap**

Well said and well done. I, once again, am thanking the gods for you, Jim Sterling.

OT: I actually skimmed the first page of this thread and I was pleasantly surprised. Good for your Escapist. I'm not going to keep going, however, as I'm now happy and don't want to run into the inevitable disappointment.

 

[Weaver]

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.

Yes, and Desmond isn't artistically interesting. The fact that I said "in any way" was supposed to indicate that.

And the rest doesn't change anything I've said. At best, you've put words in my mouth. And maybe in the mouths of others. I'm not sure anyone's saying that three days is all it would take to actually make the game work. At the same time, you're seeing all sorts of people pointing out that the overall effect is trivial (edit-with relationship to the whole).

I do find it interesting that they've been able to animate, voice, and even make playable women before, but I'm not sure that's particularly here nor there (with respect to this).

Okay, you didn't like Desmond's design. Then what if I changed "The art team needs to design an interesting character" to "The art team needs to design a character" because that work still needs to be done. Even if you think they're shit at making characters, that doesn't change the fact they simply aren't going to just make a rough sketch of one character in an hour without presenting it to the team and lead designers for input and revision. That's how character concept art works in games.

In terms of time for character creation, you said

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.

And Jim referenced an artist tweeting "The character would take a few days to animate" then construed that to mean it would be a few days to just make a character. In my opinion, Jim did not tackle the fact that it will simply take far too long for a game that will be in RTM state (IE, completely finished) in about 4 weeks. You can't have QA doing huge testing cycles with like 5 days left until RTM unless you want to all get fired and lose your sweet 20% metacritic bonus.

And yes, they've been able to create female characters before because they had time. This is simply an unfortunate case where they're too close to the deadline and had too many resources working on getting the new co-op system to work properly in time that they ran out of time to implement an feature in the icebox.

And yes I know I'm going to get "Women as characters should not be considered a FEATURE" from someone. This is, again, the problem with non-developers trying to understand the insane world of SDLCs. Features are everything in code. Everything that doesn't already exist is a feature. Features are then broken down into a set of actionable tasks, or "stories" if you're doing traditional agile development.

Moving the character is a feature. Having a character is a feature. Jumping is a feature. Shadows are a feature. Lighting is a feature. A story is a feature. Sound is a feature. You get the idea.

 

[BrainBlow]

Imagine if this sort of logic was applied to any other type of fixed narrative:

J.K. Rowling is so sexist. Why didn't she consider inclusivity from the start? Clearly she should have written a second version of the Harry Potter series, "Harrina Potter", so her female readers could read about a witch instead of a wizard. What? That would be too much work? What a lazy writer. #womenaretoohardtowrite

Or what about movies? Why couldn't they have made a female version of Django in Django Unchained? Too much work? So lazy! #womenaretoohardtofilm

Or what animation? Why couldn't they have created a female version of Hiccup for little girls in How to Train Your Dragon? #womenaretoohardtoanimate

I just don't get it. Is there something I am missing? How is demanding genderswapable protagonists in a fixed narrative in any way reasonable? I mean, demand that they be female in the first place if you have to, but how can you justify demanding both genders?

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.

But it does have a fixed linear narrative. The game has a main character, the main character has a name and a personality, specific events happen, specific words are said by the player character. They player does not change these things in any way. Just because the exact method of how you get from cutscene A to cutscene B isn't set in stone does not mean the narrative is not set in stone. It is a fixed narrative.

That is absolutely not true.
Almost NO VIDEO GAMES have a FIXED narrative from the beginning! Story takes the backseat entirely in the game creation process, and even then, the stories tend to undergo significant changes all the time.
Extra Credits: How To Start Your Game Narrative [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22HoViH4vOU]

 

[Something Amyss]

snake

Like, now I'm not sure if you're joking or not. The cardboard box was more interesting.

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

Well, of course it's "not to offend," rather than to include, or appeal to. But I somehow bet that would be a problem, too.

Meanwhile, we get saddled with more shallow white dudes and the concern level just isn't equal. Can't help but wonder why.

More specifically, I'm not sure anyone's demanding a fully fleshed character. Just a MP avatar like they've had in the past. Makes me wonder why you protest so vocally.

I already conceded my ignorance. You people don't have to keep reminding me how stupid I am.

No offense. Just pointing out why I think I prefer the resource argument.

Do I even want to know what that is?

Assassins creed is an incredibly diverse game series, it's disingenuous to try and paint that picture otherwise.

Yeah, about Liberation: Remember that black female zombiejoe said was playable? Well, he was completely correct. Which means they do have assets for fully playable female characters, and not very long ago it was perfectly within their power to do such a thing. So why is it a problem now? Did those assets suddenly stop existing? Did they fire the only female voice actor in the entire world?[/quote]

Maybe they're the only developers in the world that recycle zero of their assets. Although, the voice acting thing is probably going to be tough. After all, they will almost certainly have women as NPcs in the game, women who have voices no less. And since you probably don't need more than some grunts and stuff to meet the standards most people have set, it's hard to argue this would ad much significant strain to the process.

Then again, maybe they get paid by the word.