Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

NuclearKangaroo

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Zachary Amaranth said:
NuclearKangaroo said:
Like, now I'm not sure if you're joking or not. The cardboard box was more interesting.
well... thats like... your opinion man

Zachary Amaranth said:
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.
for me "not to offend" and "to appeal" seem interchangeable 90% of the time, maybe because people defending these kind of movements often act extremely offended

for me, an uninteresting black character is no different from an uninteresting white character, i dont want uninteresting characters, and i feel inclusion for the sake of inclusion can give birth to some very uninteresting characters


i didnt protest vocally in this instance in particular, if you read my post, you can see i said ubisoft's reasoning is complete bullshit, im talking in general terms, if the inclusion of female and racially diverse characters makes sense sure, add em, and hell in this particular case i think black/asian/hispanic characters might not make much sense, since we are talking 18th century france, and a black assasin might stick out like a sore thumb
 

daxterx2005

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I remember when Nintendo said Peach couldnt be playable in the New Super Mario Bros. series because "It would take to much time and money to properly code her hair and dress physics"......then they go and put her in Super Mario 3D world...

Back peddling at its finest.
 

Rebel_Raven

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Ubisoft's admitting their own incompetence with the excuses as to why they cut women from AC:U, and FC4. They didn't budget properly to say the least.

And it occurs to me that they cut women, out of everything. Kinda screams where female characters lay in terms of priority, doesn't it?

If it weren't for Liberation, and Child of Light, I'd be far more cheesed off at them than I am.
 

Dradeeus

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I have nothing to add to what the video was about, other than, since you added that last "disclaimer" at the end, I wanted to say I DO like your social justice videos. Even if I don't agree with everything you say, I'm glad you're saying it. I don't think you are, but I don't want you to feel outnumbered or bullied by glass-fragile people who don't want you approaching certain topics.

Though I do love your industry videos as well, of course.
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Jimothy Sterling said:
What really confuses me about it, is that they have a Woman Protagonist in an Assassin Creed game, in Liberation. So they have the animations in the code of their Assassin's engine, and a voice actress's phone number. This also doesn't explain why they couldn't get a playable character with a different color of skin.

As valve noted when it was making TF2, the silhouette is the most important thing to differentiate between characters. At a glance, you want to be able to instantly tell who I am shooting at, and in third person game who I am currently playing. If any of the Four Assassins are different at all in gameplay (and if they aren't, why have four Assassins?) having different colors of cloaks and different beards doesn't really cut it.
 

Atmos Duality

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The only point I'm going to be a stickler about is that the market -is- allowed to vote with its wallet.
Because the market isn't just Ubisoft. Jim, your own counter examples against Ubisoft's claim proves as such.

It's just that the market isn't voting along your lines. At least, not where Ubisoft's titles are concerned.

As for why Ubisoft feels the need to publicly lie about not creating a female protagonist, I have no idea.
I don't believe they should be required to provide a female protagonist as an option, but at the same time that doesn't justify or even logically fit the reasons they did provide.

This is one of those cases where sexism is an uncomfortably plausible possibility.
And I'm sure someone considered replying with the old chestnut "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity"

Stupidity is a given already, but it's a stupidity stemming from deeper issue within the company.
This isn't the first time Ubisoft has engaged this subject publicly.
 

Metalrocks

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had an little argument about it on the TR forum as well (we have a topic were we can talk about anything). some want to tell us that we shoulndt take it too seriously since its just a game and you play anyway just one character just in different colors.
they agreed thought ubis excuse is full of bull but people shoulndt take it too seriously.

i personally dont like ubis responds to it and im glad that people do cry out about it. because it is full of bull that a AAA cant take the time to create a female character.
 

Frozengale

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daxterx2005 said:
I remember when Nintendo said Peach couldnt be playable in the New Super Mario Bros. series because "It would take to much time and money to properly code her hair and dress physics"......then they go and put her in Super Mario 3D world...

Back peddling at its finest.
The difference here is that there is no model or animations comparative to Peach in the Super Mario games. This actually would take quite a bit of time and money on Nintendo's part and extra coding for the dress/hair physics. I mean it wouldn't be that long but something like that would actually take quite a bit.

In Assassin's Creed they would literally just have to go in and tinker with the model a bit and then apply the same exact animations. I mean you'd have to write in some extra code as well to deal with online viewing and other such things, but all in all they could have a female Assassin in the game in a couple of days. If they want to spend the time to update a few of the animations so they are more feminine then yeah that may take a few weeks depending how how many animations they change.

My point being that these are two completely different situations.
 

Callate

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Not G. Ivingname said:
Jimothy Sterling said:
What really confuses me about it, is that they have a Woman Protagonist in an Assassin Creed game, in Liberation. So they have the animations in the code of their Assassin's engine, and a voice actress's phone number. This also doesn't explain why they couldn't get a playable character with a different color of skin.
It's worth remembering that Liberation was a Vita game. Even its HD remake, by most accounts, was a fairly shallow port. It's far from impossible that simply porting over the female skeleton from the portable game and trying to make it mesh with a current-gen model with far more polygons, more points of articulation, and high-resolution textures, would create a character that didn't match the standard they felt they had achieved with the male character.

I don't think it's ever really been a question that they could hire a female voice actor (there's probably a few thousand to be found places like this), or even that they could create a female character. The question is whether they could do it and remain on-time, at current staff levels and budget, without dropping features that are currently on their milestone chart- and that's where the skepticism comes in. I do feel the amount of aggressive certainty the skeptics show in their skepticism isn't warranted, though.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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Zachary Amaranth said:
canadamus_prime said:
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.
Sorry, it's just you were like the 5th or 6th person to point out how mistaken I was.
 

gargantual

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Rebel_Raven said:
Ubisoft's admitting their own incompetence with the excuses as to why they cut women from AC:U, and FC4. They didn't budget properly to say the least.

And it occurs to me that they cut women, out of everything. Kinda screams where female characters lay in terms of priority, doesn't it?

If it weren't for Liberation, and Child of Light, I'd be far more cheesed off at them than I am.
Guess we'll have to put the dunce cap on their heads and send Ubisoft into the basement without supper. And they can't come out until all of their studioes have finished making Beyond Good and Evil 2 as repayment.

Sounds like a just punishment eh? ;)
 

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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The market can device. you pointed yourself many female protagonist games that the market can buy. it doesnt. because the market, gasp, actually likes male protagonist.

And creating multiple protagonist, regardless of sex, does cost a lot of money. and yes, it will cost more the more complex your grpahic and cutscene engine is, unless you like bodyparts clipping through objects.

and no, a reskin or "similar model with same animations" does not a female character make.

what Ubisoft shoud have said: "We create the game we want. you buy the game you want. we are not sacrificing our creative freedom because of few loudmouths". and that would have went well even if it had provided far less information. because people dont want information. people want pandering.
 

MaximumTheHormone

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Jan 28, 2012
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People do realize that its not just the model that needs to be redone?
Cutscenes may have needed to be altered to altered (depending on how they handled things, but if they wanted to give the concept a serious go they would've had to redo the cut scenes to center the female player).
Voices would be doubled, the assassin of course would have to be redone, but also all NPCs who address the character. Pronouns matter.

Pointing and yelling that other games could do it isn't a very valid call either.
Other games may have been able to manage it, but other games don't feature parkour mechanics and fluid movement.
If they didn't want this to be clunky as fuck they would've had to play test this aspect a LOT.
But no.
Its easy to design a female model.
Just ask these devs who have never worked on an ass creed game, or any sort of game that attempt the fluid movement of ass creed!
 

uchytjes

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If I was in charge of a game I would purposefully mislead and trap people into thinking all player characters were male through the use of clothing and, if and when they take the bait, I'd spring the trap by posting screen after screen of this female protagonist posing in her masculine clothing, all the while calling the people who thought the character was male "scared of transvestites and transgender people" as well as saying they were "not even looking skin deep, but at their clothing. How shallow and petty."

Ubisoft, get on that shit. Take the idea and run.
 

Redd the Sock

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Or it could be option 3: Ubi is afraid of getting burned. They took a bath on Beyond good and Evil, and want more hard signs that the online frevor isn't just online frevor.

I mean, I've seen this in comics for 20 years: endless complaints about too many events, too much Batman and Wolverine, too many superheroes, too few women. But if companies break the mold, the books they make don't sell in favor of the things everyone complains about. When confronted, it's the same thing: everyone has the internet but only knows about things marketed to the nth degree. Given that gaming buying habits haven't exactly proven the old bullshit wrong, companies are jockying for position to not be first lest all the internet anger is once again from a bunch of people that won't show up at the gamestop and they'll have to face downsizing.

Yes, the excuse was stupid, and maybe they're just perfectionists about such things while others cut cornors, but I said it a few times already this weekend: Ubi isn't exactly wrong to stop to ask if the extra effort would produce the cash results.

At the very least, maybe they should provide whatever sales data they're using to justify their decisions.
 

Shjade

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Feb 2, 2010
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There are times I wish I could feel like these kinds of videos will make a difference.

This is one of those times.

Sadly, I can't muster the kind of optimism required to believe that. :|
 

Infernal Lawyer

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Jan 28, 2013
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I'm pretty much on the "Ubisoft is allowed to do whatever the hell they want, though they still shouldn't insult us with their pathetic excuses" boat.

If they want to make a game with four protagonists who are such laughably cliche white male protagonists that they're practically identical, that's fine. However, making up blatant lies as to why you've made your decisions is not.