Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

[grumpymooselion]

I think there should be more playable female characters in games, but, really, most games I come across have characters so, "eh" that their gender and racial characteristics barely matter. In this light, I'd prefer customizable characters I can make to the gender and race that I prefer. Still there are examples of cases where a gender locked character is exactly what should happen.

Ubisoft's excuses are, well, terrible. They don't make sense. Here is something that does make sense. The game is set during the French revolution. I'd like to see a Female main character out of Assassin's Creed with a female character. There are tons of time frames they could set AC during that a female character makes all the sense in the world. I want to see those. Still, despite the time period of Unity, I still think they could have managed a female, and playable, character if they just stood back for a second and thought it out. It just would have been a very different story. Maybe even its own game aside from this. I'd have loved to see that.

I don't believe AC has a diversity problem as a whole though. AC1 brought us a middle eastern Assassin. AC2 (and its spin offs) an Italian assassin. AC3 brought us a Native American Assassin. Liberation brought us a black female assassin and Freedom Cry brought us a black male assassin. The first white male Assassin we ever had, that I can think of, is from Black Flag. Unity bringing us three copies of one French Assassin doesn't bother me that much in that light, but I do still think a female Assassin during the same period as Unity could work, especially if it was made its own fully fleshed out story.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

Just look at Laura Croft; having her be the stalwart heroine of the game wasn't good enough. She had to be God, unblemished and unbreakable because having her seem vulnerable or human was considered a slur against all women.

Remember the time Marcus Fenix was borderline gangraped in that one Gears of War cutscene?

Yeah. Me neither.

A strong character can go through turmoil, a strong character can be human; resorting to the "woman is beaten and abused" trope was cowardly and attention-grabbing. If you think men are being written well (which they aren't because writing in games is awful on almost every conceivable level but let's run with it) then women need to be written the same. There shouldn't have to be any more concessions in making Lara Croft a "human" than Master Chief or Duke Nukem.

 

[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?

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.

Guess it'll appeal to the very few that actually have friends to play with. If its random matchmaking, the result will most likely be too many trolls and most will just play single player. So... i don't consider co-op to be much of a draw if the base gameplay is still the worn out "parry and win" formula.

I do see your point. i personally don't play AssCreed online, thus this new game does not appeal to me.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

well... thats like... your opinion man

Whose opinion would it be other than mine?

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

Considering how much time you spend knocking down straw men, posting false or misattributed statements, lying about Anita Sarkeesian and so on, pardon me if I don't actually agree.

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

And yet you only seem to show up to gripe in topics about minorities and take jabs at "feminism."

Like the absence of women in games, it's more the overall pattern than any given statement.

are you taking this personal? now you are starting to sound offended, see what i mean?

what lies have i said about anita? that she isnt a gamer? well thats her own words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcPIu3sDkEw

i have posted around a thousand times in the escapist forums, if i only wandered around in feminism and racial threads i definitively wouldnt have this many posts

is a real shame you seem to be harboring a real hate for me, simply because of my opinion that a game's quality shouldnt be compromised over a political agenda

 

[JimB]

Give me a strong female protagonist, character or sidekick that'll interest me, but don't throw in token women for the hell of it.

Why not?

Apart from the obvious fact that it'd be done only to shut up people across the web and media, which would be a disservice to all?

I don't think it's an obvious fact at all--sometimes people with good intentions make boring characters because they're bad writers, you know? Not everything ever done is cynical and manipulative--but yes, apart from that.

Because it should be done right or not at all, which should go for all characters of all races and genders. You might ask yourself if that's my criteria and that it's rarely being fulfilled anyway, then why not have these token characters?

Actually, no, I'm asking myself why you singled out bad female characters as being unacceptable but did not, at least in a post I noticed, decry bad male characters until now. Are bad male characters somehow acceptable under your paradigm, and if so, why the gender divide? And don't you think that arguing for perfection straight out of the gate is arguing against the necessary process of making mistakes to learn from until you get it right, thus incentivizing companies to just keep producing the same white dude characters over and over because they can meet the unspecified burden set for them with that kind of character?

 

[altdoom]

Explains why Beyond Good & Evil 2 isn't happening yet herp derp.

 

[Schadrach]

It wouldn't take much work to get a female model in that game surely. We've been able to play as a female in AssCreed since Brotherhood when the multiplayer was introduced up until AssCreed 4. Just take one of those women, decorate them in shiny current gen graphics and hire the voice actress. Unless hiring the voice actress alone would be far too expensive. Ah well.

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

Eh, I took it as the standard corporate speak bullshit around not wanting to spend money when it wasn't absolutely necessary.

Don't the four existing characters all have essentially the same model and animations and just different skins? In that case, I could see the argument that a female character with different model, animations, and voice acting might be disproportionately expensive, since she would cost almost as much as the other 4 put together.

That doesn't make it better, it just makes it disproportionately expensive because they were cutting corners there, like Aiden Pearce in Watch_Dogs having a wide array of character outfits, but that are all reskins of each other because they only wanted to bother to make one model.

 

[Sergey Sund]

Read this AMA on reddit where a game developer outlined WHY Ubisoft probably went with "too expensive".
They had a female character in the very beginning of the planning phase, then saw that they didn't have enough teams & time to implement it "with quality" as the dev. put it.
Like, they started making the game with a dude, then scripted everything, implemented everything, the female was on the back burner. Then they realized that - if they were to implement a women it would necessitate rewrites, etc. and in the end they would have a playable woman - but it would have been obviously "tacked on", almost like a mini-game inside their Assassin's Creed title.
So they wrote it off at the end.
He said that dev teams are psyched about the idea of more diverse characters, but the "sacret" release dates, tight schedule, and not wanting to completely work your team into the ground made it impossible to late-implement more characters, for which they had no groundwork done.
It's not the developer whose at fault, according to this one guy on reddit who claimed to be a developer. He kicked the blame to the higher-ups and contract-makers, who bascially plan 'extravagant' characters (read: non-cis-gender-white-males) out of the game before a dev ever gets his hands on. You would have to have an extra team working on that, for which you would need to factor money in, because the other teams can't do their work PLUS a rush-job on extra characters.
I say "extra characters" because, clearly, that's what it was. If the approved script had featured a female lead, or a playable female character to begin with she would have been in the game.
This was fucked up in the planning stages, no, even before, when someone made the timeline for the entire project.
And, as Jim puts it, that level of management is the kind that does the paint-by-numbers-thing, the focus-group-outline of the project, and there's your black sheep.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Just look at Laura Croft; having her be the stalwart heroine of the game wasn't good enough. She had to be God, unblemished and unbreakable because having her seem vulnerable or human was considered a slur against all women.

Remember the time Marcus Fenix was borderline gangraped in that one Gears of War cutscene?

Yeah. Me neither.

A strong character can go through turmoil, a strong character can be human; resorting to the "woman is beaten and abused" trope was cowardly and attention-grabbing. If you think men are being written well (which they aren't because writing in games is awful on almost every conceivable level but let's run with it) then women need to be written the same. There shouldn't have to be any more concessions in making Lara Croft a "human" than Master Chief or Duke Nukem.

So you're saying bad people should never do bad things to women because women can't defend themselves? That's kinda' sexist of you!

Yes, she was almost raped. And you know what I say? SO F*CKING WHAT?!
That's real! That happens! Bad people rape. Those dudes on the island were bad people, they almost raped Laura, and she escaped and killed them all. Forgive me for my ignorance, but isn't that half the plot of all LifeTime movies? Isn't that suppossed to be empowering?! She killed ALL of them! Violently!
Remember the time Laura jumped out of burning spaceship and fell through earth's atmosphere? No? Yeah, me neither. I think that was Noble 6.
Remember the time Laura was on a transport and a giant alien spider blew it up, hurling her through a building? No? Me neither.
Comparing the difficulties of a realist game like Tomb Raider and the action set pieces of a sci-fi shooter like Duke or Halo is simply weak. They're not the same genre, not the same gameplay. You're not supposed to feel the same! Laura is supposed to be scared because there's a large stealth element. Why is Laura stealthing? Because these guys want to rape her! I suppose they could have gone with 'they have guns' but oh wait, they did.
Does Master Chief stealth? No? Why is that? BECAUSE ITS AN ACTION GAME!

But if we're comparing genres blindly, then all video games are sexist against men because of the Amnesia series. You're a man, you're scared and you hide and you can't fight back. As a man, and the protagonist being a man, I find that sexist. Laura is CLEARLY shown to be the superior gender.

 

[zerabp]

I'm a libertarian and I have to say npo libertarian I know would say "Let the market decide." Because there isn't a free market when it comes to video games. Just like with books, movies, and television, the video game market is lorded over by big name publishers. The market is speaking I believe through indie developers who are making loads of cash when they release a game the market wants. If it were up to the market instead of publishers you wouldn't need to specify that this isn't social justice because the market is there for female protagonists, and no it's not just with female gamers.

During the Destiny Alpha I created 6 characters (I deleted three to create three) of those characters I made 4 Female and 2 male. This is in a game where you rarely even get to see what your character looks like. Even then I prefer the aesthetic of female characters during those short time because I am a male who derives great satisfaction from the female form.

So Jim libertarians are with you because the recognize that the market is not open, that it contains multiple monopolies and that the "AAA" market especially needs to be given a course on the free market and the literally billions they could make appeasing it's different sectors.

If a market is ever controlled by a few big companies than any libertarian worth their salt will recognize that it's impossible to let the actual market decide rather than those companies.

/endrant

 

[St. Aidan]

Sooo... If it ts too hard to design n animate woman in the single player campaign of a next gen title, how did they manage the playable woman it all the other AC multiplayer??? A fucken genie?? Tears of a bi-sexual mermaid??

 

[Abnaxis]

Diversity is unilaterally beneficial in any voluntary association (like, say, gaming advocacy). The more diverse the gamer landscape is, the more power we as consumers can wield any time a publisher decides to take a shit on us or a conservative pundit decides that legislating control on video games is the best way to stop mass shootings. Different sub-groups have access to networks and resources that white male 20-somethings don't, and if they have a vested interest in gaming, they can help us defend and improve upon it.

So no, we don't "need" diversity, but it helps. It helps us shape our society to our benefit, and it helps us exert our power for better quality, more free (as in "Free Speech," not "Free Beer") games.

That's based on the assumption that more diversity will result in more groups of people gaming. However there's no evidence to support this belief. Unless we make shooters that appeal to pretty much every demographic these games are still going to be an easy target every time there's a mass shooting.

Which belief are you referring to? If you are questioning whether making video-game characters will result in a more diverse player-base, well...of course there's no evidence for that. If you can show me any conclusive evidence that taking any action will guarantee that more total people will buy a game, why the hell are you on these forums, instead of making millions for marketing somewhere? Manipulating consumer behavior is not a cut-and-dry, solved problem.

If you are questioning whether having a more diverse player base will help when the next jackass wants to attack the hobby, I have a library of books that delve into societal constructs and social capital for you to read (okay...more like five or six, but that's, like, a shelf, right?) The short version is this: the next time there's a school shooting and a politician somewhere decides to attack games because the gun lobby is paying for his Fritos, gamers having a wider base of support will completely take the wind out of his sales. Because that politician also relies on support (or apathy) from a diverse group of people, that includes women, latinos, blacks, men, elderly, young, etc., etc.

The more of those subgroups we have that understand gaming, the better off we are. For example, every 60-year-old grandma who likes playing Skyrim is one more voice, who will tell all the other grandmas she knows just how full of shit the politician--all on our behalf. And the grandmas will listen to her as part of their group, where they wouldn't listen to me even though I am saying the same thing, because I'm an outsider.

When you talk about self-selected groups, there are two primary paths to relevance: exclusion or inclusion. Exclusive groups derive strength through unity, by excluding those who do not fit their narrow criteria for membership. That can include dissident groups like white supremacy groups, but it also includes less controversial groups like MADD or the NAACP.

Inclusive groups, on the other hand, gain strength by accepting ANYBODY. They tear apart at the seams from a lack of unity that exclusive groups enjoy, but they can build far-reaching networks in every corner of the world, and leverage a diverse set of social resources to accomplish their aims, assuming they don't completely fracture into irrelevance. Think like the Occupy movement, which has pretty much crumbled now since everyone wanted to take it in a different direction, or Anonymous, which has been very successful at recruiting people with specialized knowledge to break online systems because there's no barrier to entry.

Gaming Enthusiasts (i.e., not just the people playing games, but the ones who show up, try to advocate for the gaming community, and try to advance gaming as an art) as a group, have been slowly, painfully evolving from the exclusive category to the inclusive category. It used to be, if you were passionate about games, you were probably a computer geek. As an adult, you couldn't share your passion with outsiders to the gaming community without being shunned. This naturally created an exclusive system, where we could build community cohesion and common ground through unity.

Now, thanks to technological advances and a society that's more accepting of technology enthusiasts, gaming has been opening up. Everyone has a computer, and the gaming community no longer needs to be exclusive...but the primary drivers of the community were built around exclusion, and momentum is driving the exclusivity as the status quo.

This is bad. Middle ground between exclusivity and inclusivity is not a good place to be. It is the worst of both worlds--there's no unity, no voice for gamers any more, but at the same time we are shunned by outsiders and we are political whipping boys. We aren't going back to being an exclusive white boys club--it's not good for business and it's just plain impossible--so our best bet is to embrace diversity so we can get those grandmas lobbying for us already.

Maybe having more diverse protagonists is one way to do that, or maybe it isn't. A common criticism that comes from outsiders is that gaming is not a welcoming community, and from my perspective, having more representative characters would help with that. That's why I'm all for having more diverse characters in my video games, especially in my AAA video games.

 

[Fireaxe]

new WoW Expansion which explores the Stories of Warcraft 1-2 (1993-1995) where no female Characters existed yet desperately wants to add some *important* female Princess or something to the game.

Not that I disagree that forced in female characters are bad, but Alleria (Sylvanas big sister) was a hero unit in Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal and appeared in multiple campaign missions for the Humans. Plus the new WoW expansion is meant to be set at least partially before Warcraft I.

 

[Giest4life]

Regardless of my personal feelings, the market [em]has not[/em] decided that it wants female characters. Because had it had decided that, people would only be buying games non-homogenized games.

 

[Abnaxis]

Now that I've ranted on why we need inclusivity in our games, I need to say that this video, and the outrage that it represents, is complete, unfiltered bullshit.

The guy from Ubi did not say anything wrong. He's is not full of BS or lying, and Ubi is not incompetent for not wanting to add a female option. The game doesn't work like CoD, or Borderlands, or Dark Souls. It is built to be a character-driven single-player game, where co-op players share a world--where they are still the main character--with other players, who also are the main character on their own systems. That means adding a female option requires completely overhauling the single player campaign, all cut-scenes, all interactions, all voice acting (not just the main character), probably even the entire script if there is a love interest ("if"? Of course there's a love interest...). This is not trivial.

A female option does not fit with the game, and adding it to the game would be very expensive. How much of the budget do you think they spent on the main character? Not just animations and textures, but design, scripting, voice acting, writing, the works? Now double it, because the dev team would have to restart from the beginning for the female option.

It is obvious, from even a cursory look at how the game is structured, that it would be audaciously expensive to add another whole protagonist to this game. But nobody is looking at that. Clearly, since Borderlands did it, Ubi should have no problem even though there are completely different design constraints between the two games... You're not even trying to think about the implications of the demands you are making.

I have spent a LOT of time, money, work, and study fighting to make the world a more equitable place. Like, real-life demonstrations, volunteer work, and donations. Yet, this video makes me cringe, because it legitimizes all those same assholes who hurl "SJW" as an insult that you complain about. All they need to do is point to this video, where you tilt at windmills over a justifiable design decision, and now what I try to do is that much harder.

Not only that, but now I'm in the unenviable position of defending mother effing UBISOFT. I hate Ubisoft, their draconian DRM, effing UPlay, and all the anti-consumer bile they're tried to push alongside all the other AAA companies. Yet here I am...

Certainly, I would better approve if they had made the main character female. It would be nice if Avelline could see some screen time that wasn't on a handheld nobody owns, on a half-assed port of a handheld nobody owns, or in a DLC. It'd be nice to see her in a real, big market game. If anyone wants to take up that standard, I'll be right beside them.

But going after someone who says, honestly, that it's to expensive to grossly overhaul the entire game to shoehorn in a female option is just not reasonable. Especially when Ubisoft, for all it's corporate bullshit, is the only contemporary AAA company that's throwing AAA money behind titles that have minority and women protagonists. I mean, if we're only going to turn around and bite them instead of giving them some goodwill for actually writing in underrepresented groups in the most recent game of the series, are they even going to bother trying?

 

[CloudAtlas]

Why is diversity in protagonists seen as a necessary thing?

This is not an argument disguised as a question, and I'm not after a long and detailed defense of the position, just a simple explanation to a simple query.

I ask this because I consider that the null position here is for the developers to make whatever characters they want, and if they want to make them all grizzled-male-white-thirtysomethings then there needs to be a compelling reason against that before they can be judged to be "wrong" or to be required to change.

You are basically asking why writing varied, interesting stories is a "necessary thing". I mean, yea, technically storytellers are free to tell the same story over and over again, it just gets stale after a while. And having the same kind of protagonist in every story is just one important component contributing to the sameness of stories. So if you, as storyteller, would like to make your story stand out, you might want to consider picking a protagonist that doesn't fit neatly into any "every game action hero looks the same" collage.

So it's not necessarily necessary, just kinda nice. As is experiencing a story that puts someone like yourself in the hero's shoes, so to speak - so it would be also nice if people who aren't straight white dudes get more chances to experience these fantasies.

 

[CloudAtlas]

So you're saying bad people should never do bad things to women because women can't defend themselves? That's kinda' sexist of you!

That's not what he's saying at all.

Yes, she was almost raped. And you know what I say? SO F*CKING WHAT?!
That's real! That happens! Bad people rape. Those dudes on the island were bad people, they almost raped Laura, and she escaped and killed them all. Forgive me for my ignorance, but isn't that half the plot of all LifeTime movies? Isn't that suppossed to be empowering?! She killed ALL of them! Violently!

Do you think being raped is empowering?

Rape is a sensitive issue and that's why it should be handled with great care, and a storyteller should be aware of the unfortunate history of rape as a plot device and possible unintended implications.
From your statements I don't get the impression that you understand why though.

 

[CloudAtlas]

I don't see the link between the race/gender of the protagonist and and how "varied" or "interesting" the story is, so please elaborate on how making the character a black woman as opposed to a white man would make a story more varied or interesting.

Hard to explain. Watching a movie or playing a game with a woman kicking ass instead of a man, that just feels different. Elements that might be stereotypical, cliche, trite with a male character might feel fresh by subverting or turning gender expectations onto their heads. And you can do the same with race.
And ideally, the different background of your character also informs the story in some way, if that's the kind of story you want to tell anyway.

Or more broadly, if you have your usual gritty dark fictional world with sexism and racism and so on, but this time the people in power are black and the oppressed are white, you can make good use of that as storyteller. Or every human being oppressed by some alien species or elves or whatever. Or the world being ruled by women and men having few rights. Stuff like that.
Or the opposite of all of that - a world where being a black or female or whatever hero is the most natural thing in the world and racism and sexism just doesn't really exist and everyone is treated equal. Like, experiencing such a world as white character, that's just... how white people usually experience the world anyway - and how quite a few want their respective societies believe to be so they won't have to face any ugly truths - but the same is not necessairly true for a black character. Or for a female character. Everyone respecting you, no one giving you shit, no one harassing you, you saving the world as a woman or as black person - a world full of men/white people - that can be a really cool experience. Playing Mass Effect as FemShep - that just doesn't feel the same. It feels great, in a way. To me anyway.

 

[Abnaxis]

This seems like a personal preference, and I see no reason for developers to change to suit an isolated personal preference.
I mean, I can see how that would work for an individual game and could be an integral part of the story, I just don't see how it translates into a wider argument for change or how it can be considered remotely valid as a reason to call for developers to do something.
I think you're massively generalising white people as well, we don't have a homogenous experience of the world, you know, we're not a fucking hive-mind! You can't generalise the experience of white people any more than you can black people, so saying that white people experience the world differently is rubbish, everybody experiences the world differently. White people can experience disrespect and harrassment, and black people can experience positive treatment.

I see no more validity in this particular demand than my own demand for a remake of TIE Fighter, it's relevant to me, sure, vut I can't expect everybody to get on board with it, and developers refusal to do so is not grounds for me to whine incessantly about being discriminated against (not aimed at you specifically of course, but the general tone of these demands).

I'm not sure what response you are looking for. Do you want us to collectively look into our crystal balls, and tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that hypothetical games with under-represented protagonists will make money?

Nobody knows what would happen if Assassin's Creed Unity had a woman protagonist, instead of Arno. Even after it is released, no one can say how many customers will give it a "meh" because they see the same trite protagonist on the cover. Nor can we tell how many gamers will pick it up and play on, without a care for Arno's demographic. No matter what you do--spend as much money as you want, distribute as many surveys as you want, you cannot answer the question without a shadow of a doubt.

Given this, what exactly are you wanting the other side to provide? There's no hard data out there that can back up anyone's claims--yours or theirs. It's all just hypotheticals. The best anyone can do here is provide their own perspective.

 

[CloudAtlas]

This seems like a personal preference, and I see no reason for developers to change to suit an isolated personal preference.

It is my personal preference, yes, but it is not an isolated preference. It is a preference that is shared by many.

I mean, I can see how that would work for an individual game and could be an integral part of the story, I just don't see how it translates into a wider argument for change or how it can be considered remotely valid as a reason to call for developers to do something.

The main reasons for the criticism is that
a) it is boring to play as the exactly same kind of person all the time. It might or might not change up the overall story much in itself, but that part of the story just is boring. I mean, you wouldn't want to see the exact same types of characters again and again in every movie either, would you? They'd turn into stale cliches fast. Why should the main character of a story be any different?
b) enable people who are not straight white dudes to play as characters that look like them, that they are able to identify with more easily more frequently.

I see no more validity in this particular demand than my own demand for a remake of TIE Fighter, it's relevant to me, sure, vut I can't expect everybody to get on board with it, and developers refusal to do so is not grounds for me to whine incessantly about being discriminated against (not aimed at you specifically of course, but the general tone of these demands).

This desire for change could simply result from, well, empathy. You (general you, not you you) understand that experiencing stories with heroes that look like you, or just generally share central characteristics with you, that can be a good experience to have. That can fulfil escapist fantasies, power fantasies, you name it, all the cool stuff. Then you realize that you, as white guy, are able to get these experiences with most movies or games, because they all star white dudes as heroes. Then you might realize, well, wouldn't it be cool if people other than me were able to have these kind of experiences more often? You might even go one step further, and ask yourself, wouldn't it be cool to see the world, to experience a story through their eyes now and then for a change? I mean that could only enrich your life, couldn't it? So everybody wins: People other than you get to be the hero more often, and you get to make more varied experiences too.