Poll: Jim Sterling Calls Out New Assassin's Creed (for racism/sexism?)

[Something Amyss]

Your original statement was "Slavery was abolished in the 1780s." I found nothing that supported that claim.

Wikipedia.

That doesn't change the fact that your link doesn't say what you claim it says.

This did sound to me like a criticism directly aimed at AC, as you called them out specifically, rather than using games in general.

That would only work if the Ass Creed team had ever said historically speaking we need TEH WITE GUISE. If you know of a place where they said that, then I stand corrected, but that would make your argument invalid and validate the argument I wasn't making.

The fact is, this comes from the fans, not from the developers. Therefore, you have no reason to assume I'm talking the AC developers. I have trouble seeing how you could read this another way without deliberately twisting my words.

Jim's tweet specifically mentioned the race and sex of the characters, and given his history of talking about racism and sexism in games, it seemed like a logical leap. I fully admit in the original post that Jim might have been making a joke, but I don't believe that guessing that Jim is being snarky about the race and sex of the characters as a form of criticism is at all "bending over backwards."

You have to ignore the "identical" part of that to jump to that conclusion. That's a pretty big omission.

What reason? I don't recall anyone protesting that the original Assassin's Creed had a Syrian lead, or any other protests for any of the other games. This thread is about the exact opposite: someone being upset that a game (or at least the brief snatch of pre-release footage) did NOT have characters of unexpected race.

Because it's become a de facto standard in gaming.

Predictably, people have been complaining that a female assassin in the FR would not be historically accurate. People who evidently couldn't be arsed to do three seconds of research.

I think we have different views of the anachronism of AC. As far as video games go, they do their best to remain faithful to history, copying real-world landmarks, people, and events, and only deviating with things such as the hidden blade or da Vinci's machines for enjoyable gameplay, or with the alien artifacts for the admittedly terrible metastory.

Okay, so why does it break verisimilitude to make a game more enjoyable for someone else?

Connor's specific involvement in ACIII didn't seem terribly versimilitude-breaking; the only thing I can point to was that the ambient dialogue wasn't filled with racist insults, and the colonists rarely tried to run Connor out of town (personally, I think that was a disservice to the character, but I can see from a marketing standpoint why they did that).

Connor's interaction with colonists were pretty inaccurate.

The game seems to have tried hard to be historically accurate.

That's the kind of superficiality I expect from History Lite!-all the action, half the calories.

As for the order recruiting minorities and women, I'm sure they will do that. I think that you've misunderstood my original point: I was saying that Jim's criticism was premature and uncalled for, given that AC has prominently featured women and minorities up to this point, and that judging the game based in the 4 guys from one trailer was doing a disservice to the game.

No, to that point my argument was that you jumped the gun yourself. I've already said this. However, you also made statements about historicity and verisimilitude. Addressing those does not mean I "don't get your point," so stop claiming it does. You made multiple statements, and I addressed multiple statements. My argument as to the tweet is, and has been that you're doing exactly what you're accusing him of. Jumping the gun, talking prematurely, assuming, whatever. As for the rest....

If you don't want history, historicity, and verisimilitude to be argued, don't make those arguments in the first place. You brought up the historicity of minorities in France. You. In your first post. It has nothing to do with whether or not Ubisoft is racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/marxist/purple. It has everything to do with things that you specifically said.

 

[Something Amyss]

The results of this poll should explain why Jim and people like him will continue to make comments like this.

I would say that the important part is how many people decided to sound off on whether he was right or not without really knowing if he was making a statement about the lack of women/PoC or about the Clone Wars.

Historical accuracy isn't a terrible argument to use, but you actually have to know something about history if people are going to make this arguement, just assuming that anything that happened before the 20th century means that it must be completely homogenous both racially and with regards to gender, is going to backfire if you aren't careful.

Not that it really matters in this case, since this is AC we are talking about, where literally every assassin in world history was part of a conspiracy involving ancient aliens. That, and the whole world takes place inside a matrix-like video game anyway, to the point that in AC4 there are log entries that flatout admit that they edited in buildings and locations, that shouldn't be there historically in order to make the locations more visually compelling and interesting to explore, they also take a number of liberties with historical events, and put historical figures in places and situations that they obviously never were in.

So yeah, the historical argument kind of falls flat in a series that comes out and admits in-game that they are willing to throw historical accuracy to the curb in order to make the animus simulation more interesting.

That's the thing, though. That historicity even comes up as an argument in AC is kind of a joke in itself. And that's regardless of whether or not they've done their homework. I mean, I do agree with the statement otherwise. There are places where historicity matters, and in those cases it's both valid and important to know what you're talking about. That there were noteworthy women and PoC to demonstrate the inaccuracy is mostly gravy to me.

 

[gargantual]

thats not my point....my point is you can't point to historical acuracy as an excuse to not have female assasins when you've had them leaping around dressed in full Ezio costumes....

and really if youre an assasin whats considered reasonable conduct for a woman of your time is....quite frankly not high on your list of priorites

No, I'm stating that I have very little knowledge of the time period beyond the causes and crises of the French Revolution and the logic of inserting of a female assassin could be argued but I'm not having any part of it.

again I'm not saying you could incorporate it in the story without having to explain it...but from what weve seen so far it really isn't stretching it THAT much to me

also assasins creed 3 had an ex black assasin.....(unless he never actually ran around stabbing people but for some reason I doubt it)

And I'm pointing out the implausibility of a black man running around as an assassin, if only due to the extremely low number of them in France.

Now the black assassin in AC3 actually makes sense, Thomas Jefferson alone apparently owned over one hundred during his life. That's a decent number in a single location compared to the 4000 to 5000 across the entirety of France.

Ok I think I see where you're going with this. War spillover in Americas did make more room for some black people whose social status had some overlap in the North and had to fight for themselves like any common frontiersman

In the heart of europe, a brotha in the bastille would feel like Othello to me. Too easy to isolate. Harder to blend in with the chaos, or another Adewale or Aveline Though those mechanics were interesting teachable moments in identity and social limitations.

And in our interests to see diversity, while not considering the historical situation, if Ubi said f' it its 2014, and started off prioritizing diversity, their end product'd still come off like a modern day 'Dances With Wolves' at best in their hands. Thats my go-to pet phrase for rose-tinted history. Because I don't think they have the skill to make a 'Django'.

 

[CloudAtlas]

I find that hard to believe even if I adopt the most pessimist view of game customers I can imagine.

And yet, that appears to be marketing wisdom in this case. Actually, I think that marketing wisdom mostly comes down to "the stereotypes of gamers is true." That being the insecure, homophobic midle class white dude who can't bear the possibility of sharing his (and only his) toys.

And given some of the apologetics we see, I can't say I blame them for getting that impression.

No, I cannot believe that. This would be akin to marketing departments believing Borderlands having a female playable character hurt its sales, or the possibility to play as woman in Skyrim or just about any MMO.

 

[bojac6]

in case anyone didnt see it on the first page they explained why they didnt include any special characters or women and to me at least it sounds legit.8000 plus animations, double the voice work double the digital assets etc. You should read the full piece linked here in this destructoid news article.


http://www.destructoid.com/assassin-s-creed-unity-won-t-have-female-co-op-avatars-and-here-s-why-276412.phtml

Or, you can take one of your coop characters, who is hopefully going to have a distinct voice actor anyway, cast a woman and give her a woman's name. That's it. Why should she have a completely different animation? They're all hyper-fit gymnasts wearing layers of armor, cloaks and belts. They wouldn't look any different.

 

[rbstewart7263]

in case anyone didnt see it on the first page they explained why they didnt include any special characters or women and to me at least it sounds legit.8000 plus animations, double the voice work double the digital assets etc. You should read the full piece linked here in this destructoid news article.


http://www.destructoid.com/assassin-s-creed-unity-won-t-have-female-co-op-avatars-and-here-s-why-276412.phtml

Or, you can take one of your coop characters, who is hopefully going to have a distinct voice actor anyway, cast a woman and give her a woman's name. That's it. Why should she have a completely different animation? They're all hyper-fit gymnasts wearing layers of armor, cloaks and belts. They wouldn't look any different.

maybe that copy and paste philosophy is only good for lower quality stuff? im not sure really. the other assassins are not characters really. YOU will always be the main character and thats true for all four people playing but to each person, they are the main while the others are not.

But I dont know. Unless a developer whose familiar with this kind of stuff( I dont count that dev from borderlands and his snide twitter comments that games budget cant touch this ones) comes out and calls them out and presents a good logical argument ill not hold any ill toward ubi.


Course now was a fine time for them to make another female protag game butttttttt ya know they didnt. maybe next time.

 

[MammothBlade]

For purposes of historical accuracy, race isn't a problem. But, having four white men with similar stature, similar ages, and similar facial hair/expressions is rather uncreative. Ubisoft can't write in a female character now, and that would be most insincere. But they could have thought about this earlier on in the dev cycle. Identikit assassins, how boring.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

This thread is fucking funnier than my original joke was, so hats off to all of you.

 

[Weaver]

This thread is fucking funnier than my original joke was, so hats off to all of you.

Do you like, even read the forums on a daily basis? This is pretty much every day here in every thread half the threads.

 

[Danny Dowling]

this is a rather large mountain being made out of a couple pebbles.

 

[lacktheknack]

Can't we just learn to take a joke?

No.

Never.

Never in a million years will we ever learn to take jokes if it lets us get good and upset about something.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Given the joke was likely made in response to the whole "Ubisoft CAN'T put women in this game because it'd be too COSTLY or too much work," I'd say it's completely justified and getting upset about it on behalf of Ubisoft is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. Ubisoft shot themselves in the foot at E3 a couple times with their bad PR in regards to both this and the WiiU and I'm perfectly fine with people taking cheap shots at them if it means the message gets across and they start learning from their mistakes. If this was EA, would you be this defensive?

And... yes... all four of them look more or less similar, so, joke or not, I'd say this criticism stands.

 

[Korolev]

The sexism call-out is one I agree with. There were plenty of women around France during that time period (I may be hazarding a guess, but I'd venture that women made up, oh, I don't know, 50% of the population?). The racism call-out is a little less logical. I'm sorry, but.... there weren't many Black French Citizens at that time. There just weren't. If you were making a movie set in 1700s France, would you have tons of Black Extras walking around the streets of Paris? No. That would be insane. Just as if you were making a game or a film about 12th Century China, you wouldn't put a whole bunch of white people walking around the streets of Nanjing!

Sorry Jim, but nations during that time period were not very multicultural. Black people weren't very common and would have stood out in Revolutionary France. Sure, there WERE black people in revolutionary France, just as there were probably a few Chinese people and a few Middle Eastern people.... just not many. And they would have been discriminated against, massively so. If you're going to be an assassin in 1700s Europe, you're gonna want to blend into the Crowd. You wouldn't hire someone of a very different ethnic background and expect them to not attract much attention.

I agree that if the game was set in MODERN day France, it should have Black and Arabic Assassins, since France has a good deal of Black and Arabic citizens. But it's not racism to portray revolutionary france as it was - a mostly white country, because that's what it was!

Of course, given that these games are all fictional, you could argue that there should be multiracial assassins regardless. Sure, that's fair, I guess. But maybe the game developers were thinking that the assassins should reflect the general population traits of the time. As I said, Dynasty Warriors is fictional, but you start putting Black Chinese Generals in those games and everyone would laugh at you.

 

[Nion]

So, the main argument in this thread seems to be that it's sexist/racist that Arno can't go to the tailor and equip boobs and become black?

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

As I said, Dynasty Warriors is fictional, but you start putting Black Chinese Generals in those games and everyone would laugh at you.

Except there ARE black characters in the game, so ...

 

[atavax]

So there are no female NPCs in game? The controversy isn't because you can't play as a female?

 

[atavax]

There are 2 main problems i have with the AC controversy.

1. There are plenty of underrepresented groups, and I don't see why women should get a greater focus then others, its discriminatory.

2. Almost everyone here agrees that games are art. That means we should respect their decisions as artists. We can and should pressure the industry as a whole to be more inclusive to underrepresented groups, but slamming individual works for not being inclusive enough sounds like the setting of some dystopian novel where artistic expression is only allowed when it meets so much criteria.

 

[Carnagath]

As I said, Dynasty Warriors is fictional, but you start putting Black Chinese Generals in those games and everyone would laugh at you.

Except there ARE black characters in the game, so ...

There are no fat characters in the game though. As a guy who weighs 240 pounds, I find that offensive.

 

[Rude as HECK]

There are 2 main problems i have with the AC controversy.

1. There are plenty of underrepresented groups, and I don't see why women should get a greater focus then others, its discriminatory.

This is incomprehensible. I don't understand your line of thinking here.

2. Almost everyone here agrees that games are art. That means we should respect their decisions as artists. We can and should pressure the industry as a whole to be more inclusive to underrepresented groups, but slamming individual works for not being inclusive enough sounds like the setting of some dystopian novel where artistic expression is only allowed when it meets so much criteria.

No, you are asking us to act as apologists for them, and to place their intentions on pedestals over their results. If you accept games as art, that necessarily means you accept them as things to be examined, discussed, and criticized.

As for the second part of that statement, I am going to have you ask you to present even one example when expression has not been *allowed*. Please present an example of the censorship you fear.