Ubisoft: Far Cry 4 Is Packed to the Gills With Women

[Rebel_Raven]

Spoiler

Since not enough people read this, I'm going to put it here

Sorry for the hijack/piggyback. Most of this post isn't directed at you, but is more general ranting I need to say.

Producer/Project Manager with more than a dozen shipped titles across every major platform chiming in, including more than a couple with 8-digit budgets.

Different words get used with different context within the game industry that have a different flavor internally than it might to the general public. Words like "cost", "expensive", and "feature" can mean ENTIRELY different things depending on who you're talking to.

Something "costly" could mean it takes up a lot of bandwidth cycles within a game engine. Something "expensive" could mean that the project manager feels it's going to take a lot of work/effort/complexity during a particular release cycle. Something that's a feature could simply be a particular requested item from a designer (could also be called a story, an epic, an ask, an item, or whatever terminology that team is using at the time, often depending on the methodology the team is using for production).

On my current team, EVERYTHING that is requested by the EP, CD, or designers is a "feature" - regardless of what it is. Want a new animation? That's a feature. Want a new weapon type? Feature. New character archetype? Feature. Anything new that does not already exist within the game is a feature. Anything that is involved in the work necessary to create the feature is a task or subtask. A collection of features is either a theme or an epic (depending on the flavor of the collection).

This shorthand exists for teams of developers to work efficiently together. My production staff does all the wrangling so that the designers, engineers, artists, animators, and QA can do more work and still get home to their families while their kids are still awake.

Features all have costs. To the project. To the company. To my team members. If I have to make a call as to whether or not this product of entertainment includes a feature that leaves someone somewhere feeling a bit left out OR whether or not my development staff has to put in some weekends (a staff that includes significant numbers of women - many of whom are mothers or even grandmothers, mind you), then I'm going to want to weigh those costs against their work/life balance...and your personal feelings on the subject aren't nearly as important to me as the well-being of my team. Sorry if that offends. Actually, no I'm not.

Building out a new female character is just as difficult as creating a new character. It means new concepts, models, rigging, storyline changes/additions, script changes, VO, and cut scene changes/additions. All of these additions now live in the game code alongside everything else, which might already be getting pretty crowded depending on what platforms you're delivering to. All of these additions make the code base larger and even more complex. All of these additions create bugs and technical debt that needs to first be found through additional QA (sorry guys, you're in this weekend because of the new character cut scenes) which then result in more work from the engineers (sorry guys, you're in next week till 10 PM mandatory because of the expected bugs from the new cut scene that QA will find over the weekend).

Because it's a console title that has a firm ship date (release date for AC5 is October 28th), you want to be submitted at least 8 weeks in advance to first party approvals (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have to approve the code you want to put on their systems before they allow you to go to manufacturing - the RTM, or Release to Manufacturer is required before you can put your disk in a box). Once you have your approval, you have a scheduled and contracted run at one of the THREE approved manufacturers allowed to take your production run within the U.S. Miss your RTM date and too fucking bad - EA or Activision or Majesco or whoever has the time scheduled immediately after yours and they're not in a mood to negotiate with you for Q3/4 sales numbers. Once you DO get through your manufacture period, you have to get the units on the shelves at Target, BestBuy, Fry's, GameStop and anyone else you've contracted shelf space with. What? You think those end caps and front facing shelf spaces are just free and randomly put together by the store staffs? That's cute.

Bottom line to the above? AC5 is already well into alpha (feature complete) and possibly already into beta (asset complete) if they want to hit that late August/early Sept submission date they have looming ahead of them.

Best estimates I've heard from people I know at Ubi are that the additional female character was prototyped out very early but sidelined as the game itself is massive and requires an inordinate amount of work just to get the co-op working in the first place. They wanted to get back to the female character, but after costing her out, discovered it would take between 25-50 days of work to get her added in properly (that's the important word, by the way - will get back to it in a bit).

That 25-50 days isn't something you can just throw money and people at by the way. Character pipelines don't work that way. You can't start rescripting or animating new cut-scenes before you have the new rigged model. You can't rig the model till have the model. You can't build the model till have the concept art. You can't record the VO for the cut scenes and in-game play till have the script written. You have to then find the actress who will record the voice, and another actress to record the mocap.

All of this takes time. Time from someone already working late into the day/night and possibly on weekends. Because they're working on OTHER parts of the game. Because the game isn't done just because you saw a trailer at E3. Chances are the trailer wasn't done by ANYONE on the team and likely was outsourced out to a cinematics house.

The game date was likely set a year or more in advance by people setting up the contracts I mentioned above, so you may as well consider that date damn near sacred. That means to get the new character in, something had to give...or rather several somethings. Because unlike many other things in life, game development really can be zero-sum. To gain X cost of features, you have to give up X. But some execs don't think that way - they want X and don't want to give up shit. So they'll grind your team into the dirt to get there (if they're not all that worried about tech debt piling up or in keeping the team together after shipping). Other execs get it - at least to a point. They might ask for lower quality on this or that or may only "suggest" that you extend your team's hours.

However, most teams on AAA don't want to give up quality for anything. Why? Because that means lower Metacritic scores for one thing...a thing that most studio bonuses are inextricably intertwined with. Busted your ass for 2 years on a project and it's expected to bring in a 90 Metacritic so you can get your 20% IC bonus? Wait, you only got an 88% because some jackass kid who gets paid in pagecounts and free games decided you did a half-assed job on the animations for the female character compared to the male and the side-quests weren't involved enough (because your team threw those out to work on the female characters)...no bonus for you, sucker!

This whole subject makes my stomach turn to shit. I know a LOT of people on those teams. Good people. They WANT to bring in more features - female characters definitely is part of that. They hate being called sexist. They hate upper management telling them estimates for their work that they KNOW is wrong ("only a couple of days worth of animations" might as well read "fuck you every other animator who can't do as well as I think I can as fast as I can on new tech").

I know very few devs who are true asshats (yeah, lots of brilliant jerks, a handful of outright assholes, most are just great people who do this for love, not money - they could stop making games and go build tax software tomorrow and double their paychecks in some cases). It's personal when I see people I know and respect called liars or sexist.

I hope the post helped you see a bit into our lives as much as it helped me to get some of this off my chest.

I rarely blame the developers themselves. I know it's not always their fault. They don't always get the opportunity to stand up for themselves, and their art because they aren't always powerful enough to sway the people above. It's generally the people above them responsible, but always? Nope.
They'll get in the crossfire. It's unfortunate. They have families to feed, but because they failed, somehow, to get in female playable characters, they hurt hopeful gamers. They can't be untouchable.

Still, there's the matter of planning for a game, and setting aside time, and effort to get a "feature" in. Budget, planning, etc. Female playable characters getting cut is salt in the wound, most assuredly, and excuses don't do much to close the wound.
Frankly, after years of hearing the same excuses over,and over again, and ending up with the same results, there's not a whole lot that'll make me feel better about women being cut from the playable roster.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Going off Assassin's Creed alone, I think they're actually fine on the portrayal of women and it's unfortunate that they of all developers are being told they're sexist pigs for not having a female protagonist.

All developers are being told that they're sexist pigs for not having a female protagonist. I don't think that's the case...ten examples from the last year please.

Ubisoft isn't being called sexist because of a lack of a female main character. They're being called sexist that they aren't having a female character because of all the stupid shit that they said.

"they of all", not "all". Different.

I actually believe them when they say it would be a lot of work. The more in-depth a game is the less able you are to switch in and out protagonists of different races and genders, not to mention voice and animations. Had they said "We've chosen a male character and designed the game around them for story and context reasons and to have a female option available would mean a less immersive world" that'd be more defensible, but I interpret it the same way.

You tell a company that without knowing anything about their game except the protagonist's gender that they need to have more females

Stop right there. Last time I checked, no one was complaining about the lack of female characters in Ubisoft's games. They were complaining about the lack of female playable characters and Ubisoft's incredibly stupid comments. Nothing about the portrayal of women. Nothing about women not existing. Just the fact that you can't play one because "it's too hard" and Ubisoft didn't think it was important enough to allocate funds to.

That's true, people were complaining about the protagonist specifically rather than all characters. I'm just saying that that resulted in a lot of cries of sexism for a developer that is surprisingly undeserving on that front, seeing as the 4 characters are all the same player character customised differently. As I said above, there are better ways of saying "it's too hard", but when you think about the detail AssCreed games go into, it seems like a valid excuse to me.

 

[Racecarlock]

So are they well written women or Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball GTA 5 strip club women?

 

[Gankytim]

What if the 'packed to the gills with women' was just a light hearted jab at the way some people are putting forward the women in games argument? To the point where they seem like they're saying "I'll buy anything with a woman in it!"

You can't just jump to statements like.

It really sounds like "Hey I'm not racist I have a black friend". I mean it's good you have female characters making up the game world as anything other than titillation, but it seems like they are only creating these characters to try and avoid the whole women in games thing, and that's not the point.

Regardless of what the women in games argument WANTS, the vocal majority seem to have trouble articulating it. They're hounding down every game with a non-female option to the point where it just seems like they'll buy anything with a woman in it.

 

[LaoJim]

I was going to leap in and defend the Far Cry 3 team, having thought that the controversy was generated by the AssCreed side of Ubisoft. Then I saw this..

http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/11/5801330/far-cry-4-women-ubisoft

and now I'm not going to.

It's one thing to say "Okay for story reasons the protagonist has to be (or maybe just happens to be) male". Its another to say, hey even the co-op partner can't be female.

I though I'd remembered that Far Cry 2 allowed you to chose your mercenary, but checking on the internet, strangely here all the choices seemed to be male as well.

While we do occasionally get female characters, I feel like the single-protagonist first person shooter (oh that most masculine of genres) is still operating on a must-be-male basis.

I found this list on the internet

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2013/04/11_noteworthy_first-person_shooters_with_female_le.php?page=2

and I found it interesting in that, of the games on the list

Portal and Mirror's Edge aren't first person shooters.
Perfect Dark and No One Lives for Ever both have the main characters as spies rather than more traditional soldiers.
Borderlands and Left for Dead both have a choice of four protagonists, one of which is female.
I don't know much about either Timesplitters or the Jurassic Park game so I won't comment.
Only Metroid has a female soldier and that's a legacy from the first game in which the gender of your character was a surprise twist at the end.

 

[MasterPaz]

I think Ubisoft needs to make the games the way THEY want, and not even try to please all the bleeding hearts. Even IF a game they make has a female protagonist, I can almost be positive that some people will not be pleased, and still find some kind of way to call it sexist.

 

[Matthew Jabour]

The moment I heard that remark, the first thing I thought of was 'binders full of women'. If you ask me, Ubisoft would be better off just showing some of their alleged women in the trailers and posters, rather than the hasty assurances they're giving us. Subtlety is the key.

 

[Olas]

As ridonkulous as this all is, it's at least as much the gaming community's fault as it is Ubisoft's. When you throw a shitstorm over a game simply having 4 male protagonists, without any further knowledge or context about them or the story, the message you send is "MORE FEMALES PLEASE". I just knew it was going to lead to Ubisoft doing dumb shit like this?

The weirdest thing about it had to be just how random it felt, as if there haven't been countless stories in the past where all the leads were male.

I think the real issue is with overrepresentation of white males in triple A games in general, with Ubisoft just so happening to be there when we reached the tipping point and therefore getting all the scorn that should be spread around. The Assassin's Creed series has never contained any themes that I would consider conservative or backwards, despite taking place in some historical settings that would easily allow for it.

You tell a company that without knowing anything about their game except the protagonist's gender that they need to have more females

Stop right there. Last time I checked, no one was complaining about the lack of female characters in Ubisoft's games. They were complaining about the lack of female playable characters and Ubisoft's incredibly stupid comments. Nothing about the portrayal of women. Nothing about women not existing. Just the fact that you can't play one because "it's too hard" and Ubisoft didn't think it was important enough to allocate funds to.

Ubisoft has made an Assassin's Creed game with a playable female character.

Not to mention their multiplayer modes have featured female characters since Brotherhood.

I'm not saying that one game suddenly changes everything, but it's something you have to acknowledge when complaining about a lack of female protagonists. And Ubisoft's explanation for Unity, besides being embarrassingly stupid, doesn't further incriminate them in any way. They never needed an explanation to begin with, they're artists and entertainers, not public servants tasked with promoting diversity and equality.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Sorry to horn in, but honestly, I don't think that's is a fair point.

Spoiler

<youtube=dQ_-rmuPZC4>

LotR had some noteworthy women in it, for one. They did some important things that earned them some spotlight, merchandising, fame, etc. At the least, they weren't on scene wonders.

The thing is, you can't really act upon the world of a movie, or book, or TV show as you can with videogames, so it's sorta apples, and oranges.
Being able to change the world as a player character is what sets things apart, and bestows power unto the player. That said, some people like wielding that power as a woman. It's why I don't value NPCs as much as player characters as NPCs simply lack the power of a player character.

 

[Olas]

Ubisoft has made an Assassin's Creed game with a playable female character.

Not to mention their multiplayer modes have featured female characters since Brotherhood.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were talking about their current games. You know, the ones they've made a bunch of stupid comments about and what everyone else was talking about. My mistake. Not that I'm generous enough to give Ubisoft any leeway for relegating their one female protagonist to a Vita game made by a different studio, nor do I consider them featuring female avatars in previous games a good defense of them not doing so now.

Assassin's Creed Liberation isn't a "current" enough game for you? It was released late in 2012 and was rereleased for PS3, Xbox360, and PC earlier this year. So are you saying that Ubisoft needs to release a game with a female protagonist every year and a half?

You can also play as Aveline in some of the bonus content for Assassin's Creed 4, though I'm sure you'll shrug that off too since it's still too far from center stage.

I'm not saying that one game suddenly changes everything, but it's something you have to acknowledge when complaining about a lack of female protagonists. And Ubisoft's explanation for Unity, besides being embarrassingly stupid, doesn't further incriminate them in any way. They never needed an explanation to begin with, they're artists and entertainers, not public servants tasked with promoting diversity and equality.

Yes, they're artists who say really stupid things when asked very easy to answer questions. They could have left out female avatars in AC: Unity and just explained how their multiplayer worked and there would have been some grumbling over how stupid their idea is, but I doubt it would have been as bad if they would just shut up about it.

Seriously, "it's too hard" is the thing people have taken issue with, not just the lack of women. When you openly admit that you didn't care enough to allocate resources for female avatars, that's a bit worse than just not having one. You can write not having one as "artistic vision" or some other bullshit, you can't do that with "we didn't care enough about this thing you care about to put any effort into it."

And how is that any worse than just flat out choosing to not have female playable characters? Basically they're saying they had some interest in female characters, but it just ended up being to resource consuming to be worth it in the end. If anything that seems like it would be better than if they never had any interest in female characters to begin with. Not that there's really a problem with either of those.

So basically your saying that it's okay to leave out female playable characters from the start, but if you start to consider adding them at some point YOU'D BETTER FOLLOW THROUGH!

 

[Olas]

Sorry to horn in, but honestly, I don't think that's is a fair point.

Spoiler

<youtube=dQ_-rmuPZC4>

LotR had some noteworthy women in it, for one. They did some important things that earned them some spotlight, merchandising, fame, etc. At the least, they weren't on scene wonders.

And Assassin's Creed hasn't had important female characters too? I can think of more significant female characters in the Assassin Creed series than in the main body of LOTR, especially discounting Arwen's expanded role in the movies.

Let's face it, with few exceptions, Tolkein's work is a bit of a sausage fest, and you can't blame it on the time period it was written either because lots of older stories have featured many prominent female roles. I get the impression Tolkein just wasn't that interested in writing for women, and maybe that's a problem, but it never caused a huge controversy that I'm aware of.

And as for the difference between books/movies and videogames? I think you could argue both ways. In many games, especially older ones, the lead character's gender is even less important since they rarely talk or interact outside of gender neutral game mechanics.

It's true that many people see the player character as an avatar for themselves, which is why some games let you customize them heavily.

However, the Assassin's Creed series has always featured characters with distinctly well defined personalities of their own, the whole premise is that you're reliving they're memories, not forging your own path. The historical characters of the game aren't technically even the person you're playing as, in Assassin's Creed 4 you're actually unnamed silent protagonist living Kenway's memories in a simulation.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Sorry to horn in, but honestly, I don't think that's is a fair point.

Spoiler

<youtube=dQ_-rmuPZC4>

LotR had some noteworthy women in it, for one. They did some important things that earned them some spotlight, merchandising, fame, etc. At the least, they weren't on scene wonders.

And Assassin's Creed hasn't had important female characters too? I can think of more significant female characters in the Assassin Creed series than in the main body of LOTR, especially discounting Arwen's expanded role in the movies.

Let's face it, with few exceptions, Tolkein's work is a bit of a sausage fest, and you can't blame it on the time period it was written either because lots of older stories have featured many prominent female roles. I get the impression Tolkein just wasn't that interested in writing for women, and maybe that's a problem, but it never caused a huge controversy that I'm aware of.

And as for the difference between books/movies and videogames? I think you could argue both ways. In many games, especially older ones, the lead character's gender is even less important since they rarely talk or interact outside of gender neutral game mechanics.

It's true that many people see the player character as an avatar for themselves, which is why some games let you customize them heavily.

However, the Assassin's Creed series has always featured characters with distinctly well defined personalities of their own, the whole premise is that you're reliving they're memories, not forging your own path. The historical characters of the game aren't technically even the person you're playing as, in Assassin's Creed 4 you're actually unnamed silent protagonist living Kenway's memories in a simulation.

Yah, LotR was a sausagefest, with few prominent women, but those prominent women, and those prominent men were, imo, on a more equal footing than NPCs and PCs because they were all NPCs.
In movies, NPCs are everyone, the way I see it. There are no player characters. The movie doesn't change no matter how many times you watch it, or want it to. You play the movie, or push the start button, and the movie plays, unchanging. Thus there's some sense of equality, IMO. Nevermind the fact that film makers cater to a wider range of people with more frequency than the videogame industry which makes potentially insulting pieces less so, because of being placated by more appealing pieces.

Videogames are different in that you have the power to act through a character to change the world. Even if it's as minute as going through a level only jumping, or stepping left instead of right, that's the player's choice, and it's generally not set in stone what one does.

In Videogames, NPCs have no real power. They do as they're programmed. They're digital robots. The real power lays with the player character.
No matter how you slice it, I think the power factor holds true, and is pretty key, here, IMO, in this issue.

The importance of "gender" is always going to be there in videogames. Even back to the days of Ms. Pac-man, though the importance was an underhanded method of making a knockoff.
Or Samus, who's revealed as a woman no doubt blew minds. I don't think anyone would've batted an eyelash if Samus was a guy under all that armor.
Appearances are important to people who've generally been deprived of representation. Shallow as a female avatar might be in some FPS we never see her in, she can create a better sense of inclusion than a guy can, provided that's what the gamer seeks, and with that inclusion is motivation to take up the reigns of the character, and enjoy the power of being the player character in that world. games are meant to be fun, and if you're playing a character you don't want to tolerate, the fun factor drops. I.E. Red Dead Redemption's Main game vs Post game. I made it a point never to finish the main game again because the post game was terrible, IMO.
Gunna actually use the spoiler HTML for actual spoilering this time.

Spoiler

I hated Jack Marston with a passion in post game. His voice prevented me from enjoying post game. John Marston, however, was far more appealing, but unplayable after the story.

The funny thing about reliving memories is that it's still leaving you some sense of agency. Kill civilians? Don't? Hire this assassin? Charm this person? Buy this ship, or this weapon? Speed Run, or faff? There's still way more flexibility in any assassin's creed game than a movie, and it's the player character that makes use of that flexibility, not the NPC. You're still forging your own path due to that agency, no matter how minimal, it's just that the destination is pretty much always the same. Frankly, it's the journey that's the fun part, and the part you'll be dealing with most of the time.
If anything, forging one's own path in a movie is the one you can't do.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Including women in the game is compensated for by comparing women to algae. "Teeming with females" makes it seem as if women are minnows. The logical thought is that certain developers are being dragged kicking and screaming into including women, and they won't go down without some choice words to show us just how they feel.

I think you're over-analyzing a common idiom.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

This is what I love about all of this "games need more _________!" anger regarding video games.

Step 1: Select group of gamers (SGG) gets angry because games don't have enough __________ characters in them.
Step 2: VG company adds _________ characters to one of their games and then announces it, thinking this will make gamers happy.
Step 3: SGG gets angry because company announced that game is doing what they said they wanted.
Step 4: Game gets released anyway, SGG angry because even though game includes __________ characters that they asked for, said _________ characters "weren't done the right way". They were, for example: "too sexy", "are a _________ caricature", "are just a guy with tits", "are a token minority", "aren't well written", "are just ________ trope", etc. etc.

Is it any wonder game companies so frequently just say "to hell with it! Another 30 something brown haired white guy protagonist!"? At least when you have the characters just be another Nathan Drake or Marcus Fenix, you don't have to worry about people getting furious about them being poorly written, or being a racist caricature, or falling into _______ trope.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There were plenty of women in Far Cry 3 as well. There was also some female mercenaries in Far Cry 2, I recall. Not really sure why this is so news worthy. If it's about the whole Assassins Creed thing, well there'll be plenty of women there too. It's not like Gothic 3 here, where the entire world is inhabited by sausage.

Edit: There's also Farrah in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, who is a pretty strong character. The company isn't as devoid in female characters as I see a lot of people seem to think.

And Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, one of the best characters ever, male or female.

 

[Nuwe]

I really dont understand what the controversy is here.

Companies know what their target audience is. In these case its men, therefore they make games in which men are the protagonists.

If you want games to have female protagonists then women must start buying more games so they can have an impact on the market.