Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed opening disclaimer change is bizarre.

[Erttheking]

Probably not doing myself any favors keeping this going, but why not...

I don't follow. How is this shutting you up? Because it was a response to a criticism? That's shutting people up now?

Evie already seemed to have been that response. The female guardsmen just felt like overkill. And before that sentence gets blown up, this is not me stating that putting equal amounts of men and women in a game is disrupting the male quota, just that developers need to take into account the setting of their game, especially if it's a historical one they want to do justice, and whether or not something actually fits.

And just to give an example of the opposite... In The Last of Us you only ever fight guys, eventhough the military and the Fireflies clearly show there's plenty of women fighting alongside the men in either the cutscenes or scripted events. But Naughty Dog likely didn't feel that having Joel brutally bash in the heads of women would go over well, so it's only dudes. Eventhough when fighting the infected, there are women.

And for any thought of whether it would fit the setting? Since when has Ubisoft given a shit about that? Machine-guns and tnaks don't fit the Renaissance era but they put that in anyway.

And you're more than welcome to complain about that, should it bother you.

And ever since Brotherhood women had been brawling against Templar forces in the streets.

Those are all characters that are trained by the Assassin's though.

How is turning women into disposable henchmen overkill? That's one of the most basic things you can do for gender equality, and it really isn't that glamorous for women. Historical? I'll say it again, Ubisoft has done a horrible job portraying history accurately, you getting hung up on this one tidbit is incredibly selective. Espically when Assassin's Creed has already shown women outside of their gender roles when they had nothing to do with the order. Like that female hunter in III, the thief in II and Ezio's sister, who managed to kill three guards out of nowhere with a knife, even though she had never been trained by the order.

Ok, Naughty Dog did that. What about it?

I'm pointing out that your complaints are inconsistent. You're complaining that it's not historically accurate. Assassin's Creed was never historically accurate. At BEST it gives us the Theme Park Version of history.

No, Ezio found them brawling in the street and decided that said brawling would make them good recruits.

 

[Casual Shinji]

snip

Hey man, I made my case as to why it bothers me. If that makes me inconsistent, then so be it.

 

[Pseudonym]

So let's get something straight. Assassin's Creed started out as a series that depicted some potentially (read: absolutely) offensive things when it came to religion, and religious figures, and also depicted cultures and history in a way some might take offense to. So the cop-out disclaimer preceded each game. Its primary purpose is arguably to dissuade backlash over Assassin's Creed very strongly implying that, among other things, Christianity and Judaism and such are incorrect and not just that, their leaders and founders were fakes. By claiming that their team is diverse, Ubisoft can claim that they're not actually making any sort of statement about whether Jesus was actually God or whether God exists or whether Islam's beliefs trump Christianity or anything like that.

I've played ac1 and revelations and I've seen bits of black flag and ac2 and I have no idea what you are on about. I haven't seen any founders of religions in the games and the religious themes that are in there are hardly at the forefront. The AC storyline depicts religions as false. So? Most people don't believe in orcs, but nobody in their right mind would think Lord of the Rings is a statement on the existence of those. Should star trek be criticised for containing FTL when most scientists are convinced that such a thing is impossible? AC is a storyline wherein two illuminati-like (the conspiracytheory kind) organisations (extremely loosely based on two religious groups) battle it out for ancient pieces of hyperadvanced technology while the main charactar is on a holiday in a heavily fictionalised version of some historical events. I dearly hope that ubisofts writers aren't stupid enough to believe that they are representing history even vaguely accurately. On top of that, these are games made, to my knowledge, by large teams of Canadians. There are christians amongst the developers and they are in all likelyhood in the majority (according to doctor google approxemately 75% of canadians identify as Christians). I see no reason whatsoever to take AC as a statement on anything. That would be giving the story far too much credit.

 

[hermes]

To be honest, this strikes me as Cote and his team misunderstanding the purpose the original disclaimer served in a headscratching manner.

On the contrary, it looks like Cote understood exactly what was the purpose of the original disclaimer. It is a cop out to try to divert blame from any misrepresentation of characters or historical context, by claiming there are people working there that are part of that context, so therefore its allowed. It serves no other propose than "we are going to portrait christian figures as mustache-twisting villains; but some of us are christians, so it is ok... right?". As such, the new disclaimer has exactly the same function and wording than the original, only updated to avoid the current shitstorm. If the original game was scared of a controversy for having a villainous Church or villainous american colons, the new one is scared of the controversy for lacking female protagonists in Unity.

Personally, I always found the message to be distracting, cynical and pretty coward. There are thousands of games (and pieces of fiction) based around historical events, and they don't feel the need to start it with "I am not racist, I know some black people..."

And how many of those other games you mentioned get as much shit flung at them in the social media for their portrayal of various real world groups? I'm guessing not many. It's not like Ubisoft is being ignored when they do this stuff. Every time they make a game, there is a huge social discussion about all the various little bits of it, and how some people hate it, some love it, some think it's racist/sexist/bigoted, some think it's just fine, etc. So yeah, I think it's totally prudent of them to put that disclaimer up, because they are getting the attention, they're getting all the attention. Comparing them to some indie game who didn't bother to put up a disclaimer, but who also has barely sold a few thousand copies, compared to a AAA title that sells millions every time they drop a new title to the franchise, is a little misleading.

You know, that really doesn't make it better. AC is not the only AAA game out there that faces criticism...

When an indie game gets produced, it has maybe a couple of people's viewpoint. They are mostly personal projects and so they show a lot of personality. Maybe they are ugly for it, and maybe the traits and viewpoints they display are not really things I agree with, but they are part of package. If they included that disclaimer, it might actually mean something, given that the small team makes it a point of being varied.

AC is an entirely different thing altogether. Part of the reason because this feels like a cop out is because it is a game made by thousands of people all over the world, a prime example of a product homogenized and designed by committee. Some of their last games have over 20 minutes long credit rolls. Under those circumstances, it comes to no surprise to anyone that the game is created from the work of people from different backgrounds in life, for every single aspect: nationality, race, sex orientation, gender, religion or philosophical belief. It would actually be harder for them to single out and exclude a certain group from working on the game.

The same is true of every single modern AAA game, from GTA (for all its criticism of bigotry, I am fairly sure a sizable part of the people on the credits are female) to Modern Warfare (I am also pretty sure there are some Muslims in there). I don't even think Ubisoft in general (and AC in particular) are worst than most other publishers or developers, but they are the only ones that take the, as you said, "prudent" route of pointing out, at the very beginning, that for every reason they could get controversy about being insensitive to some group, they employ people that belong to that group, as if that was a defense and not the result of being a multinational organization.

 

[happyninja42]

snip

I think you're kind of missing the mark here. The fact is there are thousands of historical games on the market (as he says), but Assassin's Creed isn't most of those games. It only feels like it because they put out so damn many. It's a high profile game that deals with some fairly sensitive issues on an broad scale in, as you pointed out to Shinji, what is effectively an alternate history. I can absolutely see why they'd feel the need to put up a disclaimer not despite the presence of historical games, but because of it.

I agree, I said as much in a previous post, perhaps not the one you quoted, but we are on the same page here. *rereads his post you quoted* Yeah, actually I did say it there. So yeah, I agree. I have no issue with them putting up the disclaimer. Considering how much shit they get, it makes perfect sense. "Ok guys, so we're going to up the ratio of women in the game, because people are bitching it's too much of a sausage fest." "Ok well, that might appease some, but if we're having the protagonist killing women, that's likely going to piss off other people." "Ah, for fuck's sake, look ok, just update the disclaimer and let's move on to the next issue ok?" I'm being somewhat silly with this theoretical office meeting at Ubisoft, but it's a reasonable precaution considering the environment they are producing games in.


The point I was trying to make was the person I quoted basically said "None of the other historically accurate games feel the need to put up disclaimers about that kind of stuff, so why should Ubisoft?" My point was that I can't think of many "historically" accurate games at all, much less super popular ones, except maybe Total War. But those games aren't playing with the understood history to tell their story. So nobody seems to care. I mean if I saw as many posts for these other historically accurate games, bitching about how they are sexist or homophobic, or racist, or any other of the numerous things people say about AC, then his point would have merit I think. But they don't. I don't see anybody bitching about the "thousands of other historically accurate games", and howling about them in the social media. But you sure see a hell of a lot of it pointed at Ubisoft. So yeah, when you've got that many people bitching at you, tossing up a disclaimer is prudent. Nobody's bitching about the other games, so why should they bother? But I bet you, if the masses started howling about how Total War was somehow being whatever thing pissed them off, and were doing it at the volume and intensity that people do it at Ubisoft, you damn well better believe they'll adopt a disclaimer policy real quick.

I'm regularly surprised AC doesn't get more flak, because of some of the topics brought up. Not even stuff like Slavery/gender roles/sexuality (which honestly, do deserve to be discussed), but several points in ACIII make American heroess look bad, and that's the sort of shit we tend to not like. I wouldn't be shocked to find nationalist complaints from other nations, either.

My theory is that the people who would most likely be offended by how AC 3 portrayed the colonial US stuff probably don't play many video games as a general rule. Could be wrong though. *shrugs*

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Beyond that, considering the role the disclaimer played was a cynical attempt to cover their ass from potential offense, why that was somehow better than what it apparently is now isn't very clear unless we're just going to go with the obvious reactionary opposition to diversity and inclusion. You don't care about diversity and think nothing is gained from having different perspectives, good for you. They just happen to disagree.

You seem to be jumping to conclusions a fair bit. Fighting a strawman, tilting at windmills, all that. Diversity has its pros and cons. I would say that it is nice that Animal Crossing: New Leaf had a 50-50 gender split team. But if Nintendo actually put a message at the start of the game proclaiming this, my response would be "Go boil your head". Self-congratulation, and anything designed to provoke wishy-washy congratulation is insufferable. "Let other praise you," as the proverb goes. And not just that, let them praise you for the product your employees built, not the colour of their skin, the language they speak, the political parties they align with, the religion they hold to, or anything like that.

It is, but this particular one felt like it was there just to shut us up, after the whole Unity not including a playable female character. And that just kind of irks me. It's not done with any thought of whether it would fit the setting, but just to placate us.

Ubisoft have stuck playable female characters in their games for years. Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, anyone? Without the nonsense over Unity, nobody would have cared much. When Acclaim Austin made the lead character in Turok 3 female and pregnant, nobody kicked up a fuss and whined about the theoretical political beliefs of the developers.

I still can't get worked up about it. I didn't particularly care about them not having a playable female assasin in Unity either, but that doesn't mean their wierd excuse of "Women assasins are too hard to make" didn't fall flat.

It fell flat because people are stupid. Unity was a massive overhaul with far less recycled content than previous games. The entire animation system was redone. The competitive MP was scrapped. (This is where "muh female assassins" used to go.) Unity has female characters. It doesn't have any sort of "gang" system like other AC games.

Which turned out to be the least of Unity's problems anyway. Personally, I see the problem of having their resources divided between Unity and Rogue...

AC: Rogue was by Ubisoft Sofia, who did not work on Unity. (Sofia is in Bulgaria. IMO, that's the sort of diversity that matters a great deal. The games industry is extremely difficult for people who don't live in Japan/US/Canada/etc. The Australian games industry is mostly dead, especially since 2K Australia was killed for financial reasons. Ubisoft may be shitheads for a variety of reasons, but they establish studios around the world where people in those countries have a real chance to work on games that won't get cancelled midway through, leaving them jobless. (Which reminds me how Rockstar killed the Austrian Rockstar Vienna and stole their game, Manhunt 2, sending it to their British branch and removing the original developers from the credits. Darn them.) A cynic might point out a lot of these studios are in regions where they can likely get away with lower wages, but that's neither here nor there.)

Anyhow, on another note, the bickering over female gang members in Syndicate reminds me of my musings over the fact that the Salvation Army's original organisation was founded in 1865, three years before the events of Syndicate. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, was heavily attacked for his "elevation of women to man's status," which seems like it would have been a perfect way to introduce themes of women's equality into AC: Syndicate without being preachy or shoehorning, so I find it interesting Ubisoft chose to omit him, or at least neglected to include him. I was actually half-expecting Willaim Booth to be a character in Assassin's Creed since he was such a significant historical figure of that period, especially when it came to welfare and the status of the underclasses in the United Kingdom, but alas, nothing. It is possible there were legal issues involved.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

To everyone else it was just that same old disclaimer but this time it included something beyond religion, but you had to start a thread taking issue with the thing no one else cared about.

Except it no longer mentions religion so you're just being silly.

edit:
The "You're just upset X is being more inclusive" argument is a silly strawman anyhow. You're also overall way more defensive of the new disclaimer than I am critical of it. I think the change is bizarre, misguided, and the product of a group of writers out of touch with reality. But it doesn't make the game "bad". People who attack products simply because the creators have different opinions about life, the universe, and everything to them are dicks. To me, the dispute over this disclaimer is not practically different to an argument over whether Resident Evil 2 REMAKE should keep the classic Resident Evil 2 violence disclaimer.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I don't even know why they bother with the disclaimer. People are stupid. If they want to be outraged by something they will be, and they'll ignore the disclaimer.

 

[Eddie the head]

It is a bit odd I guess. Ultimately it's harmless though the disclaimer isn't doing anything really. What I find a hell of a lot more unsettling is by maybe the third reply people are getting all "you just hate diversity" on you. When really all you're saying is this doesn't fit. Witch fair enough I don't really know becouse the last Assassins Creed game I played was Black Flag and I sure as hell didn't finish the main story.

 

[marioandsonic]

I remember Yahtzee brought this up during his Assassin's Creed Syndicate review, and I think he summed it up pretty well. It's just being used as a dodge because of the controversy that Unity didn't have female player characters.