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Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
You basically just described the complete opposite of a typical Ubisoft development team.
Women aren't "weak, defenseless, and powerless" against their peers at Ubisoft. And neither are minorities. A quick read of the credits from a Ubisoft game will tell you that much.
Personally, looking at the history of the franchise and realizing that at some point in some future iteration of the series there will either be a female assassin NPC, multiplayer PC, or singleplayer PC, and that since it's likely we'll be reusing assets and animations from this first new rework throughout this generation if not longer, maybe just maybe it might be a little prescient to do the additional legwork to address a concern I claim is dear to my diversity-focused team.
Or maybe instead I consider women props that add nothing to the game and are only useful for aesthetic purposes. Either way I'm obviously a feminist.
Or instead of hiring three men they could have hired two men and one lady.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
You basically just described the complete opposite of a typical Ubisoft development team.
Women aren't "weak, defenseless, and powerless" against their peers at Ubisoft. And neither are minorities. A quick read of the credits from a Ubisoft game will tell you that much.
How does this prove any of what I said wrong? Basically you just posted a picture of 3 women from a staff of 900. This certainly isn't helping your case at all. Because that open up an entire different dialog.
Speaking as someone who has worked on multiple nationally broadcast reality TV shows: not everyone's voice on a team is heard equally. There are many times I have been told to put in content that I knew was offensive/racist/sexist/etc and when I tried to argue against it, I was told that the people at the top thought it was funny or charming, so put it in, that's that.
This doesn't make me a weak, defenseless, or powerless woman. It makes me one person on a team. This is the reality of production, as Ubisoft said themselves.
The reality is that in most major entertainment creations today there is not one unified voice so much as many coming together to try to create something meaningful, but many people will be shouted down or entirely ignored along the way.
So pointing out that there are women on the team doesn't mean a lot if the chain of command when it comes to making certain decisions are predominantly comprised of men.
This doesn't make me a weak, defenseless, or powerless woman. It makes me one person on a team. This is the reality of production, as Ubisoft said themselves.
The reality is that in most major entertainment creations today there is not one unified voice so much as many coming together to try to create something meaningful, but many people will be shouted down or entirely ignored along the way.
So pointing out that there are women on the team doesn't mean a lot if the chain of command when it comes to making certain decisions are predominantly comprised of men.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Because you're acting like half if not more of Ubisoft staff isn't composed of minorities and females. Or that they're weak and defenseless in the face of their male peers. Which is ridiculous.
Here is my stance on things, as I see them as an employee (note these are my own thoughts as a person and not an official statement):
Ubisoft does not employ discrimination against women. We have a lot of women here. The difference is that there are much less women applying in the first place, which is a societal issue like you mentioned previously. Not being discriminatory doesn't mean you suddenly have equal sized dev teams, because that requires equal sized proportions of the population to apply in the first place.
What his picture DOES show though is that not only are women not discouraged in these offices, they flourish and are represented in all levels of the company like you'd hope and expect.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
That applies to any project and he implied that the women who work at Ubisoft never get positions of power and are fearful of their male peers. Which is a ridiculous notion.
Deified Data
Banned
So could someone confirm for me whether this game has customizable characters or not? Because the impression I'm getting is that you're stuck playing as the MC in multiplayer.
RockTurtle
Member
spit that fire Kunan!
Exactly, and if up top doesn't agree with what you want you will be over ruled. Sad thing is , seeing woman In games is about as much diversity as you will get. Let's not talk about seeing any black or Latino characters as game leads besides the one or two you may see every 5 or 10 years.
stufte
Member
This this and this. The argument that women are misrepresented or underrepresented at UBI is a weak and illogical argument.
I think you need to quickly edit your original post and clarify that this is solely your opinion, because you are creating a news story.
Zoe
Member
But the two men share the same model, as this discussion started with the voices of the co-op characters, who are already male, modeled after the protagonist. The lady would require a new model.
There were always going to be X number of NPC's. There currently is only one protagonist + possibly alternate co-op voices. Adding a female option is adding more cast members.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
YOU ARE MAKING THAT ASSUMPTION! The poster said minorities should vote with there wallets but a minority is a minority for a reason. They have by default already voted and it still wouldn't have been enough. More than likely this was the exact same case for the decision to go with the male lead in this game as well
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It's like Watch Dogs where everyone sees themselves as the main character but they take it one step further where everyone will see the costume, equipment, weapons, etc that your main character is wearing. The only difference is the face. So basically everyone has the same body but the main character aesthetically is highly customizable with many outfits, equipment and weapons available. Not to mention skill points being added for the first time. So someone might enter the game with the lock pick skill while someone else has better stealth while someone else has better combat skills in case you get detected.
The (Ubisoft) studio I worked at had 3 women and 3 people I would describe as "minorities". There were ~120 people there.
What game studio in the world honestly has 50%+ female and minority employees?
This thread reminds me of when Naughty Dog had to fight for Ellie to be on a magazine cover with Joel. This is what I think it boils down to, publishers for some reason generally feel having a woman lead will make their game sell less as opposed to a male lead. You can p.r your way with statements like 'we are equal and don't discriminate etc' but I think it all just bowls down to money and selling a product.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
And you're making the assumption that there are many people who're fans of the series who literally won't buy a game unless it has a female lead or that female leads are discouraged because of fear due to the male peers or that a male will always be chosen over a female. That's based on nothing.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Not many but Ubisoft definitely has more minorities and females than a typical game studio or company.
stufte
Member
from the 2013 Ubisoft shareholders report:
Men 6,531 79% (2013) 5,818 80% (2012)
Women 1,737 21% (2013) 1,457 20% (2012)
https://www.ubisoftgroup.com/comsite_common/en-US/images/UBISOFT_UK_2013_MDtcm99103559.pdf
and specifically this page:
from the 2013 Ubisoft shareholders report:
Men 6,531 79% (2013) 5,818 80% (2012)
Women 1,737 21% (2013) 1,457 20% (2012)
https://www.ubisoftgroup.com/comsite_common/en-US/images/UBISOFT_UK_2013_MDtcm99103559.pdf
and specifically this page:
Only %23 of women in top management...I'm not sure what your point is. Most woman in the company don't have top positions but the ones that seem to work are more so on the lower end...
stufte
Member
27%. But I posted this because people were throwing around numbers they were making up, and not actual facts. I thought it would help the conversation if people knew what the fuck they were talking about. I had no point other than that.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
This is an improvement compared to what you'd find at other companies.
To me it just sounds like a "I'm sparticus" moment or to get slightly more convoluted guy fawkes mask scenario. I mean, even one of the basic tennants of the assasin code originally was to blend in in order to not stand out as one particular individual over another. To extend that thought further to create the illusion of a single zealot is really "army of zealot usurpers" would be interesting, but I'm probably reading too deeply into this at the moment.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
That's one 19 page forum on the website. Don't you think that it would be filled more quickly if the majority really cared more about whether or not the protagonist is female. Or that more than a couple thousand people would sign the petition compared to the millions who buy the game each year in the name of wanting to play another fun installment of one of their favorite franchises? And did you really read that thread? Because it's mostly composed of people joking around while one guy takes himself too seriously.
Point is, that there are people beyond this website that care.
Why does this bother you so much?
There's obviously going to be some jankyness in it, or alternately it's not going to be very narrative-focused in order to escape odd situations. I really doubt you're going to have extended cutscenes with all four co-op partners talking. The idea might be very compelling but it introduces more problems / more budgetary concerns that are unlikely to be in-scope if they don't have the bandwidth to do female skins.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It doesn't bother me. I never implied that it bothered me. Point is, that still doesn't disprove my point, in fact it proves it. The main fanbase, as in the more of the players, aren't really bothered by whether or not we're playing as a male or female. Hell, last year there were many more fans complaining that a "a pirate can't also be an assassin" over his gender.
Didn't see this posted
http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/13/5805510/assassins-creed-unity-patrice-desilets-ubisoft
http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/13/5805510/assassins-creed-unity-patrice-desilets-ubisoft
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
That's stupid. I care about gender representation in games, but if I "voted with my wallet" and only spent money on games where the gender representation is good enough, I'd be buying almost no games at all. It's something I care about, but that doesn't make it a dealbreaker. Moreover, if I stop buying those AAA games featuring male leads, the gaming industry might get the impression that women don't like AAA games and then keep on churning out AAA games with male leads and say "it's ok, most gamers are male anyway".
lol?
ab.aeterno
Member
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. The person you were replying to was speaking to the idea that the issue being brought up represents a pro-active dialog for inclusion in the next game.
How does this address what he said about it being a dialog?
Further, why the fuck is majority rule being used to argue for forming the design decisions? And further still, how can you argue you'd like to see more female representation but then stipulate it must come with the expressed desires of a majority of the intended audience?
You know that most progress made for minorities didn't start by getting majority approval right?
Edit: hell, you keep bringing up AC: Liberation, if the majority of people don't care about the gender of the character, or didn't ask for it, then they shouldn't have made it right?
So the majority has to approve of anything related to minorities? What a frightening thought when applied to legislation. It's especially sad because it implies that content creators shouldn't bother being inclusive unless a majority expressly approves, which in context of all the artistic integrity discussion, seems exceptionally gross.
It's also ironic that you argue against the efficacy of campaigns when that arguably had an appreciable impact on the launch of two consoles, and got Nintendo to promise inclusiveness in the next Tomodachi title.
Guess people shouldn't bother expressing desires or criticisms though.
Impeccable
Member
Crossing Eden is still knee deep in this discussion more than 24 hours later from when I was last actively posting in here. That's legitimate dedication to the defense of inequality, that's for sure.
I just know that females are in this game and they will have to be animated, so we'll see when we get our hands on their game whether or not what they've said holds up.
I just know that females are in this game and they will have to be animated, so we'll see when we get our hands on their game whether or not what they've said holds up.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The next game is already in development. The people clamoring for female assassins would most likely complain that he's a male even if the point to showcase pro-feminine values. If they already decided on a male already for the next game, they aren't gonna scramble around and change the game due to a forum discussion and misleading articles. For all we know, the next game will also feature Arno. We don't know, it remains to be seen. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that we have a definite long term effect on the development of the AC games.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It's not the "defense of inequality." Stop misinterpreting my posts. It's clarifying that inequality doesn't apply in this specific context. I'm all for equality and all that. But I also know when to be fair and not to attack developers with no malicious intent towards the opposite gender and who're constricted by the development pipeline and have their own vision for their product that I am making the choice on whether or not to buy.
The discussion seems to be going off-the-rails here. It's not really about malicious intent or attacking Ubisoft. It's disgruntled consumers saying they're not happy the way a product seems to be turning out. Ubi figured nobody would care if they ditched this and they were wrong (should've taken lessons from Saints Row). They'll know better next time. While I hate uPlay as much as anyone Ubi has been a progressive company on the gender front generally and that's maybe why people are so disappointed here. There are companies I have zero expectations for, and not being one of them is a good thing for Ubi.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
But there's been multiple logical explanations as to why the game couldn't turn out that way yet those disgruntled customers still refuse to listen to them/say "oh well they should've/could've done it this way. I don't know anything about game development, I don't know how animation works, I don't know about the scheduling process and pipeline process or even the pre-production phase, but I still think that it should've done in x way" And it's ridiculous. If gamers knew how much content was cut from games....oi...the backlash would be immense.
Woah tone down the vigor there Sojourner.
ab.aeterno
Member
Why are you framing this as though it only applies to the next game? Neither my post, nor the posts in the long chain of replies, is arguing about anything other than including them in the future of the series. Framing the discussion like this just to dismiss it, when the conversation was about the general future of the franchise, is a textbook strawman. that's setting aside the reductionism of the discussion on the issue of female inclusiveness being a few misleading articles, so that can dismiss underlying concerns. And you didn't even bother to address anything else.
Sorry, but "you won't have any impact, don't bother" is just about the worst response to the idea of people making their wishes known. What a bunch of nonsense.
stufte
Member
I think it was more about making what looked like an official statement. I've made claims on here before that were turned into news stories on various gaming sites, much to my horror.
Yeah, but logical explanations don't really matter since it's just a question of supply and demand. If this game was a car and I wanted a car with air conditioning and the dealer guy went 'well, we had to get in something else so we ditched it' I'd say 'okay, I just won't get this car then'. People here are letting them know they really wanted that AC in.
I've seen it happen a couple of times and it's the last thing I'd want, to have a comment / opinion get someone in trouble or explode into something larger.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Logical explanations always matter. There's no situation ever where a logical explanation does not matter if it's been provided multiple times by multiple people who're more informed/knowledgeable on the situation. And in this case, the demand, is not high enough to consider the supply. I'm sure the demand that Ubisoft delivers a highly polished product that clearly shows that it's a higher tier than the rest of the series and worthy of the nickname "next gen" is higher than the idea that "oh maybe i'm playing as a female character right now on someone else's screen." I see no reason why this game won't sell at least a couple million copies. Especially not as they continue to give out more and more information and gameplay demos while also revealing things that we don't know about, like a story trailer, the continuation of the making of documentary on ign's channel, or just a plain and simple gameplay commentary video.
How about metascore?