-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
stufte
Member
Which is probably why he threw his thoughts out there in the first place...
"Logical explanations" for why content is missing do not factor into critics' reviews of your game. They review the game both in terms of what it is and what is missing. When Arthur Gies reviews this game and considers the co-op, is he going to deferring to the developers' excuses against him feeling isn't fully fleshed-out, or is he going to be evaluating it in terms of what it is and what he feels is missing? When you discuss WD's multiplayer, do you defer to the developer's explanations for why it is the way it is and stay silent, or do you instead criticize it continuously in this thread?
Hah true. Maybe they should have asked him why Ac1 and Ac2 didn't give you a gender option
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
That's pretty credible, especially given senior representation which is usually a weak spot. Kudos to Ubisoft for their commitment to employment equality. Of course it's still a long way from completely representative of society as a whole, but that's a much bigger and more complicated problem.
... which leaving female avatar and character options out of a game does nothing but reinforce. I understand the decision to target the established demographic, but it doesn't mean I have to like it or agree it has anything but a detrimental impact on an issue we both seem to believe in.
MoonsaultSlayer
Member
Thinking about this today, why would they? Why should they? They got enough feedback from AC3 to inform them of what kind of character people want. Most of you either abandoned AC3 or completed it begrudgingly because of Connor. Why would they ever expect the public to accept a female in the lead role of the main line games if people couldn't even accept a character that went against the grain?
Edit: The AC series has always featured strong female characters in each of their games. The playable female characters in the multiplayer also always seemed more popular than the male selections. And of course there was Aveline. So I think Ubi should be let off the hook a bit here.
Edit: The AC series has always featured strong female characters in each of their games. The playable female characters in the multiplayer also always seemed more popular than the male selections. And of course there was Aveline. So I think Ubi should be let off the hook a bit here.
Don't remind me. I'm still bummed we didn't get more Connor.
MoonsaultSlayer
Member
Me too. I just hope Ubi gives us a look at Connor as an NPC while he visits France and acts as a guest mentor of some sort.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
I don't think you're on the right track here. I'm all for a female protagonist, naturally one of the mainline games will have a female lead, (probably...preferably...hopefully... ಥ_ಥ set in Feudal Japan), but in this case I don't think that appealing to a mainline demographic was part of the reason why they decided to go for a male lead during a very bloody revolution time. I mentioned it before but for all we know the next AC:Unity could look like this.
(Yes these are all the same female character in different clothing)
It's more a matter of patience and to wait til Ubisoft deems that a female protagonist is necessary for the message and story that they wanna tell during whatever time period they choose next.
This is funny to read http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=518907
He should get the Freedom Cry treatment at least.
People weren't a fan of connor, but I'd say he was AC3's smallest problem. I certainly hope that wasn't ubisoft's main focus when thinking about how to improve the game, or blamed poor reception solely on him
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
I blame the "next gen on last gen consoles" focus. I feel like it wouldn't been a much better game on next gen consoles considering the engine was made for it in the first place. Huge fan of AC3 but some criticisms were definitely valid. Like the bugs, oh lord the bugs.
stufte
Member
and the whole first 3 hours of the game where you "grow up" being infuriatingly lame.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Yes. However, this is all off-topic discussion that would suitable in another thread.
ab.aeterno
Member
As if the poor pacing wasn't bad enough, the game's back half just sort of meandered and then rushed to conclude, at the expense of plot and characterization. And then there was the bloat of systems that made the game feel like it was going to collapse under the weight of.
Man, I was so hyped for that game. What a letdown.
MoonsaultSlayer
Member
Just think, those systems were optional, hidden and available whenever. Imagine if the series dedicated a button to a checklist and made optional objectives blink in your face and locked behind an online pass.... oh wait.
I hope Unity irons some of that out.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
We'll see. (✌ﾟ∀ﾟyeah me too. Hoping it'll one day read "WE DID IT" because Ubisoft became less lazy and rep women killers.... (...awkward phrasing)
figadapaura
Member
Is that book just a really long, drawn out way of saying yes?
I think it does work. Who cares? I bet more men played tomb raider than women. We in the first world just have too much time on our hands. WE ARE ARGUING ABOUT FEMALE VIDEO GAME CHARACTER> HAHAHAHAHHA
I'm an engineer and went to an engineering school. Women were outnumbered 5:1 at the school when I got there, and that shrank to 3:1 by the time I graduated. Women don't enter those fields as much as men, and they just don't play games as much as men. I have a friend who's an artist at Ubi, and I was joking with him today that if a team of women made a AAA title, it would probably end up a fps with a male lead solely due to the market they'd be serving.
You're right it's societal. I tell my friends to give their daughters Legos. Get them building and designing things and developing their spacial skills. PEACE.
Does it bother anyone else that "We didn't have the resources to implement more than one player characer" has become "Women are too hard to animate"? It appears the entire industry and press has been dogpiling on Ubisoft on stuff that they never actually said. It looks like AC: Unity has the same co-op multiplayer as Dead Rising and Halo where everyone plays the same PC. People are just plain making shit up about Ubisoft's comments (#womenaretoohardtoanimate, there are four male co-op characters), saying it would only take a couple days to implement a new player character and game system into the game, and comparing the workload of a vita game to a current gen AAA game.
Orthogonal
Member
Read this remark by a game's producer that may add some context. Explains it best I think.
http://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscr...inct_lack_of_female_characters_due_to/ci5z8i7
DAREALGUMMY
Member
I don't neglect games just because the main hero is white. If I have interest in the game, it doesn't bother me.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Yes it completely bothers me as an animator. There's nothing worse than when an animator's words get twisted by people who're misinformed/don't bother to look up any clarification. It's just like when one of the facial animators of Frozen talked about the difficulties of making facial deformation look natural on the facial rigs which were much more complex than a typical Disney film and tumblr users misinterpreted it as him saying "she always has to look pretty."
VibratingDonkey
Member
You can understand where Ken Levine is coming from. But I don't know how true it is that a "dude with gun" cover helps a game sell more considering how common that motif is. They're the ones with all the sales data, but I wonder about their interpretation of it.
This ought to have been linked to already.
Publishers think games with female leads will sell less, so give them less marketing, and so they sell less.
Given an equal opportunity, it's hard to tell if there is merit to the belief that a game sells less if it has a female lead, because, at least when this research was done, there weren't enough examples for a meaningful comparison to get made.
ThreePiMatt
Member
Women and men watch different movies, read different books, listent to different music. Obviously there is media that crosses over the genders and gaming has that to a degree in some MMOs, the Sims, etc. I just don't get this notion that because women are 50% of the population that they're also 50% of the potential market for AAA action/shooters.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Or that they're 50% of established fanbases and franchises. Thats a given, some series have more male fans than female fans.
Assassin's Creed
Battlefield
Call of Duty
^ It's not unrealistic or offensive to think that these series have a higher male:female ratio of characters. Just like it's not offensive to think that
-The Sims
-Animal Crossing
-Pokemon
Have a lower or more equal male:female ratio.