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Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters

G

Guess Who

Banned
Gold_Loot said:
Agreed, it's bullshit, and I'm pretty disappointed with some of these other developers dog piling a non issue via Twitter..

Here's a company that has given us good female protagonists. Good black protagonists, as well as Indian , and Persian. Yet, they get the brunt of all the shit concerning race and gender.

No wonder most companies stick with the white male demographic. Just a few days of reading some forums, and I wouldn't bother with that shit either.
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"A company that has produced a diverse range of playable characters gets lots of flak when they have no diversity in a new game's playable character roster. Therefore, it is logical that most companies do not bother producing diverse character rosters."

Your thinking isn't even internally consistent anymore, go take a nap bro.
 
G

GeoGonzo

Member
wildfire said:
It's not too late at all. We've seen bullshit animation fixes and DLC skins come out in a very swift time frames.
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Oh, that is true... but I meant that it is too late if they're sticking to their original excuse, which is what I'd expect them to do.
 
C

ClaptoVaughn

Member
Well they mentioned that the assassins are customizable, so does that mean we can mold the faces? If that's the case, the face/hair creation options and tweaking would require extra time.

However, Ubisoft obviously has enough resources to create that if they really wanted to.

1) they could have reused female animations from previous AC games
2) they obviously have no issue with female assassins since one AC game starred one and at least one other let you recruit them
3) they surely know that lots of people customize and use female characters when there's an option (Mass Effect, Skyrim, etc)

The only other option, I think, is pure cheapness. They don't think it'll affect their bottom line so they just didn't bother spending time/resources on it.
 
L

Lime

Member
I'm glad that this shit is being called out. Especially in contrast to the BF4 debacæe last year, where some people seemed more lenient on Dice's rationalizations for exclusion.
 
T

Toski

Member
ClaptoVaughn said:
Well they mentioned that the assassins are customizable, so does that mean we can mold the faces? ]If that's the case, the face/hair creation options and tweaking would require extra time.
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I think they mean customizable in terms of skill sets/abilities/weapons and not appearance.
 
Mikey Jr.

Mikey Jr.

Member
The coop character is obviously also your story character.

I'm with ubi on this one. You would need to create facial options. Then new clothes pieces for female characters. Then get voice acting for the entire game.

I'm gonna go ahead and say ubisoft doesn't have some fucking secret agenda against women.
 
R

Raitosaito

Member
Mikey Jr. said:
The coop character is obviously also your story character.

I'm with ubi on this one. You would need to create facial options. Then new clothes pieces for female characters. Then get voice acting for the entire game.

I'm gonna go ahead and say unisoft doesn't have some fucking secret agenda against women.
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Lead from ubisoft Toronto who is handling the coop is a female. Ubisoft has no agenda....

Gamers are going crazy.
 
U

UrbanRats

Member
Morrigan Targaryen said:
Having hundreds of hours in all the Souls games, I can assure you it's just fine. Never once while playing Demon's or Dark Souls did I think "oh wow my female warrior runs like a man, this is so wrong!".
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Infact, i'm not fond of the run animations, just feels somewhat forced in its differentiation of masculinity vs femininity.
I don't think being female or male should be that crucial in the way someone moves, if you're a barbarian swinging a huge ass sword, it doesn't mean you'll necessarily have to move your hips more while walking because you're female.
 
L

lefantome

Member
Blackthorn said:
As I said on the last page, assassin recruits in the series have always shown an even split in terms of gender. To have four assassins and not even one of them female not only goes against statistical reality, it goes against the statistical reality of their own series.
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Get some basics of statistics first.
We don't even know those assassins backstories!
4 people, at least one has to be a female because gender equality. Can't you see how it makes no sense to impose it?
Let's have the four mosqueteers adding a fourth female one out of nowhere!
I don't see any problem in the media products where there are only female leads. Equality is when gender is irrelevant.

Intheflorsh said:
You know, it's not like Ubisoft doesn't have 500 studios working on the game. I think they would be able to do some extra work.

If they don't want a a female character in their next game then so be it. Just stop with these bullshit excuses.
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The game has to be ready for a November(or october don't remember) release date, AC games have never been perfect and they could have improved a lot of things.
Was having a female co op character female a priority? They said no, it was their rightful choice because, having it, is not mandatory as far as we know.
Could the game have been better with a female coop character? Let's wait for the release.


the_batman said:
check your privilege, white, cis-gender scum!
/s
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I was scared when I discovered the "check your privilege" stuff widely used, it just another form of sexism/racism used against other sexism/racism (in the best case).
 
M

Mindwipe

Member
I do think it would be a bit harder to do a good job of it than some people are suggesting here (even industry people who should know better about the implications) but that isn't to say Ubi didn't have the resources and of course they bloody should have.

But yeah, don't do anything stupid like reuse the male animations, Dark Souls style. That looks terrible.
 
Z

Zeyphersan

Banned
dab0ne said:
It is what it is. It sucks but they're not in the game. If no females prevents you from not playing the game then play a game that has females. I've never looked at a game and said "No Doods!?!?!? Fuck it, I'm out!! I've also never said "there's girls!?!? I'm out". Seems like it's getting out of hand tbh.
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Luckily I don't care what does or does not prevent YOU from playing a game.

If a game is touting a customizable character and to be who you want to be and have it be a representation of what you want, not being allowed to be a woman is a BIG deal
 
M

Mars477

Banned
Frologic said:
Yeah, not sure why Ubisoft is getting all this flak. Liberation and Freedom Cry may have been smaller assassin creed games but I still respect them with their character choice.
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They did good with Aveline and Adewale, but that doesn't excuse that Ubi shuffled them safely to second tier products and optional DLC.

Plus, acknowledging that black men and women exist (in an organization that is inherently counterculture and transgressive) doesn't excuse utterly failing to do that in the next game.
 
F

Frologic

Member
Videospel said:
I can't say anything about how hard or easy it would be to include a female character. But what are you insinuating, that the people at Ubisoft are making the active choice of not having females because they hate women or want to "hold them back"?
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Considering that one of Ubisofts most beloved games has a strong female lead (BGaE) and they created an assassins creed game with a female main character, along with female assassins being playable in previous multiplayer creed games, I hope not.
 
Gold_Loot

Gold_Loot

Member
Guess Who said:
"A company that has produced a diverse range of playable characters gets lots of flak when they have no diversity in a new game's playable character roster. Therefore, it is logical that most companies do not bother producing diverse character rosters."

Your thinking isn't even internally consistent anymore, go take a nap bro.
Click to expand...

I think it's pretty cut and dry "bro". Why bother with multiple cultures, races, and genders when people complain about them when they do?
 
D

dosh

Member
Morrigan Targaryen said:
Having hundreds of hours in all the Souls games, I can assure you it's just fine. Never once while playing Demon's or Dark Souls did I think "oh wow my female warrior runs like a man, this is so wrong!".
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Yeah but that's due to the fact that female and male characters don't have the same running and walking animations in the game :)
The other animations (attacks, parry, etc.) are shared though (I think).
 
S

soulassssns

Banned
Lame excuse but I honestly do not care about gender/race/sexual orientation of game characters as much as I care about the games just being fun and entertaining or in some cases functional.
 
M

May16

Member
Isn't Alex Hutchinson the same guy that said something like "it shows subtle racism" when Japanese games are reviewed better than Ubisoft games?

And now this classic.
Man, what an idiot.
 
L

link4117

Member
Frologic said:
Yeah, not sure why Ubisoft is getting all this flak. Liberation and Freedom Cry may have been smaller assassin creed games but I still respect them with their character choice.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it's getting more and more attention because they threw out a reason that made no sense/sounds like straight up bullshit. I'm all for letting the people make their own stories and use the protagonists they want to use, it's their game, but don't try to cover it up with weak excuses. It probably wouldn't be getting half the attention it is now if they had made some sort of realistic statement on it.
 
D

dab0ne

Member
Zeyphersan said:
Luckily I don't care what does or does not prevent YOU from playing a game.

If a game is touting a customizable character and to be who you want to be and have it be a representation of what you want, not being allowed to be a woman is a BIG deal
Click to expand...

I guess. You still have the option to not buy the game. It just sounds like a game design decision you don't agree with and if it is, then you have a solution. Hardly a big deal.
 
B

Berksy

Member
Harlequin said:
Well, to be fair, it's likely that these animations wouldn't be easily transferable as I'd assume they're using much more complex rigs in Unity (a PS4/Xbone title) than they did in Liberation (a Vita title). But still, if someone who worked as an animator on AC3 and should thus be very familiar with its animations says that creating a feminine moveset shouldn't take more than two days, then this certainly doesn't seem like a workload issue.
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Its has a HD PC port?
 
B

BanGy.nz

Banned
I get really weirded out when the majority of a GAF thread on gender isn't a flaming pile trash. I can never tell if it's because GAF is getting better or the incident is so egregious that common sense prevails.

//edit I smell smoke, well it was nice while it lasted.
 
M

MadScientist

Banned
I cannot believe this is an issue.

It is not that unusual that someone who says "It is too much work." really means "It is not worth the effort.". He does not necessarily want to say: "It is prohibitively time-consuming and expensive."

Therefore I do not get why Ubi's statement is supposed to be sexist.
 
C

Carcetti

Member
TheExorzist said:
Come on mate, now you're trying real hard....
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What? The lead characters who are more risky to market were factually shuffled into a Vita spin-off and a DLC. They were probably considered test cases by Ubisoft internally in that sense, too. AAA games is about lowest common denominator and playing it safe, after all.
 
Nevadatan

Nevadatan

Member
this is a bit out of hand, but in a sense its worth a debate.
im a woman myself, and i really dont care about having a female or male protagonist. i tend to choose female characters on some games to feel more attached to the character, but not always (for instance, on that streetfighting game Def Jam, the one on xbox, ps2 and gc, i always used a male character, i cringed every time i got KO using a female character). so not getting a female protagonist on the next assasins creed doesnt seems a bother. but the actual reason Ubisoft pulled on this is simply laugheable, c'mon, you can reuse most of the assets from other characters.

"we dont want to bother making a female protagonist, period" would be a direct, more honest and somewhat nicer excuse
 
V

Videospel

Member
link4117 said:
I'm pretty sure it's getting more and more attention because they threw out a reason that made no sense/sounds like straight up bullshit. I'm all for letting the people make their own stories and use the protagonists they want to use, it's their game, but don't try to cover it up with weak excuses. It probably wouldn't be getting half the attention it is now if they had made some sort of realistic statement on it.
Click to expand...

So if his explanation was a weak excuse meant to cover something up, what was he trying to cover up?
 
S

Some Nobody

Junior Member
Gold_Loot said:
I think it's pretty cut and dry "bro". Why bother with multiple cultures, races, and genders when people complain about them when they do?
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Because no one complained when they did. People complained because they stopped.

And, I'm torn. I want to play this game but when I saw the whole "four different characters, all of them male" thing, it bugged the hell out of me. I'm not even all that much of an activist, I just think that we as a race (humanity) can just fucking do better.

But now I'm hearing that they aren't four different characters, they're just the main character, which renders it all moot. Now you're not asking "could some be female", you're asking "could the main character be female". Which is actually still a good question, but not the discussion I was initially in for.

Ah, fuck it. My friend will eventually buy it because he buys all Assassin's Creed games. I'll play it when he finishes. Ubisoft made the mistake of releasing this in October when I'd be busy playing other shit anyway.
 
A

Alexastor

Member
You can't simply reuse animations from an older titles, as they will extremely bad. And even if you reuse the male animations from AC:U, creating female characters is still pretty damn resource intensive because you have to make all those costumes again and rig them (which is part of the animation process). That is the problem. AC:U doesn't even have a dedicated MP mode that'd justify making a diverse range of new character models like in the MP section of the other ACs.

When Ubisoft says they don't have the resources to do it, they mean they don't want to hire more developers. Yes, Ubisoft does have 9 studios or so working on it, but they are also working on half a dozen of other projects, including this year's second AC and the ACs for next year and the year after.

Nearly every AAA developer has the resources or money to do female characters on paper as well. So, even if you say money or greed is the only reason they didn't include it, I don't see the problem with Ubisoft specifically.

Other developers or publishers don't or didn't include female characters in their MP either because they don't (didn't) want to spend that money. But they don't get flak for it. Compared to other games or game series, AC does indeed have a very diverse set of characters. Maybe this year's second AC even has a female main character again?

Complaining about it in general , and across the industry, is fine. But calling out Ubisoft specifically is utter bullshit.
 
P

popyea

Member
RubberJohnny said:
Dark Souls shows you can use the same animations for male + female and it works fine.

It's s shitty excuse, and all of Ubisofts stuff seems to have a terrible attitude.
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I think they only have different walking animations between genders. A very economical solution and it works perfectly well. But then again, I wouldn't expect Ubisoft to know any better than to spend millions putting teams of people to add a feature like that.
 
M

More Fun To Compute

Member
It's interesting how they seem to pass the problem off as one of bureaucratic inefficiency. They would like to create a female player character but any work on a female character has to be signed off on by a committee of senior female employees and it was too much work to assemble that committee.
 
S

Some Nobody

Junior Member
Alexastor said:
You can't simply reuse animations from an older title, as they will extremely bad. And even if you reuse the male animations from AC:U, creating female characters is still pretty damn resource intensive because you have to make all those costumes again and rig them (which is part of the animation process). That is the problem.

When Ubisoft says they don't have the resources to do it, they mean they don't want to hire more developers. Yes, Ubisoft does have 9 studios or so working on it, but they are also working on half a dozen of other projects, including this year's second AC and the ACs for next year and the year after.

Nearly every AAA developer has the resources or money to do female characters on paper as well. So, even if you say money is the only reason they didn't include it, I don't see the problem with Ubisoft specifically.

Other developers or publishers don't or didn't include female characters in their MP either because they don't (didn't) want to spend that money. But they don't get flak for it. Compared to other games or game series, AC does indeed have a very diverse set of characters. Maybe this year's second AC even has a female main character again?

Complaining about it in general , and across the industry, is fine. But calling out Ubisoft specifically is utter bullshit.
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Everything we've heard so far says it doesn't. Which is actually also annoying, because Unity should be the one they're pushing so they should be able to take more risks with Comet.
 
R

RégisEstUnCon

Neo Member
Ok stop, there is only one studio who works on the animation of assassin's creed. You can't make people who doesn't do chara design on this job.

IT's actually a lot's of job to make new models and all the animations and finally
There was NO FEMALE ASSASSINS IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF HASHASHIN.

So every time you are saying "Yeah AC is great because of the history aspect" just shut up when they do a choice because of the history aspect...

And they also make a whole game with a female assassin so who cares ?
 
JimmyRustler

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
Carcetti said:
What? The lead characters who are more risky to market were factually shuffled into a Vita spin-off and a DLC. They were probably considered test cases by Ubisoft internally in that sense, too. AAA games is about lowest common denominator and playing it safe, after all.
Click to expand...
I don't see how an Arab and an Natice Amercian guy (AC1 & 4) were easier to market, yet they still made it into main entries of the series. And please lets totally ignore that it would have not made any sense at all so far to make leads of the game black as, you know, the story was centered around Desmonds ancestors so far. And Desmond seemed pretty white iirc.
 
C

CelticKnight

Member
Ubisoft bashing seems to be this summer's hottest sport.

I wouldn't be surprised if they backed themselves into a corner on this. After all the FC3 and FC4 hubbub, maybe they thought they couldn't say there's no playable females in this game because they wanted all males because it would cause a backlash, so they half-assed a PR reply that inadvertently sounds condescending.

Every time Ubisoft seem to do something these days it seems to blow up in their faces...
 
K

kuppy

Member
Yeah, this is bullshit, the teams working on Ubisoft games are enormous, they rebuild whole cities. They should maybe also consider a different skin color option as another additional feature on their list, ugh.

There is also that Rainbow Six: Siege hostage situation, where we have a helpless woman waiting to be picked up like a flag.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
TheExorzist said:
I don't see how an Arab and an Natice Amercian guy (AC1 & 4) were easier to market, yet they still made it into main entries of the series. And please lets totally ignore that it would have not made any sense at all so far to make leads of the game black as, you know, the story was centered around Desmonds ancestors so far. And Desmond seemed pretty white iirc.
Click to expand...

A white guy that has Altair and Connor in his line. Not exactly a huge stretch to throw in a black person. And really, Edward's connection to Desmond is barely a plot point.
 
X

Xpliskin

Member
honest question, no sarcasm, not judging:

are there any games (except tomb raider) with a female lead or co-op character that have sold > 5 million units ?
 
L

Lime

Member
Good piece by RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/12/assassins-creed-unity-characters/

Ubisoft seems to be moving goalposts.

Also, regarding any diegetic or narrative justification:

Historical setting or no, Assassin’s Creed games remain fantastical science-fiction, concerning psychic holodecks, ancestor races, murderous gods and centuries-long cosmic conspiracies. The rules are that there are no rules. Just one line of technomagical dialogue would excuse anyone being anyone, or looking like anything. The only, only unbreakable defence for not including a woman or any other kind of playable character option can be “we did not want to,” and from there one has every right to question why someone would not want to – which is what is happening in this case anyway.
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K

Kuldar

Member
F

False Witness

Member
Lime said:
Also, apparently all 4 characters in coop is Arno. Which seems incredibly stupid and unbelievable.
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The player character is always Arno. So, say they give one of the characters that you will never play as a female skin, will it really matter much in the end?
 
L

Lime

Member
Kuldar said:
Why unbelievable? It will be like Watch Dogs. You are playing as Arno and you see othe your friend with a different skin. Your friend will play as Arno and see you with a diffeent skin.
Click to expand...

Sorry I misunderstood and have edited accordingly, but my point is touched upon in the RPS article.
 
A

Alexastor

Member
kuppy said:
There is also that Rainbow Six: Siege hostage situation, where we have a helpless woman waiting to be picked up like a flag.
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This, and the actual ingame stories and sexual or racial stereotypes is actually what we should be concerned about. Yet, we only have a superficial and hypocritical outcry when it comes a game's box art or one game out of many not featuring female characters. Bleh.
 
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