OP didn't frame that quote very well. He should have said former lead animator of Assassin's Creed III. Then that makes his opinion all the more poignant in this issue.
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Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
OP didn't frame that quote very well. He should have said former lead animator of Assassin's Creed III. Then that makes his opinion all the more poignant in this issue.
NuclearSpy
Member
Not completely unrelated here, but I don't understand why anyone is "calling out" and think it's OK to do so. What the hell is this trend?
It's extremely unprofessional even if you are right. Not that I want such a thing to happen to anyone, but you guys need to be aware that this isn't acceptable behavior in the industry (or anywhere else for that matter) and can get you fired.
It's extremely unprofessional even if you are right. Not that I want such a thing to happen to anyone, but you guys need to be aware that this isn't acceptable behavior in the industry (or anywhere else for that matter) and can get you fired.
figadapaura
Member
Did you miss the first sentence of my post? What?
n00bsauce87
Member
Probably not in all honesty
But this is Tomodachi life all over again, but with women instead of homosexuals. Would you say Nintendo should have been whatevs? Sometimes your bottom dollar is worth more than company pride. Even if you believe that women (or any other minority) shouldn't be in your games, you might want to appease the masses. At the end of the day, that company you are speaking of has to face their shareholders. They care about the money and if having a public stance like that hurts them getting more money, they will start taking heads.
sickvisionz
Banned
If they only had an animation library that was specifically for a female MC this all wouldn't have happened.
...whoops!
Yeah but then if the men are fluidly animated in a capture system and engine designed for next gen while the women move like they're ripped from some janky PSP game, the internet provides the same hyperbolic reaction.
I get the feeling that if they had women and said, "we just copied the animations from male characters" you'd have some backlash about how they couldn't be bothered to actually use female motion capture artists and it'd be the same hyperbolic reaction.
They just fucked up their communication plan. This is all based on a misunderstanding.
You don't "create a character" in ACU. This is not Mass Effect or Skyrim.You customize the existing one.
Just like you do in GTA V for example. You have extensive customization option for each of the 3 main characters of the game, but you can't, for example, change their race or gender. Because the game tells the story of Franklin the black guy who says "nigga", you can't suddenly decide to make him an asian female for example. However, you can change all of his clothes and even his hairstyle and give him a moustache if you feel like.
People never complained that you couldn't be a woman in AC Brotherhood for instance. I don't see any problem here, it's the same for ACU. No matter what moustache you have, or the color of your coat, you're always going to be Arno, just like you were Ezio, Altair, Connor, or Edward.
All I see is people making points that would be totally valid for other type of games, but just have no bearing here.
1 - it would be really a shit move if a game where you create a character (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Wildstar, etc) didn't allow for female characters to be made. But this isn't the case here.
2 - it would be a totally shit move if this was a game about a crew of 4 main characters (like Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, Fuse, etc.) and each of them the identical mold of white male.
Again, this isn't the case here. This is not a scenario where the four main characters are white male. The co-op part is outside of the story, and since you don't create a separate character for co-op, everyone plays it with "Arno". So in co-op, you have 4 instances of "Arno". Now you can find it highly silly at worse, but it's not sexist or racist.
But I don't fault people for getting mislead, I was too at first, and frankly, with marketing assets like this one...
... I can't blame anyone for thinking this is like left 4 dead or borderlands, but with a terrible lack of diversity in main characters. This thing looks like an Ocean's Eleven movie poster where the 4 wise-cracking heroes of the plot are going to kick some ass.
But this is just 4 times the same character with different clothes and facial hair, "because videogames".
So I really don't know why Ubisoft is digging their own holes with stupid "production reasons" when they could just explain this misunderstanding.
Assassin's Creed Unity is not more "obligated" to giving gender choice than, say, The Last Of Us, Infamous Second Son, GTA, Splinter Cell, or any other AC game, or any other game that is about telling the story of a unique pre-written character.
Now I'm not saying that it's "impossible" to make a scenario that goes fine for a male OR a female, because lots of games do it, but it's really up to the game's creators to decide about which story they tell and how much the player is allowed to have an impact on it.
And please don't quote that last bit out of context without reading the rest of my post.
I'm all for more female representation in games (I always play female character when given the opportunity), but what I see in this situation is not people advocating for more female character, it's people being mislead and acting like from now on every big budget game should adapt its scenario and storytelling intentions to accomodate characters of any gender. I feel it's a bit sad that once again, an originally noble cause is made to look bad by people jumping to conclusions and blowing things out of proportions.
You don't "create a character" in ACU. This is not Mass Effect or Skyrim.You customize the existing one.
Just like you do in GTA V for example. You have extensive customization option for each of the 3 main characters of the game, but you can't, for example, change their race or gender. Because the game tells the story of Franklin the black guy who says "nigga", you can't suddenly decide to make him an asian female for example. However, you can change all of his clothes and even his hairstyle and give him a moustache if you feel like.
People never complained that you couldn't be a woman in AC Brotherhood for instance. I don't see any problem here, it's the same for ACU. No matter what moustache you have, or the color of your coat, you're always going to be Arno, just like you were Ezio, Altair, Connor, or Edward.
All I see is people making points that would be totally valid for other type of games, but just have no bearing here.
1 - it would be really a shit move if a game where you create a character (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Wildstar, etc) didn't allow for female characters to be made. But this isn't the case here.
2 - it would be a totally shit move if this was a game about a crew of 4 main characters (like Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, Fuse, etc.) and each of them the identical mold of white male.
Again, this isn't the case here. This is not a scenario where the four main characters are white male. The co-op part is outside of the story, and since you don't create a separate character for co-op, everyone plays it with "Arno". So in co-op, you have 4 instances of "Arno". Now you can find it highly silly at worse, but it's not sexist or racist.
But I don't fault people for getting mislead, I was too at first, and frankly, with marketing assets like this one...
... I can't blame anyone for thinking this is like left 4 dead or borderlands, but with a terrible lack of diversity in main characters. This thing looks like an Ocean's Eleven movie poster where the 4 wise-cracking heroes of the plot are going to kick some ass.
But this is just 4 times the same character with different clothes and facial hair, "because videogames".
So I really don't know why Ubisoft is digging their own holes with stupid "production reasons" when they could just explain this misunderstanding.
Assassin's Creed Unity is not more "obligated" to giving gender choice than, say, The Last Of Us, Infamous Second Son, GTA, Splinter Cell, or any other AC game, or any other game that is about telling the story of a unique pre-written character.
Now I'm not saying that it's "impossible" to make a scenario that goes fine for a male OR a female, because lots of games do it, but it's really up to the game's creators to decide about which story they tell and how much the player is allowed to have an impact on it.
And please don't quote that last bit out of context without reading the rest of my post.
I'm all for more female representation in games (I always play female character when given the opportunity), but what I see in this situation is not people advocating for more female character, it's people being mislead and acting like from now on every big budget game should adapt its scenario and storytelling intentions to accomodate characters of any gender. I feel it's a bit sad that once again, an originally noble cause is made to look bad by people jumping to conclusions and blowing things out of proportions.
flatearthpandas
Member
Irrelevant. What I'm saying is that it is historically accurate for women to be assassins in that setting. From what they've shown so far, the entire game is missed opportunity after missed opportunity to use relevant aspects of the setting to the benefit of the game. Female assassins make sense.
AC main protagonist never are an historical personnage. So they would not use Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday dArmont as a main character. Plus she was executed in 1793 so they wouldn't be able to cover some part of the Terror during the French Revolution.
How about you try harder to downplay the issue which is a wide range of bullshit excuses made by Ubisoft employees? And how about you do a bit of research of generally the sameAss excuses they always bring on the table regarding excluding women?
I'm not downplaying anything. I'll tell you what I'm not doing.
I'm not painting one of the franchises that has the most racial diversity and a game with a female lead in it as excluding other races and sexes for white male characters. I'm also not conveniently forgetting the fact that female characters were playable for the last 3 main entries as multiplayer characters.
I'm not going to argue women aren't under represented in games. They are. AC however is not a franchise that deserves the flame treatment for this topic.
BrokenEchelon
Banned
Witch hunts, witch hunts, everywhere.
SpinningBirdKick
Banned
Business is business.
Do you want extra content? Then buy it as DLC.
There's far more to adding a female character than just rigging the animations. Female character textures/outfits will also be required, as will female voice acting and translations if necessary. The game will also need some mechanism either in the story or the UI inferface to select the sex of the character.
In game cut scene animations (that are not real time generated) will also need to be done with both the male and female characters. It may not be possible to squeeze all of this into the storage space available.
Players can ask for this stuff but they should realise that it it has cost implications. Anyone can ask to be given things for free but if you're not prepared to pay for it, shut up.
Do you want extra content? Then buy it as DLC.
There's far more to adding a female character than just rigging the animations. Female character textures/outfits will also be required, as will female voice acting and translations if necessary. The game will also need some mechanism either in the story or the UI inferface to select the sex of the character.
In game cut scene animations (that are not real time generated) will also need to be done with both the male and female characters. It may not be possible to squeeze all of this into the storage space available.
Players can ask for this stuff but they should realise that it it has cost implications. Anyone can ask to be given things for free but if you're not prepared to pay for it, shut up.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
So I'm assuming this controversy spawned out of people thinking those were 4 different guys rather than 4 different outfits on the same guy.
Didn't they rework her animations in the HD versions for PS360 though?
benicillin
Banned
Say what you will about their decision to not include female playable characters, which is an issue in its own right, but to give a lame excuse about it being too much work or something was just dumb.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Now imagine that all of those series have always had set narratives with a set main character and were never advertised as aren't rpgs and suddenly everyone wants them to change and add more work which other animation directors stated would "result in a decrease of quality." in the name of "representation" when not only are there many other options out there but also because the work to add said changes wouldn't add anything significant to the games other than a bragging right. Also imagine that those series have represented women before with female playable characters and characters in the narrative that are female and significant. Now imagine that a new installment is being completely built from the ground up with groundbreaking new tech and completely revamped systems to ensure an increase in quality animation and a focused goal for the game which takes more effort than any other attempts in the series because it's being made for a new generation of consoles.
figadapaura
Member
Mass Effect received a lot of complaints and then there weren't any non-heterosexual romances in 2 (unless you romanced Liara as femshep and bought Lair of the Shadow Broker). And no, Kelly Chambers does not count.
They made up for with 3 tbf, but still.
BrassDragon
Member
This, a thousand times this. We're on a forum where every last scrap of gaming-related news is scrutinised and discussed in mind-boggling detail, second-guessing developers all the way. The question of resolution and FPS alone seems to warrent a new thread every other day.
But question the lack of a gender option in a game that's being sold on customisability..? Nope, that's artistic prerogative and not up for debate.
Marketing, proven mechanics and polish ensure that these AAA titles generally sell in droves - 'voting with your wallet' to change policy has proven utterly ineffective in this industry. So the only way to get through to developers is by actually having these discussions and pushing back against their PR.
Pretty much. Actually, reading through this thread a bit more I'm glad most people in here figured this out. Maybe I didn't have to write such a long winded post actually
Women are not represented in AC Unity. Gamers are free to call out that they are not represented. It is that easy.
theDeeDubs
Member
.
I have to disagree. It seems the hot topic in gaming is novelty almost for novelty's sake. I think any reason the Creative Director gave for not having a playable woman character would have the same outcome we have now. If you want to have playable female/gay/bi/transgender/whatever characters, there is almost nothing he could've said that would've assuaged people looking for "diversity" in playable characters, even if the scenario/budget/planning/time didn't call for it.
I wasn't saying that to preclude the inclusion of a female character. I was just pointing out you never play the famous person. Of course there can be female assassins, regardless of whether there was a famous historical female at that place and time. That quote is just meaningless though.
Ascenion
Member
I didn't think of that. It also reminds me of the as of yet unseen Assassin's Creed Comet. Given the apparent development of 2 AAA titles in the same year likely using the same resources I can see where they wouldn't have the time.
Nah. I'm gonna have to disagree here. Men and Women are not the same, and we do not move the same way. (This is a sad fact of life - or a delicious one, depending on perspective.
I'm going with the latter.
A woman does indeed move differently than a man. Much of that is based on cultural influences (skirts, high heels, etc), but that doesn't mean the difference due to different skeletal and muscular make-up isn't there.
Also, sneaky! You added that hip wiggle part. It was only about different animations in general.
ZehDon
Member
Actually, my point was that the game title was "The Ballard of Gay Tony." Like, it's written on the box that sits in the game store that people are going to see. And it didn't spark global protests from the world's religions.
Lalalandia
Member
So the AC series now features on demand cloning in the 18th century? Unless the in game fiction is that somehow you are creating copies of yourself a lá The Swapper this is a garbage excuse.
Why do men and women show gait differences in the military, police, or athletic events. Would seem they get similar/same training?
Huh? People complain about it all the time, and Bioware specifically gave Femshep different animations in ME3 because people complained about it constantly. It's actually one of the few things they did right in ME3.
Again, I think Ubi should have used the massive resource they have to do it regardless, but this is actually proof of the opposite to what is being claimed - for slow, non-athletic movement in particular, you can definitely detect gender, and reusing male animations would look terrible, and should under no circumstances have been done.
I understand, but you'll have people saying that game doesn't count because he's not the protagonist. The protagonist is a straight Hispanic that's like half typical.
ZehDon
Member
Well, every game gets complaints. Seriously. People complained about the lack of racial diversity in "Mario Kart 8" - ironic, considering it uses iconic characters in addition to your Mii, which is heavily customisable. Anyway, my point was that it didn't spark mass protests enough to scare off a publically traded company. As I mentioned, The Sims allows for same-sex families, and that game is marketed towards children. In fact, as you pointed out, the complaints themselves were ultimately ignored, and three was the best selling of the lot. Anyway, as I said, we've had the discussion about homosexual appeal is many, many other threads, let's not repeat the discussion here.
Sorry, thought perhaps I wasn't as clear. Anyway, people can try and make that point - but its not a rebuttal to my point and ignores it entirely. My point is in regards to the title of the game, not its actual content. If we can have a game called "The Ballard of Gay Tony", which to the usual ignorant masses might appear as a game about a homosexual called Tony, and we aren't all killed in mass religious protests, then I think we're passed the point where the mere inclusion of homosexuality kills a game. Consumer taste is another issue - and as I said about, we've had discussions on that elsewhere.
But the head of animation for AC3 and ME2 says it's a couple days work. Who would know better than him?
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It's not being sold on customisability because you always play as Arno. They NEVER advertised or said that you will play as anyone other than Arno or that you play as a fully custom character. They said the opposite.
Zen_Arcade
Banned
When you can look at dozens of other franchises in gaming with little to no representation of women or other races and you pick one of the only series that historically has, people are allowed to criticize your criticism for it's lack of logic and for how misguided it is.
Damn Ubisoft never letting me play as a woman...
Seriously though... i love how people jump on this ubihatetrain. come fucking on. Seriously jumping on Ubisoft for their game that features male characters? OH NO!
What about EVERY OTHER GAME that features a playable MALE CHARACTER ONLY made by all the other devs? (theres a LOT of them...)
Another AC another bunch of whiny babbies hating on it.
Seriously though... i love how people jump on this ubihatetrain. come fucking on. Seriously jumping on Ubisoft for their game that features male characters? OH NO!
What about EVERY OTHER GAME that features a playable MALE CHARACTER ONLY made by all the other devs? (theres a LOT of them...)
Another AC another bunch of whiny babbies hating on it.
figadapaura
Member
To be fair, if you go and look at his Twitter he's actually admitted that was a stupid thing to say - his point was that *in athletic motion* they walk the same way, but not in athletic motion they walk differently. And he said in a videogame you would be using athletic motion.
The problem is a) that point is probably still wrong, but fair enough it's considerably less pronounced and b) that AC is a game where you actually do spend an awful lot of it walking round in non-athletic motion.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
BrassDragon
Member
I was hoping it was a homage to the Four Musketeers, oh well.
Oh the narrative excuse. Yes, narratives and worlds are mainly build around white heterosexual males. We know that. That is the point. Now people, gamer and developer are demanding more. Are saying that more is possible. I really don't see why you are so much fighting against that.
The game is as much sold on customizability than any game with a preselected main character that you can customize.
Ubi really messed up their communication.
Lalalandia
Member
FemShep sitting in her dress in ME2 was particularly hilarious, I liked to imagine she was daring the other person to try and peek so she could shoot them.
Then again the multiplayer co-op as described thus far is solely for the high energy murder segments of the game so animation reuse, while less than ideal, would have been better than just not having female characters IMO.
That's fine. But people were here throwing the whole series and Ubisoft as a publisher under this too and that's what my original post was aimed at.
I don't know if being creepy about this is helping any point you were making
BrassDragon
Member
Yes, they did.
"CHOOSE YOUR OWN ASSASSIN
…Yes, customized. “We have a fully customizable Assassin, who can evolve over the course of the game,” Pontbriand says. “So as you complete missions, you’ll earn skill points, which you’ll be able to spend upgrading your skills.” Unity includes different skill trees for stealth, combat and navigation; it’s up to you how you spend those points. And you can also further customize your Assassin with different gear, offering even more diversity in how you play. This customization fully crosses over from the single-player to the co-op and back again."
It's clarified with two more paragraphs now but it's definitely a source of this problem.
I don't think people are asking for a choice of a female Arno. I'm not, anyway. But the coop characters should offer a choice. They're just generic assassins, right?
Trust me, no matter which game gets called out, you guys will always bring up the "but other games" strawman. It happens every single time. Just face it, you don't want it to be discussed to begin with.
If it helps any, consider the centre of gravity difference rather than cultural differences. That exists regardless of any clothing. I'm sure you can understand why.
Well, I would argue that a lot of animation in ME2 was shit tbh, but aside from that he's not disagreeing with me - all I'm trying to say is that you would have to do the work and not reuse the male animations. He agrees, which is why it's any work at all.
He says that's only a few days work, which I am not terribly convinced would produce a good outcome, but I agree a good animator with a friendly engine might well be able to pull a mediocre result together in that time. But it would also create days of extra testing time, etc.
But again, I DO think Ubi should have done it. I just don't think bullshit like you can reuse male casual walking animations on female characters should be spread around, because they can't, and we don't want devs thinking they can get away with crap like that.