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[figadapaura]

It's pretty sexist to say that a developer should be shunned or called out for not including a particular gender. It is, and should always be, their creative choice as an artist to include and exclude whatever they choose.

Art forms like film, stage performances, video game design, traditional art, etc. shouldn't be forced to show gender equality. If a painter enjoys painting only males, it is his freedom and choice to continue only painting males. It also doesn't mean in the slightest that he doesn't respect and appreciate women.

This is a very slippery slope and I'm not sure where it would end.

I'm not sure you understand what that word means.

 

[FloweryMarston]

Ubisoft gave a bad argument unfortunately, if they said in a more honest way like "we didn't want to put female chars because this and that" they wouldn't face this backlash

 

[Glass Rebel]

Because you would understand how it work: everyone see themselves as the main protagonist but see other players as another character.

So in the context of Assassin's Creed, Abstergo, the Animus etc.

There's four characters that have Arno as their ancestor using an Animus each, reliving his memories at the same time but every characters sees the others 3 as non-Arno characters?




okay

 

[Ascenion]

So far, you deflected criticism towards Ubisoft. Not in sake of gamers, in sake of Ubisoft. Feel free to explain why.

You made a baseless claim. Representation =/= female main character. Unless you've played Unity you have no proof women aren't represented. For all we know a major supporting character could be female. Plus though Ubisoft did a shit job explaining it, we now know you are always Arno like how you are always Aiden in Watch dogs. No conspiracy, no antifeminie agenda just a simple matter of why make animations and models for a character the player will only see and never actually be. The lack of female protagonists is entirely another issue.

 

[MJLord]

Because this game has been built completely from the ground up and doesn't reuse any assets from the previous games. The parkour mechanics are completely different now because they the building in the game are 1:1 scale to real life compared to the old games where they were made with 1:3 scale. Not only that, but the character models are also more complex. It's not that simple as just reusing female animations from the main game.

You're just repeating yourself now. Give it up I don't think people are listening.

 

[Kuldar]

It's AC. There's always a cutscene. You kill the guy. The cut scene starts. He offeres his (usually helpful) last words. You tell him to requiescat in pace. He dies. the cut scene ends, and you run away while the bell is ringing.

There isn't cutscene for side mission assassination in AC games. Maybe the will made cutscene for co-op assassination, but it will be like other cutscene: a scene where you see you're targuet dying and discuting with the main protagonist in a white/grey background without link to anything you did few second before.

 

[Oersted]

They lack empathy, you won't convince anyone sadly:

"Every video game I've ever played has featured a white male, so I don't mind playing as a woman once in a while because I have always had so many options. Why don't women just play as men in every game?"

Maybe it was just Dragona doing work, but I feel like the average intelliegence of the posters in these threads is at an all time low.

Embarassing.


It's one of the most laughable posts I've read in a while.

Yep, afraid so. It just fucks with my mind. Worst case, stop caring, thats fine you don't have to care about everything. But actively fighting against the representation of gamers? Whats the point?

 

[Crossing Eden]

Going by the preview material it looks like all the animations have been redone from the ground up. They also kicked out the classic MP mode.

Still not really a valid excuse since they have so many resources. The explanation that it's not worth it because all players see themselves as Arno at all times makes more sense.

They said that all players play as Arno the exact same day where they said that people can't play as a female character. Journalists and gamers just cherry-picked the latter and decided to completely ignore the former.

 

[Kinyou]

So in the context of Assassin's Creed, Abstergo, the Animus etc.

There's four characters that have Arno as their ancestor using an Animus each, reliving his memories at the same time but every characters sees the others 3 as non-Arno characters?




okay

They don't have to be directly related to Arno to play as him in the animus. That has been established when the series added a MP

 

[mindsale]

Elie was secondary there though. And the lead was another male white dude, which is what every other Naughty Dog character has been for the past 10 years. Compared to Naughty Dog Ubisoft are masters of variety when it comes to characters.

AC series alone had middle eastern muslim lead, black lead, black female lead and native american lead. The series has shown so much variery that I really don't even get why Unity team felt they had to explain having white dudes this time at all. Not to mention they should have known better and recognize journalist fishing for fake controversy.

Ellie's the entire motivation of the plot, and her growth is the entire motivation of the subplot. She eclipses Joel in competence. To say she's secondary misses the point quite a bit. The secondary characters in that game are Marlene (woman), Tess (woman of color), Bill (homosexual). In fact, the two most prominent, paternalistic, sexually-nebulous or default heterosexual white males in the game, Joel and David, are arguably villainous. One engages in cannibalism, both are remorseless killers.

 

[Lord_Balkan]

How are people supposed to vocalize that demand? If people write about problems with representation in the abstract, people will say it's too vague and there need to be specific examples of what we can do (if this approach is even taken seriously at all).

If you name specific examples, then people accuse you of naming and shaming and trampling on creative freedom (which isn't even true).

So again, what's the proper way to do this?

The proper way is to attack the problem at the root. The reason there are so many male protagonists, is because the majority of game developers are males. Support girls going into technology, software development, and game design. A huge part of why game design is male oriented, is because of Computer Science. If you were a game designer, you were just a software developer that happened to make a game. Go into any CS class and just look at the female to male ratio. The underlying answer to this problem is to kill the stigma that many people in general have: 'ew math'.

Forcing people to change isn't the right approach because I view games as art, and by extension someones opinion and experience. Forcing devs to make something they can't experience (such as being a woman, and knowing the struggles of a woman) is not fair to the devs and it is not fair to woman (obviously there are exceptions). But the point is, getting more woman in the industry will have a positive affect- look at the affect it has had recently with all the woman writers and how much more inclusive they have been compared to game stories from 10 years ago.

I'm in support for all sorts of characters and diversity, but I think forcing devs to be inclusive is a very shallow way of representing gender equality that ignores the bigger issues of the medium.

 

[saunderez]

So in the context of Assassin's Creed, Abstergo, the Animus etc.

There's four characters that have Arno as their ancestor using an Animus each, reliving his memories at the same time but every characters sees the others 3 as non-Arno characters?




okay

Nobody has to even be Arno's ancestor because Abstergo were recording the experience, editing out the boring parts and selling it as a game. In ACIV. They can do that but they can't make a multiplayer version of the same thing? Come on!

 

[Raven77]

I'm not sure you understand what that word means.

Wow you are right. Not sure where my head was going at that point.

Edited to read "ridiculous" and not "sexist" cause it doesn't fit in the context of the point i'm trying to make.

Thanks.

 

[Glass Rebel]

They don't have to be directly related to Arno play as him in the animus. That has been established since the series added a MP

Okay they aren't related to Arno then. But all four of them are reliving his memories at the same time. But they don't appear to the other three as Arno.

 

[Wiktor]

You're not really helping their argument by treating an entire gender like something expendable like multiplayer and dynamic cloth physics.

.

I don't see why it's requirement for a game to have playable female character.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

You're not really helping their argument by treating an entire gender like something expendable like multiplayer and dynamic cloth physics.



Most of the people who made those diverse games are no longer there. It's not like the entire company gets to be exempt from any criticism from now on because other people who formerly worked there did something better in the past than they're doing it now.

There have been white male main characters previously in the series and they've went back to using a non white male character in games after that. Even those people who made diverse games made games with white male characters. Maybe wait until a pattern occurs before assuming that the series is doomed to only having white male characters from now on?

 

[Crossing Eden]

You're just repeating yourself now. Give it up I don't think people are listening.

It's honestly ridiculous. I wish they would. The worst kind of thing imo is when people are trying to provide argue against something but are misinformed about the subject matter in the first place. I'm just trying to do my part in keeping people informed before they try to make an argument against something.

 

[saunderez]

Okay they aren't related to Arno then. But all four of them are reliving his memories at the same time. But they don't appear to the other three as Arno.

Well obviously. Because in Arno's memory they IS Arno. Which would make anyone else not Arno.

 

[Tigress]

Poor ubisoft, after giving us a game and a DLC centered on a female assassin, a strong femal character in ACIV and a game with a supposed gay antagonist, it has to deal with this.

Yeah, poor ubisoft. They gave us "other" (not white straight male) people a bone by putting a character in a game on a device few people own and a minority character in a add on content that's not part of the main game (and probably story wise isn't as long as the main game, dlc is not as full as a full game) and even a gay person as a non playable character, the villain even.

I mean that totally cancels out them saying that females aren't worth a little extra to allow people to play in a game that lets you customize your own character.

Now shuttup and be happy with just token stuff thrown at you. We should be happy to get anything at all, amiright?

 

[figadapaura]

I already said I was a man (as if thats a bad thing) and I said it would be ridiculous for me to clamor for a male version of Joanna Dark. All this will become is games designed with a protagonist in mind and the the opposite gender tagged on for whatever reason. I don't care if the character is male or female I just think creators should make that decision and not use precious resources to do something just because the PC police think its best.

Of course it would be, but you don't seem to understand why. People care about female characters because there are so few of them. If the majority of video game characters were female, I'm sure you wouldn't have such a nonchalant attitude. Maybe you'd even join the PC police.

 

[Kunan]

Regardless of reason, can we stop pretending that having lots of developers means you can do unlimited work? People throw that for every single thing they miss or don't agree with in Ubisoft titles, disregarding that the entire rest of the game kept people in late working. It goes hand in hand with the constant notion that developers are lazy, despite the fact that developers work very hard for less pay/benefits/etc than they would get working in business development and marketing firms.

Now you can be mad that one feature stayed while another was dropped, but the way it's said below is just "they're lazy". I also like the comment that people should be able to "do some extra work" as intheflorsh stated below. People already do extra work. I thought people were upset for developers having to go through overtime, but apparently for some it's only in those threads and evaporates the instant they want more done.

Don't they have 9 dev teams working on this with resources out the ass? I don't think it was a work issue it was just they didn't feel it was necessary to include woman (or any other demographic for the matter ) in co op .

That's why they're getting shit for it. It's the most transparent bullshit ever which makes it way more insulting than the usual "we didn't care, deal with it" approach most AAA developers have.

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.

 

[MJLord]

It's honestly ridiculous. I wish they would. The worst kind of thing imo is when people are trying to provide argue against something but are misinformed about the subject matter in the first place. I'm just trying to do my part in keeping people informed before they try to make an argument against something.

Fact of life I'm afraid :/

 

[Galactic Fork]

The crowds use most simpler rigs than the main characters. Not only that. But imagine that you've been playing as Arno for the longest time, and suddenly you do a co-op mission and you're running in a feminine way because on another player's screen you're playing as a female. It just doesn't work. So no, they don't have a "vast majority of the animations for female characters."

Why would the animation on your own screen be different? You'd be seeing yourself as Arno. So you'd move like Arno. The other person would just see a woman instead of your version of Arno. You're OK with them seeing a different guy, but they see a woman instead and suddenly it's outlandish?

 

[Respawn]

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.

Uhmm I assuming you don't own Assassins Creed for PS4 eh

 

[stupei]

Ubisoft gave a bad argument unfortunately, if they said in a more honest way like "we didn't want to put female chars because this and that" they wouldn't face this backlash

This is honestly true.

If they'd said something like, "From the beginning the concept was that all four characters are representations of the same man, so it didn't feel like it made sense for the character to change gender or race, but in the future we will be working on other ways to integrate multiplayer and co-op opportunities that allow for more diversity," nobody would be pissed, except that would mean that they'd actually have to do that.

Saying it's just a time or budget issue means that they can bring out the same excuse next game. And the one after that. If women are always totally a priority, just one at the very bottom of the list, instead of a deliberate design choice specific to this game that could very well be changed in the future, then it never actually needs to be addressed.

 

[jacksepticeye]

It does sound like a lame excuse to hide their true feelings about it. Ubisoft seem to be a very efficient team at cranking out games all the time so making female rigs shouldn't be THAT hard

 

[ScriptedReality]

Total cop out. You made assassin's creed liberation and ac4 with a female assassin, even reskinning her would of been fine.

 

[Incandenza]

doesn't mean they should have to, though

Calling out the industry for under-representation of what isn't actually a minority in real life isn't wrong or overblown. It doesn't mean they should immediately take action, rewrite their games to include female Asians and gay African-Americans, begging for the lynch mob's mercy.

but if they aren't being called out, we'll never see real diversity in our games.
Usually, devs tend to feel the need to "justify" having a non-white or non-male protagonist, which has the amazing side effect of them writing actual backstories for them.

just look at Watch_Dogs' Aiden Pearce or FarCry 3's Jason Brody. Can't get any more generic white male, really. Their backstories sum up to: "dead niece" and "rich parents".

I like this post. This is a nice fucking post.

Also it's funny to see people keep bringing up "artistic vision" regarding male characters. Like, sure, in many cases that's true. But that grizzled white male with a buzzcut who walks towards you on the box art is very often a product of marketing more than anything else.

When a series has shown itself to be fairly inclusive in the past, and then suddenly is not doing it, and giving a bullshit excuse as to why, yeah, that's worth complaining about. Even if you still plan to play the game, criticizing it is productive to the games industry as a whole.

And the "Oh, well this just isn't for you. Don't play it then." dodge is awfully easy to make when 90% of the people on this board are the kind of people who nearly every game is made for.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

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.

Yeah it's a dumb thing to say, and personally I still think he's wrong. It's his opinion though, and the thing with animation is it's an art form and subjective to an extent, so he's totally entitled to his opinion.

IMHO, I think even in athletic motion there's going to be some variances. There's enough of a bone structure difference between male and female hips that you can tell if some one was male or female just from looking at the hip bones of a skeleton. It's going to effect to an extent how some one moves.

 

[Kuldar]

So in the context of Assassin's Creed, Abstergo, the Animus etc.

There's four characters that have Arno as their ancestor using an Animus each, reliving his memories at the same time but every characters sees the others 3 as non-Arno characters?




okay

It's a way to explain it in AC lore. We can't know until more informations.

In my opinion, it's only you, as a memory explorer, reliving Arno memory. And in this part, it's a memory of a mission where Arno is helped by three assassins. No other memory explorers.
But it's only speculation.

 

[The Librarian]

It's disappointing to see a developer take such a position. I want to play as a female character wherever and whenever it make sense that I should be able to.

 

[Gucci Messiah]

It does sound like a lame excuse to hide their true feelings about it. Ubisoft seem to be a very efficient team at cranking out games all the time so making female rigs shouldn't be THAT hard

But isn't this being built from the ground up on a tight development schedule?

 

[flatearthpandas]

well in tomodachi life it was just a marriage thing, nothing to work on it heavily. probably something you can fix in a couple of minutes.

in a game focused on a storyline it can be different

Absolutely wrong. You don't control the characters in Tomodachi so it would have meant recoding the entire relationship aspect of the game... by the localization team.

 

[Fliesen]

Street Fighter 2?

Civilization 5!

Spoiler

can anyone top that? did i just win?

 

[Glass Rebel]

Well obviously. Because in Arno's memory they IS Arno. Which would make anyone else not Arno.

Alright. So let's say I'm playing with a friend. To me, I'm Arno and he's not and kills a guy. The historical Arno killed that same guy and while this reliving of the memory is consistent with my friend's perspective, it isn't consistent with mine. That's apparently cool with the Animus but me playing as a female isn't?

It's a way to explain it in AC lore. We can't know until more informations.

In my opinion, it's only you, as a memory explorer, reliving Arno memory. And in this part, it's a memory of a mission where Arno is helped by three assassins. No other memory explorers.
But it's only speculation.

Maybe. How do you explain the scenario I described above?

 

[Kinyou]

They said that all players play as Arno the exact same day where they said that people can't play as a female character. Journalists and gamers just cherry-picked the latter and decided to completely ignore the former.

Ah, OK. Sucks when the sensible argument gets buried.

 

[Wiktor]

It's disappointing to see a developer take such a position. I want to play as a female character wherever and whenever it make sense that I should be able to.

Well..here it kind of doesn't make sense that you should be able to The way co-op works in Unit is that at most you would be able to see other people play as female character and it would be just you seeing them like this, they themselves would still play as male from their perspective. With set up like this it kind of does seem like a waste of resources and needless complication to put female model there.

 

[Principate]

It does sound like a lame excuse to hide their true feelings about it. Ubisoft seem to be a very efficient team at cranking out games all the time so making female rigs shouldn't be THAT hard

TBF playing devils advocate here, they are making two different AC games in one year. Last gen and next gen are completely different games. In comparison to previous years it actually likely would be an issue. Because I can't imagine cranking out one game per year is an easy task let alone two. As well as Watch dogs delayed release.

 

[Ramenman]

It's honestly ridiculous. I wish they would. The worst kind of thing imo is when people are trying to provide argue against something but are misinformed about the subject matter in the first place. I'm just trying to do my part in keeping people informed before they try to make an argument against something.

Yeah, I think things are pretty clear. It's also pretty telling that for several pages people have been discussing how this whole thing stems from a misunderstanding about what the co-op gameplay is in this game, but others seem to only care about answering to "bler der we don need woman in der games" posts.

The urge of some people to start a broad discussion of the state of female characters in the industry-at-large (which I can understand is an issue) is leading them to ignore the fact that there's nothing terribly wrong with *this* game in particular, and it's a bit sad.

Again, can't blame the people, Ubi did a poor communication job.

 

[Ol No Bones]

Of course it would be, but you don't seem to understand why. People care about female characters because there are so few of them. If the majority of video game characters were female, I'm sure you wouldn't have such a nonchalant attitude. Maybe you'd even join the PC police.

So every game that has a male protagonist should have a female playable as well? If the majority of female characters were female I wouldn't care one bit. You know how I know that. I don't even think twice about it when I play tomb raider perfect dark, any fighting game with females etc. But that's not even the point. It should always be up to the creators to make that decision. I just think it waters down games to expect protagonists of both genders in every game.

 

[Karkador]

. Forcing devs to make something they can't experience (such as being a woman, and knowing the struggles of a woman) is not fair to the devs and it is not fair to woman (obviously there are exceptions). But the point is, getting more woman in the industry will have a positive affect- look at the affect it has had recently with all the woman writers and how much more inclusive they have been compared to game stories from 10 years ago. .

You don't have to be a woman to create female characters. The assertion that men can only write men because it's 'what they know' implies that they have never known a single woman in their life.

Also, no one is forcing anyone to do anything.

 

[Ascenion]

Why would the animation on your own screen be different? You'd be seeing yourself as Arno. So you'd move like Arno. The other person would just see a woman instead of your version of Arno. You're OK with them seeing a different guy, but they see a woman instead and suddenly it's outlandish?

It's not outlandish, but what's the point? Why do it? You will never see how you look in someone else's game so why would it matter. Plus you're always Arno, looks aside why would you move like a woman as Arno? All the other people see is a skin.

 

[saunderez]

Alright. So let's say I'm playing with a friend. To me, I'm Arno and he's not and kills a guy. The historical Arno killed that same guy and while this reliving of the memory is consistent with my friend's perspective, it isn't consistent with mine. That's apparently cool with the Animus but me playing as a female isn't?

The memories have never been totally consistent. My playthrough has always been different than your playthrough. The Animus isn't an accurate replaying of the memory, but the limited freedom you've been provided always ensures the same outcome. Why should we expect anything different now?

 

[Picobrain]

It's pretty ridiculous to say that a developer should be shunned or called out for not including a particular gender. It is, and should always be, their creative choice as an artist to include and exclude whatever they choose.

Art forms like film, stage performances, video game design, traditional art, etc. shouldn't be forced to show gender equality. If a painter enjoys painting only males, it is his freedom and choice to continue only painting males. It also doesn't mean in the slightest that he doesn't respect and appreciate women.

This is a very slippery slope and I'm not sure where it would end.

I totally agree with you.

 

[Spineker]

Ubisoft are getting a megaton belting for this and deservedly so.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Why would the animation on your own screen be different? You'd be seeing yourself as Arno. So you'd move like Arno. The other person would just see a woman instead of your version of Arno. You're OK with them seeing a different guy, but they see a woman instead and suddenly it's outlandish?

Do you realize how much work it would be to have a character on screen using different fluid animations than another character on the screen of the player. The only result would be a lower quality animation. Males and females move differently. Male animations on a female character rarely ever look as natural and fluid as they should. A perfect example of this is liberation. Aveline does not look as natural doing the exact same things that Connor does. Heck, even Edward doesn't look as natural whenever he's rescuing Connor's animations. Reskinned animations when done right take alot more time and effort than the solution ubisoft has here. Not only that, but Arno obviously has the body of a male. So Ubisoft would have to go back and redo the all the customizable outfits to looks realistic on a female body with a rig just as complex as Arno. And here's the beautiful kicker.....say that they put in ALL that work to makes all these complex systems work and look natural and fluid, the person playing the game would never even know that they were playing as a female unless someone over voice chat told them so. Do you realize how ridiculous this argument/controversy is now?

 

[Grewitch]

It looks like Ubisoft is bringing revolution to AC but not where women are concerned. Seriously, their reasoning has the smell of BS. Games with a lesser budget are able to offer this option.

 

[Kuldar]

Maybe. How do you explain the scenario I described above?

Abstergo improved the animus so people can relive the same memory at the same time. In order to avoid desynchronization, the animus make them see other people as other characters than Arno. In this memory Arno was working with other assassins, so the animus can change the way these assassins act and remplace them with acts of the other people reliving the memory at the same time.
For a lore explanation of why they are doing that... well... the team work was so important and complex that it was impossible for the animus to do it itself and someone couldn't synchronize with the memory by doing it alone.

 

[Crimsonsky]

Man, why do companies act like this is a big deal? All you do is toss a female mesh and texture on the male rig, it's fine. Check Lydia and most of the other housecarls and a lot of the other women in Skyrim. Notice their walk? Yes sir, it's the exact same as males. There's a mod to fix it, but you didn't see Beth not including females, they made it work. Ubi needs to do the same. Dargon Age: Origins was mad lazy, it wasn't even a female mesh, it was the male mesh with scaled back shoulders and a chest. It's lazy, but at least it's there, put women in, there is no excuse not to have them.

 

[figadapaura]

So every game that has a male protagonist should have a female playable as well? If the majority of female characters were female I wouldn't care one bit. You know how I know that. I don't even think twice about it when I play tomb raider perfect dark, any fighting game with females etc. But that's not even the point. It should always be up to the creators to make that decision. I just think it waters down games to expect protagonists of both genders in every game.

Because there are already so many games where you can play as a male. In the majority of games I own the lead is a male and I have enjoyed playing them. I have no problems playing as a male, but I would also like more games centred around female characters. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?

So every game that has a male protagonist should have a female playable as well?

And stop using this ridiculous extreme argument. Nobody is asking for this. It wasn't even implied in my post.