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Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
bluecapsule
Member
I'm more angry about the unplayable frame rates in Ubisoft's console games.
Pseudo judo
Member
Ubisoft can choose and not choose what ever character types they see fit and we as consumers have a choice to buy it or not. They are not beholden to us in any way to change their vision of an established franchise. No one is begging Hideo Kojima for a female version of Snake. Gamers don't want to play a female version of Snake.
I don't believe in forced political correctness in creative endeavors. If you want more female characters then be the change you want to see in the world. Go out there and make it happen.
I don't believe in forced political correctness in creative endeavors. If you want more female characters then be the change you want to see in the world. Go out there and make it happen.
You really can't speak for them though
The Librarian
Banned
__________
figadapaura
Member
I'm not denying that, I just meant comparatively.
Wasn't the entire crux of the PS4 reveal that it was "easy to develop for"
Simple guess is that the AAA market is too scared of making a leading female character.
Probably after BGAE ubi felt female leads didn't sell well. Same with Mirrors Edge.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
And the result of that is that the animation for Aveline wasn't as fluid or natural as it should have been. It was jerky, there were clipping issues, people wouldn't be where there needed to be, Aveline sometimes displayed some very unnatural looking feats of strength. To avoid all that and get to the quality bar that they're trying to reach would take up lots of resources and development time on something that's the user would not be aware of in the first place. In fact, I bet the company would get scrutinized for reusing animations and not doing a good job of making them convincing or they would do all that extra work and other aspects of the game would remain unpolished by the time of release. Which doesn't benefit anyone in the slightest.Agreed.
This whole animation thing is flimsy.
Even though, AC:U probably has the most complex animations in the series.
The idea that it requires double the work for a female character makes little sense to me. I mean, they have had female multiplayer characters in the past for AC, Aveline used most of Connors animations for liberation, etc.
Interfectum
Member
Ahh I misunderstood exactly what you were asking for. I see your point and it's a shame that Ubi is the target for this considering I think they have come a long way and are a lot further ahead than a lot of developers in the area of inclusion.
I'm not mad there is no female character or option.
I'm just baffled by their reasoning.
They should have just did what rockstar did and said "We didn't want to make a female character"
But then again, they would have probably gotten even more flak. R* can get away with it because they are R*.
Shin Johnpv
Member
What he's talking about has nothing to do with the PS4 being easy to develop for.
Comments like this are always silly... Nobody is forcing the developers to do anything but through our complaining we are changing it like you said we should. Didn't you see tomodachi life and the 180 on Nintendo's stance?
Also the "creative endeavor" always seems so forced when we're talking about AAA games filled with market research and only the safest choices possible
Yeah, Aveline did look weird in motion.
But the female MP animations looked fine.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
On my phone so not the best image but
from this it looks like they specifically designed 3 assassins for you to be so not random NPCs. You make very good points but again from Ubisoft's standpoint why? I'm not disagreeing with you I'm just asking if you were them why would you put time into additional animations when you could easily just copy Arno's and use random male grunts.
They planned on it, but cut it because they felt it was too hard.
There have been women assassins in previous games, so obviously they exist, but none of them were in France in that time period apparently. They had a great way to show a diverse number of assassins while still having a guy main character.
Interfectum
Member
Creating brand new models, clothing for said models, animation and voice for said models has nothing to do with the ease of coding for the PlayStation 4.
So you're the guy who put Conker into Project Spark!
the good old "if you want it, go make it yourself" way of handling things
Someone please make a Conker game, i'm super lazy
The Librarian
Banned
I haven't played Watch Dogs so I really can't speak to that. I'm mostly saying that, for multiplayer and co-op modes, story reasons aren't necessarily these impossible obstacles that can't be overcome.
Yeah, that actually makes more sense. However, I wouldn't have had a problem with one player being the MC if it gives the other three players the means to customize their Assassins.
Wiktor
Member
No, everybody is the main character and seens everybody else as random dudes.
Scrooge McDuck
Member
For better or worse, Assassin's Creed team takes their narrative really, really seriously.
Well..
I have stared at a lot of asses. A man's ass typically doesn't sway as much as woman's.
...This got awkward.
Of course all of this is arbitrary and they can choose to change the way everything work and allow anything.
If we try to find an explanation in the lore of AC, the animus technology is tied to DNA. The idea is that the whole history of your ancestors is written in your DNA, so you get the DNA informations of all you ancestors. The animus create a VR where you can explore the memory. The main problem with this exploration isthat you have to do what your ancestor did, to act as he/she acted, to be her/him. If you succed, you synchronize with the memory. The synchronization is the way to know if the simulation is working. The VR is built with the DNA information of the selected ancestor. So if the selected ancestor is a biological man, the VR will make you to relive the memory as a man. Maybe it could change a man in a woman but it's so strongly tied to the DNA than the synchronization would not be possible.
As I said, it's only a way to find an explanation with the actual lore of AC Games. They could just say "a new version of the Animus allow gender change" and then you would be able to choose the gender of the main protagonist.
Wiktor
Member
Ermm...but you still wouldn';t be able to play as female character. If you want non playable female characters then there are plenty on the streets of Paris.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Here's the issue with saying "It's their decision, we should respect it" and this isn't just about Ubisoft: It's "their decision" to make 95% of all games with mostly male casts. It's "their decision" to make 99.9% of all protagonists white, straight, and cis. Now, that's fine for people who happen to be white, straight, cis, and male. But for everyone else (especially, oh I don't know, 50% of the population), I guess tough luck for them? Sorry, I find that rather hard to respect. And hell, from what we know of the industry, it's not even always the developers decision and they are forced to make accommodations for the publisher. For example, Naughty Dog had a hell of a time even getting Ellie on the front cover of The Last of Us. And now when a developer is actively saying "we were going to have women... but eh, too much work", again, I find that very hard to respect.
In regards to " Equality is not imposed equal(by counting them) representations in games or other media."
So of that group, 3.5% had an explicit female lead. Now, imagine for a moment how those numbers look for minorities.
Go team.
But of course, that's totally not a problem.
Now, to be fair to developers, from the same study:
So they are getting better at at least giving you the option to choose the gender of your character.
One more study, based off a census of the top 150 best selling games:
http://www.popsci.com/entertainment...us-finds-minority-characters-underrepresented
89.5% of characters are male.
85% of characters are white.
Asians are the only others group overrepresented: everyone else is grossly underrepresented.
Do I really need to go on?
So yeah, if you are fine with those statistics, then sure, let's just let the industry keep on truckin'. Let's not pretend, "LET THE DEVELOPERS MAKE THE GAME THEY WANT" is an okay solution.
True, and I certainly was overgeneralizing, but I think that perception being held by the big publishers is what drives their productions.
Regarding your point, not that I'm contending, but are there any statistics for what kinds of female characters young males are playing? I would find the distinction between playing as female humans and female non-humans (e.g. orcs) interesting.
My gut feeling is that some MMOs, dealing in fantasy settings, might appeal to different sensibilities than a modern or futuristic war setting would.
Well I have played watch dogs, and it is a bit hilarious seeing a chubby woman moving around with Aidens animations.
These mindnmbingly naive statements are why I never venture into Neogaf threads regarding issues like this. Lest I be called the PC police.
Didn't Naughty Dog explain the lack of female human enemies in TLOU by saying they couldn't fit the animations in the limited RAM? If other developers and posters here are claiming you can justs use the same animations for males and females why didn't they call out ND too? Brushing it off as "a day or twos work" kind of ignores the money involved as well.
I'm not exactly sure what the debate going on is. Every game has some finite amount of resources and what's done with them reflects what is important to the developer/publisher. So are we arguing about inclusiveness being something that should have been important to Ubisoft? All the specifics on costs and animations and crap seem to obfuscate that actual issue.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
You kinda can, if you're informed about what the game is like so far thanks to actually listening /reading interviews instead of feeding into headlines from journalists who were purposefully decided to ignore parts of their own interview.
Comparative to other games it would be asking for a lot. The end result is that you get a very unconvincing female doing very unconvincing things or you get an game that has less quality because they focused on an arbitrary aspect of development.
"Easy to develop for" doesn't mean that the character rigs get simpler. Higher fidelity graphics=higher fidelity models=more work and time dedicated to making them look and feel natural and convincing. Also Ubisoft has had female leads before in their games. Two years ago they released AC:L, last year they did a re-release of it in HD. And this year they released Child of Light. Ubisoft is not afraid to make a lead character that is not dissimilar to other leads in gaming. The AC series is a perfect example of that. Considering they've had a female main character already.
If not including gender options for a protagonist in a story based game is "alienating and insulting half your userbase", where are the people asking for a male version of the protagonist in Rise of the Tomb Raider?
Yes, I know mine is a dumb argument but I'm using it to highlight the absurdity of the quoted post
figadapaura
Member
I already said I wasn't asking for it. And I'd hope there's at least one notable female character in the game that isn't just in the crowd.
No comparative to having a completely different character to play as for the entire game. With her own animations, voice acting etc. Comparative to that it's not asking for much.
But not fitting the animation in the limited RAM is not the same as claiming they have to redo all the animations.
Naughty Dog said to have human female enemies would have meant they had to re-rig the animations for all the enemies, which would have allowed to have human males and human females but they said there just wasn't enough time.
You can bash them (and Sony) for that decision that they should have done it and delayed it or that they are dumb for managing stuff badly but it is not the same, even though both things have to do with animation.
Well, I typically think the female swap of a character is better in terms of VA, etc.
A male tomb raider (2013 version) would be fucking terrible since Lara Croft and the characters from that game were fucking nothing.
That's a very good point. I'm sure at least some of the studies are caught in that error or are just crap studies.
The question, then, is, are there any that show the opposite? Are there more or what % of females play this genre? If there are any studies that show a huge %? Even one?
I could relate anecdotal stories, but that means nothing.
It's a lot of money to do these so I can't blame these games for focusing on males.
"Tons"? Citations, please. Again, anecdotal means nothing.
I would agree, though, that a larger portion of MMO players are female than in other genre's by comparison. Almost definitely. Thing is, though, that's why I qualified it with genre in the first place. I really want to know what the gender breakdown is between different genre's, for curiosity sake if nothing else.
Obviously they did it on purpose to promote the patriarchy
Wiktor
Member
I wonder though if the problem isn't that big budgeted games are mostly action games full of violence. Looking at other, more developed mediums, like TV, books or movies, the violent action stories aren't as popular among women as among men, so they also tend to be heavily male-centric in their cast. Similiarly those stories that do appeal to women usually have them as leads.
I'm simply not sure if we should assume that women actually want to play all those violent games, even with female leads, to a degree that men do.
Yeah! See, ubi did a female lead once. And then they made a HD remake of it! That's TWO bones thrown your way, female gamers. What more could you possible want...
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
So you're saying that you want to look at another player who's avatar is a female who's using animations that motion captured from a man and are made specifically to play as a man while wearing outfits specifically designed with a male character in mind? And let's not forget the clipping issues.
Wiktor
Member
So if you're not asking for playable female character then you have no problem with Unity right? Because they have shown plenty of nonplayable women.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
And yes let's completely ignore Child of Light and BeyondGE while we're at it for the sake of making a sarcastic post. Should we also forget the loads of female MP characters in the series with their own backstories too?
I wonder if we'll see female enemies in uncharted 4. I get the ram issue but female enemies have been avoided in the uncharted games as well. (Heck, most games avoid them)
The point is they would be using separate animations for male and female characters. Other developers and some of the posters in this thread are saying Ubisoft could just use the same animations for male and female characters. One is claiming limited resources the other is claiming limited RAM but the end result is both lacking female specific animations. How is that not ultimately the same issue? If Ubisoft can use the same animations for male and female characters why couldn't ND?
Nah. It is clearly a cleverly layered plot to promote Feminist agendas via precise, deliberate exclusionary tactics.
Ascenion
Member
I didn't know that, and yeah female assassins exist so I expect to see some. Most people seemed to be focused on the co-op aspect and are ignoring the rest of the game. Actually given Aveline's(AC:L) heritage I expected her to be teased for this game in some capacity.
I agree if it was a separate mode, which it could be like the normal multiplayer (which I'm not sure Unity has). However Ubi chose to integrate the co-op with the story mode so sacrifices had to be made with respect to maintaining Arno as a unique individual within the game while keeping everything seamless.
Violence against women is also a ratings issue in some regions / countries.
i think it highly depends of whether the protagonist is interesting, has a backstory you care about (like Lara Croft) or is just a generic almost-blank-slate (like Aiden Pearce)
i don't think the game would have been at all different if it wasn't about uncle Aiden avenging Lena but rather auntie Aisha Pearce.
With Lara, the fact that she's not just young of age but also a girl is very relevant to the story, as she herself believes to be not just outgunned but physically inferior to the "pirates" and she learns that
by shooting hundreds of dudes ...
it's really hard to do that kind of arc with a male protagonist. - look at FarCry 3, similar "coming of age" moment, totally botched execution.
also, it's not about any single game, but the gaming landscape as a whole, i believe.
it's not "MAKE UNITY'S PROTAGONIST A GIRL! / MAKE EVERY GAME'S CHARACTER USER GENERATED " but "how about we get more games with interesting female protagonists" with unity being just the continuation of the trend we don't like.