Ubisoft has determined that the ladies are not a vital part of its next Assassin’s Creed game, Unity. Female avatars for multiplayer will not be featured because, and this is paraphrased: “I can’t even right now with the women. Animating men is easy but women? Pssh. The boobs are like, millions of dollars to get those things right because I’m pretty sure they don’t work according to physics? They’re like, ghost spheres or demon orbs. And don’t even get me started on vaginas. What even are vaginas? Where are they? Do they have powers? Given that we do not know any women, and we have not been able to capture any of these elusive creatures, we will be striking their mythic presence from our game because honestly, nobody has even proven to me they exist. The game will, however, feature a Bigfoot Robot to replace Napoleon.”
Okay, they didn’t say that, exactly.
From the article:
“It’s double the animations, it’s double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets,” Amancio said. “Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work.”
In the game’s co-op mode, players will have custom gear but always view themselves as Arno, Unity‘s star. Friends are displayed as different characters with the faces of other assassins.
“Because of that, the common denominator was Arno,” Amancio said. “It’s not like we could cut our main character, so the only logical option, the only option we had, was to cut the female avatar.”
Speaking with Polygon during a different interview, level designer Bruno St. Andre estimated more than 8,000 animations would have had to be recreated on a different skeleton.
Oh, well, jeez, that is tough.
Creating a diligently, realistically-imagined version of Paris during the French Revolution was easy, apparently, compared to including women as playable avatars. Something that many other games accomplish — Bioware makes an effort to do this, which is what you have to do, isn’t it? Make an effort. Something Ubisoft cannot be bothered to do, it seems.
I mean, The Sims lets you play as a man, woman, boy, girl, or androgynous space Frankenstein.
Oh, but maybe history plays a role, right? Because there surely weren’t women assassins —
Wait, wuzzat?
Charlotte Corday was a female assassin from the French Revolution?
Oh. Huh.
Huh.
But, hey, history is too much work.
Women? Just too much work, too.
Thankfully, me spending money on this game is also — say it with me — too much work. Acknowledging approximately half of your game audience was just too hard for Ubisoft, and so do not be surprised if it’s just too hard for me to spend money on a game that cannot even do the bare minimum in terms of inclusion. C’mon, Ubisoft. Really? Fucking really? You’ve been progressive in the past, so what gives? Why the backpedaling? Why the lazy lean toward the outmoded (and unproven) assertion that women don’t play AAA games? Do better. Make effort. Spend the coin.
Otherwise, why will folks spend their coin with you?
Vote with your dollar, folks.
Oh, hey.
I hear Bioware has a new game coming out…
Ali Trotta says:
Damn it all to hell. Honestly, why is this kind of thing still happening? Yes, I have a vagina. Yes, I love to play video games. And yes, I’d like to be able to create an avatar that is female. Do it, and that ups the chance of me buying the game. Pull something like this? You’re not getting my money.
Great post, Chuck.
June 11, 2014 — 11:35 AM
terribleminds says:
WHOA WHOA WHOA WE GOT A LIVE ONE HERE
UBISOFT, SEND DRONES TO LOCATION TO CONFIRM EXISTENCE OF ACTUAL WOMAN
SUSPECTED FRAUD
ALERT
ahem.
Yeah, it’s a little silly. Really, what they mean by “too expensive” is, “not worth it.”
Which is sad.
— c.
June 11, 2014 — 11:37 AM
Ali Trotta says:
It is sad. Zero Dark Thirty was the last game I can recall owning that had a female badass as the lead. And I would absolutely kill for a game like Thief with a woman as the main character. *sad face* This is right up there with the erroneous belief that female leads can’t do well in Hollywood.
June 11, 2014 — 11:43 AM
Hillary says:
This makes me so sad. There aren’t a lot of GREAT co-op games out there. So to get excited for one and then find out it’s going to fit into the problematic paradigm of the gaming industry to a T? Goddamnit.
June 11, 2014 — 11:37 AM
Grace says:
Dude. We have bought every single damned AC game to date, the vast majority of which were on *preorder*. This seriously pisses me off. (Especially because I’m female and the biggest AC player in my house is ALSO female – my oldest spawn.)
*sigh* Yeah, not giving them any more of my money. I sincerely hope they learn their lesson. :/
June 11, 2014 — 11:38 AM
Laura Roberts says:
Aren’t these the same jerks who made a game that labeled your FB friends as “stalkers” – and made unauthorized use of your profile picture to “out” you? Yeah, fuck these guys. Or better yet, don’t fuck them and see if it makes them go all first-person shooter on us.
June 11, 2014 — 11:39 AM
Anthony Laffan says:
I said this on a friend’s facebook page, but it is tragic that the game series that got headlines because it DARED to have a muslim protagonist going around killing christians during the crusades is now getting them because women are too hard to have in their game.
The sad thing is, every game since Assassin’s Creed brotherhood has had women assassins in it. In the single player they’d be there helping you out. In the multiplayer you could be them. The PSP game Liberty had one as a protagonist.
Women do add complications and technicalities on the hardware/labor side of things for game development. It does increase work. But when you have 9 studios and hundreds of millions of dollars working on your flagship franchise this isn’t an excuse you get to use. Especially when it is also a step back from previous games.
I’ve actually lost interest in this AC game completely now. The setting is too close to the setting for 3 and 4 so that is meh, I’ve already explored the naval stuff to my heart’s content and doubt it will feature prominently here, and now there are suddenly no female assassins? Remember in AC2 when Ezio’s mother was an assassin and half his teachers were women? Heck, remember in the videos of the proto-civilization how it was Adam and Eve working together to escape? Why the sudden drop down now? This game should not only have female playable characters, the main character should be a female assassin based off of Charlotte Corday or one of the other female assassins that actually were around during the French Revolution.
June 11, 2014 — 11:39 AM
springinkerl says:
“Women do add complications and technicalities on the hardware/labor side of things for game development. It does increase work.”
No, they don’t. At least not more than males (minus the boobs, I’ll give you that). How can it be that putting men into a realistic game environment is considered natural and taken for granted while women are merely an “addition” and a “complication”? They’re not. They’re half the population and therefore mandatory. If you (as in, you UBI) don’t get that, you can just as well replace your male ACs with spacebunnies on crack, and it will be nothing further from reality than a game without women.
June 11, 2014 — 12:05 PM
Anthony Laffan says:
You misunderstand my point, and probably because I phrased it in a way to directly reference ubisoft’s statement. If the game had been made with a female lead and they wanted to add a male playable character the work load would also be double. Just as it would increase by the same amount for any different skeleton/mesh character you had to do. It is simply a fact of the work.
However, this doesn’t excuse what Ubisoft is doing. Assassin’s Creed is not some new IP that is untested nor is Ubisoft some small developer that is working on a shoe string budget. This is a Flagship IP that is also one of the biggest IPs in gaming and has been for most of the past decade (AC, AC2, AC2:B, AC2:R, AC3, AC4 is at least 6 years as a major IP.)
Ubi could have saved the workload by having a female MC and having no playable male characters. Absolutely right. In fact, it would have been awesome to get to experience what life was like for a woman back during the French Revolution. But even then the “not enough resources” to have both male and female playable characters (even for the main character in my opinion) is not an excuse that a game currently using NINE studios simultaneously to develop it and with a budget in the hundreds of millions gets to rely on.
June 12, 2014 — 8:34 AM
Paul Baxter says:
I now want to read an androgynous space Frankenstein story. Or write one.
June 11, 2014 — 11:40 AM
M. Andrew Patterson (@M_A_Patterson) says:
Ubi-soft are idiots. Every other MMO out there (including some crappy ones) have female avatars. It’s not hard to do! Who gives a crap if the “main character” is Arno. Take a chance, that isn’t a chance at all but a decent thing to do. Guess I won’t be spending my money on that game.
June 11, 2014 — 11:41 AM
Shelby says:
What…. WHAT!? I am a girl and I have bought every damn game Assassin’s Creed game they’ve put out, even though I really didn’t care for the boat battles and what not. But I was SO excited for Unity because it’s during the French Revolution and that’s my favourite time period in history and I thought that would bring back some of the aspects of the game I loved so much from Brotherhood….
But this is bullshit. Most of the AC fans that I know of have vaginas. My boyfriend even tried to tell me not to spend any more money on the series cause he doesn’t like it and thinks they’re bad. But I’ve been loyal and bought 3 and 4 even though I just watched my brother play them.
I was so excited… why…. Dx this is like a slap to the face.
I’m so disappointed now.
June 11, 2014 — 11:46 AM
Ruby Duvall says:
I’m so excited for DA: Inquisition!!! It was a relief to know that I could rely on BioWare to try very hard to be inclusive. I put in a pre-order without any anxiety that upon release it would get the kind of hissing, ooh-that’s-not-cool reviews that Watch Dogs received.
June 11, 2014 — 11:46 AM
theerrantcat says:
See, I’m willing to buy that it does take some further effort to create female models. Examples of the effort I’ve seen mentioned on tumblr include hiring motion caption models and voice actors, setting up rigs that move in a more feminine manner (I don’t even mean “sexily” or “seductive,” just… I dunno, more loosely? I’m not an animator).
What ticks me off is that all of this was an afterthought to them–that we’re not worth the effort? That women, who are 50% or 51% or what-have-you of the population, are somehow optional. I don’t get it. Why do some guys have to be reminded that women are people too?
(Which is to say nothing of people off the gender binary, who have it even rougher.)
June 11, 2014 — 11:49 AM
Anthony Laffan says:
There is an old Game Informer article on women in videogames where all the differences needed (modeling, texturing, animations, clipping, etc) are listed. It has also been reinforced recently. Making Commander Shepard was twice the work to have both FemShep and ManShep in the game, and only about 20% of the people who played Mass Effect used FemShep.
The thing is we’re not at a time when the excuses of physical limitations really works anymore. The consoles have the storage space and technical specs to do both, and with game development budgets rivaling those of blockbuster movies and development teams that number in the hundreds if not thousands it isn’t a resource question. The resources are there, they just made the choice to not use them in a way that would include 50% of the population.
Just remember that next time you fire up an Assassin’s Creed game and get the notice about how the game is made by hundreds of artists from people of multiple races, ethnicities, and creeds.
June 11, 2014 — 11:55 AM
K.C. Wise says:
And to be clear, women who dont play AAA games often buy them for their partners. Ive been buying AC for my husband since the first. Actually, I am the principal game buyer in the house. Youd think those guys would know about Lady Purchasing Power. Hubs doesnt play DA, but I do. Maybe I’ll just buy MY game this year…
June 11, 2014 — 11:58 AM
terribleminds says:
Right. And you can be sure they already have women in the game somewhere — I’m sure it’s not 100% of a Dudefest in the French Revolution. Soooo, y’know, maybe use those in multiplayer? No? Really?
June 11, 2014 — 12:09 PM
Ruth Dupre says:
Ubisoft ? *Listens to wind blowing through an empty canyon* Hmmm. I thought I heard something for a sec. Guess it’s gone. Bioware, you say? Cool. *Opens vagina, removes money purse, snaps vagina shut* Let’s go…
June 11, 2014 — 11:51 AM
Jen Dornan-Fish says:
This made me laugh like hell.
June 11, 2014 — 11:54 AM
terribleminds says:
Literal LOL moment.
June 11, 2014 — 12:09 PM
Terri Herrington says:
Hillfreakinlarious!!
June 11, 2014 — 12:16 PM
RSAGARCIA says:
LOL! Brilliant!
June 11, 2014 — 1:47 PM
Beverly says:
I don’t know you, but I’ve decided that I love you.
June 11, 2014 — 2:35 PM
Jen Dornan-Fish says:
Oh screw you Assassins Creed devs. Though to be honest I’d already stopped playing these, terrible gameplay. This is just the nail in the coffin of a dying intellectual property. I’ve worked in the video game industry and agree with Anthony, yes it will add time and money to include women, just like every other game feature. you prioritize what features you want, and they had a hell of a budget to work with. What they meant to say was, “this wasn’t a priority for us.” So, yeah, screw you.
Dragon Age on the other hand…please pardon me for a moment…SQEEEE, OMFG, PLEASE INCLUDE VARRIC, SQEEEE!!! Eh hem.
June 11, 2014 — 11:51 AM
Justin Gustainis says:
The guys at Ubisoft got one thing right, anyway — women *are* a lot of work. But, you know what? The right one is worth every second you devote to her, and then some. Just sayin’.
June 11, 2014 — 11:56 AM
Melanie W says:
You know The Last Guardian? That vaporware game by the dude who made Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus? You know why he decided not to have a female character? He gave two irrefutable reasons:
1. It would be unrealistic for a girl to have the physical endurance necessary to hold onto the griffin while it flew. (But totally realistic for a griffin the size of a house to get airborn in the first place. Or exist.)
2. There would be “problems involving camera angles when climbing while wearing a short skirt.”
I won’t be playing Last Guardian, either. If it ever comes out. At least Ubi didn’t claim it would be unrealistic for a female assassin to hold onto a building, or pretend that no female humans in all of history have ever worn pants.
But boy will I ever be playing the hell out of Dragon Age! And, if previous incarnations of the game are any indication, writing reams of fanfic about it, too… Better clear my calendar.
June 11, 2014 — 11:58 AM
David says:
From the end of the article, in case you didn’t click through:
“We started, but we had to drop it [women assassins],” St. Andre said. “I cannot speak for the future of the brand, but it was dear to the production team, so you can expect that it will happen eventually in the brand.”
This doesn’t strike me as conscious sexism. This isn’t “Ubisoft hates women”, which would be a big change from, um, every game since AC2. This is a development team facing two new hardware platforms and a massive increase in modeling work that decided the best way to generate character variety was to have every character be a reskin of the one mandatory character model, who is male. You can look at the picture in the article: they’re all the same height, same weight, same build, just different colors and accessories.
And this absolutely sucks: leaving out gender, I enjoyed being able to play a bunch of different crazy-looking templars in multiplayer, and now I’ve just got color-coded assassins to look forward to. And only four players. (Or not: with a ten-month-old at home it’s 3DS for life, baby.)
It also suggests the main game is going to suck compared to Assassin’s Creed 4. It will inevitably be very pretty, but I predict right now the game will be much shorter and have much less of a variety of things for the player to do.
I’d love to know more details: how much work goes into the models now, what resources the multiplayer team had, what deadlines they faced. I’d like to know if there are women in the main game, and why they aren’t wearing hoods and stabbing people. I’d like to know if this is something that will get better once the dev team stabilizes the game engine and can focus on asset creation.
I’m not going to buy the game because I don’t have the time or the hardware. But I’m not going to damn Ubisoft as sexist for struggling with their first software release built specifically for new hardware, either.
(I will gladly damn them for being sexist if this isn’t fixed for the next game, though. So be warned, Ubidevs, this excuse only works once.)
June 11, 2014 — 12:18 PM
terribleminds says:
I don’t anticipate this being overt misogyny, but sexism is really something so direct. It’s often just like this: creeping in at the margins, quietly shouldering an entire group of people out of the equation.
This ultimately strikes me as lazy.
And not something particularly hard to see or deal with from the outset.
Again: they created IN-GAME a thing that does not exist anymore: French Revolution-era Paris.
They couldn’t handle something that *does* exist: women?
— c.
June 11, 2014 — 12:20 PM
David says:
Found an article here describing the multiplayer in detail: http://mashable.com/2014/06/11/assassins-creed-unity-e3-2014/
If anything I’m even less surprised that a female option wasn’t included now. The way it works is that you tackle the single-player game with friends. From your POV you’re Arno, the main character, no matter what. If you jump into another person’s game they see you as someone else, but you still see yourself as Arno. Everyone views themselves as the protagonist.
The upshot is that to let you play as a female character, Ubisoft would have to tweak the entire game, including the story and cinematics, to permit that option. That’s a HELL of a lot more work than adding an extra player avatar to an arena-style deathmatch, which is what AC used to do for multiplayer. Alternatively they let you create a female avatar that only your friends will ever see in-game, or let you play as a woman and just switch back to Arno for all the in-game movies.
June 11, 2014 — 3:05 PM
terribleminds says:
Also worth reading:
“There were more severed heads than women presenters at E3 2014.”
http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/10/5797132/e3-2014-women-at-e3-violence-e3-2014
June 11, 2014 — 12:21 PM
Terri Herrington says:
I bet Ubisoft would be surprised to find how many women of all ages play games originally purchased by the men in their lives. That’s how I got hooked on Dragon Age in the first place, then Oblivion, then Mass Effect. Now I’m a badass RPG mama and I will definitely be spending my money on games that let me fully experience my badassedness!
June 11, 2014 — 12:24 PM
Ev Bishop says:
“Thankfully, me spending money on this game is also — say it with me — too much work. Acknowledging approximately half of your game audience was just too hard for Ubisoft, and so do not be surprised if it’s just too hard for me to spend money on a game that cannot even do the bare minimum in terms of inclusion. ”
Yeeee-ep. Won’t buy for me–and uh, won’t buy for my teenage son either.
June 11, 2014 — 12:26 PM
Tee Morris says:
Well now, you know, Ubisoft might have a point because why would people want to play a chick in a video game where you need to kick ass. I mean, chicks don’t do that in video.
Oh yeah…..
http://levelsave.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/tomb_raider_game_informer_cover_art-600×300.jpg
June 11, 2014 — 12:32 PM
The Glitzy Faery says:
I guess they missed that article about how a whole lot of male players like to play the female avatar – especially in those shooters where you’re actually staring at your avatar’s ass the whole time.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/13/world_of_warcraft_gender_switching_why_men_choose_female_avatars.html
June 11, 2014 — 12:41 PM
M (@Rattify) says:
YES. THIS. My husband plays female avatars exclusively (when option is available). Learning that a game is male-only is always a disappointment to him.
I play male avatars for the same reason. Especially if we’re medieval era. I’m a sucker for a man in armor *swoon*
Honestly, I’m mystified that this is not more common. I get the “imagining the avatar is me” thing but, really, gender is not such a dominating facet of my personality that I am not capable of identifying with a male avatar. I know what it’s like to be a girl, that’s old news, I’m looking for something OTHER than my normal life when playing a game. Also, I’m not that thrilled about looking at a girl for 10+ hours while I’m kicking ass. Not when I could just as easily be looking at a hot guy. (Confession: I tend to write and read stories with male MCs for the same reason.) Female gaze, amirite?
This is why I’m shocked we haven’t had more female superhero movies. I mean COME ON. Ladies in spandex foiling bad guys? What straight guy doesn’t like watching that? Heck, even I and all the straight girls I know can appreciate the aesthetics.
In related news, if anyone knows anyone in Hollywood, I would like to pitch a gender swapped Spider-man (spider-girl) movie. Peter Parker would be SO much better as Patty Parker. Not only would the acrobatic fighting style work beautifully, but spiders are traditionally feminine, and just imagine how amazing she would look soaring through the air on her web!! That shit would sell tickets, I’m telling you.
June 11, 2014 — 1:07 PM
Mr Urban Spaceman says:
“This is why I’m shocked we haven’t had more female superhero movies. I mean COME ON. Ladies in spandex foiling bad guys? What straight guy doesn’t like watching that? Heck, even I and all the straight girls I know can appreciate the aesthetics.”
Don’t worry, one day somebody’s going to have the great idea of making a superhero movie with Psylocke as the lead, and it will (hopefully) be awesome.
*Sends out a dozen more MAKE A FILM WITH PSYLOCKE AS LEAD letters to random Hollywood producers*
June 11, 2014 — 1:32 PM
Jinxie G says:
Because Bioware ROCKS! I guess I won’t be playing any Ubisoft games…
June 11, 2014 — 1:12 PM
Mr Urban Spaceman says:
Whilst there are many awesome games out there which do not feature a female avatar (Planescape; Torment, for example. The story of The Nameless One revolved around one specific individual… but you can have females in your group lineup, and they are awesome females. Also, Broken Sword, which again, has a story revolving around a very particular character… but in the later games in the series, you do get to play as Nicole Collard, frequently switching between George & Nico’s POV)
–anyhoo, to pick up on my original thoughts, Whilst there are many awesome games out there which do not feature a female avatar, in this day and age there’s no excuse for big games companies to potentially alienate half of their player-base in this way. I can understand a specific story requiring a character of a specific gender for specific parts, but for co-op mode and online play, where your gender accounts for squat there’s no excuse for not making an effort.
No excuse except time and money, apparently. Those pesky universal constants.
On the other hand, I haven’t bought/played any Assassin’s Creed game since numero uno, so I’m not sure if that invalidates my opinion in any way.
Great news about the new Bioware game, though! Although I haven’t bought/played any Dragon Age game since #1… yep, sounding like a broken record now.
June 11, 2014 — 1:23 PM
M T McGuire says:
That pisses me off more than I can say. And I don’t even play games… except for lego star wars.
June 11, 2014 — 1:23 PM
catfleming says:
@NotBuyingIt
June 11, 2014 — 1:30 PM
Eva Therese says:
I find Jonathan Cooper’s comments about this interesting. (Though, to be fair; I have no idea whether he is right or is just talking through his backside, trying to make Ubisoft look even worse.) http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/11/assassins-creed-unity-will-skip-female-playable-characters-due-to-resources/
I’ve never played an AC game and suddenly I’m in no hurry to try it. I’ll throw my money at Dragon Age instead. And I hear rumours of a new Mass Effect game.
June 11, 2014 — 1:31 PM
Beth Treadway Author (@BethAuthor) says:
So I can (FINALLY) have real world combat roles in fighter jets, train harder for a real world Specs Op slot if I can master that upper body hang when the guys can’t match me for G-force consciousness due to MY lower body superiority, and get my very real and NOT hard to draw when they’re not pumped to silicon-basketball size body parts blown off in balmy vacation zones ending in ‘stan. Because even the die-hard woman haters finally figured out women are here to stay and might have aggressive tendencies with weapons when facing moronic woman haters in combat.
But some zit-faced proto-nerd hiding in his weeny-boy cave where his fingers on plastic keys are the biggest thing about him decides women aren’t worth the work ’cause hey, he might have to get up and face his mom for another bag of cheeze-doodles to break the unreality of his never-going-to-get-any existence and I’m supposed to ignore it because I don’t exist in his world????
Watch my real world dollars, euros, and yen blow his world like a 500 pounder dropping from altitude. Mwuu ha ha ha ha ha!
June 11, 2014 — 1:45 PM
Jim says:
Hey, Bungie has a new game coming out soon that not only lets you play as a women but also as a woman in your choice of one of three separate races! And Ubisoft has the gall to say that creating a female option for their avatar is just too damn hard?
June 11, 2014 — 1:57 PM
Meg says:
If only female and male human skeletons had more similarities, so that the same rig could be used to make life easier on this poor, downtrodden indie game studio with limited development resources! Oh, curse you, delicate womanly skeleton made of unicorn horns! A thousand curses against this cruel creator who crafted our weak feminine bits out of smoke and mirrors, which will definitely not be present in any of the locations available in revolutionary France such as the Hall of Mirrors!
June 11, 2014 — 2:00 PM
mermaidmaddie says:
I love you. :3
June 11, 2014 — 2:09 PM
Matthew Eaton says:
I’ll play devil’s advocate here:
Do you have multi-millions in a strapped thin budget where your deadline to produce one AAA game was due last week? Do you have overlords and investors looking at you when you write, expecting you to crank out every word to make it count (and the threat of having multiple writers coming in to finish your story if you don’t meet the deadline)?
Let’s look at this first: It is a business, plain and simple. Since Ubisoft is a publicly traded company, they only have one duty to fulfill: Return money to the investor’s pockets.
They do this by limiting the expenses and (yes), giving you less choice if it means their bottom line isn’t at stake. In fact, because of the useless optional “standards” within the gaming industry today bog down a product (1 year minimum of DLC to extend life, voice acting costs, animations, etc), it makes it easy to say “No playable women” because it really isn’t in the budget.
You can go on and on about social norms and whether or not it is fair to a specific gender, that’s fine. Put up the cash to invest enough in the company to make your voice heard and they’ll do that, or stop buying their games and hit their bottom line hard enough to get the message.
Their target audience isn’t you. It never was you, and it will never be you. Their target audience are their investors. Whatever pays back the dividends makes the choice for them.
June 11, 2014 — 2:09 PM
Toni says:
And yet, now those dividends will be substantially diminished, as those who were, perhaps, not in the target audience take their money and give it to other companies. The developers may come to the realization that the interests of the buying public and those of their investors are intimately entagled.
June 14, 2014 — 2:31 PM
fadedglories says:
So I’m gonna be real Girlie and say personally I don’t want to assassinate anyone, run people over or kick prostitutes.I like escapism, but I’m not into violence. Fairies meh, but there’s loads of feminine stuff I’d love to buy in game form:
I want a game based on real architectural understanding so I can build houses.
I want a game where I can travel and NO I don’t mean a train sim. I want a game where I can go to exotic places and then sit on the beach or sail in a boat or visit an art gallery.
I want a space exploration game with NO monsters and No vengeful imperialist space empires. I just want to walk on a strange planet and admire it.
I’ll never get any of this because the gaming world likes things just as they are and poor down-trodden, threatened men don’t like the woman in their life getting attached to games when they should be cooking, cleaning or shagging.
I feel a little better now……………………..
June 11, 2014 — 2:13 PM
Fatma Alici says:
I do understand the game developers point that is more resources. However, there are plenty things in the games that take a lot more resources that nobody wants.
There is an attitude with game industry that girls that play games are some strange, twisted minority who are more like guys than girls. And, even if they aren’t, they’ll tolerate being treated as men, cause where else are they going to go?
The truth is more independent and big publishers are starting to think to grab the market for the minority. Because, minority tends to be more brand loyal. Loyal cause everyone else is shafting them.
I played the first few Assassin’s Creed games, and I enjoy more ‘manly’ games. Gore, blood, assassination, that sort of thing is my thing. And whether there is an option to big a female avatar, as you mentioned Bioware did even though it was extremely basic, makes me really happy. It makes want to play their game. Spend additional money on that game. Why aren’t companies cultivating that? Their dumb.
As far as the new Dragon Age game, my interest in ordering it quite low. With the Dragon Age 2 fail of a game, and the ending that will not be named, I’ll wait for reviews this time.
June 11, 2014 — 2:21 PM
Rachel says:
I keep hearing some gamers say that women as assassins isn’t “historically accurate” and would be too much suspension of disbelief.
But… wait. You’re telling me that a godlike precursor race who scattered these immensely powerful superscience artifacts around the world, and a Templar conspiracy spanning literally centuries to collect these things and use them to rule the world… /that/ isn’t too much suspension of disbelief? That’s “historically accurate” enough for you?! That’s literally /more believable/ to you than a female protagonist?
*beats own head on desk until concussed, as it is seemingly the only way to understand that argument*
June 11, 2014 — 2:28 PM
unhappymango says:
Honestly? I don’t even care if there are women or men or aliens or whatever the fuck you want in the game. I just want to play it already. Who cares if there aren’t any female avatars? People get stuck on such stupid little issues. The important thing here is the fact that they recreated a 1 to 1 scale of France from the fucking 18th century. That shit’s impressive and I don’t care if I even have to play as an androgynous monkey ass in order to have fun. Ease up, guys, It’s just a game…
June 11, 2014 — 2:39 PM
john freeter says:
Hey, they’ve got to save money somewhere in order to implement their godawful DRM.
Let’s stay positive though, they might make female avatars available as DLC at launch!
June 11, 2014 — 3:14 PM
Anonymous Poster says:
They’ve already tried to backpedal this with a statement to Kotaku about “strong female characters” and whatnot.
They’ve failed miserably in that regard. Their statement reads like a piss-poor apology for not realizing that the decision to exclude women would make a lot of people angry. At a point in time when diversity within the gaming industry (on both sides of the screen) has become a hot-button issue, Ubisoft pressed the wrong button.
I can only hope gamers will make them pay dearly for that mistake.
June 11, 2014 — 3:27 PM
Moonshine Meret says:
I hate getting crapped on because I’m a girl gamer. I have actually played the Assassin’s Creed series from the beginning, but noooooo, I don’t need any representation. How lofty of me to think so.
June 11, 2014 — 3:33 PM
Incognita Secunda says:
@ Mattthew: “Their target audience isn’t you. It never was you, and it will never be you. Their target audience are their investors. Whatever pays back the dividends makes the choice for them.” Yeah–and I’m absolutely sure that the investors wouldn’t be the least bit interested in seeing Ubisoft capture a bit more of the 50+% of the population that’s made up of women. I can totally see your point there.
Not.
June 11, 2014 — 3:55 PM
Matthew Eaton says:
Actually, while it might be 50% of the population, it isn’t 50% of their gaming core.
However, you are missing something else entirely with this development. If 81% of all their stock is owned by 1% of all their investors (proven in a 2008 Schwab study), it also applies to every other public company out there.
If they don’t get your money through UbiSoft games, they’ll get it through TV, movies, books, food, you name it.
Again, you aren’t their target audience because they will get their money from you anyway. It doesn’t have to be this product.
June 11, 2014 — 9:40 PM
mshatch says:
Another good reason to stick with Skyrim. And if you play it modded, you can have breasts, vaginas, AND penises.
June 11, 2014 — 4:06 PM
UrsulaV says:
What infuriates me is that women are an optional thing you can cut.
We can’t cut buildings, no. Or trees. Or horses. Or ornithopters or ships or carts. Because that would be stupid and the game wouldn’t work.
But the notion of having women as a default setting and building the game around the notion that there are women in the world–! Crazy talk.
I played AC2 and the expansions and loved them passionately and it’s a damn shame Ubi doesn’t want my money.
June 11, 2014 — 4:17 PM
Laylah says:
What infuriates me is that women are an optional thing you can cut.
This just completely nails it — the fact that they seem to think women’s existence is a logical and acceptable thing to skip when they want to save time and resources. Way to demonstrate your priorities, guys.
June 11, 2014 — 7:02 PM
eporter70 says:
Wow, seriously. Some of my favorite assasins are women. Farscape’s main female character (TV show) spent time as an assassin off screen, then was pretty kick ass on screen as well. Too bad–after games like Dragon’s Age, and Uncharted, and Mass Effect I thought we were over this. Show me one 16 year old boy who won’t play the “girl part”–seriously. I think they’ve evolved beyond that.
June 11, 2014 — 4:21 PM
Claire Grasse says:
I’m not a gamer but I ran this by my 18 year old son who is. Here is his response:
That’s a lot a BS on the side of the devs. There are lots of AAA games with options such as Gender and and other customization options, and for Ubisoft one of the biggest video game companies to say it cost too much is a lie. However I wouldn’t blame the devs, they’re just the face, they’re just the messenger.
Ubisoft is a French company and many of the devs are women. Like I said before the last game had female characters and was the top grossing Assassins Creed game so far. Many people applaud them for have a well-made non-stereotypical women that wasn’t just tits and ass. Ubisoft is a very progressive company. I would say them not putting playable female characters comes down to two things:
1. DLC (downloadable content) this has been a growing and unwanted addition. Corporate will tell the devs to leave out game features and then sell them later
2. Ever since PS4 and Xbox came out cutting corners to save a little cash has been a big deal, which will most likely be sold as DLC later.
The corporate guys are out of date; they still see gaming as a boys’ things, yet 50% of gamers are women. A month or so after the game comes out I bet they will be selling a DLC for about $20-$60, 20 is ok but 60 is the cost a new game. Then they will have the devs say some BS half assed speech
Like I said it’s hard to think the devs would be the ones behind this and its most likely the bosses on the top floor looking to sell a half made game just to sell you the other half later for just as much.
June 11, 2014 — 5:27 PM
KVeldman says:
Also not a gamer, but reading the quote, I immediately thought, “Bullshit, they’ll make money on this somehow.”
June 11, 2014 — 5:56 PM
Scott A. Bullard (@writingbull) says:
Definitely sounds like a DLC ploy to me. Every game now has an eight hour single player story tacked on as an after-thought for their online multiplayer Avatar selling, map making, weapons hording DLC’s. Most games have turned into sad money-grabs.
June 11, 2014 — 7:03 PM
KVeldman says:
“…because I’m pretty sure they don’t work according to physics? They’re like, ghost spheres or demon orbs.”
Almost fell off my chair laughing.
June 11, 2014 — 5:51 PM
Samantha says:
I don’t understand why the whole gaming industry is fumbling about and thinking this isn’t going to blow up in their faces. Even if a lot of other games have oversexualized females, at least they HAVE females. Not that I’ve ever played Assassin’s Creed, but yes, they’ve guaranteed that’s not gonna happen. I mean, Mass Effect had the option to play the female or male version of the same character. You know, EVERY OTHER GAME has a female and male option. :/
June 11, 2014 — 5:59 PM
Bird on a Beverly (@birdonabird) says:
Star Wars: The Old Republic is still around with various combinations of genders and species! Hooray!
June 11, 2014 — 6:04 PM
tazo85 says:
Goddamnit, I’m halfway through AC II and I’m seriously enjoying it and now I have such mixed feelings about the company.
Well, not mixed, that’s just a dumbass thing to say. But I want to love the game.
June 11, 2014 — 6:55 PM
Eleri Hamilton says:
You know, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst had customizeable female PCs, and Bechdel Test passing NPCs done by a studio with an umpteenth fraction of the funding and resources of Ubi, and that was 11 years ago. Maybe if Ubisoft had kept it around instead of fraking up the story and yanking the plug on the live beta, their poor, belaboured nine different multi-million dollar studios would now know enough resource management to make a female PC without kersploding.
June 11, 2014 — 7:28 PM
yellehughes says:
Sadly, Ubisoft has done it again for Watch Dogs. I would have loved to see a female lead. Do you think the boys wouldn’t play if they used a woman to hack instead of Aiden?
Granted, there is a female that speaks, but you can’t do anything else with her.
I would definitely get that game, especially if they gave her a better wardrobe (yeah…I’m a woman, I think of things like that)
June 11, 2014 — 8:41 PM
terribleminds says:
I have heard some criticisms about how women are handled in WATCH DOGS, yeah.
June 11, 2014 — 8:55 PM
Susi Matthews says:
Well, glad it doesn’t matter to me; the game, not the issue.
It reminds me of the boys in Art school who were so obsessed with boobs that they couldn’t draw them. I mean, they either looked like pair of grapefruit just splatted onto a flat surface or were so out-sized with no correct musculature that the woman ended up looking deformed on paper or canvas. And so I doubt if it’s changed much with the technology updates.
We gals would LAUGH at them which I’m sure didn’t help matters but we just couldn’t resist. I mean, we could draw penises and balls just fine, with great realism. But then, I suspect that the gals were seeing more of the real thing than the guys were. What? Reverse sexism? Why not, we get enough of it the one way.
So they just say, “no, it costs too much” rather than admit that they really just can’t draw boobs, even covered with clothing. Or what passes for clothing for women in most games.
June 11, 2014 — 8:53 PM