Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of production'

[Yminale]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

So you're saying the real issue is that people don't like change. Hmm, I can't imagine how that has ever been used to justify to sexism or racism before.

Not justify, explain and yes unfortunately traditions have often been used to defend retrograde notions (see Gay marriage).

Also people don't seem to understand how obsessed corporations are with message control and brand identity.

 

[Yminale]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

Black Flag has DLC with a black main character and Liberation sold well enough...

Assassin's Creed III Liberation had an African American female assassin and it was considered a BETTER game than the mainline ACIII. I believe in ACII Brotherhood you could recruit female assassins and there were female models available for multiplayer.

 

[Reverend]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

I'm not defending Ubisoft but...

The lack of female representation isn't due to sexism but to companies obsession with brand identity. For instance Assassin's creed is basically some white dude in a white hoodie jumping off of tall structures and shanking people. With so many competing IP's in the video game market and the millions put in marketing, a consistent vision is important. Consumers wants consistency too since because they want to know what they are getting and they really don't want NEW things. That's why Nintendo flipped out when people though Link was a girl. It's not that Link can't be a girl but Zelda games have certain tropes that marketing wants and fans kind of expect.

So you're saying the real issue is that people don't like change. Hmm, I can't imagine how that has ever been used to justify to sexism or racism before.

I think it's more a case of marketing people don't like change. I can't believe that actual game designers are responsible for this ludicrous policy. Either way, the excuses I've seen them make are just so beyond feeble it's not even funny.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

So you're saying the real issue is that people don't like change. Hmm, I can't imagine how that has ever been used to justify to sexism or racism before.

Not justify, explain and yes unfortunately traditions have often been used to defend retrograde notions (see Gay marriage).

Also people don't seem to understand how obsessed corporations are with message control and brand identity.

But it's bullshit. It's basically claiming that having a woman as your main character (or even as an option for your main character) would damage the brand, somehow, or reduce people's ability to identify said brand. It's fucking Assassin's Creed. Put a woman in that hooded outfit and it's obvious what the brand is.

In any case, that wasn't the stated reason for the lack of options, but rather a resource issue, which is another way of saying "we didn't consider this at all important." That is their right, but from a marketing standpoint it's pretty boneheaded to basically say half your potential audience doesn't matter.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

Yeah, honestly I would actually find it quite exciting to see a woman as a main character in one of their main games, even just for the possibilities in storytelling that it could bring to the franchise.

I like to think that the treatment of women as characters in games have improved, but there are always companies like Ubisoft who prefer to keep their heads in the sand, and it certainly doesn't help the industry. It sounds like they're trying too hard to justify their sexist viewpoints.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

Yeah, honestly I would actually find it quite exciting to see a woman as a main character in one of their main games, even just for the possibilities in storytelling that it could bring to the franchise.

I like to think that the treatment of women as characters in games have improved, but there are always companies like Ubisoft who prefer to keep their heads in the sand, and it certainly doesn't help the industry. It sounds like they're trying too hard to justify their sexist viewpoints.

Yes, more games now do have female protaganists, even the original Resident Evil had a female playable character, and there were three in the most recent outing, not to mention characters with their own games such as Lara Croft and Bayonetta. I mean, did the sales of those games suffer because the protaganist was a woman?

In this case I think it's more likely they thought "Where can we shave money of the budget and make us higher profits?" rather than "Only men can be in games!" The closest to any real sexism is the fact that Ubisoft thought doing this wasn't going to be a problem.

 

[FPAlpha]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

I'm not defending Ubisoft, but you're not going to see gender diversity in AAA games. Budgets are too high...

You do realize how bizarrely contradictory those statements are, right?

"These games cost a lot to make and that's why we have no gender diversity!" lolwut

Gaming is sadly a horribly sexist industry. Look at all the shit people like Anita Sarkeesian get just for bringing the issue into the spotlight for discussion. If you were in charge of developing an AAA game worth up to $500 million dollars, do you really want to step into the middle of that shitstorm? For what gain?

I'm not saying that it's right. All I'm saying is that I can understand companies being gunshy about potentially getting into the middle of such an important issue when huge sums of money are on the line. Companies like EA and Ubisoft are going to be the last to change, but eventually they will too.



I never said that. I said the primary demographic for most AAA games are young men who want to kill things. I read this very interesting article on Polygon about how and why gaming evolved to be so male dominated and why women are (sometimes intentionally) excluded when its roots were much more gender neutral. It's a (long) read, but well worth it.

Gender diversity is going to start small with indie games long before it moves up to the big boys.

This is true, but then that just highlights the absurdity of Ubi's claim. Zero-budget indie games can afford female player characters, but AAA developers can't? The mind boggles.

Indie games can't compete with AAA games, so they have to stand out by targeting players outside of the mainstream or by doing something to get attention.

I agree with what you said.. games are still being made primarily for boys which is why we have so many sexist female images that often enough don't even make sense (the stereotypical armor issue.. guy is clad in armor from head to toe, woman has an armored bra and bare stomach)- nevermind that a big percentage of gamers are girls now (i seem to remember something nearly 50%) though they do prefer other genres than shooters related games.

With AAA titles and the sometimes absurd amount of money they put into them nowadays they will not "risk" anything by having a female equal let alone the main character because teenage boys may not want to play as a girl (but having a side character with a hot body and equally hot movements).

Movies are similar.. they use what works and what almost guarantees a financial success, especially when it's about big budget action movies. However reality has proven that a broad appeal to both genders can sometimes skyrocket a movie's take, e.g. Titanic.

Maybe some day someone high up in a major game studio is brave enough to start an experiment and i hope it pays off really well so others start to think.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

Assassin's Creed III Liberation had an African American female assassin and it was considered a BETTER game than the mainline ACIII. I believe in ACII Brotherhood you could recruit female assassins and there were female models available for multiplayer.

In AC Brotherhood because the recruits spawned were male or female depending on location, it was possible to recruit an all-female "Brotherhood" (as I did, cos what's cooler than having a private army of loyal female ninjas?) - which was then somewhat undermined by one of the story missions in which all the recruits come to work with you and they are all male, regardless of the gender balance you've actually recruited.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

In this case I think it's more likely they thought "Where can we shave money of the budget and make us higher profits?" rather than "Only men can be in games!" The closest to any real sexism is the fact that Ubisoft thought doing this wasn't going to be a problem.

Yeah, and in my earlier post in this thread, I mentioned that I thought they did this to be able to put out things in quicker succession, since this is a yearly production cycle. They probably use the same models with slight modifications and with new skins and hire the same person for the motion capture for every game. But they probably feel that they wouldn't be able to do that if they had to change their focus. It's shortsighted of them though, because in the long run, they should be able to recoup their investment and open up new opportunities for them.

 

[Kelthaz]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

With AAA titles and the sometimes absurd amount of money they put into them nowadays they will not "risk" anything by having a female equal let alone the main character because teenage boys may not want to play as a girl (but having a side character with a hot body and equally hot movements).

Yeah, it's worth remembering that Ubisoft did just release Child of Light last month. Child of Light is a a lower budget game with a female protagonist. Coincidence? I think not. The company itself isn't sexist. They simply work in a sexist industry (partially their fault) and they don't want to take risks with their most popular franchise. I would do the same if I were them.

I think the only real mistake Ubisoft made is their idiotic response to a lack of a female character. If they had simply said "we don't wanna", like Rockstar did with GTA V, there wouldn't be this controversy.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

You know, it's 2014. The idea of a female protagonist being "risky" is ignorant at best.

 

[Yminale]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

You know, it's 2014. The idea of a female protagonist being "risky" is ignorant at best.

I don't think it's ignorant. It's hard to gauge what the market dominated by children and people who never grew up will respond to. For instance, Tomb Raider has improved greatly over the year but sales have been lackluster. There was the whole flap about Bioshock: Infinite cover and talks of boycott but it looks like it didn't affect sales. The last FPS game with a female lead was Perfect Dark Zero but it's problem was due to poor gameplay. The consensus seems to be that female characters don't necessarily hurt sales but they don't help either.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

You know, it's 2014. The idea of a female protagonist being "risky" is ignorant at best.

I don't think it's ignorant. It's hard to gauge what the market dominated by children and people who never grew up will respond to. For instance, Tomb Raider has improved greatly over the year but sales have been lackluster. There was the whole flap about Bioshock: Infinite cover and talks of boycott but it looks like it didn't affect sales. The last FPS game with a female lead was Perfect Dark Zero but it's problem was due to poor gameplay. The consensus seems to be that female characters don't necessarily hurt sales but they don't help either.

Those Saints Row games have sold quite well and they let you have just about any kind of character you want. I'm not talking about making games with exclusively female protagonists, I'm talking about games that even give you the option. I question the notion that that is in any way "risky" at this point in time.

 

[Reverend]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

You know, to me the idea that white male protagonists should be the default state for any video game and that having a non-white and/or female protagonist should be considered a feature, betrays some very backwards thinking.

I actually get annoyed every time a video game with a female protagonist fails to be commercially successful because I just know some marketing guy is going to draw a false parallel and hurt the chances of diversity in other games.

Indeed, I really hope this nonsense has doesn't have anything to do with why Ubisoft has delayed 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' for so long.

 

[Kelthaz]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

Those Saints Row games have sold quite well and they let you have just about any kind of character you want. I'm not talking about making games with exclusively female protagonists, I'm talking about games that even give you the option. I question the notion that that is in any way "risky" at this point in time.

Saints Row is an incredibly small franchise compared to Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed Unity has 10 studios (out of 29) in 6 different countries working on the game. Ubisoft is one of the biggest video game companies in the world, with 9,200 employees, and they have more than 1/3 of their development studios actively developing this one game. That's beyond huge. Ubisoft has all of their eggs in the Assassin's Creed basket and if anything at all goes wrong with this franchise they're fucked.

Saint's Row on the other hand is developed by a small company called Volition with a, according to their website, 200+ strong development team.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

Those Saints Row games have sold quite well and they let you have just about any kind of character you want. I'm not talking about making games with exclusively female protagonists, I'm talking about games that even give you the option. I question the notion that that is in any way "risky" at this point in time.

Saints Row is an incredibly small franchise compared to Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed Unity has 10 studios (out of 29) in 6 different countries working on the game. Ubisoft is one of the biggest video game companies in the world, with 9,200 employees, and they have more than 1/3 of their development studios actively developing this one game. That's beyond huge. Ubisoft has all of their eggs in the Assassin's Creed basket and if anything at all goes wrong with this franchise they're fucked.

Saint's Row on the other hand is developed by a small company called Volition with a, according to their website, 200+ strong development team.

Although there's a pretty wide gulf between the sales of those franchises, it's not as huge as you're implying. Saints Row games have sold over 13 million units, while AC games have sold over 73 million. We're still talking about franchises that sell millions of copies per title, not some indie game that sells 10,000 copies vs. a multi-million AAA title.

 

[FPAlpha]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

You know, it's 2014. The idea of a female protagonist being "risky" is ignorant at best.

Not when you consider the target demographic. Games are not meant to be the flagbearer of an equality movement that intentionally marches ahead to change society.

They are a business and want to make money and given the investments they are naturally very cautious to challenge the status quo and sadly this means games are for boys and boys like boobies to oogle at.

As i also said it would probably just take one franchise with a strong, interesting female protagonist (who will not be reduced to tits and ass) that becomes hugely successful to start a shift but that would take balls from a studio to push.

There are a few games that try this - Lara Croft being the example though it's a skewed one because of her large breasts which was all that was talked about. The relaunch Lara Croft seems to be better in that regard but i have yet to play the game to see if the game itself holds up (from what i hear it does).

Another game that comes to mind is Mirror's Edge but that's about it from most recent titles that feature a female lead.

I'd love to have a good game with a good story that has a female lead, i have enough macho destruction games for the the neanderthal in me and i would welcome a good game from the female perspective.

 

[SPCTRE]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

I for one would decry the lack of Jade Raymond*.

*(EP)

 

[Reverend]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

You know, it's 2014. The idea of a female protagonist being "risky" is ignorant at best.

Not when you consider the target demographic. Games are not meant to be the flagbearer of an equality movement that intentionally marches ahead to change society.

"...marches ahead"?!

Mate, the suffragette movement was over 80 sodding years ago. Women's lib about 40. Marching ahead? More like tailing behind, coughing and wheezing.

As for that nonsense about target demographics. Don't you think it's circular logic to claim that the reason games should be male centric is because games are already male centric?

There are more female gamers now than there's ever been and if studios catered to them more then sales can only go up and just MAYBE it'll help them cover the spiraling production costs they keep whining about.

Bottom line, under no circumstances should an artistic medium be declared a "boys only club". It's moronic and counter productive.

 

[RoJoHen]

Re: Lack of female assassins in Assassin's Creed? 'Reality of producti

I don't know if this is a valid argument or not, but wouldn't a female assassin be less realistic in these kinds of games? I realize the Assassins and Templars aren't exactly mainstream citizens, but they would still be more apt to follow the societal norms of their time.

Why are there no female Assassins? Well, honestly, because the men of the time probably wouldn't allow it.