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[Scrooge McDuck]

And once again where does it say in there that they asked for the male character to be replaced? All they said is it's not a huge effort to include a female lead like they're saying it is.

I apologize, but I'm not seeing where you are going with this. Whether replacing or just including, they still need to create a female playable character, right? The point of contention is how hard that act of "creating" is.

Are you saying that a game set in the french revolution period must have a male lead to do the job right?

Maybe the story foundation is not simply "something in French Revolution period"? Maybe they already had a theme, a character arc, a message, and those could be conveyed best using Arno as the main character? None of us know the narrative creation process of this particular game, but please don't trivialize it like that.

 

[ExFalsoQuodlibet]

No, i'm saying that for this game Ubisoft decided that a male character was the better decision.

Absolutely, and that's not in discussion. My question is: why? In a time where a female lead would be most certainly believable and interesting, why they ended up choosing a male lead and even representing the game with 4 male assassins on the cover? Unless you link me a wiki article that says that a female lead in a game set in the french revolution period is impossible

Spoiler

(joke about the disrespectful statement in your previous post)

I'm going to assume that the possibility was there.

I can think of two possible answers, that I already posted in that closed thread:

1) the game designers involved are bad at writing and/or are not capable of writing believable female leads and neutral stories without the male gaze all over the place, probably due to bad education in their respective schools;
2) the game designers wanted to write something different for a change but were hardly pressed by their bosses and publishers to write safe stories with the usual tropes;

Now, I certainly don't think that all videogame leads should be female (but I think there should be more of them), but in my opinion Ubisoft had the chance to do something interesting this time and they blew it. Now that's my opinion of course, I don't personally know all the developers, writers and designers that worked on AC:U, but I find this position perfectly legit and I didn't see any solid evidence that convinced me that Ubisoft had no other choice than to use another male lead and put 4 male assassins on the game's cover.

Also, this matter does not exists in a vacuum: it's the tip of the gigantic iceberg that represent the low quality of character and set design in a lot of AAA games when it comes to gender neutrality; we are talking about this just because it's the last piece of news, but I find this battle worth fighting for even if I'll have to repeat the same things thread after thread.

 

[DR2K]

Don't like 6000 people work on AC games?

 

[Wazzy]

I apologize, but I'm not seeing where you are going with this. Whether replacing or just including, they still need to create a female playable character, right? The point of contention is how hard that act of "creating" is.
.

This whole argument is from his Uncharted example which I said wasn't good.

 

[ExFalsoQuodlibet]

Maybe the story foundation is not simply "something in French Revolution period"? Maybe they already had a theme, a character arc, a message, and those could be conveyed best using Arno as the main character? None of us know the narrative creation process of this particular game, but please don't trivialize it like that.

I'm not trivializing anything, I was just responding to a particular post that seemed implying that if someone writes a videogame in the french revolution period he/she is obliged to use a male lead. My point is simply that it is not mandatory, but I'm not saying that it's not legit choice. In fact, it's a choice, a conscious choice, so Ubisoft should not have said that it was somehow obliged to use a male lead: if they wanted to be honest about that they could have said "after our research, we ended up preferring a male lead".

 

[Dregun]

Instead of complaining about a game already in production not having the ability to play as a female why not champion games that are designed around a female lead in the first place?

All this pandering because of "white male" leads is just as insulting as 'no female leads". Lets all jump on the bandwagon and start complaining about women having such large roles in romantic comedies and men having such large roles in action films. Lets keep it going and insist men be in more Tampax commercials and women be in more Craftsman commercials.

The sexes exist, wars exist, killing people exist. When an overwhelming amount of violence is committed by men against other men (yes a staggering amount more so then against women) why is it so hard to believe that a main character for a game depicting massive amounts of violence would have a male lead? Could it have had a female lead? Maybe, should it really matter if the final product is good?

i dont want a female lead shoehorned into a game simply to appease a small portion in the gaming community (sorry to say). Instead I want a game with a female lead that MAKES SENSE in the context of the story. No sidekick, no 'gawking" material for oversexed males..a real life character that the audience can connect with. A character thoughtfully created to push the narrative of the story, in a compelling story or sequence of events I will enjoy experiencing.

Beyond 2 Souls had a female lead character, last i checked it didn't smash any records or even approach the sales of AC3 (yes even on the same platform it was outsold over 4:1). Was B2S a bad game? I wouldn't say so and its not like all the sales were purchased by women, and if more female gamers bought the game and it started making headlines about its overwhelming success because of a female lead the industry would change faster. Choosing to vote with your wallet/purse by NOT purchasing games does little if that wallet/purse isn't opened up for good games supporting your cause/wants/needs. Yes wallet/purse because it will take BOTH sexes to voice that opinion!

Look it's going to take time, nothing happens overnight but the industry is already changing, but trying to "Shame" developers into the change is going to have a very negative effect. Female characters will be shoehorned into games to avoid the "misogynist" cries, the "white male" privilege banter already taking place. Games will sacrifice even more potential quality in the hopes of checking off one more box to make it 'appeal to a larger audience". As gamers that should be our first concern, the quality of the games being produced.

For pete's sake we still get unfinished games peddled to us with microtransactions and pre-order collector edition bs and you guys think having a playable female character renders all those things meaningless now? That adding more work onto the developers who can't seem to produce a fully finished well designed product under the time constraints they have now will suddenly, because of a female character have all that other crap sorted out?

Be warned, you might get what you're asking for but chances are you're not going to be happy when you get it. Just sayin!

 

[Wiktor]

I can think of two possible answers, that I already posted in that closed thread:

1) the game designers involved are bad at writing and/or are not capable of writing believable female leads and neutral stories without the male gaze all over the place, probably due to bad education in their respective schools;
2) the game designers wanted to write something different for a change but were hardly pressed by their bosses and publishers to write safe stories with the usual tropes;

.

Really? Those are the only two possible answers? How about they just felt male character would work better for the story they waned? But no...they're obviously either bad writers or are abused creatively by their bosses. Because clearly no story set in that period should be anything but female centric, right?

Jeez.

 

[ExFalsoQuodlibet]

Really? Those are the only two possible answers? How about they just felt male character would work better for the story they waned? But no...they're obviously either bad writers or are abused creatively by their bosses. Because clearly no story set in that period should be anything but female centric, right?

Jeez.

I don't think these are the only two possibilities, in fact I elaborated in the rest of the post.

 

[quantumnerd]

For the record, male and female animations are generally lightly to notably different, but there are ways of feminizing/masculinizing movements algorithmically. Here's an in-browser mocap demo thst got shown in my animation class.

Biomotionlab BMLwalker

I doubt, considering Ubisoft's tech and art teams, that they couldn't figure out how to make this kind of thing work.

As for gender in writing, in games like The Witcher I can see justification for masculinity as a theme, but Assassin's Creed isn't about that. It's about assassination. There are tons of ways to put women into these stories, ranging from historically accurate abuses/struggles of women, to historically accurate triumphs of women (like that famous female assassin in this particular period...), to the-past-was-gender-equal historical revisionism (considering the other asspulls in the series' plot, would anyone notice or care?). The writers didn't even bother to pull out the femme fatale assassins, they just went and pretended competent women don't exist. I won't call it evil. Marketing to men is normally safe these days, and Ubi is trying to play it safe. But it's definitely lazy.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

This isn't it at all. To make a convincing female character you need a different skeleton than a male character. To share an animation between a male character and a female character you have to retarget it to the female skeleton. Some engines might have ways to do it automatically, some don't.

It has nothing to do with "girly animations". And chances are good that the excuse is perfectly reasonable.

Then obviously you make an engine that adapts to the different body types. I have seem SO MANY FREAKING GAMES do that that I don't think it's hard at all to do.

 

[quantumnerd]

Then obviously you make an engine that adapts to the different body types. I have seem SO MANY FREAKING GAMES do that that I don't think it's hard at all to do.

There are already female skeletons in the game, too. The male assassin animations just have to be run through a retargeting filter (this can be done with animation tools offline).

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

This whole argument is from his Uncharted example which I said wasn't good.

Ah yes, I see now. Thank you.

1) the game designers involved are bad at writing and/or are not capable of writing believable female leads and neutral stories without the male gaze all over the place, probably due to bad education in their respective schools;

Oh my, oh my, you just touched a nerve. This shall be a bit of a personal story, so I apologize beforehand.

Once I was commissioned to write a romantic drama, so I began to create a story about - to put it short and simple - about a hopeless romantic who wants to propose to their lover. Now, in country, of my ethnicity, the word "propose" comes with a lot of cultural connotation and baggage that are interesting to explore. A woman doing that is unheard of, and if she did, then it would be a different kind of story altogether. So of course, the main character needs to be a guy.

I finished it, I presented it to the producer. Then she said "because our main demographic is female, can you rewrite it so that the main character is a woman? Please hand over the revision in two days time." (I assure you this "two days" thing is merely a coincidence)

And so, I said that I can't and backed out of the project. That's not because I am "bad at writing and/or are not capable of writing believable female leads" (I've done that). That's because my fricking story is about a fricking person who wants to fricking propose (well, and a complete rewrite in two days for a 90 minutes film is madness). When I began, I didn't go "hmmm... and urban setting with many possibilities... Shall I choose a female lead or a male lead?" It doesn't work that way.

Ubisoft is not obligated to make a male character, yes. (Have they actually said this, anyway?) But this is rather irrelevant unless you want to argue that the very first thing a writer must decide after deciding the setting is always picking the sex of the protagonist.

 

[ExFalsoQuodlibet]

Oh my, oh my, you just touched a nerve. This shall be a bit of a personal story, so I apologize beforehand.

Once I was commissioned to write a romantic drama, so I began to create a story about - to put it short and simple - about a hopeless romantic who wants to propose to their lover. Now, in country, of my ethnicity, the word "propose" comes with a lot of cultural connotation and baggage that are interesting to explore. A woman doing that is unheard of, and if she did, then it would be a different kind of story altogether. So of course, the main character needs to be a guy.

I finished it, I presented it to the producer. Then she said "because our main demographic is female, can you rewrite it so that the main character is a woman? Please hand over the revision in two days time." (I assure you this "two days" thing is merely a coincidence)

And so, I said that I can't and backed out of the project. That's not because I am "bad at writing and/or are not capable of writing believable female leads" (I've done that). That's because my fricking story is about a fricking person who wants to fricking propose (well, and a complete rewrite in two days for a 90 minutes film is madness). When I began, I didn't go "hmmm... and urban setting with many possibilities... Shall I choose a female lead or a male lead?" It doesn't work that way.

Ubisoft is not obligated to make a male character, yes. (Have they actually said this, anyway?) But this is rather irrelevant unless you want to argue that the very first thing a writer must decide after deciding the setting is always picking the sex of the protagonist.

I'm glad to have touched that nerve, so that you could share your story.

First of all, your producer was obviously wrong in saying that she wanted a female lead AFTER you wrote the story: that's simply ridiculous, if there was a choice of gender to be made beforehand, she should have communicated that to you right away, so you could have decided if you wanted to write the story or not.

Moving on, you wanted to create a story about a hopeless romantic who wants to propose: I can understand that in your culture (out of curiosity, what's your nationality? please don't be offended by the question) it means that the romantic has to be a man, but consider the following:

- the romance shouldn't have necessarily took place in your country, unless it was specifically requested, and if it was, it was wrong from the producer to ask you for a female lead;
- the fact that you don't even consider the possibility of a female lead for your story could mean that there's a intrinsic hindrance in your culture that makes that thing impossible to happen, so if they asked for a female lead right away you could have had the chance to say beforehand that the story was impossible to write for you;
- there's plenty of women around the world that hopelessly propose to men, it's not always the opposite;

I don't think that the very first thing you must decide is the gender of your lead: I'm arguing that in the context of assassins in the french revolution, a female lead is possible. Even you, in your story, did actually choose the gender of your lead right after choosing the setting: the gender was not the first choice, but it was made very early in the writing process anyway, and in a videogame where there's animation, motion tracking, voice acting, character design and so on involved, the choice of the lead's gender should be done early.

I mean, "the right to choose whatever" is an argument that could be made for every videogame that features a male lead, but since almost all of them have a male lead, even worse a male lead with similar features, means to me that there's something more behind those choices. As I said, this particular case is one among many, but I consider it worthy of discussion.

If every game designer and writer were good, well educated, open-minded, free from publisher pressures, and capable of writing gender-neutral stories, statistically we would see a gigantic variation of stories, lead characters, npcs attributes, but it's simply not like that in AAA space.

 

[tkscz]

http://www.p4rgaming.com/ubisoft-most-developers-here-dont-even-know-what-a-woman-is/

Oh god i can't stop laughing.

Is this... Is this real?

 

[The Spoony Hou]

http://www.p4rgaming.com/ubisoft-most-developers-here-dont-even-know-what-a-woman-is/

Oh god i can't stop laughing.

I'm dying.

 

[Jintor]

Is this... Is this real?

It's P4G, they're (one) of the Onions of gaming

 

[Prototype Viktor]

If you had read any of the interviews, you'd know that they considered female characters, but had to cut them due to the extra effort.

and if you understood my statement is that extra effort is not extra if you plan for/think about it in the first place instead of it being a afterthought.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

It's P4G, they're (one) of the Onions of gaming

That's still more realistic excuse than the "real" one.

 

[tkscz]

It's P4G, they're (one) of the Onions of gaming

Would've been hilarious if it were real.

 

[Amir0x]

Although I agree with this being about Ubisoft being stupid, I will say that Tim Borrelli's that many men and women "move exactly the same" isn't precisely true, and certainly wouldn't be scientifically supported in its implication anyway. Yes, some probably do move the same, but the average certainly does not. In fact, studies have been done on the fact that we can actually decide gender just by that motion alone, without even needing to see the person associated with it.

Men tend to swing their shoulders more broadly, women tend to swing their hips more broadly.

But again, this isn't fucking double the work anyway.

 

[El-Pistolero]

I have not played any Assassins' Creed game after the first one, but if the protagonists are still Hassasshins, well, historically, they WERE all men.

 

[Lalalandia]

I have not played any Assassins' Creed game after the first one, but if the protagonists are still Hassasshins, well, historically, they WERE all men.

This game series has never been about the Hassasshin, AC1 was distinctly lacking in the ardent religious fervour of the Hassasshin so we can discount that as a reason right off.

 

[Kuldar]

I have not played any Assassins' Creed game after the first one, but if the protagonists are still Hassasshins, well, historically, they WERE all men.

There are not Hassasshins anymore since a long time. In the lore of Assassin's Creed, the Assassin Brotherhood is older than the Hassasshins. The Hassasshins is just what they were at this time and location. There were female assassins before and after the Hassasshins. For exemple in AC2 we visit the tomb of Iltani, a female assassin from the Babylonian Brotherhood (around 300 BC).

 

[BrassDragon]

There were female assassins before and after the Hassasshins.

Those two on the right need new animation rigs.

 

[figadapaura]

I hope Ubi make a game where we can play as the one with the snake.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Absolutely, and that's not in discussion. My question is: why? .

Because it's their game and after months of of planning they decided that a male lead would be best. There's no conspiracy here and you're making a big deal out of nothing. Ubisoft wasn't obliged to represent the female gamer.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Although I agree with this being about Ubisoft being stupid, I will say that Tim Borrelli's that many men and women "move exactly the same" isn't precisely true, and certainly wouldn't be scientifically supported in its implication anyway. Yes, some probably do move the same, but the average certainly does not. In fact, studies have been done on the fact that we can actually decide gender just by that motion alone, without even needing to see the person associated with it.

Men tend to swing their shoulders more broadly, women tend to swing their hips more broadly.

But again, this isn't fucking double the work anyway.

It's more work for little gain.

 

[Bailers]

Because it's their game and after months of of planning they decided that a male lead would be best. There's no conspiracy here and you're making a big deal out of nothing. Ubisoft wasn't obliged to represent the female gamer.

Haven't you learned anything? The needs of the few are much more important than the needs the many.

Outside of Polygon/Verge/topic specific blogs, I really doubt most people care what their character looks like when they stab people in the face.

 

[Scizzy]

Outside of Polygon/Verge/topic specific blogs, I really doubt most people care what their character looks like when they stab people in the face.

Surely the length of this thread would tell you that you have no clue what you're talking about.

 

[Louis Cyphre]

They have a woman hosting their E3 event unlike all the others yet they get called out for not having a lead female in AC, hilarious.

 

[R0ckman]

I don't agree with this, usually if I am far away I easily determine if a person is male or female by how they walk. The hip movement is very different from my observations.

 

[ab.aeterno]

Ah, crap I think it was because I was searching Final Fantasy XIV and not 14. Because that is the official title but whatever. Thanks for the link guys.

Point still stands that we have one article that is mostly direct quotes and probably has never been featured on the front page.

Meanwhile, for this whole fiasco there are probably half a dozen articles and videos front and center that are at least somewhat related.

They are in no way giving as much attention to the good news that came out.

Why are they obligated to give as much attention to something good as bad? Yes, I do think we should spend more time highlighting progress made. Absolutely. But by no means do I think enforcing some sort of misguided notion of equal coverage makes any sense. Progress gets made by bringing issues up, so naturally when things aren't good, we need to spend more time discussing them: why it happened, why it's important, and how it might change in the future.

 

[Jackpot]

Is PA mocking Ubisoft or people calling out Ubisoft?

 

[stupei]

I would hope that female gamers aren't so closed minded that they can't enjoy a game where they play as a man.

Since games where the only playable characters are men are like 95% of our options, prejudice on the behalf of female gamers is obviously not the problem here.

Fatigue with being ignored or considered an unnecessary after-thought that might ruin the integrity of the design is. I am definitely way less interested in buying a game made by people who have openly admitted that they think my gender is a last minute consideration, only if time allows.

 

[TangibleDream]

I don't agree with this, usually if I am far away I easily determine if a person is male or female by how they walk. The hip movement is very different from my observations.

That tweet is bullshit.

I'm not agreeing with Ubi here, but to think all you could have done is reuse the exact same animation is unauthentic.

 

[ab.aeterno]

Haven't you learned anything? The needs of the few are much more important than the needs the many.

What a fucking gross implication of that statement. So the only thing that matters about how important something may be is sheer numbers? Also, why do the majority have a need, equal or greater, for representation than minorities?

Outside of Polygon/Verge/topic specific blogs, I really doubt most people care what their character looks like when they stab people in the face.

You know, before making the same tired "no one really cares" argument that's turned the thread into a graveyard of grey, you should really take the time to read the linked post at the top of the op. If no one cared, this wouldn't be a 32 page thread.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Since games where the only playable characters are men are like 95% of our options, prejudice on the behalf of female gamers is obviously not the problem here.

Fatigue with being ignored or considered an unnecessary after-thought that might ruin the integrity of the design is. I am definitely way less interested in buying a game made by people who have openly admitted that they think my gender is a last minute consideration, only if time allows.

That's most likely because you don't know how time consuming it is to make something like a character model that's as complex as the main character and are misinterpreting production with some form of non-existent sexism.

 

[R0ckman]

I hate to bring this up again, but again I feel that there's a two-faced issue going on with civil rights issues. Again with what Ubisoft has done with excluding women, people have no problem all gathering to call them out, if it has to do with homosexuality like with Tomodachi Life and Nintendo people are okay fighting. If it has to do with ethnicity representation? Everybody jokes. It feels very immoral to me and gives me the impression that we are not making progress with racism and that it is not that its getting better but that its swept aside like a skeleton in the closet that will eventually burst out as a revived demon.

Here we have two cases where people show they have a sense of justice yet they mostly choose to reserve it for only a specific situation and withhold it from others. How is that truly a just heart? Why does this continue to happen?

 

[stupei]

That's most likely because you don't know how time consuming it is to make something like a character model that's as complex as the main character.

And apparently neither did the developers since they claim it was a part of their design from the very beginning until quite recently. You think they would have noticed it was as impossible as you keep saying sometime earlier since they, you know, were the ones making the schedule.

It's almost like their original statement was sort of bullshit.

 

[fade_]

Since games where the only playable characters are men are like 95% of our options, prejudice on the behalf of female gamers is obviously not the problem here.

Fatigue with being ignored or considered an unnecessary after-thought that might ruin the integrity of the design is. I am definitely way less interested in buying a game made by people who have openly admitted that they think my gender is a last minute consideration, only if time allows.

I completely agree...but I think this game specifically is the wrong place to fight this battle. They designed the game around a character with a back story. It would be silly to try to force any of our ideals on a developer in a game that's close to post production. We as consumers don't have the right to force developers what they should release. We do have the right to vote with our wallets and if enough people don't change will come about that way.

This witch hunt on Ubisoft is a little too much, especially when they've come out with games with female leads and very strong female characters in almost all of their recent AAA games.

 

[Dice//]

That tweet is bullshit.

I'm not agreeing with Ubi here, but to think all you could have done is reuse the exact same animation is unauthentic.

Important movements aren't that different. Our breasts and hips won't hinder us terribly when I'm sure stabbing someone. We may walk a little different, but I really don't think every single animation needs to be "effeminized" to compensate for a new character.

And yeah, the fact we've seen female PCs before, and the AC staff is huge, and I can't imagine them working on a VERY tight budget is making this story even worse. Much like the initial Tomodachi Life issue, I think half of the problem is that women are being treated as burdensome and an after thought.

And for goodness sakes... I'd take a reskinned male if it means a female PC at this point.

Since games where the only playable characters are men are like 95% of our options, prejudice on the behalf of female gamers is obviously not the problem here.

Fatigue with being ignored or considered an unnecessary after-thought that might ruin the integrity of the design is. I am definitely way less interested in buying a game made by people who have openly admitted that they think my gender is a last minute consideration, only if time allows.

1,000%.

 

[Crossing Eden]

And apparently neither did the developers since they claim it was a part of their design from the very beginning until quite recently. You think they would have noticed it was as impossible as you keep saying sometime earlier since they, you know, were the ones making the schedule.

It's almost like their original statement was sort of bullshit.

A developer on reddit who has contacts with the developers of this game specifically came out and said that it's not something that was recently dropped. It was dropped during pre-production. So at the earliest, it was dropped two years ago. There must have been tons of ideas that were dropped. And a female body and animations was just one of them. It's really not that big a deal. I'd much rather have one well-animated fluid character than a game with multiple characters that have less fluid animation in the name of "representation" Plus if you always see yourself as a man anyway idk how you feel represented.

 

[APF]

Yes. But complaing there's no female lead in a game is like criticizing GTAV for not being science-fiction, or than Uncharted 4 isn't open world or complaing there is no RTS mode in Tomb Raider.
At this point it's not really criticism of the actual game anymore.

Sorry this is a late response, but the above is one of the dumbest posts I've ever had someone reply to me with. First off, plenty of people argue here about genre and play modes when it comes to video game translations and iterations. Second, wanting a choice of avatar, or wanting diversity in avatars, is a completely reasonable feature request and a perfectly legitimate point of criticism for modern day games.

 

[Infinite]

It's more work for little gain.

Little gain? You keep saying this. How you mean

 

[Crossing Eden]

Sorry this is a late response, but the above is one of the dumbest posts I've ever had someone reply to me with. First off, plenty of people argue here about genre and play modes when it comes to video game translations and iterations. Second, wanting a choice of avatar, or wanting diversity in avatars, is a completely reasonable feature request and a perfectly legitimate point of criticism for modern day games.

But not in a game where they specifically stated that you ALWAYS play as the main character days beforehand. Not really justified to complain or "criticize" that design decision when 1.There are tons of games that allow you to choose your avatar and 2.You already knew how the game works and if you didn't then that's your fault and not the developers because you decided not to look up information that was given to you. This isn't a game where you choose your avatar nor was it EVER implied that it was when he second day of e3 had tons of interviews with the developers saying no it's not that kinda game multiple times.

 

[stupei]

A developer on reddit who has contacts came out and said that it's not something that was recently dropped. It was dropped during pre-production. So at the earliest, it was dropped two years ago.

So, as I've been saying over and over since I first posted in this thread, the issue remains that the REAL PROBLEM HERE is their mouth pieces and the fact that they felt a need to lie. The real issue is the fact that it never came up in any discussions about the game's publicity that someone might care. That a woman might want to play this game and, looking at the design and trailers, say, "Hey, why are they all guys?"

That thought never crossed anyone's mind, since they don't appear to have ever considered how they would answer that question. Either that or they thought that the topic of inclusion was so minor that they could offer clearly false lip-service and it would be taken as gospel.

Why lie? Because they don't care. Because the existence of female gamers or women in their game world hasn't crossed their mind in about the length of those two years.

As an animator, you seem really annoyed when people speak about the topic without knowing as much as you do or taking your experience into consideration, and yet we're on a game forum where people at least consider the existence and experience of animators all the time. But the idea that a woman might ever want to engage with the game? Unthinkable. Never even considered.

The fact that women exist and might have questions about their representation in a multi-million dollar game that is being touted as such a huge deal? A fact they weren't remotely prepared for.

Try to take that annoyed experience of people talking on your behalf and assuming they know everything about your experience from observing on the outside and then apply it to them forgetting most of the rest of the time that you're even there at all until you speak up, at which point you are a nag who is targeting a poor victim.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Little gain? You keep saying this. How you mean

You literally never see yourself playing as a female in this game. You literally never do unless there's a story reason like

Spoiler

playing as the mother of the main character

.So what's the point in putting in the days of extra work to make a female avatar work when the game doesn't even work that way in the first place?

 

[ab.aeterno]

A developer on reddit who has contacts with the developers of this game specifically came out and said that it's not something that was recently dropped. It was dropped during pre-production. So at the earliest, it was dropped two years ago.

Except for where they said they started it, but dropped it. Which does not imply preproduction.

Oh, and:

It was on our feature list until not too long ago, but it’s a question of focus and production.

You should stop asserting things you can't prove, particularly if your definitive source is a contract of a person on reddit.

 

[Crossing Eden]

So, as I've been saying over and over since I first posted in this thread, the issue remains that the REAL PROBLEM HERE is their mouth pieces and the fact that they felt a need to lie. The real issue is the fact that it never came up in any discussions about the game's publicity that someone might care. That a woman might want to play this game and, looking at the design and trailers, say, "Hey, why are they all guys?"

That thought never crossed anyone's mind, since they don't appear to have ever considered how they would answer that question. Either that or they thought that the topic of inclusion was so minor that they could offer clearly false lip-service and it would be taken as gospel..

You have no idea what they considered during development. To say that they never considered it is very insulting and blatant denial of the fact that I just told you about the developer who knows people at the studio and knows about some of the things they cut during pre-production said that it was considered. They never lied. About anything. Or implied that the game would allow you to customize and make your own character. So who's fault is it that you thought that it was that kinda game despite tons of interviews saying otherwise?

 

[Crossing Eden]

Except for where they said they started it, but dropped it. Which does not imply preproduction.

Oh, and:



You should stop adding things you can't prove, particularly if your definitive source is a contract of a person on reddit.

Not too long ago may or may not be a long time during video game development. Not too long to a developer or animator can mean months ago or a year ago.