Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
You definitely can't change the build and I don't even know if they confirmed that you can customize facial hair.
Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
Ah yeah, misremembered that, my mistake.
I get that. But Besada sounded like he meant all games and not just coop ones. Maybe I interpreted it wrong
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
Idk, maybe it doesn't seem to matter to people because they either don't have a problem with the way people are represented, because they aren't the ones apart of that minority or because they simply don't care. But that's not exactly true. This thread isn't to kill or boycott Ubisoft for what they said, but only to prove that the excuse was terrible. I don't know how many ways to say that.
I see it like this.. As games continue to push budgets and production values to be taken seriously as another multi billion dollar industry, then criticism is something that's going to happen alot more often.
How is it a terrible excuse?
I get features shot down all the time because of the exact same concerns. It's standard fare--that's what producers are for. I'd love to hear why it's bullshit.
Vermillion
Banned
This thread convinced me that they have their reasons, even though they couldn't express them for shit. I suppose it depends on what complaint we're discussing. Do we want Arno removed or a second playable character fully integrated in the game or a female playable character solely for co-op?
I didn't mean "we" as in the thread; I meant in general.
I mean in general - people are attacking Ubisoft because they want what? I'm getting the vibe that this all started because of a misconception of how the game worked.
Now that we know, the complaints have become abstract and can be applied to every developer that doesn't add a female character to their game (and specifically female - not anything else, but that's another subject).
The Librarian
Banned
I'm not trying to trivialize anything. Just have trouble understanding why other developers can work toward inclusion of female characters in related scenarios and not others.
People are complaining and signing a petition, neither of which I'd describe as an "attack" because they'd like to be able to play as a female at some level in the game. And the complaints can be applied to many developers, of which Ubisoft's is one, which happens to be the topic of this thread.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
You kinda are trivializing it when comparing it to games like halo reach as if that game has complex animations just like this. Or comparing it to dark souls, or any last gen game for that matter.
I think it's pretty obvious, no?
Ubi said they strongly considered it, but had to cut it due to production concerns. If you believe that much, it means they at least wanted to do it. I'm sure it wasn't an easy choice either; these things rarely are.
At the same time, it's clear that OTHER Ubi projects, like The Division, have female models, animations, etc. Different game, different project, different priorities. They've also gone out of their way to have female "players" for their gameplay trailers, which is pretty meaningful from my point of view. It just so happens that for this one project, they cut it out. Context folks, context.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Only two days? What about re-recording dialog to accommodate a female player character? Or changing any plot points that may depend on the character's gender to make sense (such as having a child, a decidedly important aspect of the Assassin's Creed series). How about contending with continuity down the line? Do you make all future references to the AC:U player character super ambiguous to avoid canonizing one gender over another?
I think this boils down to poor discussion from Ubisoft regarding the decision rather than them making a bad design choice. I'd totally love to see more Assassin's Creed games with female leads, but allowing the player to choose their gender just doesn't seem like something that will ever work well for this series.
I think this boils down to poor discussion from Ubisoft regarding the decision rather than them making a bad design choice. I'd totally love to see more Assassin's Creed games with female leads, but allowing the player to choose their gender just doesn't seem like something that will ever work well for this series.
Vermillion
Banned
Yes, but the only reason Ubi has been singled out by the gaming community was a misunderstanding. Can we say that we would have expected the same reaction had Ubisoft shown no co-op? We all knew Arno was a guy before.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
Let's this summarize it for you
We aren't talking about changing the game. In fact, I haven't seen one person say they want ubisoft to change the entire game to accommodate a female character. However there is 4 guys. 4 guys, and we are being told that 1 female wouldn't have been able to work because of financial reasons, resources, and animation. It's too far in development to change it now but the fact that to even consider the idea, that this would be the reason why they couldn't just seems so lame.
I think if they had no multiplayer in the game, few would have considered representation a serious concern with the this iteration. It would be interesting to be able to choose your character through the single-player campaign, but would not easily mesh with the in-game conceit of retreading a specific person's memories. But if they had multiplayer without female characters (a step back), then obviously there would be a concern. It doesn't make sense in a modern game to not have more representative choices in multiplayer, be they gender or skin color, especially for a game like AC where such choices are in tune with the multiethnic and diverse perspective the team prides themselves in having.
Stormhammer
Member
Those 4 guys are the exact same main character..
Vermillion
Banned
I get that, but all four of the guys are Arno, and everyone sees themselves as Arno. Presumably to allow the cutscenes to all be the same.
So just to make sure that I understand, is the issue that one of the people you don't play as isn't a woman? Or just that they're being generally lazy with the multiplayer, and they should have had more playable characters and one should have been a woman?
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
There or not 4 guys. How many times do we have to inform you that you ONLY play as Arno?
Gold_Loot
Member
True , but just ad it was stated before, it's four versions of the same person. It wouldn't make much sense having a female randomly pop up in this situation .
Exactly. I guess people are complaining that their appearance to other players, an appearance that they themselves would be unable to perceive, cannot be changed?
Funny, Ubisoft has recently let us play as a native American (AC3), a black female (AC: Liberation), and a female (Child of Light) in the last two years. What other developers have done so?
Right, but as everyone has been saying you don't see the other characters as yourself, but as other assassins (if I'm incorrect and you do see them as literally all the same person despite how weird that would be in terms of the fiction then correct me, but everyone has said my interpretation is accurate). So there is a missed opportunity to not half-ass their multiplayer or regress by not including female assassins as part of this co-op group, either randomly or by choice in customization. And that idea was clearly in the mix while in development, but nixed for reasons of prioritization.
About as many times as people have to tell you that all of the characters being Arno and people wanting to be able to play a female character are not mutually exclusive?
As a poster above me pointed out, you seem to misunderstand even the basic fundamentals of how co-op works in that game from a narrative and development standpoint.
Second, the post you linked is barely coherent English, and makes a lot of strange assumptions about the work flow at Ubisoft. I have already seen Jonathan Cooper's rebuttals, and they're certainly compelling given his experience with the series. However, whatever shortcuts they took with Aveline and the previous AC games (especially given the relatively small differences in animation from AC2 - AC4; to caveat this, they seem to all have been in the same engine, whereas ACU is a different engine with a MASSIVE jump in fidelity), is clearly not being reflected in their development philosophy with ACU.
Third, and it's really sad that I need to continually point this out, but the size of the studio is NOT the size of the development staff, and the size of the development staff is NOT the size of the animation team, and the size of the animation team is NOT the size of the character animation team. Does that make sense? The AC3 team only had 12 3D gameplay animators (which would handle the bulk of what we're talking about here), and 2 of them were leads (I don't know if leads perform any animation work at Ubi, so we can include them here for the sake of discussion). If you want to talk about relevant team size, then somewhere around a dozen-plus (we can only assume they increased the size for ACU) is probably what you're looking at. So PLEASE, stop spouting off about things you don't know about.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
Fixed.
I get that they are doing the whole Watch Dogs thing but even in watch dogs, there was at least one female character you can see. Like I've said before, they stated it as if making a women is so hard that she has to have ridiculous features, a very distinctive voice, a ridiculous sexy perfectly made face, and body from head to toe.
No one's said that other than you.
Anyone saying this is incredibly ignorant to how a basic development pipeline works. Those other assassins don't require a rig change, animation change, or anything like that. It's model and texture changes, which are LEGITIMATELY 2 day changes (potentially, if they did a rush job without much iteration).
Another argument you could potentially make is that Ubi could've just gone with a VO, rig, model, and texture swap--the combination of which would be several magnitudes less than animation work alone. Yes--that's true, given the ACU team would be alright with the overall decrease in quality. And that's what it's ultimately about--they don't want to do this half-assed, so they're not doing it altogether. Again, totally understandable from a developer's point of view.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Yes it is because you never see yourself as anyone other than the main character.
No, I'm sorry, but you saying that hasn't magically made me not want it.
Perfectly fine to want it, but this isn't the crux of the debate in this thread.
I (and others) want competitive multiplayer in ACU, but we're not trying to make it a social issue, or demand it.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
I don't even know what you are trying to argue with me about.
But I'll just be as basic as possible.
I am not questioning the size of the studio.
I am not concerned about how easy or hard it is to make this character.
I am not complaining about the development of the team...
Once again, I am disappointed by the EXCUSE. It is so sad that I've repeated that one thing 100x and people continue picking the technicals. This is ethical to me. This is not technically to me. Adding or thinking of one female isn't something that should be a technical difficulty. How hard is that for you and the other guy in this thread who continues to persuade people to play other games and defend their technical decision to understand . I do not care about the technical decision, I just care about the fact that to CONSIDER a female, it is only a technical decision instead of coming right out and saying they didn't want a female character.
Last but least as I have said one hundred times.. I appreciate the HONESTY. I can respect visions to not include her, however I do not respect the BS response to boil it down to technicals. It should never be a technical issue to make one different character. Yes of course, it sometimes will boil down to it in the grand scheme of things, but just say that it didn't fit your vision and let it be. Do you get it now or do I have to repeat this again?
If you're saying this in response to my post (I said nothing about "2 day changes"), you're saying it is technically impossible. You are incorrect. It's more work but it is not technically impossible.
The argument is that they *did* do this half-assed, by not following through on this idea. Your point is actually that they only wanted to do it half-assed, and not one-quarter-assed by taking on more than they wanted to chew.
Do you offer free PR lessons?
IdreamofHIME
Member
Let them make the game they want to make, shoe horning sexes and minorities into games to tick a box is something i'm not a fan of in any way.
Ubi's the company spending 50million on making a game, they've probably focused tested protagonists at quite an expense. You, yes you have no problem with a female lead? Well good for you, pat yourself on the back. Now go to the supermarket or a sports game and look around you, ya think all those other people all have the same opinion as you?
Wanna bet 50million dollars on it?
Ubi's the company spending 50million on making a game, they've probably focused tested protagonists at quite an expense. You, yes you have no problem with a female lead? Well good for you, pat yourself on the back. Now go to the supermarket or a sports game and look around you, ya think all those other people all have the same opinion as you?
Wanna bet 50million dollars on it?
Their initial claim is that they wanted to do this and are disappointed it couldn't make it in the final product due to limited resources.
It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. There's a semantic difference between the two.
You're choosing not to believe Ubi's explanation, and then making a conspiracy theory about how it doesn't fit their vision for AC--which makes ZERO sense as they've shown considerable evidence otherwise, seeing as they've featured, to date--an Arab, an Italian, a Native American, an Englishman, an Afro-Caribbean, and an African- American female playable characters in the series to date. And again, Ubisoft has shown time and time again, that as a company, they've been very gender/sex-inclusive in their games, even in their promotional materials. You're literally pulling this out of thin air.
No, but willing to teach Reading 101.
The Cowboy
Member
This is something that I'm surprised hasn't happened along with something like the PS4 DRM twitter campaign, this is clearly an issue in gaming but its really unfocused and only ever seems to come up at certain times (like for example, when this Ubisoft story happened), yes there has been various threads on this when stories break or a dev misspeaks, yet i don't recall a centralized thread actively trying to change things for the better.
When the DRM issue came about last year it was quite surprising to see so many people on here (and other places) band together to try and fight it, yet this IMO is a much bigger issue and i don't recall in all my time being on here (and reading here before becoming a member) anyone/any thread getting together in an effort to try and change something like this using similar means (trying to get much more diversity in games).
Wouldn't it be a good idea to have something like this so when any game gets announced/leaked that looks set to be able to have a choice put it, that all the people on this site/campaign started to contact the companies/devs requesting more choice?.
Mr.Wreckless
Banned
The person I quoted said the people are tired of the discrimination and I'm simply asking who. Can it really be stated that this is a hot button issue if only an extremely small minority is even aware of it?
Are you seriously comparing a desire for multiplayer to a desire for gender equality in playable roles?
Saying it can be done in 2 days is more of a response to Jonathan Cooper's comment on all of the animation work for a female PC in ACU being doable in 2 days.
Your second statement is incongruent with how development quality is evaluated. But features are cut all the time--and really you need to judge the end product against other end products, not the idea that was formulated on a notepad.
Let's say you have a budget of 100 "budget points"--which is our way of saying time, money, and human resources. You have 20 features that you want. Each feature requires 10 budget points to bring to full polish. Now you say that your quality bar requires that each feature is at a 10.
To complete the game with 10/10 quality, you need to dump 10 of your features. Otherwise, you end up with 5/10 features, but twice as many features. THAT is half-assed from a development standpoint.
From a production standpoint yes, the two are absolutely comparable--and may have even competed against each other at some point. Obviously, one is a real social issue. The other is not.
Mr. Pointy
Member
I don't know why Ubisoft just say that they built AC [Rick James]Unity[/Rick James]'s story around 4 guys and we can't change it because we crank these games out once a year. We underestimated demand for a playable female character and will endeavour to include them in the sequel or inevitable DLC.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
Bolded.
Yet couldn't consider a female character. I really respect you going out of your way to recognize that what they "explained" is really up to a true technical production, whatever you want to call it, issue and less than a social one.
But the way I see it, a company that you claim in bolded, that would have had to change everything for one character due to resources will continue to be a problem to me like it or not. If other studios can look at this and recognize it as an excuse as well, who some are developers and can accept both sides of the argument, I fail to see why you can't. It really isn't hard to see it from the point of view from a fan, a consumer who loves ubisoft games, who can recognize that they are one of the most diversed gaming companies in the world, but tell me that the only reason why they couldn't have made a female or someone I could have wanted to play with in a co-op game with friends, was because of technicals that people aren't demanding them to do or change.
I'm done.
This game better be freaking FLAWLESS from what I've heard as well.
figadapaura
Member
Why would they compete against each other when all the previous iterations of multiplayer have included playable female characters? Actually having multiplayer would have probably prevented this whole situation, so no they're not comparable.
Read everything else I said in this thread. If they're building from scratch, then development priority. It was just a random example anyway. Better example making use of character animation exclusively would probably be female PCs vs. more diverse NPC animations. From a prioritization standpoint, an argument could be made that NPC animations would be more important because everyone will see NPC animations, while potentially less people would see PCs. That's risk vs. value talking. Obviously the result of the "battle" depends on your target audience, production guidelines, development priorities, etc.
Bolded.
Are you serious, because they literally did say they considered having female characters, and then cut them due to production concerns.
This is what people are doing. AC is a series that literally opens every game saying they're a diverse group, a series that has always had female assassins as teammates and that has always had female assassins in multiplayer.
As far as your budgeting example, I assume then that they have 10/10 (best-in-class) in terms of character customization, since that's something they include in the game and highlighted in their demos, and they refuse to half-ass anything they actually develop?
I can't speak for Ubi, as I don't work there. I can only postulate based on my own experiences in the industry and offer what I think is a logical explanation based on Occam's Razor. I think it's safe to say that they won't be doing any cloudbushes though.
You're not entirely correct, either. AC1-4 were incremental updates in a lot of ways. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they were built on the same engine (albeit with updates each time), and re-used a lot of the same assets. My understanding for ACU is that everything is being built from scratch. A better comparison of finished product would be AC1 and ACU, not AC4 and ACU.
Except for the fact that they did consider a female character. They didn't have the resources, so the character was cut. I don't see a problem with their explanation, and considering who we are talking about, and the fact that they are in the forefront in this industry when it comes to inclusion, I'm pretty shocked that people are taking them to task over it.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
I don't think you know what a "social issue" is.
EDIT: As for the "they already had a female, but cut it" BS, I'm almost 100% sure that was due to the higher-ups going "nope" rather than budget.
Quadraphonic
Member
There are no "4 guys" and saying that shows you have a grave misunderstanding of how the 'multiplayer' in the game works. (Which, is a mess right now that takes a bit to understand since Ubisoft has so poorly explained it) It's not even about the story, rather the seamless gameplay mechanic.
It's not even a multiplayer game. They severely mismarketed it as one.
You simply enter a tavern, and other friends playing at the same time are shown as ghosts you can join in the city. You either free-run or do brotherhood contracts. These online missions with other players replace the Assassin Contracts (pigeon coop with paper tied onto the leg) side missions of the previous games.
Those contracts don't even advance the story. And you can do them alone, too. It was just a neat feature they wanted to promote. It ended up looking like the whole game was based around it.
It's amazing to see how this thing became so overblown, of course. While a lot of that is Ubisoft's own fault, to be fair, it all started from the banner for the game showing the 4 Arnos, and everyone (fairly) assumed a lot of wrong things.
They spent so long redoing the game for current gen consoles with other things, that they scaled back the 'extra' things to do. Things like seamless indoor/outdoor transitions, no loading, and climbing DOWN buildings took priority. They even picked Paris because it's a huge-ass city, and didn't need to have ships to navigate, even though they know people love that feature. This is very much a 'core' AC game with less of a focus on multiplayer. Ironic...
dancingphlower
Member
farcry4's protagonist is apparently asian
Which is awesome! Too bad that game is wrapped up in some ridiculous racism/homophobia controversy.
This reply--completely devoid of actual content. Provides no supporting evidence, knowledge, or contribution to either argument. But OK, you're almost 100% sure. Thanks for letting us know.
If you actually have something to say on the matter, we'd love to hear it.
About the inclusiveness of their other iterations? I'm not sure why it's important I only consider the first game, but that game did open discussing their personal diversity and had at least one female assassin.
figadapaura
Member
Wtf are you talking about? How about you answer my question instead of telling me to read stuff that isn't relevant. Obviously multiplayer wasn't a priority for them, that's not what I was talking about.
And now we're actually arguing that NPC animations are more important than the PC as a reason for not having playable female characters. Fucking amazing.