Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: The Same Old Assassins
The issue of gender equality has seriously manifested within both video games themselves and the industry, with people fighting for equality in both — especially in the last half-decade. It’s a gigantic, complicated issue, so I’ll only focus on a single one here: playable characters. There wasn’t much fuss when Yakuza 4, for instance, introduced four playable characters to the franchise, in addition to main character Kazuma Kiryu, and made all of them dudes. That happened for two reasons: the fight was in its infancy when it released, and it’s a niche Japanese game that few English-speakers paid attention to. Sorry, but there’s a good reason why Sega isn’t localizing these games anymore.
Whether that fight happened in Japan is unknown to me. If it did, no one documented it in English.
The issue of choice in playable characters really exploded when Grand Theft Auto V was revealed, a title that offered three playable characters with different perspectives. It raised an eyebrow when all of them were revealed to be male, with many stating its apparent need to go after the “dudebro” crowd. Market research from publishers suggests there’s a group of guys who have a peculiar reluctance towards playing a female character in a video game. But that raises a couple of questions: Is that group as big as publishers think? And by forgetting the audience they’re turning off with the inclusion of a female protagonist, could they attract another potentially larger audience that wouldn’t otherwise be interested before? It’s the result of playing it safe, but it wouldn’t be surprising if some execs making these decisions were divorced from reality.
The newest title receiving this criticism is Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Unity. Suspicions of a co-op mode rose when someone posted a photograph of a gigantic E3 poster for the game on certain message boards (depicted above), showing four robed individuals in nigh-equal positions. It was difficult to get a good look at their faces, but upon inspecting closer, they all seemed male. All doubt was removed when the game was demoed at Microsoft’s E3 conference, showing four playable guys. The upset over it was expected, to the point that any journalist worth their salt asked Ubisoft about it when given the chance.
The lack of playable female assassins alone wasn’t what stirred a controversy, though. That happened when Unity technical director James Thoren told Videogamer.com they simply didn’t have the time or resources to implement them. “It would have doubled the work,” he told them. Anyone familiar with how AC games are developed could tell you that was crap. We’re talking about games handled by well over 1,000 people between six or seven studios, meaning there was no way they don’t have the manpower to implement this. Thoren’s response gets really funny when you can tell he messed up with his shift in tone at the end.
While plenty of “regular” people and journalists called him out on that comment, it was surprising to see other developers follow suit. Johnathan Cooper, who worked on animation for Assassin’s Creed III and is currently lending his talents to Uncharted 4, estimated that animating a female character would be “a day or two’s work.” Former Assassin’s Creed director Patrice Desilets remarked that it would be nice to have an AC game with all female characters — though he couldn’t resist plugging his own game too. GamesIndustry.biz collected a number of comments from various developers, many (but not all) of which called out the developer for providing a poor excuse. 
Ubisoft issued a statement in response, stating the game does have some female assassins in it. They’re just not playable. The focus of the game is the lead character, Arno, while the others are only important as important in co-op mode. They also mentioned that the franchise had a playable female character before with Aveline in Assassin’s Creed: Liberation (who also had some bonus missions in the Playstation versions of Assassin’s Creed IV). The company is aware of the diversity issues present in the gaming industry and, well, the AC games have a diverse array of developers from around the world working on them. I hope they didn’t think this makes everything OK, because it doesn’t come close to addressing the developer’s aforementioned comments. It also doesn’t answer the real reason why there are no playable female assassin’s, that implementing female protagonists is a risk they don’t want to take with development costs being so high. Not to say anyone should have expected them to answer that question honestly.
Most people who play Assassin’s Creed games will have no problem playing guys, regardless of their gender. But it’s nice when equality issues that need to be addressed are brought up, and it’s easy to tune out the petulant nerds who feel the need to try and shoot them down, because they have an irrational fear of the hobby being taken away from them. There’s no way Unity will receive a female option by the time it releases on October 28th, unless they delay it. But don’t be surprised if there’s a DLC quest involving one of the female assassins in the game, assuming their role is important enough for them to be named. They might even make it so you can play it a standalone quest, like Assassin’s Creed IV’s “Freedom Cry” DLC.
Or maybe they’ll try their best not to acknowledge it at all in the future, in the hopes that this issue will blow over — even though it won’t. We’ll see.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
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I understand why some are upset, I just don’t see the significance behind it. Perhaps we need more people whining to replace Samus with a male character for the next Metroid game.
I think the gist of it is, people are seeing the Ubisoft team made *four* characters, and they’re all men–but I imagine the only reason they are is because the team wanted to shoehorn a co-op mode into a franchise that generally has just one character… and (as is generally the case for these games) the protagonist was a man, so the extra characters to play as were just made by altering that character’s model data (I mean, they kind of, uh, look interchangeable). The team would probably need to make an entirely new character model for a woman character (or set of woman characters). Perhaps (probably) they should have planned to make that effort as soon as they decided to stick in a co-op mode, but, well, they couldn’t be arsed. Deadlines to meet, $$$ to make, and it’s going to take 80,000 more man/woman-hours to get the cobwebs on that bench to reflect sunlight half-decently!
Plus, controversy -> more publicity. And if there’s demand for new characters… well, what do you know! I’m sure Ubisoft will be more than happy 🙂 🙂 🙂 to add a woman character some day down the line in the form of pricey 🙂 🙂 🙂 DLC. Joan of Arc’s great-great-granddaughter or something, why not? Money, money, money. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Right, part of the controversy was generated due to all the playable characters being dudes (which IS odd), but the biggest came when Ubisoft flat-out lied about the reason why. But as I said in the post, I’m almost certain Unity will have a DLC quest starring a female.
*puts on tinfoil hat* Maybe this was the plan all along!