What's up with calling Ubisoft sexist/racist this year?

Pre-fucking-cisely.

@random45 said:

Better yet an androgynous homogeny of every race on the planet.

Let's not pretend that other game journos don't get in on this. It's not just them.

It's been annoying as hell to read on Twitter. I want to read about E3 updates and all I see is "hurr durr Ubisoft is the devil" bullshit.

Ah. I sort of figured that, but wasn't sure. I still stand by my other points. I don't think it's ok to throw all of Ubisoft under the bus, and game companies should be better prepared for people asking them about not having playable female characters, whether they be protagonists, co-op characters, or otherwise.

@kishinfoulux: Block or unfollow those people. It's why I only follow people who don't get into this stuff. Sure, Brohei Broshida works for Sony and will never say a bad thing about them and is biased to them but at least his tweets will have information about stuff I care about.

I'm just waiting to see how people generate some outrage for The Crew.

In all fairness, she's more of a murderer than an assassin. You won't be seeing any parkour from her.

heh. I have fortunately seen most people presenting opinions far better than simply "hurr durr", and that includes most of those who don't care about it. I don't think it would be appropriate to sum up any of the perspectives involved as simply mindless gurgling.

I'm glad to say I don't think many are seriously throwing the entirety of Ubisoft under the bus; usually when people say "Ubisoft", it's with the understanding that it's the "heads of Ubisoft" or the "public face of Ubisoft". In this case, some people clearly making the company look bad, and for that, I feel bad for the many developers there who likely had little to do with the decision or subsequent excuses.

And I quite agree that game companies, especially ones as usually diversity-conscious as Ubisoft, should be better prepared in situations like this.

I think these sort of conversations are worth having, but not like this. This industry certainly likes to overplay the gender and race card these days, and it is getting a little tiresome. That being said, Ubisoft need to sort out their messaging, it's abysmal.

I don't know man, their responses to the questions might be pretty terrible but to me, Ubisoft are the last guys people should giving shit to when it comes to that subject. They have some of the most diverse cast in any video games(Assassin's Creed more specifically even.) I'm not hearing anybody complaining about no female protagonist in COD for example. At the very least not as loudly.

Edit: actually, in most "debates" I've seen, both sides seem to be just as childish and dismissive as the other, including the ones who claim to want video games to grow up. It's really quite unfortunate. We're kind of getting nowhere with it.

Nah, their response was pretty bad. Supposedly inflating the amount of work required doesn't help either. Besides that though, well said.

But hey, if you want to get to the real meat of sexism in the industry, allow me to present an arbitary comparison between severed heads and female presenters. I'm looking forward to their follow-up article comparing homosexual relationships with stealth kills.

"It's time to stop pandering to our own stereotypes, and stop placing more importance on [sneaky murder] than [loving who you love] in the industry.

Again, it's about the co-op characters, not the protagonist, and Ubisoft's long-standing encouragement of diversity is a reason for people to more notice its potential absence. They aspire to be more diverse, and people are pointing out their excuses that may not fit with that aspiration. As a company that cares about it, I would hope Ubisoft will consider the criticism.

And, heh, people -have- complained about a lack of female characters in COD, but they did eventually add in female characters. Still not the protagonist, but it was something welcome to see.

This sounds about right.

If you go by that logic, couldn't you also suppose that all those complaining about those complaining are just doing it because they enjoy getting worked up over nothing?

I would prefer to believe what the majority of evidence over the years has shown me. Which is that people are different and feel differently about things. So, sometimes they express concerns which others will not also share. They will express them not because they want to get worked up over nothing, but because not understanding or sharing someone's concerns does not mean they don't actually exist.

I've been around here long enough to know that some people will be genuinely bothered by prejudice and ignorance in the game industry and community and others will be genuinely bothered by other people feeling bothered by something that doesn't bother them. That's not because anyone here enjoys perceiving something undesirable and getting worked up, but because different people simply care about and respond to things differently.

@truthtellah: ok sure, but shouldn't that be the whole point? Having them as protagonists, the actual part that matters? Of course you can have female playable characters, but if they're only for co-op or multiplayer, isn't that a cop-out? Sure, you could say that it's a start, but it seems like only getting half the job done.

As a disclaimer, I don't consider myself to be on either side of the discussion. I mostly find the whole subject and the way both camps are handling it very frustrating.

I don't think the ultimate goal is an Assassin's Creed game with a female protagonist. That, well, has already happened. The point is regarding a simple question of asking, "Hi. Can you play as a female avatar in co-op? And why not?" And after a previous Ubisoft game had a female option for co-op, why not for this upcoming game?

Their responses about them being within inches of doing it except for deciding it would take endless amounts of effort is what drew the real attention. The unfortunately common excuse of "women are hard" to include in a game is simply a lot of hot air, and their exaggerations about redoing 8000 animations made it seem like they were making excuses, not genuinely explaining. They have boasted at E3 about all of the effort put into the giant world of the new Assassin's Creed, and if the representatives are telling the truth, they prioritized every possible thing before possibly including a playable female avatar.

Ubisoft is clearly a company that has shown an interest in diversity; so, it makes sense for people to ask about something they pride themselves on. And when a game developer aspires to be a better, more diverse company that makes diverse games, it is extra baffling to see their odd responses here.

I have learned to detect click bait articles and to not.. click them. I don't want to promote this way of artificially creating controversy for the sake of generating money for the site. Also this gender representation thing really sounds like quotas to me. You better have this number of this and this or we'll be mad at you!

Because this shit is total click-bait because it gets a bunch of people juiced up.

Fuck it, it seem like every corner of the internet I go to recently (like the last 6 months) has been aflame with social justice stuff, some very justified, some like this bullshit, totally bollocks. Its starting to wear me down it seems the outrage call to action keeps getting pushed for petty shit. Someone gets sexually harassed in real life or shit like the fucked up torso statue happens I'm probably on board with your outrage and will probably make my dissatisfaction known with my dollars (or lack thereof). You start inventing problems and I start losing interest in your agenda, you keep doing it and I will make a point of not running to your aid when you cry wolf.

I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with targeting a series of games towards a specific demographic, even if it's male, and making design decisions based on that knowledge. There are good and bad ways to do this, sure, but ultimately I feel there's no such thing as "neglecting" a group you were never particularly aiming for. Let people appreciate or decry a game for what it is, and not approach this issue from the position of what it should be.

Inclusivity, as a concept here, bothers me because it is inherently democratic; the creative vision that comes from a single person is autonomic, it's an expression of who they are as a specific being. This gets diluted through massive dev teams, sure, but there is ideally always a specific person in charge who makes key decisions and puts a significant creative stamp on their project. Inclusivity invites design-by-committee; a slavish devotion to modern notions of political correctness; the homogenization of characters and casts, such that anyone should (emphasis on should) conceivably be pleased by being "represented."

It can destroy part of the experience's core identity, because even if that identity seems a bit flawed to some, it's still a valuable part of the whole thing. Credibility, a sense of authenticity, can be served by flaws or imbalances. Maybe the order of assassins here is exclusively male and the creators wanted that emphasized in the game? Maybe that makes sense, considering the historical backdrop of the 18th century and the sort of things happening at the time. We don't know the story, but there's already anger that some portion won't be good enough for diversity.

I provide this anecdote. I train new troops during the summer and fall months, and while most understand what they're getting into (and what they have to give back), others have an entirely different attitude to it all. If they can't do something, it's because it's not easy enough; if they failed somewhere, it has to be a problem with the system. And while I admit the military has many, many flaws... it's this attitude towards serving which is itself probably the biggest issue. They want it all to cater to their expectations, for the world to bend over backwards and allow a personalized, acceptable experience while they're there. There is rarely, if ever, a realization that being there means giving yourself over to an imperfect organization which, in turn, deals with the inherently imperfect affair of war.

No, it has to be perfect ahead of time, and it has to be perfect for them.

Anyway, I find all this arguing over co-op gender in Assassin's Creed petty as a player not because I'm male... but because I want to enter their world as it is presented by the developers. What I don't want is to walk into any and every experience expecting total conformity to my ideas of right or wrong.

My core issue is with the expectations some have from these games, which seems out of line from what I consider to be fairly approaching the experience as-it-is.

In Assassin's Creed there are female assassins. There was Maria in AC1, Aveline in Liberation and 4, James Kidd in 4, the girl you recruit in the Aveline DLC for 4, and there were female recruits in Brotherhood, Revelations and 3. There was also Lucy and Rachel in the present sections. So I kinda don't see the "There are no female assassins" argument.

Nice strawman. You missed the rest of the post where he said if the designers want the protagonist a male, it's going to be a male, and you can be offended all you want, but it's their product and thus, their decision.

@ninnanuam: And here ladies and gents is a sensible human being that gets it! There are times to get upset and outraged, and there are times were I feel like we get all huffed up over nothing (like Dragon's Crown).

That said, Ubisoft's excuse of it's too much work was pretty bad. In today's day and age, that's almost the worst answer you can give (Number 1 answer would be something about women and sandwiches).

In a perfect world, it shouldn't matter at all. But sadly we don't live in a perfect world and there are ways in which women constantly being portrayed in media as always the one in jeopardy and never the strong hero kind of harmful. It creates expectations of people which aren't always the case.

It's not the biggest problem facing humanity in the 21st century but I don't think that's a particularly good justification for not addressing it.

I'll be honest, I set the over-under for social justice warrior or SJW being mentioned at 10 posts, but it only happened once on page 1, so that's pretty cool. As that wasn't even a derogatory user!

These PC rules that apply even to videogame villains are idiotic. Just apply these rules to other mediums and have a laugh. No one does.

@giantstalker: But the issue isn't that it was simply a design decision. At least, that's not what Ubisoft's representatives have said. They apparently don't agree with your take on this. They said they were "inches" away from putting female characters in the games, but they relented, saying that it would have taken twice as much work on over 8000 animations. They aren't missing because they felt it would serve their vision best; they are missing because, according to them, it was just way too hard to put female characters in.

Which is poppycock. Plain and simple. That isn't an artist deciding they wanted an all-male co-op team and sticking to their guns. It appears to just be a boss at a developer making up a bad excuse for an oversight in development. Other animators in the industry are rightfully pointing out how absurd this excuse is.

In our interest to defend developer artistic vision, we shouldn't just accept any crazy excuse they come up with. We shouldn't believe any random story or grand promise simply on faith. They're developers. They're people like you and me.

If they just wanted it different, that's alright. They could say that. But instead, they have responded with ridiculous excuses and sidestepping which have made people more concerned, not less.

There is actually a long and enduring history of criticism of every aspect of other mediums, and simply because videogames are only in their young years in the process doesn't mean they're exempt from it. It's more common and widespread than you may think. Most mediums and their communities have gotten rather used to it though.

This is just another step in videogames getting even better. :)

@creamypies said:

The race card is a term made up by people in order to easily and casually dimiss accusations of racism, and it gets brought up 100% of the time when racism is discussed. If the "race card" was an actual card, it would be worth about as much as a 2 of clubs in a game of poker.

Anyway, I find it kind of funny how people seem to think "social justice" has literally any real power in the game industry; as if companies the size of Ubisoft are shaking in their boots over any of this. Their "creative vision" isn't under any threat here, guys. In fact, the only reason why social criticism about games seems so loud on the internet is because it's such a novel thing for this industry. We're so used to the other 99% of games coverage that we don't even really notice it as having any sort of inherent political perspective and it kind of just washes over us, but talking points about diversity still stick out like a sore thumb and we're all like "THE DARN SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS ARE AT IT AGAIN! THEY WANT TO KILL FREE SPEECH!"

It's also interesting to ask what are we accusing Ubisoft of exactly? Negligence, or clear intent? Because if it's just a negligence to add more meaningful female characters, well then welcome to 99% of the gaming industry. If it's clear intent to exclude women for some deep rooted and nefarious reason then that's a much more relevant discussion.

I am surprised nobody brought up how sexist Watch_Dogs is as well. Even with there horrible excuses this E3, the female characters of Watch_Dogs were ALL victims. Every single one of them was there to be rescued.

I don't think Ubisoft is intentionally trying to be this way, but ignorantly appearing that way. They definitely need a more diverse group of writers and creative directors to help flesh out what the real world is like.

It's easy to say that gender doesn't matter when you're part of the heavily represented gender and not the minority. As a female, I get really excited when I get the option to play as a female character, whether it's my own creation in something like Mass Effect or a developer created character like Lara Croft. These things matter on a personal level to me. I devote a lot of time and money to games so seeing someone like me makes me happy and makes me spend my money. I don't need it, but it makes me more likely to buy and play a game.

One of my most informative gaming moments was popping in Super Mario Bros. 2, which is still one of my favorite games of all time. I was astounded that I could play as Peach. Floored. That shit blew my mind. Up until that point I was used to playing a guy. I had no problems with it, I didn't really know that I would ever get options on who I wanted to be, but in that moment a switch was flipped in my brain and I realized that the people making games could not only make strong, brave men, but also strong, brave women too. And I could BE them if I wanted. As a young girl that matters more than I think some people on forums realize.

Now, I have no problems playing male protagonists. Right now I am playing through, and loving, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I also play through every new Halo game, Gears of War, Bioshock and various other games where the main character is a man. That's totally okay, I love their stories just as much as the stories that star female characters. I don't feel like someone should be bending their game vision to match my desire to play a female character. However, in the end, the developers that give me better and more varied options will get more of my money. And as more women play games, more women will hopefully vote with their wallets.

I think you are kind of over stating it. Spoiler alarm...

His sister for example was just a normal person, not some spec ops/fixer/whatever so it is kind of reasonable how she behaves through the game. Despite ultimately getting "rescued" she is also a very strong character. She tells Aiden off at multiple points because his crusade is self destructive, she tells him not to get involved with the creep caller and wanted to deal with it herself, she kicks him out of her life, I would say she is one the games better characters. He also has to rescue his nephew (twice) and I don't see that being a big issue. I guess cause he is just a kid we can overlook that he is male with PTSD. Clara also goes down fighting and had a gun herself if you didn't notice, hardly a wilting flower waiting for you to save her even if her portrayal over all could have been much better. Let's also not forget that the Psychiatrist doesn't take your crap either and ultimately calls the cops on you.

If there was one legit offensive to women bit though I would have thought it would be that part about the human trafficking myself.

The "race card" comes up when someone makes a claim of racism that can't substantiated either way.

No, Syl Johnson, it's not because you're black, because that suggests an objective truth, and there are many factors that relate to finding success. There are also a large amount of poor white people who never find the level of success that you are referring to either.

At the same time, to suggest that Syl was probably never a victim of racism is absurd. This song came out in 1970, so it's pretty much certain that Syl was a victim of racism throughout his life. I'm sure many times it was because he was black.

Whenever anyone these days wonders "Is it because I'm black?" there's often no true known answer to that question. All I can say is that it much really suck to go through life asking yourself that question, and inevitably sometimes being correct in your assumption, but also sometimes being completely mistaken and guilty of making your own distrustful generalization. For an example, try nearly every rap song about police ever.

The moment "is it because I'm black?" is said out loud, though, someone has made a terrible accusation. It's also an accusation of very little worth, because it can rarely be proven either way. And it brings race into a situation that may not have had anything to do with the subject. This is what upsets people about "the race card."

It's less about casually dismissing accusations of racism, and more about realizing that accusing someone of having a thought--one that can never be proven or known either way--isn't remotely helpful in any situation, and can sometimes actually be harmful.

Great song, though.

Ignoring the issue itself, it's really sad to see people on this forum and the Internet in general be so dismissive of other people's concerns. Watch Polygon's discussion on the issue. http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014/2014/6/11/5800522/female-characters-assassins-creed-video This isn't clickbait, they aren't frothing at the mouth about this, they're just genuinely upset that a full half of the human population (and if the statistics are correct, almost half of all video game players http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2012.pdf) isn't being properly represented--or represented at all, for that matter--in a medium they love. And it's not like they're straight white guys discussing the issue--though that wouldn't make it any less legitimate--but women who are legitimately excluded through these design decisions.

Saying someone isn't being genuine in their arguments or opinions is a really disrespectful way to approach a debate. Firstly, it's assuming they're believing something or taking a particular stance just to cause controversy, or become popular, for some other ulterior motive, and that devalues the fact that they have actual feelings or beliefs. Secondly, it's dismissive of the issue, allowing you to paint it as something raised only to generate headlines.

Be better than that, guys. Take people at their word, hear them out, try to empathize if not sympathize.

huh this thread has taught me that the "not all men!" Response to racial diversity is "There's so many different white cultures!"

That's a bullshit figure that is absolutely worthless when trying to calculate the ratio of male to female Assassin's Creed players. Not that it should be a determining factor--game developers shouldn't decide the gender of their protagonists based on the gender of their players--but people who argue your side of things keep using that statistic like it doesn't include a massive amount of female Candy Crush players in their mid-forties.

Fewer than 1 in 5 Mass Effect 2 AND 3 playthroughs use a female protagonist. That doesn't exactly scream almost 50 percent of console gamers being women, or that gamers are dying to see a 50/50 representation of female to male protagonists.

However, it does say that even in a heavily relationship-focused game that includes elements of romance, either considerably less than 20% of players were female, or female Mass Effect players don't care to be a female protagonist.

For what it's worth, I was primarily a female Shepard player, so I hardly want to keep female characters out of gaming, but Polygon and countless others go about their argument the wrong way, quoting worthless and misleading statistics, and pointing fingers when games don't include females and minorities.

Then when games do include diversity, they point their fingers again and use words like "unrepresentative" and "problematic" when a character isn't some flawless idealized version of THEIR OPINION of the "proper representation" of women or minorities.

Seriously, I see polygon as less of a solution, and much more of a problem.

With that said, I'm always happy to see more diversity in gaming, though. Variety and and more choice is almost always a good thing.

Are women underrepresented in gaming culture as a whole? Yes, but it's getting a hell of a lot better.

Is Ubisoft the problem? Good god no.

Did Ubisoft give a correct response? Good god no.

@spaceinsomniac: I'm not sure if using Mass Effect here is a good example. That game was always marketed with male Shepard as the main character and almost everyone will associate him with the franchise more than femshep.

Anyways, I will just say that it's fucking dumb when people dismiss articles about these subjects as automatic "click bait". If you do, that's just a way of dismissing a subject you do not want to discuss. There are click bait articles about subjects of race, gender etc., but not all articles about these subjects are click bait. The Polygon articles had pretty neutral headlines are of course not click bait.

I was going to make a joke asking why Broforce doesn't have any female main characters, but I looked it up and realized that they do have one.

There were only two main females in Watch Dogs and the hacker chick only needed to be saved once; she helped him more than he helped her. His sister and nephew being threatened were central to the game and she kinda helps rescue herself if you use the camera rather than going in shooting. By that logic, Peach being kidnapped all the time in Mario is very sexist lol.

That's hilarious. Not only no, but HELL no. Women are not even close to being half of all video game players. I don't know what the hell "research" they did to come up with that b.s., but that figure is complete horseshit. These days, more females are starting to play video games (and that's certainly a good thing), but the vast majority of gamers are young dudes. I don't know how this is even in question. There may be a bunch of moms buying video games because little Timmy HAS to have Call of Duty and isn't old enough to get it himself because it's rated M for Mature and he isn't, but it's little Timmy that's actually playing it.

Therefore, is it really that unreasonable to have characters that mostly reflect their gaming audience's demographics? What's more offensive, simply making a game and dealing with the fallout of whatever complaints that a bunch of ridiculous people can come up with, or making sure to include certain characters of a specific gender/race to appease the p.c. folks? People seem to want the latter, but forcing games to be the equivalent of an Old Navy commercial to check as many demographic boxes as possible is a billion times worse to me. Making token demographic characters is so freaking dehumanizing and horrible.

Frankly, I think Ubisoft has been among the most "progressive" in this regard, so I don't know why they're under fire. (I'm guessing its because they're a wildly successful studio and therefore make a nice target more than anything.) I seem to remember AC: Liberation having a female lead, AC4 repeatedly addressing the extremely touchy subject of slavery, and AC3 tackling a really dark period of near-genocide in American history (and managing it well, IMO), etc. etc. Even with this, you had people bitching about Connor not being a "likeable" enough protagonist because a bunch of folks don't like thinking about those atrocities. Then you had the Far Cry 4 "controversy" where people apparently forgot what a villain is. And Watch_Dogs? Another game where the big bad is a a white guy, in addition to Aiden generally being an asshole. Ubi apparently can't win no matter what.

This stuff is out of freaking control. @viciousbearmauling made a joke earlier about RB6: Siege being sexist for having a female hostage in their trailer, but people are actually complaining about that. At this point, you can't even exaggerate the extent of the lengths people will go to dream up a slight, because in reality, the crusaders are typically already there and beyond. I pity devs at this point. They shouldn't have to "answer" for any of this nonsensical, sensationalist crap, nor should the answers they give be subject to being picked apart further. However, there are a bunch of folks who DESPERATELY want to put themselves on a pedestal over these things, so this stuff is only getting worse.

The ultimate irony is that the folks who try to create these controversies and further try to put pressure on studios/devs in the hope someone makes a PR mistake to get some gas thrown on the fire are the ones who are freaking taking count of characters' gender, race, etc. in the first place. What kind of twisted fuck views the world like that in this day and age? People are more than their fucking demographic, and so are video game characters. Why can't a character just be viewed as a character? How do people honestly think that boiling them down to the depicted color of their skin or their gender is somehow a good thing? I'm so sick of this crap.

So we should expect game developers to pay for character modeling and voice work that their own internal statistics show will only be used by fewer than 1 in 5 people, but we shouldn't expect gamers to flip a gender selector because "that doesn't look like the person on the box." ?

I'm sorry, but as a female Shepard player, I find that to be an incredibly weak argument. The game gives you an option, only 18% of players took that option.

The idea that 47 percent of Mass Effect players are female, only 18 percent of them decided to use a female character, and the other 29 percent just couldn't bring themselves to play as anyone other than the guy on the cover seems like a ridiculous argument to make.

So basically, "I'm a woman who REALLY feels marginalized by the lack of female characters in video games, and I'd really like to play this game with a female character, and I would relate more to this game if I used a female character, and I would identify with the romance options more if I were a female character, but that person on the box is clearly a man so I guess that's who I'll pick."

Seriously?

When that's been the case game after game for nearly three decades? Yes! Yes that's very sexist! At the very least it's lazy as all hell.

3D World was a wonderful departure from this formula.

I wholeheartedly agree!

Addressing the specific numbers of female gamers, I looked over the Wikipedia article and here are some of the finer statistics:

25% of console players are women. 39% of PC players are women.

38% of Xbox users are female, 51% of whom have kids.

30% of women gamers play violent games.

These are not minor numbers, guys, and they're growing.

@corvak: And is why Super Mario Bros. 2 is the best NES Mario game. To me at least. ;)

There is so much wrong with this I'm not sure where to start.

1. God forbid people wear clothes they're comfortable in.

2. You're completely devaluing the work people like Tracey and Megan do.

3. You think that Tracey and Megan would have stepped in front of a camera to record their discussion, wearing their clothes because the editors thought some skin would get more views, especially given the discussion?!

The absolute lack of respect you have for them, their opinions and their choices is frankly insulting.

The constant barrage of all this stuff is having the same effect on me as the never ending advertisements for African aid agencies on TV. After so many years of looking at starving African children with distended stomachs and flies crawling all over them, I now just automatically switch the channel.

The never ending stream of people crying "sexism!" is just making the whole issue blur in my eyes, mostly because it all seems to be on the internet where people have trouble arguing the issue in any kind of educated fashion. My brain just does not want to hear it any more .

If you had read any of those Polygon articles, watched their video, or read the stuff Patrick has posted on the site or on his Tumblr, you would know it's not people crying "sexism!" It's a variety of people having nuanced discussions about the issues, their roots, and how to fix them.

It's easy to be dismissive when you're not directly impacted by the problem. I used to be. It can be an uncomfortable thing to come to terms with but it's a necessary step.

I love that Ubisofts Tom clancy demo had a woman sniper and a woman hostage. EVERYONE LOSES THEIR GOD DAMN MINDS! But Call of Duty just dude bro's it. NO WOMEN AT ALL. That's ok though its Call of Duty.

It's extremely baffling to me the hated white male that its better to not have ANY women in a game than a Hostage be a woman.

Hostages in Counter-Strike are men. Is that sexist because women aren't represented? But if they make them female then its sexist because its a male power fantasy. Make up your fucking minds.