Assassins creed unity- another diversity post

[Vault101]

It is kinda frustrating; especially since in games like Smash Bros., the Wii Fit Trainer and Villager can be played as either gender, the Miis can be female, and Hyrule Warriors has the playable females outnumbering the males 3 to 1.

I like the fact that Wii fit trainer seems to be "defualt" female (oposite of comander shepard)

hell I like the fact she's considered a charachter in the first place

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I'm just not at all interested in playing as a guy who prolly has little imagination in his character. At least a female version would stand out in the sea of D.

Yeah... because a female character that is just female is the type of forward focus the industry needs to make women more prevalent and interested in gaming.

It's a start.

Game Developers get acclimated to adding more women by adding more women.
Gamers get more acclimated to seeing more women.
We get more women, which opens the doors to more diverse representations.

It's pretty simple as that. Expecting them to not take baby steps and create fully fleshed out, ultra well women is probably demanding on the script writers, or some nonsense like that. They'll prolly complain that it's ever so hard writing a female character, or something.
That said, I'd rather edge towards better representation of women than wait for someone to do it right, coz that'd be a long wait, and/or not very common when it happens.

Then again, gender select games, like Unity was supposed to be, pretty much never put much stock into the differences of gender because the scripts generally mirror eachother, so expecting immense depth is asking a bit much.

Honestly, though? There's a whole lot better than a company defaulting to straight white male as their main character.

...Also eff' Farcry 4 for pulling pretty much the same crap.

 

[sXeth]

Um... who do I trust? The actual developers, or an ex-employee who last worked on what was easily the worst major title in the franchise?

The one that isn't trying to cover it's butt?

The ex-employee is talking about making female assassins appear in the game somewhere. Ubi's comment is in reference to allowing the protagonist to be gender-swapped, including all related scenes, dialogue, alternate costumes, etc. Its unclear whether they fumbled a question, didn't understand the question, or whichever journalist quoted it originally chopped it up to suit their agenda (though that Destructoid link does actually mention how the co-op works and that there aren't any "co-op characters", male or female.)

I'd be surprised if there was a total absence of female assassins. Black Flag had 3 named ones, one of whom was a major character, and about 60/40 on the unnamed background assassins.

 

[bug_of_war]

gordon freeman is interesting to me because he has glasses and is a physicist

...seriously this is what we have to work with here...

Yeah, but he came around like 15 years ago, in a time where games were fun and nostalgia and shit...but I can't get into HL.

I have no issue with a bland character, my issue I have though is people who fight for a female protagonist and that they don't care if they're bland/generic person 5, yet they will rain down on a game for having a bland/generic person 5 female side character. If you (not you specificly) want a diverse and good game industry, then I don't understand why you would ask for a bland character regardless of their gender.

 

[King Billi]

Unity won't have any form of competetive multiplayer according to the recent E3 interview, so that's probably why they didn't use multiplayer characters. The reason everyone is Arno I'm guessing is because the coop is storybased, so everyone would get the story cutscenes with their version of Arno being Arno, and everyone else being other characters that probably won't have names.

So then is this kinda like a drop in drop out situation like Dead Rising 2 had where other players can join in your game but you'll still just be playing through the single player campaign? It isn't like Dead Space 3 which had an alternate(slightly) campaign when playing coop?

If thats so then sounds reasonable to me.

 

[bug_of_war]

It's a start.

Game Developers get acclimated to adding more women by adding more women.
Gamers get more acclimated to seeing more women.
We get more women, which opens the doors to more diverse representations.

It's pretty simple as that. Expecting them to not take baby steps and create fully fleshed out, ultra well women is probably demanding on the script writers, or some nonsense like that. They'll prolly complain that it's ever so hard writing a female character, or something.
That said, I'd rather edge towards better representation of women than wait for someone to do it right, coz that'd be a long wait, and/or not very common when it happens.

Then again, gender select games, like Unity was supposed to be, pretty much never put much stock into the differences of gender because the scripts generally mirror eachother, so expecting immense depth is asking a bit much.

Honestly, though? There's a whole lot better than a company defaulting to straight white male as their main character.

...Also eff' Farcry 4 for pulling pretty much the same crap.

True, but you know what puts a fair amount of gamers off games? Bad characters. I can't count the amount of people on JUST THIS WEBSITE I've seen swear off games/series such as Assassin's Creed/Remember Me/Call of Duty/Battlefield/Dragon Age simply because they didn't like the characters. Another thing to go on about the multiplayer in AC: Unity is that no one actually views themselves as the other characters. Every player sees themselves as Arndo (Arno? Arndo? It's one of them I think) and the other models are just randomly given to other players. So that still doesn't break or adjust the issue of females as protagonists or as playable leads.

Yes, more women in games is a good step, but I don't get this anger at Ubisoft for this one. Straight white men were pretty normal back in the 1800s, yes there were black men as well, but that doesn't mean that because there are 4 people one or more HAVE to be coloured. Yes, women existed back in the 1800s, they even fought in the French Revolution, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any sexual prejudices found back then that may actually have 4 men preferring to work with each other than with a woman. The games context was well within it's right to do what it has done, and seeing as how this series has so far shown itself to have a wide array of mixed ethnicity and gender playable characters (both in the single player and multiplayer) this sound more like a bark up the wrong tree.

Far Cry 4 on the other hand...I can see room for argument there.

 

[Vault101]

Yeah, but he came around like 15 years ago, in a time where games were fun and nostalgia and shit...but I can't get into HL.

I have no issue with a bland character, my issue I have though is people who fight for a female protagonist and that they don't care if they're bland/generic person 5, yet they will rain down on a game for having a bland/generic person 5 female side character. If you (not you specificly) want a diverse and good game industry, then I don't understand why you would ask for a bland character regardless of their gender.

my point was that as far as games go you take what you get, Femshep herself is just kinda....[i/]there[/i] but we love her anyway for what we the player sees in her and what she represents

that isn't to say we wouldnt want GOOD female protagonists, we want that and good charachters in general....but at this point just having them in the first place needs to happen, and we arent even there, having a female option in customization should be default....its just a basic courtesy

now in this case the "reaons" are...well kinda there as I think people are getting say...customizing an avatar mixed up with having a "mass effect" situation (I could be wrong here) as I said I feel like Ubisofts excuses do more harm than not giving us the options in the first place....

 

[Something Amyss]

Unity won't have any form of competetive multiplayer according to the recent E3 interview, so that's probably why they didn't use multiplayer characters. The reason everyone is Arno I'm guessing is because the coop is storybased, so everyone would get the story cutscenes with their version of Arno being Arno, and everyone else being other characters that probably won't have names.

It's baffling that they could od all those MP characters for other games, but this time, a second character model is "too hard." Especially if there's no other multiplayer to divide resources.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

It's a start.

Game Developers get acclimated to adding more women by adding more women.
Gamers get more acclimated to seeing more women.
We get more women, which opens the doors to more diverse representations.

It's pretty simple as that. Expecting them to not take baby steps and create fully fleshed out, ultra well women is probably demanding on the script writers, or some nonsense like that. They'll prolly complain that it's ever so hard writing a female character, or something.
That said, I'd rather edge towards better representation of women than wait for someone to do it right, coz that'd be a long wait, and/or not very common when it happens.

Then again, gender select games, like Unity was supposed to be, pretty much never put much stock into the differences of gender because the scripts generally mirror eachother, so expecting immense depth is asking a bit much.

Honestly, though? There's a whole lot better than a company defaulting to straight white male as their main character.

...Also eff' Farcry 4 for pulling pretty much the same crap.

True, but you know what puts a fair amount of gamers off games? Bad characters. I can't count the amount of people on JUST THIS WEBSITE I've seen swear off games/series such as Assassin's Creed/Remember Me/Call of Duty/Battlefield/Dragon Age simply because they didn't like the characters. Another thing to go on about the multiplayer in AC: Unity is that no one actually views themselves as the other characters. Every player sees themselves as Arndo (Arno? Arndo? It's one of them I think) and the other models are just randomly given to other players. So that still doesn't break or adjust the issue of females as protagonists or as playable leads.

Yes, more women in games is a good step, but I don't get this anger at Ubisoft for this one. Straight white men were pretty normal back in the 1800s, yes there were black men as well, but that doesn't mean that because there are 4 people one or more HAVE to be coloured. Yes, women existed back in the 1800s, they even fought in the French Revolution, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any sexual prejudices found back then that may actually have 4 men preferring to work with each other than with a woman. The games context was well within it's right to do what it has done, and seeing as how this series has so far shown itself to have a wide array of mixed ethnicity and gender playable characters (both in the single player and multiplayer) this sound more like a bark up the wrong tree.

Far Cry 4 on the other hand...I can see room for argument there.

Bad characters happen to every gender in media. It's unavoidable. I fully expect women to get bad characters, too. Hopefully just not all bad characters.

I thought they all saw themselves as their Arno, hence all the character customization that Ubisoft was whining over adding for women among other things?
Heck, if you end up seeing pre-set characters as co-op characters, then, IMO, Ubisoft has even less excuse to exclude them as we can just pick a female preset as a preference, and just go.
Thing is, though, in single player you HAVE to be a guy. From my understanding, you could've been a woman, but nope! Ubisoft had to be lazy. Or just scared. They said they're dodging any lead that isn't straight, too. On an off note, that makes me feel a bit like a 3rd class citizen to them.
You wanna talk immersion? Being blank slate dude breaks my immersion. The game had better be something fantastic for me to take my mind off that. Assassin's Creed isn't that amazing, frankly. It doesn't help Ubisoft went from being a new favorite company of mine to near full repulsive in just a few months.

The fact that there were women doing fighting, and what not is the perfect excuse to allow gender select. Just because they were the minority shouldn't mean anything. If it did mean something, then women will NEVER see much representation because they're locked in a never ending game of catch up since they'll never likely be the majority of combatants.
This is why I really like Koei. They give a crap enough about representation to take some liberties with history while at least trying to remain somewhat true to the flow of historical events.

Considering Arno is going to be customizable, IIRC, odds are you CAN have a black Arno, or prolly any other ethnicity.

Just because Ubisoft had some variety in the past, it doesn't excuse the present. They don't get a free pass to say "Awww, close but no cigar! No gender select for you, after all!"
Seriously, being progressive, to me, is like drinking from a straw. When you stop, when you quit trying, the drink in the straw doesn't just stay where it is, it goes back down. Ubisoft's dropping the ball, here.

 

[bug_of_war]

my point was that as far as games go you take what you get, Femshep herself is just kinda....[i/]there[/i] but we love her anyway for what we the player sees in her and what she represents

that isn't to say we wouldnt want GOOD female protagonists, we want that and good charachters in general....but at this point just having them in the first place needs to happen, and we arent even there, having a female option in customization should be default....its just a basic courtesy

now in this case the "reaons" are...well kinda there as I think people are getting say...customizing an avatar mixed up with having a "mass effect" situation (I could be wrong here) as I said I feel like Ubisofts excuses do more harm than not giving us the options in the first place....

I understand your point, but I just don't feel as though Ubisoft deserves this much flack. The developers are on a tight schedule, this is a yearly franchise (for better or for worse) and cuts have to be made. If history serves as any indication the AC games get about 3 years development time, meaning that it is possible that the co-op option may not have even been in mind for the first third or half of the development. The game was (again, this is an assumption) in development since 2011, around about the time Revelations had been released. With this in mind, multiplayer in an AC game was still fairly new and was not yet a staple part of the series, its was still somewhat seen as an experiment adding onto what Brotherhood had brought. AC3 seems to be when they became more sure of multiplayer being a thing in Assassin's Creed and from memory this was when some people started arching up and asking for co-op. I wont go on from here (I will if you ask but for time's sake I'll stop and allow assumptions to run), but it seems pretty clear that their first statement of, "We didn't have time" was pretty accurate. I doubt that they have time to re model, re animate and re write dialogue (if there is any for the MP characters) in the last stretch before the game comes out.

Is this a sign of poor time management? Yeah. Is it something we should be persisting with (in terms of gender diversity)? Yeah. However I don't think the community has to be so aggressive about it. They gave an answer and whilst some may not be happy with it I doubt it deserves the frankly hostile and immature response some people are giving them.

 

[Bix96]

Um... who do I trust? The actual developers, or an ex-employee who last worked on what was easily the worst major title in the franchise?

The one that isn't trying to cover it's butt?

The ex-employee is talking about making female assassins appear in the game somewhere. Ubi's comment is in reference to allowing the protagonist to be gender-swapped, including all related scenes, dialogue, alternate costumes, etc. Its unclear whether they fumbled a question, didn't understand the question, or whichever journalist quoted it originally chopped it up to suit their agenda (though that Destructoid link does actually mention how the co-op works and that there aren't any "co-op characters", male or female.)

I'd be surprised if there was a total absence of female assassins. Black Flag had 3 named ones, one of whom was a major character, and about 60/40 on the unnamed background assassins.

He also said "There's a danger in creating characters that are too homogenous...It's definitely a compromise in quality. But I think it's more important that you can actually play as who you want to play as." meaning that his "just swap some animations it should only take a day or two" would directly hurt the quality of the game. Is that really what everyone wants? to shoehorn a woman into the game just to check a diversity box? That is how the token black guy trope was brought into existence.

Besides I don't think this guy has any right to chime in on what it takes to create female characters when he has only worked on a couple a games with female protagonists AT ALL let alone games that allow you to choose your gender.

 

[Something Amyss]

now in this case the "reaons" are...well kinda there as I think people are getting say...customizing an avatar mixed up with having a "mass effect" situation (I could be wrong here) as I said I feel like Ubisofts excuses do more harm than not giving us the options in the first place....

I probably wouldn't have even noticed if they hadn't made excuses and if the anti-diversity crowd hadn't been so thin skinned.

Then again, after IV, I think AC would have stayed below my radar for a while.

 

[Vault101]

He also said "There's a danger in creating characters that are too homogenous...It's definitely a compromise in quality. But I think it's more important that you can actually play as who you want to play as." meaning that his "just swap some animations it should only take a day or two" would directly hurt the quality of the game. Is that really what everyone wants? to shoehorn a woman into the game just to check a diversity box? That is how the token black guy trope was brought into existence.
.

they didn't bother with animations/anything with Femshep and people didn't mind...I mean sure you can kinda tell at times but really I think people at least apreciate the thourght

 

[King Billi]

Just because Ubisoft had some variety in the past, it doesn't excuse the present. They don't get a free pass to say "Awww, close but no cigar! No gender select for you, after all!"
Seriously, being progressive, to me, is like drinking from a straw. When you stop, when you quit trying, the drink in the straw doesn't just stay where it is, it goes back down. Ubisoft's dropping the ball, here.

Just because Ubisoft had some variety in the past also does not mean that they are obligated to provide it to you now.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Here's what I don't understand: why aren't people saying that a game session with up to four Arnos would look silly, but they are saying that having a woman as a co-op character choice would be immersion-breaking since Arno is the game's protagonist? Where are the other Arnos coming from anyway? Were more modern people placed into the Animus, and if so, why do those people also have to be Arno and not one of Arno's assassin peers? How could Arno have been doing multiple things at the same time, and how did all those extra versions of himself get into his memory?

OH! Did Arno have multiple personality disorder?

I'm sure we'll learn more about this in time, but it doesn't make any sense at the moment and it doesn't do anything to quell the shitstorm that Ubisoft kicked up this week.

 

[Eve Charm]

So at what point should people start defending males in games when it's a Shitstorm if an male cast is announced? hell it's not even a cast it's one character. You have that assassin game If all you care about is a female character.

 

[dumbseizure]

Here's what I don't understand: why aren't people saying that a game session with up to four Arnos would look silly, but they are saying that having a woman as a co-op character choice would be immersion-breaking since Arno is the game's protagonist? Where are the other Arnos coming from anyway? Were more modern people placed into the Animus, and if so, why do those people also have to be Arno and not one of Arno's assassin peers? How could Arno have been doing multiple things at the same time, and how did all those extra versions of himself get into his memory?

OH! Did Arno have multiple personality disorder?

I'm sure we'll learn more about this in time, but it doesn't make any sense at the moment and it doesn't do anything to quell the shitstorm that Ubisoft kicked up this week.

I'm gunna be honest.

Ubisoft didn't kick up the shit storm, thin skinned people did because Ubisoft didn't give them EXACTLY what they wanted.
Somehow, because the Co-op shows your customised version of Arno, they are excluding women.

They had a specific character in mind for the game, and you can customise how that character looks and what weapons he uses,so they decided "how about we let people show off their customised Arno in the co-op?".

But because this customisation doesn't include setting the Gender of the character they based the story around, or assigning them random female skin #2121 in the co-op, people are complaining?

I'm sorry, but its just completely ludicrous.

 

[Something Amyss]

they didn't bother with animations/anything with Femshep and people didn't mind...I mean sure you can kinda tell at times but really I think people at least apreciate the thourght

Not quite the same because they're silent characters, but if you make a woman in GTAO, she still has more or less the same animations, too. She sways her ass a little more, but she mostly walks, stands and even receives sexual "services" like a dude. And women are about the same height, so hitboxes aren't so much an issue.

Now, if they'd only fix the freaking hair....

Just because Ubisoft had some variety in the past also does not mean that they are obligated to provide it to you now.

I don't think anyone's actually said they are obligated to do anything.

Doesn't mean people can't criticise a commercial product for not doing something. And that's what people, far as I see, are doing. They dislike it. They are disappointed. They are annoyed. And just as Ubisoft has no obligation to make a female character, consumers have no obligation to be okay with or quiet about that choice.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I'm gunna be honest.

Ubisoft didn't kick up the shit storm, thin skinned people did because Ubisoft didn't give them EXACTLY what they wanted.
Somehow, because the Co-op shows your customised version of Arno, they are excluding women.

They had a specific character in mind for the game, and you can customise how that character looks and what weapons he uses,so they decided "how about we let people show off their customised Arno in the co-op?".

But because this customisation doesn't include setting the Gender of the character they based the story around, or assigning them random female skin #2121 in the co-op, people are complaining?

I'm sorry, but its just completely ludicrous.

Wow... can't there be a single topic discussing equal representation in which those of us who want to see more games with our sex/gender aren't put down, or accused of being the root of the entire problem?

Thanks for using my lighthearted post to trash people like me. Much appreciated.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm sorry, but its just completely ludicrous.

What would be the appropriate level of response, in your mind?

Because as far as I can tell, this is restrained for the gaming community. I mean, a community that offers death threats for minor balance tweaks, that invades privacy over an ending they don't like, rape threats for a boring look into video games and gender, or more death threats for making characters you don't like.

So tell me why wanting, even demanding diversity, is so crazy when the community standards aren't exactly high.

Histrionically calling for the blood of a developer gets less opposition than wanting female character options.