Assassin's Creed: Unity isn't sexist, just lazy.

[Matthew Jabour]

So, Ubisoft's new AC game features four-player co-op, yet only one player character. No matter what player you are, if you play this game, you're Arno. Presumably, this is so all the cutscenes and story moments can focus on him alone. Now, this drew some flack recently, since if all four characters are the same, there's probably not going to be a woman in there. But I feel this complaint is misguided. Ubisoft isn't sexist for going in this direction.

But they are LAZY.

When you decide to make a four-player co-op mode, that comes with certain obligations. Among the most obvious is to make four characters, each with distinct personalities and storylines. Ubisoft, however, is choosing to ignore that obligation. Everyone's the main character! You all experience the same story beats, just ignore those other three guys that keep following you around, they're probably not important. How lazy is that?

The question arises, then, of why Ubisoft even bothered to make a co-op game, as they are obviously not prepared to write a story for it. The answer is simple: Four player co-op games sell! Yes, Ubisoft is reaching out to a market it's never even considered before, even while making it clear how woefully unprepared it is to do so. Does anyone else hear a train wreck coming?

Now, I'm sure some people can defend them. They're trying something different, we should give it a shot. But do you have any idea how important it is to have a four player coop game have four characters? Consider all the dialogue between characters in Left 4 Dead that made them feel real, alive. All that's gone. Would Bill's sacrifice mean nearly as much if you always played as Francis? This is just the wrong way to go about things. You don't need to put in a woman in your game, but you do need to put in some effort.

 

[Asita]

"But do you have any idea how important it is to have a four player coop game have four characters?"

Spoiler: Obligatory response

Or to be less derisive: It isn't important for a co-op game to have four distinct characters. Four Swords, Portal 2, Castle Crashers, Killing Floor, Terraria, Mass Effect 3 the Borderlands franchise[footnote]Granted, this last one does flesh out its playable characters somewhat, though in the games they're actually played in this is only in the form of recordings you can find and the difference in character interaction is nonexistent[/footnote]? These are all games that pulled made a good show of cooperative multiplayer and none of them required interaction between the player characters. Make no mistake, cooperative multiplayer with strong character interaction between PCs can be certainly be done well, but that's the exception, not the rule.

 

[Shadowstar38]

You'll notice that Left for Dead is built to be a co-op game from the get go while the co-op in Unity is an optional add-on to the main single player campaign. That's sort of going to lead to a difference in overall design.

I'd say they went the best route they could with how they wanted it to work.

(Also, couldn't this have just been an aside in the other AC thread OP has going on?)

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Yes. They are lazy. Copy paste Co-Op is about as lazy as you can get with Co-Op. That is valid way you can look at the issue. Though, you can also look at the game and ask, well why not 4 women? I have seen a few nice arguments that they should have had a female character from the start. (I think, the issue of "why no women?" comes up more in games with multiple characters because it's so much more noticeable.) Yes you are right though. It's a lazy way to implement Co-Op

 

[Lilani]

I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. Yes it was a product of laziness, but a side-effect of that product is something which comes across as sexist. They were lazy for copy/pasting their people for co-op and lazy for not even bothering to explore the possibility of a playable female from that time period. But the result is a conspicuous sausage fest which has an embarassing lack of non-white non-males.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Seem to be in the minority in thinking that a game with a strong sense of identity in it's single-player campaign and a new co-op option that is supposed to be integrated seamlessly into that same "experience" sounds pretty great.

I'll reserve judgement on just how "lazy" they've been until the game is published and I've played the damn thing. From what I've seen I wouldn't claim they've been "lazy". Infact, from what I've seen, I'd say they've made something that could be great, something which I would be proud to have been involved in producing.

We'll see. I don't buy that these people are lazy though, I just don't. They're accomplished and they put in a lot of hours. I'm lazy, that I can say authoritatively.

 

[Harpalyce]

As a great philosopher of our time once said in a taco commercial... Why not both?

One can absolutely be sexist whilst being lazy if women characters are just too hard for you to put the effort in. Especially when it makes things obvious how not-so-great that challenge would be when one's entire industry turns around to point and laugh at one's stupid excuses for making things suddenly no girls allowed.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Call it what you will, they planned to have women, and they cut the women. Out of everything, they cut the women. They didn't want to give them any sort of priority over anything else. You can understand how people feel that women got the short end of the stick here, and thus fit it in to their definition of sexism.

To, maybe, coin a phrase, women got Brink'd. Cut from the playable roster so the guys could have more customization, coz we all know customizing Arno, r however you spell his name, wouldn't get cut, or even trimmed.

Why didn't they just have a women instead of men as playable characters as opposed to defaulting to the typical dudebro image?

"Lazy" doesn't make things any better. Honestly, excuses don't make things better, either, IMO.

 

[bug_of_war]

Yes...a game studio large enough to have multiple outlets working on one game for 3 years on next gen hardware, implementing new locomotive and fighting gameplay/animations whilst also researching the time period, writing the storyline, adding co-op, making two demos for E3 are so lazy.

Christ sake, the co-op is just supposed to be a feature of the game, for them to then say, "we're gonna hold back the game for a few more months so we can add something to a section of the game some people may not even play" is stupid. So many people cry at devs for delaying a game or sacrificing polish to the single player so as that multiplayer can be added, so I don't get why this issue just blew up. Yeah, women are not represented much in the game industry, but AC:U has a legitimate reason for choosing to make all the co-op characters as male.

 

[Erttheking]

Sometimes lazy and sexist can be two sides of the same coin. It can be a result of sexist views being so taken for granted that they just slip out when someone isn't trying. It's like how someone described a Max Payne 3 character to me. "You escort a pregnant woman through a heavily guarded area and then she drives your get away car. Through the entire chase, she drives poorly and keeps hitting things. The thing that bothers me the most is that the writers probably didn't even think about what they were doing with that."

 

[Lilani]

Topic discussed in great detail elsewhere buuuut here we go.
The simple reason there's no female characters in Unity's co-op is because you're playing the same guy from singleplayer. It's designed to be semi-seamless. Asking why the co-op characters aren't female is like asking why they didn't make the protag a female which is inherently a dumb question as they can make their protagonists however the hell Ubi wants.

Yes, you're playing the same guy, but there's no reason why the avatar of one of your cohorts couldn't be female. Or black. Or Asian. Or just not a carbon copy of the main protagonist.

 

[AJ_Lethal]

I wouldn't call it "lazy", I would call it "sloppy planning"

Their co-op model is a clusterfuck; even Zelda Four Swords bothered to make sense.

 

[IceStar100]

........

I have to admit I don't get the anger. Had they said we don't want to. Then they get flack. They chose an answer that they hoped would raise the least amount of anger. To be honest its one dude with a diffrent coat of paint. Does not seem lke they gave everyone there own personality and such. It's a copy paste for time. Right ow all I can think is this.

 

[Matthew Jabour]

"But do you have any idea how important it is to have a four player coop game have four characters?"

Spoiler: Obligatory response

Or to be less derisive: It isn't important for a co-op game to have four distinct characters. Four Swords, Portal 2, Castle Crashers, Killing Floor, Terraria, Mass Effect 3 the Borderlands franchise[footnote]Granted, this last one does flesh out its playable characters somewhat, though in the games they're actually played in this is only in the form of recordings you can find and the difference in character interaction is nonexistent[/footnote]? These are all games that pulled made a good show of cooperative multiplayer and none of them required interaction between the player characters. Make no mistake, cooperative multiplayer with strong character interaction between PCs can be certainly be done well, but that's the exception, not the rule.

Four Swords is in Zelda, a series with basically no characterization in its main character in any installment. Assassin's Creed is not. Portal 2 only has two playable characters, and even they display some level of interpersonal interaction. Castle Crashers is deliberately retro and thus never really even attempts to have any characterization. Terraria is a sandbox first and has literally no story, and is not built around co-op at all. The latter also holds true for Mass Effect 3, and the Borderlands franchise has not four, but eight characters - rather one dimensional, I'll give you that, but at least it's better than ONE. And even if there's no character interactions, there are still multiple characters that developers put hard work into designing, something that Ubisoft seems to have deliberately tried to ignore.

 

[Matthew Jabour]

Yes...a game studio large enough to have multiple outlets working on one game for 3 years on next gen hardware, implementing new locomotive and fighting gameplay/animations whilst also researching the time period, writing the storyline, adding co-op, making two demos for E3 are so lazy.

Christ sake, the co-op is just supposed to be a feature of the game, for them to then say, "we're gonna hold back the game for a few more months so we can add something to a section of the game some people may not even play" is stupid. So many people cry at devs for delaying a game or sacrificing polish to the single player so as that multiplayer can be added, so I don't get why this issue just blew up. Yeah, women are not represented much in the game industry, but AC:U has a legitimate reason for choosing to make all the co-op characters as male.

You seem to be in the wrong thread. Look at my other thread, which gets into gender politics, because I have no intention of doing so in this one.

 

[Matthew Jabour]

Topic discussed in great detail elsewhere buuuut here we go.
The simple reason there's no female characters in Unity's co-op is because you're playing the same guy from singleplayer. It's designed to be semi-seamless. Asking why the co-op characters aren't female is like asking why they didn't make the protag a female which is inherently a dumb question as they can make their protagonists however the hell Ubi wants.

THAT IS NOT THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD.

I want debates, not copy-pasted 'I'm so sick of everyone making the same argument' responses, especially in cases where they do not apply. If you have something worthwhile to add to this discussion, by all means, do so.

 

[Lilani]

Topic discussed in great detail elsewhere buuuut here we go.
The simple reason there's no female characters in Unity's co-op is because you're playing the same guy from singleplayer. It's designed to be semi-seamless. Asking why the co-op characters aren't female is like asking why they didn't make the protag a female which is inherently a dumb question as they can make their protagonists however the hell Ubi wants.

Yes, you're playing the same guy, but there's no reason why the avatar of one of your cohorts couldn't be female. Or black. Or Asian. Or just not a carbon copy of the main protagonist.

The co-op partners are ALSO playing the same guy. The reason they look like carbon copies of the protag is because they ARE to protag.

You don't understand. From the perspective of every player, they are playing the same guy, yes. However, the cohorts are supposed to be other random people from the brotherhood. For every individual. It isn't like L4D where what everybody sees is consistent.

Or to put it another way, the 4 co-op player characters are A, B, C, and D. A is the main protagonist from the game, B, C, and D are other random guys from the brotherhood. The revs have stated that is supposed to be the setup. When I'm playing, from my perspective I will be A and the other three people playing will appear to be B, C, and D. If you are playing the same game, from your perspective you will be A and myself and the other two players will be B, C, and D.

Again, there is no reason for B, C, and D to appear to be the same person because they aren't intended to be.