Brink : No Girls Allowed

[cystemic]

the best character customization was in saints row 2, hands down. everything else doesn't even come close and how many other games have i had to play as a dude? nearly all of them. im gonna let this slide

 

[CapnDork1337]

Okay, I got a few things to say. To the guy who asked if Halo had women then said Not Reach every time it was brought up, I have to say good on you for sticking to your guns and saying you meant other than reach, but since reach and 3 were the only ones with customization in their multiplayer they are the only ones you can compare it to. No the other halos didn't have female spartans in multiplayer, they also didnt have any customization options beyond color in ffa.
To BigKush, cause I have made extra sure I remember your name(sorry halo guy)
It's your kind of backwards logic and sexism that society grabs a hold of and says "look they're all ignortant, spoiled, inmature boys". Thanks for trying to put us back twenty years. When you can start treating the other half of this world's population fairly maybe they wont be "complaining" as you put it. Well you didn't put it quite like that but I would prefer not to be as rude as you.
And on this whole Brink issue (is it sad that the OP is my third point?)
I understand where the devs are coming from, but at the same time if they had tried it could have been done. Their reasons ring of half truths. When saving money and doing less work are the key reasons behind not adding females, it makes me worry in general. What might be cut from the next game I'm looking forward to cause it would save them money and wasn't "nessecary". I'm sorry but you can't build something up on customization when you cant customize your gender. That's kinda silly. And I'm sure it was the first question that was asked by people when the developers started touting this game for its customization.

Dev: We've got loads of customization, we got so much its coming out our asses. Any questions?
First person to raise hand: so we can play as a woman then?
Dev: uhhh, no.
second person to ask a question: well then how is it customized if I always gotta be a dude?
Dev: look at all the pretty clothes we have!!!!!

I mean hell, Halo could do it. And I know most of the escapists' stance on Halo. So if a mediocre, average, run of the mill, same as halo one knock off can do it, why the hell can't a new franchize that's selling itself on customization.

(also let it be known I fucking love halo, I was just using some of the words I have seen escapists use to describe it in their oh so lovely halo flame threads )

 

[Snotnarok]

Except that's wrong. Men move differently from women, so not only do you need to hire a female for motion capture, you need others for voices, and all the women would need their own models, mo-cap,voices and customizable gear.

Unless you're Bioware, apparently, because the male and female versions of Shepard have basically the same animations (with occasional hilarious results), and most of the same gear. And honestly, unless Brink is dumping a lot of its budget on voicework (which, for all I know, it might be), adding a couple models to a game where literally everything you look at needs modeling seems like kind of a flimsy excuse to me.

Have you ever made anything in 3D? At all? I know a guy that does it professionally, and he'd tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to do so. There probably was plans to do so but it was probably cut because of the extra work required. People are very hard to model and animate, and basically doubling the effort required just wasn't enough to justify something that wouldn't really add anything to the game.

Don't just toss around the term "Just adding a couple of models" because that's more work than you know.

Yeah, of course it's work - but so's every other model in the game. If you're a dev and customization's a big part of your game, including customization would probably be a worthwhile use of your time.

Yes, and they added a lot and it's far easier to just have men, than to have men and women. Trust me, women were probably on the board for things to be done, there probably was even some models made, but they probably got cut. Same thing happened with crackdown, they actually had women modeled but because of some problems and the added cost, they were removed.

It costs too much to add them in so they're doing something else.

I think it's a question of priorities. Let's put it this way: you don't see that many games that were going to have a male and female PC model, but only had enough money to animate the female model.

The publishers don't care, manly men running around shooting things sells, a lot of people from what I gather don't want to play as a 'weak girl' and want to play as a serious dood shooting shit up. A lot of people put down Heavenly Sword for having a woman as the hero, despite her kicking a lot of ass. ...Armies of asses were kicked.

I'm not arguing, I really think it would have been great to have both genders playable, I'm just telling you what probably happened. Even Fable had women in the works I think before they dropped them and decided to put them in 2. It's extra work that...well really adds nothing to the game technically. Would have been really good though

 

[LuckyClover95]

I can't imagine it would take so much TIME and HARD WORK to add a female character. Yeah, more guys than girls game but so? More girls than guys.... I dunno, wear make up but that doesn't mean it's not available to you.
I can't believe games would be this far behind
Also, I think women game a lot more than you think, they apparently make up for roughly a third of all gamers, maybe we just don't notice because for whatever reason there are less girls like myself who go on gaming websites and forums to discuss stuff? I'm not sure though.

 

[nicholaxxx]

Well I could argue the same for non-male games. Mirrors Edge, Portal, Tomb Raider, Metroid Prime, Beyond Good & Evil, Diablo 1&2 (I wanted to have a male Sorceror or a female Necromancer, Buuuut NOOOOOOO says Blizzard), Eternal Darkness, Heavenly Sword, ect.

But in this case...yes...Brink is just being lazy

on a side note, Diablo 3 is letting you pick your class AND your gender.

OT: yeah that's pretty lame, too bad I wasn't planning on getting it anyway.

 

[CapnDork1337]

I can't imagine it would take so much TIME and HARD WORK to add a female character. Yeah, more guys than girls game but so? More girls than guys.... I dunno, wear make up but that doesn't mean it's not available to you.
I can't believe games would be this far behind
Also, I think women game a lot more than you think, they apparently make up for roughly a third of all gamers, maybe we just don't notice because for whatever reason there are less girls like myself who go on gaming websites and forums to discuss stuff? I'm not sure though.

I like to think that you don't notice all the woman playing cause they're always the players that don't have mics. I mean it makes sense, that way they don't have to deal with the bullshit that is male gamers

 

[Reaper195]

I like playing as a female character in games that allows me the option since I'm fucking since of playing as dudes. There is only so many times I want to save the universe as some bad ass guy with muscles. It's almost like the appearance of these characters is actually aimed at women....

 

[rsvp42]

Compared to the price of programming the actual game, designing a slightly different model for the character is pretty minuscule.

To do it right, they couldn't just blendshape the male bodies into females. It would require nearly twice as much design, modeling, texturing, rigging, and production time, not only for the characters themselves, but for the different gear and outfits, not to mention changing the animation to fit the female models. It really would constitute a significant development cost and for something that doesn't improve actual gameplay, it was probably deemed too unnecessarily expensive. who knows, maybe they'll add the ladies for Brink 2 if this does well.

Femshep uses basically the same animation set as maleshep, for instance. This stuff isn't as expensive to do as you seem to think it is.

Except that I'm well aware of the pipeline involved in creating and animating characters because I have a BFA in computer animation. If you look at the characters in Brink, you'll notice their designs are a lot more pushed than Shepard's are.They could just throw boobs on the existing models and call it a day, but that would be lazy and based on what I've seen of the game, they're not doing things in half measures. Doing it right would require significant modification to the base meshes and all possible variants with some more feminine variants added, a completely new set of facial features (and textures) comparable to the existing male options, extra voice work and facial animation for the story parts of the game, making sure that all the outfits are converted to the female models as well as designing new outfits that fit the females better. There's plenty of quality control involved in all that as well. Regardless, some Production Manager still has to find time and money for everything.

I'm not saying they couldn't or shouldn't do it, but I am saying that it's not just an afternoon's work to get it all up to the same standard. Artists aren't cheap and when someone suggested adding females (as I'm sure they did at some point in production) it was determined that the time and cost of adding anywhere from 75-100% more work to the whole character creation process wasn't worth it.

Ideally it would be there, but it works without it. As I mentioned, it's the sort of thing that would be easier to implement in a sequel if/when the franchise has proven itself. Breaking the bank on a new IP is not the smartest move.

 

[Snotnarok]

The publishers don't care, manly men running around shooting things sells, a lot of people from what I gather don't want to play as a 'weak girl' and want to play as a serious dood shooting shit up. A lot of people put down Heavenly Sword for having a woman as the hero, despite her kicking a lot of ass. ...Armies of asses were kicked.

I'm not arguing, I really think it would have been great to have both genders playable, I'm just telling you what probably happened. Even Fable had women in the works I think before they dropped them and decided to put them in 2. It's extra work that...well really adds nothing to the game technically. Would have been really good though

That's the sad truth haha - remember the sh*tstorm when that one woman from Gears of War was slated to get more screen time?

"Wh- A girl in MY SHOOTER!? Is Cliffy B gay!? You can't have GURLZ in MAH SHOOTERS! FFFUUUUUU"

Yeah I think that up there sums up the general reaction that I heard. Hell 2 of my friends were spitting blood when they saw a girl in the CoG uniform (a car cut up to be worn by a person).

 

[Magnesium360]

This thread has been done before and I'll agree with what was said before.

I'd prefer to see one full assed customization as compared to two half assed ones.

But what if the quality had remained consistant? Two full asses are better than one.

 

[Ladette]

I can kind of understand why people would be angry with this issue in general, but I don't understand why they chose Brink as the focus of all that anger. It's roughly the billionth shooter to not allow you to play as a female. Are people just really slow in regards to taking a stand, or what?

The reason people are annoyed is because Brink is selling itself on customization a lot more than any prior shooter. Every time one of the devs opens their mouths they make sure to talk about customization.

Nobody cares about the lack of females in Call of Duty Black Ops for example because there is no customization what so ever.

It's just crappy that they're selling their game on customizability, yet you can only play as a male.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Don't mean to be sexist, but it's hard to run around in a parkour-FPS hybrid when you've got this bouncing around (for both parties now that I think about it).

Never heard of Mirror's Edge have you?

In all fairness, her figure wasn't the equivalent of two cantaloupes ducktaped to a playboy model cardboard cut-out. Even if it was, you'd still have to use a copious amount of body tape to keep those puppies down.

 

[Vykrel]

Any game that offers even the most basic of character customization options, but does not include the option to select your gender, is immediately ignored by me. That's why I have not and will not play the Gothic series.

sorry, but that seems like kind of a bad reason to completely skip out on what might be a great game.

also, the game is largely class-based. one of the classes is a large tank-like character. i can only imagine how many 12-year-old boys would be running around as big, burly amazon women just because they think its funny. and theyll through in that triple-mohawk haircut just for added lulz

its probably better this way

 

[Eri]

I don't see why this matters. If all I could choose was female characters, I wouldn't care. If all male characters, still don't care. If you absolutely CANNOT play a certain gender, you have problems imo.

 

[NightlyNews]

No offense, but I thought this game was supposed to be rebels versus an army.

There are women in both rebellions and armies, but they are without a doubt a minority. If your in the halo universe or something where there are many female Spartans then being all male would be out of place.

But given that it's:
A. the army so primarily male
B. a fps and people don't like shooting women

I have no real problem with it being male customization only.

 

[CapnDork1337]

I can kind of understand why people would be angry with this issue in general, but I don't understand why they chose Brink as the focus of all that anger. It's roughly the billionth shooter to not allow you to play as a female. Are people just really slow in regards to taking a stand, or what?

No and I'm gonna do something here that might earn me a lot of flame, but I'm going to bring up yahtzee. Please, bear with me.

He was talking about how we can be given freedom and choice and you can talk it up all you want but it will always be in some constraint. (it was one of the fable reviews)

And this is why, to me at least (and I know lots of other peopl) the fable games were a let down, because the more you went on about freedom the easier the walls were to see.

So apply this idea to brink and it's customization, the more you give us, the more glaringly obvious it will become that we're missing something. So to promise all this customization then drop the ball in a big way like this, it just makes people upsept.

 

[Keith Reedy]

Does Halo have female charecters in ITS multiplayer? What about Section 8? I don't know why Brink is the upset. Of course, it is a little more jaring since there isn't power armor for everyone. Despite Spartans in Multiplayer looking male, it doesn't take much to imigine one as a girl.

Brink is the upset because, aside from forcing your character to be male, it has a very robust character customization aspect. The fact that it put so much focus into character customization, yet forced your character to be a guy, makes the issue (which is still present in other shooters mind you) more obvious.

Imagine if Bioware came out with a new RPG with their standard level of customization, but decided that your character had to be a girl, how do you think people would react? It's the same issue here.

That doesn't bother me at all a game is about an experience not just what gender u are if it fits the story thats fine. As for brink I'll get it hopefully like it and since its an fps I can't say I care a whole lot about how I look since I won't see it most of the time. Now how my guns look I care about cause I gotta look at the thing all game long. This is why I hated the PTRS in world at war looked really weird.