Brink : No Girls Allowed

[Moonlight Butterfly]

These are the issues I would like answered. Would you be so kind as to answer them? Please.

- If you don't believe that Splash Damage is sexist then what is your issue with them leaving female avatars out?

-Do you believe there reason for doing it is phony? If so then why?

-Why can't you accept the reason of time and money constraints.

Well, I don't presume to speak for anyone else, but my answers to those questions are:

A. The decision may or may not have been made for sexist reasons. I was not in the room when it was made. But the results of the decision are to perpetuate an under-representation of women in fiction in general and video games in particular (see also: Bechdel test), which is at the very least a disappointment.

B. & C. The devs knew they had time and money constraints from the beginning. What they did within those constraints is a question of priorities. They chose to allocate resources away from having female characters and towards clothing choices. They could even have opted to portray a world entirely populated by female characters (think Y: The Last Man) which would have been a more interesting and original decision.

Thankyou for that very clear and consice answer. Earlier I though whether they could have made a female only game and whether that would have made it worse for them, people complaining about objectifiction etc. Splash Damage is a small company and perhaps thier reach overexceeded thier grasp as I said earlier, personally I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt on that.

I apologise for the slow answers btw escapist is being slow for me.

Here is an idea; what if the characters were androgynous like Magicka or Spore would that have been a more acceptable premise?

 

[Mr.SunShine]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa...
Slow down. What you said is basically "They didn't cut out gender for customization, they cut out gender for more customization"

I dont- what? I can't say that what you just said makes any sense, you just proved my point for me...

 

[Slycne]

Here's my problem with this. Lots of people are citing female body structure or narrative gender choices, when that isn't the issue here at all. The devs flat out stated that the only reason they didn't include females was to provide more options for the male avatars.

So essentially what they've said is that a couple extra t-shirt models are more important than an whole gender, and that's where I start to get a little worried by the whole thing.

Imagine, if you would, this logic was applied to other scenarios. "Sorry, the rogue class only has half the number of abilities because we found more people played fighters and we wanted to give them more options." People would be rightly a little confused or upset at that, and that's how I think people should be viewing this situation.

Cosmetics =/= functionality, so your it's quite a stretch to go from "we don't have female avatars" to "the abilities of your chosen profession are subpar."

I'm not talking about it being subpar or unbalanced though, and that's putting aside that there already are some games that broach these class disparities.

I further embellished the hypothetical to another poster. Imagine the situation that say at level 10 a fighter could specialize into a berserker, paladin or a weapon master. All the specializations unlock a certain number of new skills. However, the designers find that less of their players want to play rogues, so they instead only offer a single specialization - bard. The bard could still be perfectly balanced to those 3 other specializations, but ultimately the rogue end up with less depth because it was decided to a more popular class.

The analogy, if you could really call it that, was meant to be a little facetious to promote some people to look at the scenario in a way that might have a greater impact for them, but in this often game design by metrics industry that we current are in, I don't see that as being that outlandish of a scenario.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I further embellished the hypothetical to another poster. Imagine the situation that say at level 10 a fighter could specialize into a berserker, paladin or a weapon master. All the specializations unlock a certain number of new skills. However, the designers find that less of their players want to play rogues, so they instead only offer a single specialization - bard. The bard could still be perfectly balanced to those 3 other specializations, but ultimately the rogue end up with less depth because it was decided to a more popular class.

Hmm I have trouble with that anology becuase to me being a male or female in a game is cosmetic at best and although as a girl I prefer to play as a girl I don't really see it in the same light as if blizzard cut the discipline tree from priests for example. I can see what you are trying to get at though but to me to unbalance classes would be a much greater sin than a cosmetic difference.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that I can understand the direction that Splash Damage wanted to go in. Although obviously they have recieved alot of flak for making that call at the end of the day.

Something I do find puzzling however in the favour of those who are disgruntled is that Saints Row 2 a game released a few years ago has a similar system of customisation yet includes women. However, I assume Brink is alot more detailed clearly. I haven't been able to play yet being in the UK.

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

You see, there are these wacky things called deadlines.

Despite what many of this threads posters believe, they actually have to be adhered to. Total surprise, right?

 

[OutforEC]

You see, there are these wacky things called deadlines.

Despite what many of this threads posters believe, they actually have to be adhered to. Total surprise, right?

From accounts I've seen they actually had to push back their release date numerous times.

From Wikipedia, original source cited:

"Bethesda and Splash Damage originally planned to release the game sometime in spring 2010, then pushed it back to fall 2010[12], and then pushed it back again. They later announced a release date of May 17, 2011[13]. In April, a month before release, they pulled the release back a week to May 10[14], citing early completion of the game and a desire to get it in players? hands as soon as possible."

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Why do you believe they considered female avatars less important was it due to sexism or a business desicion based on demographic and time constraints?

Again with the false dichotomies.

Demographics? Maybe. That would fit with "wanton apathy," as two people stated not too long ago.

As for time constraints? If they've never heard of the "it will be ready when it's ready" policy, that's really on them.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa...
Slow down. What you said is basically "They didn't cut out gender for customization, they cut out gender for more customization"

I dont- what? I can't say that what you just said makes any sense, you just proved my point for me...

No, I didn't.

Let me break this down for you: In light of the fact that customization options in Brink number in the quadrillions, there's no way that we won't be getting some degree of near-repetition among said options.

Splash Damage claimed that adding more cosmetic items made their customization "deeper" than female characters would have. Aside from the logic of that being bizarre? Character models are usually a higher priority than cosmetic items. Female characters were an afterthought to them, at best.

So, in short? The choice was never between male characters that were hugely customizable, or male and female characters that were minimally or not at all customizable. Splash Damage decided that another three character models were less important than another ten slightly different tan cowboy hats. And they still have the gall to call their customization "infinite."

You see, there are these wacky things called deadlines.

Despite what many of this threads posters believe, they actually have to be adhered to. Total surprise, right?

Funny thing about that: I could have sworn that companies usually set their own deadlines.

 

[RickRoll]

Did Halo have female charecters in IT'S 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.

There ARE female spartans in Halo 3 and Reach. It's pretty much just a voice change in Halo 3, but the body actually looks slightly more feminine when you choose female in Reach, as does the voice too of course like in 3.

 

[Kahunaburger]

These are the issues I would like answered. Would you be so kind as to answer them? Please.

- If you don't believe that Splash Damage is sexist then what is your issue with them leaving female avatars out?

-Do you believe there reason for doing it is phony? If so then why?

-Why can't you accept the reason of time and money constraints.

Well, I don't presume to speak for anyone else, but my answers to those questions are:

A. The decision may or may not have been made for sexist reasons. I was not in the room when it was made. But the results of the decision are to perpetuate an under-representation of women in fiction in general and video games in particular (see also: Bechdel test), which is at the very least a disappointment.

B. & C. The devs knew they had time and money constraints from the beginning. What they did within those constraints is a question of priorities. They chose to allocate resources away from having female characters and towards clothing choices. They could even have opted to portray a world entirely populated by female characters (think Y: The Last Man) which would have been a more interesting and original decision.

Thankyou for that very clear and consice answer. Earlier I though whether they could have made a female only game and whether that would have made it worse for them, people complaining about objectifiction etc. Splash Damage is a small company and perhaps thier reach overexceeded thier grasp as I said earlier, personally I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt on that.

I apologise for the slow answers btw escapist is being slow for me.

Here is an idea; what if the characters were androgynous like Magicka or Spore would that have been a more acceptable premise?

I actually doubt the response from the community would be complaints about objectification, esp. if they portrayed the body-type diversity a game like Brink would require. Of course, portraying women as warriors vs. models with guns would alienate the vital 13-year-old-boy demographic, but you could make a pretty good case that the added attention the game would get would offset this.

 

[RickRoll]

Is there an explanation in the narrative of the game? I thought the setting was kind of a giant floating prison, which is male only could be wrong shall google it.

But if that is the case having female characters is plain wrong. Also the first two Gears games managed to make headway without female characters. To be fair I would play a sentient lump of Tofu if the game was good!

If any game should have females in it out of all the ones that are mentioned here, it should be Brink. The premise is that they're on an Ark that was constructed to save HUMANITY, not MANITY from the floods caused by the melted icecaps, so it actually makes no fucking sense that there are no women in the game. In fact, its downright illogical and stupid, unless the Ark is just a giant male-only congregation of psychotic gay guys that hate women and pushed them all overboard into the sea.

P.S. I don't have anything against gay people, but seriously its pretty fucking weird for this game to slightly hint at that with no females.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Of course, portraying women as warriors vs. models with guns would alienate the vital 13-year-old-boy demographic, but you could make a pretty good case that the added attention the game would get would offset this.

The "girls with guns" gimmick would probably sell the game on its own by virtue of novelty.

Of course, even if it was all-female and they weren't models with guns, marketing itself on "infinite" customization would still ring hollow.

 

[Slycne]

I further embellished the hypothetical to another poster. Imagine the situation that say at level 10 a fighter could specialize into a berserker, paladin or a weapon master. All the specializations unlock a certain number of new skills. However, the designers find that less of their players want to play rogues, so they instead only offer a single specialization - bard. The bard could still be perfectly balanced to those 3 other specializations, but ultimately the rogue end up with less depth because it was decided to a more popular class.

Hmm I have trouble with that anology becuase to me being a male or female in a game is cosmetic at best and although as a girl I prefer to play as a girl I don't really see it in the same light as if blizzard cut the discipline tree from priests for example. I can see what you are trying to get at though but to me to unbalance classes would be a much greater sin than a cosmetic difference.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that I can understand the direction that Splash Damage wanted to go in. Although obviously they have recieved alot of flak for making that call at the end of the day.

Something I do find puzzling however in the favour of those who are disgruntled is that Saints Row 2 a game released a few years ago has a similar system of customisation yet includes women. However, I assume Brink is alot more deatailed clearly.

Like I said, don't take it so much as an analogy as a intentionally factious hypothetical. Though you do mention World of Warcraft, which in the past has struggled with an avenue similar to what I raised. It was sometimes seriously questioned in a raiding scenario why you would bring say a rogue, who could only ever melee dps, over say a hybrid class. They could fill a number of roles, including dps just as or almost as good, with proper equipment and talent specs. The rogue could dps well, but if not to a good enough margin then it's loosing out to a class that can both do that but also heal or maybe tank. So you can start to see threads of how this might not be that unlikely of a situation.

In the end, the point is simply to get across the question - is offering more support for the majority always a good thing? What are the potential ramifications if we continue to design games solely with that mindset?

 

[RickRoll]

Why do you believe they considered female avatars less important was it due to sexism or a business desicion based on demographic and time constraints?

Again with the false dichotomies.

Demographics? Maybe. That would fit with "wanton apathy," as two people stated not too long ago.

As for time constraints? If they've never heard of the "it will be ready when it's ready" policy, that's really on them.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa...
Slow down. What you said is basically "They didn't cut out gender for customization, they cut out gender for more customization"

I dont- what? I can't say that what you just said makes any sense, you just proved my point for me...

No, I didn't.

Let me break this down for you: In light of the fact that customization options in Brink number in the quadrillions, there's no way that we won't be getting some degree of near-repetition among said options.

Splash Damage claimed that adding more cosmetic items made their customization "deeper" than female characters would have. Aside from the logic of that being bizarre? Character models are usually a higher priority than cosmetic items. Female characters were an afterthought to them, at best.

So, in short? The choice was never between male characters that were hugely customizable, or male and female characters that were minimally or not at all customizable. Splash Damage decided that another three character models were less important than another ten slightly different tan cowboy hats. And they still have the gall to call their customization "infinite."

You see, there are these wacky things called deadlines.

Despite what many of this threads posters believe, they actually have to be adhered to. Total surprise, right?

Funny thing about that: I could have sworn that companies usually set their own deadlines.

Yep, hence the fact that Valve took ages to release Half-Life 2 and even more ages to release Episode 3. They're working on their own set of deadlines. Also, adding female character models is really not that huge of thing of epic time-consuming proportions. It just takes some more work in the model making department. Hell, they can just use the same outfits that the guys had and animations as well, but just on a female figure. It's purely an aesthetic change.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I actually doubt the response from the community would be complaints about objectification, esp. if they portrayed the body-type diversity a game like Brink would require. Of course, portraying women as warriors vs. models with guns would alienate the vital 13-year-old-boy demographic, but you could make a pretty good case that the added attention the game would get would offset this.

If they made it a sucker punch like art style I would find that very cool and it would be attractive to men and women alike I think. Perhaps heavies would be hard to depict but I think that has already been covered earlier in this thread with Team Fortress 2 comparisons.

As none of us were in the room at the time the desicion was made we can't really call judgment too much but I think looking at the amount of times Brink was pushed back that they were struggling with deadlines and resources. Even Boware held up their hands and said we need more time for Mass Effect 3. If a company like that has problems keeping to deadlines I can see how a small and relatively new one like Splash Damage could honestly make mistakes with time constraints and resources.

 

[OutforEC]

Demographics? Maybe. That would fit with "wanton apathy," as two people stated not too long ago.

As for time constraints? If they've never heard of the "it will be ready when it's ready" policy, that's really on them.

The demographic analysis of your core audience and time management of your deadline are both critical, and to discount either one is an often fatal flaw for a business. "It will be ready when it's ready" is great once you're 'made it', but for a smaller development company that is using the resources of a much larger and more established company it usually doesn't bode well.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Of course, portraying women as warriors vs. models with guns would alienate the vital 13-year-old-boy demographic, but you could make a pretty good case that the added attention the game would get would offset this.

The "girls with guns" gimmick would probably sell the game on its own by virtue of novelty.

Of course, even if it was all-female and they weren't models with guns, marketing itself on "infinite" customization would still ring hollow.

Haha, yeah. It's sort of silly to market a game on nigh-infinite customization when you have orders upon orders of magnitude more customization in, say, Oblivion.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

In the end, the point is simply to get across the question - is offering more support for the majority always a good thing? What are the potential ramifications if we continue to design games solely with that mindset?

I think developers will always cave to demographics purely because of the money factor. A recent example is Bioware appeasing thier stockholders by saying that they need the extra time to open the game up to a wider audience. This sends alarm bells ringing with the fans but at the end of the day Bioware needs the money from the investors to get the game out.

Perhaps if us female gamers show them that we aren't put off by this pandering to numbers and that we can cross out of the boxes we get put in we can gain some leverage with developers. More so than complaining about a cosmetic issue.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

There ARE female spartans in Halo 3 and Reach. It's pretty much just a voice change in Halo 3, but the body actually looks slightly more feminine when you choose female in Reach, as does the voice too of course like in 3.

Yep. Smaller frame overall, slightly narrower shoulders, a suggestion of hips, and possibly somewhat different animations. It's not exaggerated, but your Spartan does come off as female.

If any game should have females in it out of all the ones that are mentioned here, it should be Brink. The premise is that they're on an Ark that was constructed to save HUMANITY, not MANITY from the floods caused by the melted icecaps, so it actually makes no fucking sense that there are no women in the game. In fact, its downright illogical and stupid, unless the Ark is just a giant male-only congregation of psychotic gay guys that hate women and pushed them all overboard into the sea.

Okay...yeah. Definitely apathy. If that's their premise, it really must have simply not occurred to them that cutting female characters was a bad idea (or that adding more hats wasn't the solution).

The demographic analysis of your core audience and time management of your deadline are both critical, and to discount either one is an often fatal flaw for a business. "It will be ready when it's ready" is great once you're 'made it', but for a smaller development company that is using the resources of a much larger and more established company it usually doesn't bode well.

You know, I keep hearing these excuses about how it's a small company. And yet, it's clearly big enough to make a highly sophisticated game with three different character models, good graphics and animations, and lots and lots of hats.

As for demographics, marketing strictly to your core audience is going to sell to them. Aiming for a broader market is going to get you more buyers. Unless, of course, you're trying to imply that including female characters would have scared off the typical shooter player?

Perhaps if us female gamers show them that we aren't put off by this pandering to numbers and that we can cross out of the boxes we get put in we can gain some leverage with developers. More so than complaining about a cosmetic issue.

Does it really not occur to you that this "cosmetic issue" is an example, if a subtle one, of pandering to numbers?

 

[BlackEagle95]

I've read an article, forget where. The Brink developers all said that the inclusion of female models would not only mess with the depth of the customization, but with balance and appearance.

Look at the heavy body type in this game. Now, imagine him as a female. No matter how you do it, the female characters would have less health, or look insanely unrealistic. That would force players who want to go heavy to play as men. Women are lighter, so they would be unfairly faster.

They want to do it right.
They plan on working on it for a future release. I wouldn't be surprised if they already started.

(Note: This is based off of an article I read a few weeks back. I'm not sure if everything is accurate, but I know they wanted it.)

 

[Kahunaburger]

I actually doubt the response from the community would be complaints about objectification, esp. if they portrayed the body-type diversity a game like Brink would require. Of course, portraying women as warriors vs. models with guns would alienate the vital 13-year-old-boy demographic, but you could make a pretty good case that the added attention the game would get would offset this.

If they made it a sucker punch like art style I would find that very cool and it would be attractive to men and women alike I think. Perhaps heavies would be hard to depict but I think that has already been covered earlier in this thread with Team Fortress 2 comparisons.

As none of us were in the room at the time the desicion was made we can't really call judgment too much but I think looking at the amount of times Brink was pushed back that they were struggling with deadlines and resources. Even Boware held up their hands and said we need more time for Mass Effect 3. If a company like that has problems keeping to deadlines I can see how a small and relatively new one like Splash Damage could honestly make mistakes with time constraints and resources.

Yeah, I'm also inclined to believe that a small developer producing an ambitious game would have a hard time getting that out the gate with their level of resources. I'm just more of the opinion that their final product was not the most interesting and/or progressive use of those resources, but that even if it is disappointing from that perspective, I can't get too angry at them for playing it safe by doing what 90% of devs do.