Brink : No Girls Allowed

[Koroviev]

Given the emphasis on customization, that's a real bummer. For me, it kind of ruins the customization element as I am ambivalent to male appearance. If I'm going to be observing my character during cut scenes, I'd definitely prefer to look at a female.

 

[Justin Gooch]

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.

We aren't talking about game breaking mechanics though. If there was a class that had half the abilities of any other class, it's breaking mechanics of the game. Female avatars being in a game isn't going to completely change the mechanics of the game then if they were. Splash simply wanted to have that many more options for the male type. Or they could pull a valve and have everyone bitching and moaning that their DLC is pointless and stupid cause it adds extra clothes.

 

[Ladette]

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.

This is what I was attempting to convey in my posts. They basically passed over female characters for more male options.

 

[Justin Gooch]

And in all honestly, if you don't like looking at a male avatar, there are plenty of pieces of clothing that completely cover the face and body of said character, so cover your avatar completely up, and pretend it's a flat chested, more masculine female.

 

[WanderingFool]

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.

We aren't talking about game breaking mechanics though. If there was a class that had half the abilities of any other class, it's breaking mechanics of the game. Female avatars being in a game isn't going to completely change the mechanics of the game then if they were. Splash simply wanted to have that many more options for the male type. Or they could pull a valve and have everyone bitching and moaning that their DLC is pointless and stupid cause it adds extra clothes.

Oh... oh, God... I think I found that much funnier than it probably was...

 

[Snotnarok]

Also, all these fancy moves were made with a male skeleton in the animation so to put a womans body to it would make it look awkward. This means with all these parkor moves they'd have to spend more time re-motion capturing these things which takes a long, long time. The effort into the game would have been doubled. Adding new skins and whatever is easy in comparison to what they'd have to do with another gender.

Femshep uses most (or all - she might have a different walk anim) of Maleshep's animations. "Budget" is not a good excuse, because if they really wanted to save money they'd cut out cosmetic character customization entirely. The decision to include only male protagonist options is a design decision.

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. This would literally double the workload.

Having a all male game means 1 guy for mo-cap and you can have a short staff for voice and just run some filters on their voices to make it sound like more people. There's a large article on this whole thing in game informer with the developers talking about why it's hard to get females in and its all down to time, money, need, publisher. And publishers aren't so much concerned with extras as they are with meeting deadlines and making money.

Draw designs, have meetings on what ones get picked, model them in 3D, motion capture, clean up motion capture, add custom animations, apply to character, test and debug.

Things aren't as easy as everyone here makes it out to be, it takes lot of time and development to make things in games, it's not right click and it's finished.. It's a lot of work and asking them to double it isn't always a great idea. Chances are we'll see females in a sequel where they can just reuse the motion for the men and add extra content.

A lot of games start out male only, hell Saints Row 2 and Gears 3 are adding women into it and that's pretty amazing. Let's just hope this becomes more of a trend because I really prefer using a female in shooters. Not saying it's a bad thing TO have it, just understand it's an ass load of work.

 

[Corkydog]

Yeah...I don't much care if my character model in a first person shooter has boobs or not...maybe that puts me in the minority.

So seeing as the only benifit I would get from females in the game would be the option to kill women as well as men, I have to say that I really don't care. At all. And I wonder why so many of you would like to shoot at girls.

But hey, maybe I'm missing the whole artistic point of it.

 

[Vault101]

as a female It does annoy me a bit HOWEVER the game still seems interesting

Ill just go and make the most effeminite charachter possible ;P

 

[AlexNora]

Now spend a few seconds thinking of a girl that big. Sure they exist. Does anybody want to play as that?

Fem!Heavy is credit to thread. Srsly, people, it's like 2011. Women are allowed to have muscles.

Where can I buy that game?

 

[jaketaz]

I didn't even realize people still made games with no women in them

 

[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.

We aren't talking about game breaking mechanics though. If there was a class that had half the abilities of any other class, it's breaking mechanics of the game.

Not necessarily. For instance, you could have 2 fully function class a rogue and a fighter. The fighter can later specialize, with individual skills associated to each, to be a paladin, berserker or a weapon-master, but the rogue can only specialize into a bard. The bard could very well be equally balanced against a paladin, berserker or weapon-master, but the rogue still has far fewer options.

Still, the point of the comparison was simply to highlight the logic of the decision as it applied to another area of game production.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Besides, maybe they'll add female characters in the sequel. They did it in Fable, yah? You always gotta do the rough draft before you do the masterpiece.

 

[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.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

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.

Halo was created while it was still relatively uncommon to have such options. Many developers have gotten a lot better about this since then. Standards have changed. The fact that old games weren't great about this doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect new games to be.

Also guys, we need to have a word. When you say it doesn't matter so long as the gameplay is good, you look like a dick, which is I suppose reasonable because I imagine about 90% of the people espousing such views have one. It may not matter to you personally, but let's not pretend like everything's just fine and dandy with gender options in games (especially games touting robust character customisation).

As for the "oh but it's so much work" point: it's work to make robust character customisation in the first place. And it's the kind of work that should be done. Complaining that it takes too much work is like defending a game that's only an hour long because adding more hours would take so much more work.

 

[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.

 

[Ensiferum]

That really sucks. Granted most shooter-esque games restrict you to being male but it would've been nice for Brink to break ground in that department. Here's to hoping ladies are included in patched/DLC versions of the game.