Matthew Jabour said:
So Ubisoft had another controversy recently, this time about how their video game protagonists being all men and their lame-ass excuse shortly after. This prompted the usual backlash, followed by the usual counter-backlash about how there didn't need to be any female protagonists in that game in the first place. You can almost set your watch to these tides of opinions.
But I feel an important detail was missing from the debates, an absent point that needed to be made; this particular game did not actively need a woman as a protagonist, but the games industry, as a whole, would be better off for it.
You see, as with any industry in its infancy, video games have an image problem. Even beyond the Fox News featherbrains, many see video games as an industry for teenage males, a concept that physically manifests itself with developers making games only for that same demographic. As a result, the main characters of many games are white men, with companies having to fight uphill to put out the odd exception, such as Remember Me.
Now, when four player co-op is present, the game would probably function fine with any assortment of male and female characters, but most developers usually put in at least one girl, being free to do so because the main character rule no longer applies and suggesting that the developer is savvy to the fact that women do, in fact, exist. Ubisoft, however, has just suggested the opposite: that the number of women who play games is so low, it isn't worth shelling out to make a new character model. While the inclusion of a female character would not automatically improve the game, exclusion of any female characters whatsoever clearly makes a statement, the same kind of statement the Tea Party periodically puts out when they feel they haven't alienated enough people yet. And since Ubisoft, one of the new biggest software companies out there, is making this statement, it puts the whole industry in a bad light. To put it another way, you certainly COULD wear a tie-die tshirt to a company meeting, but don't be surprised if they deny you that raise you wanted.
So put on a tie, Ubisoft! Do you really want to let Nintendo outshine you in the PR field?
People need to understand, it's not just shelling out for a new character model, though that in of itself is expensive when animated to the point of a main character. It's ensuring the entire game works with that model. Look at it this way, when you play any of the games and go running across rooftops or whatever, notice how much time you spend just barely making jumps, and moving from carefully positioned climb point to carefully positioned climb point. You change the model even a little and all of a sudden you now need to test and re-design every one of those elements of the game. If say Edward in "Black Flag" was a head shorter, all of a sudden a lot of his jumping animations and climbing animations wouldn't work, with his hands gripping space away from where he's supposed to hit. To make it so all of these points work with very different models, and different styles of animation, means positioning them just right.
Basically what the outcry against Ubisoft amounts to is "hey, it's wrong to not have a playable female character, so you need to re-do your entire game from scratch".
That said, there are also the historical aspects to consider. Sure, there WERE women involved in The French Revolution, and even a couple of famous examples, but the reason why they are famous is because they were women and stood out as the most notable of the time. If you had some girl running around swashbuckling with dudes, parkouring up the side of castles, and whatever else, it would have been really noteworthy, it's not something people would likely have forgotten about, especially if the idea is to have the characters get involved in the breadth of notable events from the period.
Ubisoft already gave people a female protagonist, but in order to maintain the integrity of the series, also did it in a way where the character doesn't actually effect anything. After all it's debatable that "Aveline" exists, or at least existed the way things were presented as it's made clear "Liberation" is a propaganda piece about Assassins created by a bunch of Templars.
It's sort of like why despite a multiplayer skin, you don't have an option for a female pirate in "Black Flag", despite there being a few female pirates historically. The reason of course being specifically that those female pirates stood out for being women, and one such figure is a key NPC. Having an even cooler version when they are already doing a fantasy re-definition of what existed would have pretty much sent suspension of disbelief flying out the window.
See, part of it is that when your doing things historically, you have to understand how much things are going to stick out. The same reaction from the NPCs to see some dude jumping around the city, or cutting down a bunch of guys, isn't going to apply to a female character, especially if your going to expect her to somehow blend in afterwards (in this respect, being a propaganda piece justified how Aveline did things that shouldn't have been possible for her).
That said "Liberation" is due to get a sequel apparently as Ubisoft was happy with the sales, so there will be more AC spin off action with you controlling a lady. What's more if they ever decide to modernize things a bit more, you might see one in the core series, especially if they do a game in the 1920s or 1930s. Some might argue the 1890s, but at that point the women's lib thing wasn't in full swing, and there were women around who were famous just for being women who did stuff and stood out for that reason. Someone like Elizabeth Cochran (Nellie Bly) is pretty much why you can't have a female hero in the time period if your trying to be fairly historical, rather than an example of why you could have one.
The point here is that it seems that people are being unreasonable in their expectations of Ubisoft specifically because they did one spin off game, and now it's viewed as an entitlement.
I'll also say oddly enough, that their "Watch Dogs" franchise seems more likely to spawn a series of female protagonists given it's modern setting, and the fact that I haven't run into many people who like Aiden. Liberals who scream about "I hate having a white guy as a hero" are of course something that should be ignored as a matter of course, but the bottom line is his ethnicity has nothing to do with the fact that he's a badly written piece of cardboard who dresses like some loser about to try and hold up a liquor store. "Carla" is 10x more cyber-anarchist than he is from the look (alternative fashion sense with tats, etc..) than he is. When the best Ubisoft itself can really say about him is how he has an "Iconic" Baseball cap (I echo the "WTF" sentiments here, especially the implication that they can decide what's iconic... especially when it's just a bloody baseball cap) that should tell you something.... and while I'm rambling Ubisoft should also learn a bit about telescoping batons, by their nature they are not a thrusting device and pointing one like a sword or thrusting the tip tends to be pretty stupid (think about why here kids).
