During E3, Ubisoft announced the game “Assassins Creed Unity” which finally shows off a 4 player cooperative mode which had been missing from past titles. Most fans have noticed that all 4 of the playable characters were indeed “male” Assassins, the question was brought up in an interview to Ubisoft’s Technical Director ‘James Therien’ in which he asserted that “including a female character as an Assassin would have “doubled the work” on the game, forcing the team to “redo a lot of animation, [and] a lot of costumes.” He continued “It’s something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision … It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality of game development.”. In 2012 just before the release of Assassins Creed 3 of their game creative Director Alex Hutchinson stated that “including female characters in that game would have been a pain. The history of the American Revolution is the history of men.”
Which, let’s be honest really just sounds like a sexist statement and an excuse. Especially considering the portable version of Assassin’s Creed Liberation actually reused most of the animations from Assassin’s Creed III for female protagonist Aveline De Grandpé. Naughty Dog animator Johnathan Cooper stated in light of these comments that,” in reality the necessary work would only be equal to a day or two’s work.” in an interview he shared with Polygon. Some could argue different games have different engines which come with its own set of problems, however Johnathan Cooper has actually worked on titles that include Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed 3. Ubisoft also stated in another interview for Far Cry 4 that they nearly included female co-op characters which was scrapped at the last minute due to the “realities” of production.
I’m not bringing this up to merely focus on these controversial comments, I’d simply like to bring to light that sexism and the lack of diversity in the gaming industry is indeed out there and not only throughout game development. You can argue that maybe the animator was wrong – maybe it doesn’t equal to a day or two’s work. These statements still could bring the question to mind of, “Wouldn’t it still be worth it?”. Diversity in games are clearly missing with most game developers featuring their protagonist as a dark-haired Caucasian male.
Let’s imply again that females are harder to create for Ubisoft, it probably should’ve been added as the core design to begin with, they don’t get to create the issue and rely on that issue to get out of doing their job, from recent statements Ubisoft seems to envision males as characters and females as features.
Smash Survey noted that 19% of video-games are non-human and only 17% are actually female, which means there are 2% more non-humans than actual females in games. A female graduate student surveyed 1,800 random World of Warcraft players through Survey Monkey, along with a forum master over at Blizzard Entertainment back in March 2011. She stated that 49.78% of the population was female, 91% of the players who were females stated that at sometime they felt harassed in-games for their gender while only 7% of males reported the same. 82.5% of female players admitted that they “would rather not talk” or “hide their identity” to avoid harassment while 29% of female players stated they felt in danger more than once playing the game. However only 10% of male players felt that they would stand-up for a female player who was obviously being harassed in-a game for their gender. She also noted that it’s hard to find out exactly how many women actually play because so many are scared to even say that they are female.
Believe it or not females have a large impact in the gaming industry, from today’s statistics let’s assume 40% of the women in the gaming industry all left. (based on Gamerisms statistics)
- Roughly 8 million woman would leave Xbox Live
- About 84.6 Million games and 7.6 million consoles wouldn’t be sold in 2012
- And somewhere between 4-5 million women would stop playing World of Warcraft.
Diversity and sexism in the gaming-industry seem to be linked as one, as some huge named game companies prefer to play it safe and not innovate or make more relatable characters. If these stories and simulations deliver the concept that being a “girl” is lesser of a character trait of the general female gamer population, then they are receiving that message of inferiority every time a console is turned on or a player is logged in. There are the exceptions of game companies that do innovate diversely and are praised for it with titles like; Walking Dead, GTA V, and Last Of Us. However as the gaming industry grows I hope it also becomes more known that a person’s skin color or sexuality isn’t what defines them as a standard cliche(the damsel in distress).
What we need more of is good characters and writing in general and to not define women as a way to make another character look good or an add-in for the illusion of diversity because in the end we all want a believable great game, something that can take us on a journey and is relatable for today’s society while being fun. Games let you experience a character through their eyes and let you control their paths which is something a movie can never do.
Lastly for the guys out there, girls can be just invested into gaming as we are it’s time to grow up and be kind to one another.
-Amario Andre’ III
