E3 is undoubtedly one of the most exciting times to be a gamer. It’s a week of thrilling announcements, new games, and industry advancements. I know that I for one spent practically my whole day on Monday watching the press conferences and gaming chatter. The discussions and “meeting of the minds” is what I probably find most thrilling about E3. It’s an opportunity to witness developments within the industry in the making. That’s why I was so disappointed when I learned that an industry giant, notable for its efforts in trying to diversify gaming, had decided to take a giant step back in the representation of women in video games.
At Ubisoft’s press conference on Monday they announced that their newest edition in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, set in France during the French Revolution, will feature co-op multiplayer. Four assassins, who are appearance-adjusted copies of the main campaign’s assassin Arno, are available to players. I wasn’t surprised that Assassin’s Creed: Unity will feature only white male assassins; that’s been a common theme at this – and every previous year’s really – E3. Had they left it there it would have just been a mild, but familiar and unsurprising, disappointment. Instead Ubisoft’s creative director Alex Amancio came forward and released a statement saying that they had scrapped their initial plans to create a female assassin player option because, when it boils down to it, it was “too hard.” They called it just a reality of production, because apparently the reality of development is that female characters are disposable and unimportant compared to realistically gritty facial hair, visible pores, and intricate period costumes. According to an interview with Polygon, Amancio went on to say:
“It’s double the animations, it’s double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets,” Amancio said. “Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work.”
In the game’s co-op mode, players will have custom gear but always view themselves as Arno, Unity‘s star. Friends are displayed as different characters with the faces of other assassins.
“Because of that, the common denominator was Arno,” Amancio said. “It’s not like we could cut our main character, so the only logical option, the only option we had, was to cut the female avatar.”
Another official at Ubisoft, technical director James Therien, shared similar ideas, stating:
“It was on our feature list until not too long ago, but it’s a question of focus and production. So we wanted to make sure we had the best experience for the character. A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation, a lot of costumes. It would have doubled the work on those things. And I mean 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.”
It’s pretty easy to see this as just an excuse, and a rather flimsy one at that. Naughty Dog designer Jonathan Cooper (and former designer at Ubisoft) even spoke out against his former company on Twitter, stating that he thought the kind of edits they would have to make to include a female assassin would take a day or two at most and not the exaggerated claim Ubisoft was making. I have to admit, I’m angry. Although I can’t say that these statements are even all that surprising or unprecedented, I felt hurt and betrayed. I’ve long considered Ubisoft an innovator, especially in terms of diversity. But what this all really conveys to me is that Ubisoft does not see value in female characters. Rather than considering them a staple or necessity in a game or considering the development and creation of memorable female characters as being as important as the development of male ones, their presence is being treated as a nice feature. Therien even blatantly mentions that a female character was “on their feature list,” essentially stating that representation for female gamers was considered on par (or less important considering that they nixed female assassin creation) with other nice add-ons for the game. These comments state that allowing woman gamers to play female characters is not of value; that creating representation for their female customer and player base is not important or worthwhile. Ubisoft has nine studios devoted to working on Assassin’s Creed: Unity, but a decision was made to not devote any of them to making female assassins because it was simply not a priority. I feel wounded because Ubisoft is telling me, and other female players, that once again we’re simply not a priority.
Rather than help alleviate the situation, Ubisoft made it worse with their official response:
“We recognize the valid concern around diversity in video game narrative. Assassin’s Creed is developed by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs and we hope this attention to diversity is reflected in the settings of our games and our characters.
Assassin’s Creed Unity is focused on the story of the lead character, Arno. Whether playing by yourself or with the co-op Shared Experiences, you the gamer will always be playing as Arno, complete with his broad range of gear and skill sets that will make you feel unique.
With regard to diversity in our playable Assassins, we’ve featured Aveline, Connor, Adewale and Altair in Assassin’s Creed games and we continue to look at showcasing diverse characters. We look forward to introducing you to some of the strong female characters in Assassin’s Creed Unity.”
There are a number of things wrong with this statement. The first is that they hide behind claims of diversity within their staff when that multiculturalism has clearly not been allowed to be conveyed in their latest game. The second paragraph feels more like a passive-aggressive advertisement for the game than anything – stating that they decided to allow you to edit the main white male character and that they hope it makes you feel “unique” feels like a slap in the face when the very issue at hand is representation. The third paragraph seems like an attempt to cover their tracks and prove their record for diversity, which doesn’t really do anything but make me feel more disappointed – they went from showcasing a powerful character like Aveline to making comments like these. The last is that this is a non-apology. Nowhere did they actually apologize for their statements or really address the concerns of so many of their players or audience. While Nintendo announces a 3 to 1 ratio for female characters in their recently announce game Hyrule Warriors, Ubisoft has taken a huge step backwards in terms of advancing women in gaming.
One thought on “Just too Inconvenient”
I just wanna throw out there, that although Ubisofts responses were rude, the Assassin’s Creed series has a lot of very strong females in the games. In the first game you had a female knight (in the Third Crusade mind you) and Lucy; in the second game you have Ezio’s sister and mother (professionally running a brothel full of assassin’s) and alters to past female assassins; the third game we have Ziio, a badass native american.
Also, we shouldn’t forget the spin off Liberation, where you play as an Afro-French female assassin in New Orleans.
A lot of people are getting angry over playing as a female character, but we really need to appreciate what’s here already as a small victory in the war for gender equality in the gaming world. We just have to keep going.