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The 5 worst reasons for not including women in video games
The most infamous example in recent memory comes from the criticism fired at Ubisoft, developer of the "Assassin's Creed" series, for its lack of playable female heroes in "Assassin's Creed: Unity."
In response to this criticism, creative director Alex Amancio said that including playable female characters would be "a lot of extra production work." Specifically, he said, "It's double the animations, it's double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets."
—jalebi baby (@AboveAverageJoh) June 11, 2014
Some other game developers chimed in, though, saying Amancio's excuse was completely false. Jonathan Cooper, who worked on "Assassin's Creed III" told Polygon that in reality, the work would really only take "a day or two."
Using the snarky hashtag, #womenaretoohardtoanimate, many Twitter users were saying that Ubisoft's comments were just an indication that the work itself was not the problem — it was simply an issue of not wanting to do it in the first place.
—Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) June 11, 2014
As Anita Sarkeesian notes in the video posted above,"There is still a tendency for game studios to treat female representation as some kind of extravagant goal, rather than simply treating it as standard in the same way they handle male representation."
Notably, the series' next game, "Assassin's Creed Syndicate," prominently featured the female character Evie Frye as one of its main playable protagonists, likely in response to the criticism of "Assassin's Creed: Unity."
When the first trailer for "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" was shown in 2014, many remarked on the somewhat androgynous appearance of the game's main hero, Link.
This prompted questions about whether it would feature a female version of Link, instead of his usual depiction as a male.
When asked about this possibility by gaming site Kotaku, one of the series' creative leads, Eiji Aonuma, said:
"You know there’s the idea of the Triforce in the Zelda games we make. The Triforce is made up of Princess Zelda, Ganon, and Link. Princess Zelda is obviously female. If we made Link a female we thought that would mess with the balance of the Triforce. That’s why we decided not to do it."
The Triforce is a fictional sacred object within the "Legend of Zelda" universe that's made up of three pieces, each of which is owned by one of the game's characters. The person who owns each piece exemplifies the quality that specific piece represents: Courage, Wisdom, and Power.
While there's nothing inherently gendered about any of the pieces of the Triforce, Aonuma seemed to think that two males and one female was more "balanced" than two females and one male.
What's additionally counfounding about this is that the whole conceit behind the character of Link is that he is a stand-in for the player — the literal "link" between the player and the in-game world — so by restricting his gender, Nintendo is implying that male characters are a sort of blank slate onto which someone of any gender can project themselves.
In "Battlefield 1," the upcoming first-person shooter that takes place in World War I, don't expect to see very many women.
According to Amandine Coget, a coder who used to work at DICE (the company that makes "Battlfield 1"), the company thinks its male audience wouldn't find the presence of female soldiers "believable."
In the video posted above, Sarkeesian has the perfect response to this line of reasoning (emphasis ours):
"Games, even ones that draw on historical locations or events like the 'Assassin’s Creed' series, create their own worlds and set the tone for what we will or won’t believe. To participate in the worlds games create, we happily accept time travel, superpowers, ancient alien civilizations, the ability to carry infinite items, the idea that eating a hot dog can instantly heal your wounds, and a million other fictions. It’s certainly not too much to ask that these fictional worlds give us believable female combatants too ... [and] unlike those magical healing hot dogs I mentioned, female combatants actually exist."
DICE has since said there will be a playable female soldier as a part of the campaign, but there will be no playable females in multiplayer. In fact, players have never been able to control a female character in the entire history of the series' multiplayer, which began in 2002.
Not long after the debacle surrounding "Assassin's Creed: Unity," Ubisoft set eyes rolling regarding another of its games, "Far Cry 4."
Game director Alex Hutchinson told Polygon he wanted to include the option for players to select female characters in the game's multiplayer mode, but ultimately, they just didn't have time. Here are his comments in full:
"As we get better technology and we plan for it in advance and we don't have a history on one rig and all this sort of stuff. We had very strong voices on the team pushing for that and I really wanted to do it, we just couldn't squeeze it in in time. But on the other hand we managed to get more of the other story characters to be women.
We did our best. It's frustrating for us as it is for everybody else, so it's not a big switch that you can just pull and get it done."
Sarkeesian says, as you might expect, the perception was once again,"what they were really saying was that they just couldnt be bothered to do the work it would have taken to provide that option."
In the upcoming "Final Fantasy XV," the main cast is made up solely of men.
Hajime Tabata, who's directing the game, spoke about this decision with GameSpot, saying:
"Speaking honestly, an all-male party feels almost more approachable for players. Even the presence of one female in the group will change their behavior, so that they’ll act differently. So to give the most natural feeling, to make them feel sincere and honest, having them all the same gender made sense in that way ... we think, male or female player, that everyone will feel a certain connection and bond with the four characters."
GameSpot ran an article arguing that, because of its cast, "Final Fantasy XV" sheds light on the intimate and emotional friendships between men. Therefore, it subverts the hypermasculinity we've come to expect from our video game heroes.
It's a compelling counter-argument, but the issue is not just that the game has an all-male cast, but that Tabata asserts that their gender makes them universally relatable. This reinforces the notion that male characters are the "standard gender" with which all others can identify.
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