[quote]"It's double the animations, it's double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets,"[/quote]
"Because we're fucking lazy and want to be called sexist. Our writers have already asked for their vacation during development of unity."
As "tone-deaf" as it sounds, it's completely true, making both genders be playable is a lot of work. Max Payne 3, one of my favorite video games of all time, has over a thousand footstep sounds. That's about 5 footstep sounds for every material you can walk on, repeated for every type of shoe, repeated for both genders that can wear those kinds of shoe specifically for the multiplayer. Max is the only playable character in single player but there is an entirely different female skeleton and animation rig that is only used in multiplayer, something a lot of players will never see because they won't play it. It's the same reason everyone is the same height and everyone uses similar animations: to save on both budget and effort, both of which are equally valuable to a game company. It has nothing to do with women except for the way the person phrased their question.
This article is so weirdly anti-Ubisoft that it refuses to acknowledge the fact that what they said about it being a lot of work isn't wrong. If you can understand the reason behind it, why ask it in the first place?
I have never understood this. Nowhere is it written that game developers MUST make both genders playable. Yet people complain that you can't play as their preferred gender.
It doesn't means that the game developers are trying to push a sexist scheduled onto their players. It just means they wanted the characters to be male.
Wasn't the protagonist a woman in early leaked screens though??
[QUOTE=Dukov Traboski;45069081]I have never understood this. Nowhere is it written that game developers MUST make both genders playable. Yet people complain that you can't play as their preferred gender.
It doesn't means that the game developers are trying to push a sexist scheduled onto their players. It just means they wanted the characters to be male.[/QUOTE]
The problem isn't that every game doesn't feature a customizable main character, it's that the majority seems to feature male characters and female characters get written off as a technical burden.
If anything it's worse in games that feature customizable characters because you can't use the technical burden as an excuse, it just comes down to them not considering a female character important.
And a few months down the line fully resourced, voiced, etc female characters will show up as a microtransaction/real money item. Because its Ubisoft.
Lets create a problem that isn't there.
Seriously it's fucking pathetic that this is even a thing. How about we get the gameplay down, then someone write a half decent plot for once, make graphics that actually look real, then we can touch on this whole "play as a girl" thing.
The only way women are going to have a voice is if they fuckin speak up. There is no obligation for any developer whatsoever to produce games that pander to this shit.
Also this is NOT as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. Seriously, someone give me one solid thing this is actively destroying about the gaming industry? And how come so far all that's been done about this is a bunch of blog posting and just utter dumb-fuckery, just bitching about this so-called problem.
Playing as a male protagonist and all the other shit people seem to be stirring in this area are completely null and void when it comes to gameplay. And with gameplay being the only thing that matters, why the fuck are people getting hung up on the packaging.
When girls want to play games they'll get theirs, but right now it's not a thing. So the dorky girls just have to fuckin deal with it till then.
Making women playable is never straight up twice the resources because you can reuse stuff such as code and animations. I doubt they have never heard of retargeting, something done by lots of other games... such as Torchlight 2.
Hell, I even did it for Garry's Mod back when I was working at Facepunch because I wanted the female playermodels to have animations just as good as the male ones, while sourcing the same animations file. In the end I made a system where if I retarget a male animation and the retarget doesn't look good, I wrote a macro that can plug in an adjustment in literally 60 seconds.
And that was on Source, which is outdated as hell. These guys have cutting edge technology and engines, so when they say they have to make twice the animations, it's straight up bullshit.
The only thing you need is new models, but hey, they have 4 dudes playable, if they had done 50/50, it would have taken the same time).
As for the voice actors, it's handled by different people and I really doubt scheduling two women to voice the character would be a huge work load.
Considering the army of developers Ubisoft has, literally thousands of people, they don't really have any excuse
Like in the end what difference does it make what avatar is what and what they have to do with the chicken shit plot noone gives a shit about and is simply a device to move the game along...
[editline]11th June 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45069309]
And that was on Source, which is outdated as hell. These guys have cutting edge technology and engines, so when they say they have to make twice the animations, it's straight up bullshit.
[/QUOTE]
because you have an assassin's creed devkit and know exactly how the engine is so much like source.
This is one of the laziest excuses I've ever heard for something that's just so trivial.
who cares its a video game
they werent saying this shit about doom 2
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3797350/hosting/2014-06/2014-06-11_08-43-57.png[/IMG]
[editline]11th June 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Kwaq;45069400]who cares its a video game[/QUOTE]
that's kind of a dumb excuse
Are we going to start seeing threads about this for every game that has multiplayer? Also quick solution, they could try what dark souls did and just slightly change the shape of the outfits and slap a female head on, that and tweak animations a little.
[QUOTE=Kwaq;45069400]who cares its a video game
they werent saying this shit about doom 2[/QUOTE]
While I agree we're at a point at complaining about this shit like it's an international problem is kind of dumb, that excuse doesn't really work. Lazy Devs? who cares it's just a video game, shit tons of dlc? who cares it's just a video game etc. you get the point of what I mean, " who cares it's just a X " doesn't really work well.
They could just reuse animations from previous female assassins?
Ubisoft for worst company 2014. Too lazy to even reuse content.
[QUOTE=Mr.95;45069470]Are we going to start seeing threads about this for every game that has multiplayer? Also quick solution, they could try what dark souls did and just slightly change the shape of the outfits and slap a female head on, that and tweak animations a little.[/QUOTE]
That's a simple solution, but it seems like the people at Ubi hadn't thought of that.
[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45069410][IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3797350/hosting/2014-06/2014-06-11_08-43-57.png[/IMG]
that's kind of a dumb excuse
[editline]11th June 2014[/editline]
[/QUOTE]
game developers should be able to make whatever they like without the pressure of ethics groups to shove shit down their throats for not creating the game a certain way
Maybe you always play as a man because the whole assassins creed game series up to IV has been built around Desmond, who is a man.
[QUOTE=mecaguy03;45069535]Maybe you always play as a man because the whole assassins creed game series up to IV has been built around Desmond, who is a man.[/QUOTE]Now I haven't played the AC games since 2, so feel free to disregard me if I'm flagrantly wrong due to a change of perspective later on in the series, but I recall it usually being built more around Desmond's ancestors with Desmond himself serving as an anchor for the stories.
Hell; at one point I was technically "playing" as a sperm, because that was the ancestor the Animus locked onto instead of the descendant carrying said sperm. If magic gene science can accidentally do that, it could probably sync a dude up with a girl ancestor well enough.
[QUOTE=TAU!;45069360]This is one of the laziest excuses I've ever heard for something that's just so trivial.[/QUOTE][img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/dJfoCp7.png[/img_thumb]
this is pretty much ubisoft
based on the portrayal of women in watch dogs (pretty much all of the women in the main story are just there to suffer in some way) i think it's more that they just don't give a shit
Can't see Watch_Dogs on Alex Amancio's resume, so I doubt it's an overarching influence. I think Occam's Razor would suggest Kevin Shortt stuck to the old stereotypes of "fight men, save women" and the AC team here wanted to cut corners without drawing any more attention than all the other combat-related games that only feature male characters. I'd say that's at least what the author of this article suggests. It's apparently not about creating the best game possible, it's about minimum effort for keeping a yearly iterating franchise running.
They've done female characters in multiplayer before, so I doubt making a playable female character in a different context would be that much more difficult, especially with how much the AC franchise already carries over from game to game.
[QUOTE=ColossalSoft;45069471]They could just reuse animations from previous female assassins?
Ubisoft for worst company 2014. Too lazy to even reuse content.[/QUOTE]
It's not like AC is a franchise that has been criticised the most for ever reusing content.
What we're forgetting here though is that several last AC games had multiplayer that seemed to use most of the animations available in the base game. And that had female characters. Did it take them millions of hours to do?
[QUOTE=Kwaq;45069400]who cares its a video game
they werent saying this shit about doom 2[/QUOTE]
so what it's automatically exempt from artistic critique or something because of the sole fact that it's a computer game?
if you want to get better at portraying, you study it before you implement it instead of making dumb excuses i.e. "argh too much resources to do this!!!"
[QUOTE=gudman;45069824]It's not like AC is a franchise that has been criticised the most for ever reusing content. [/QUOTE]
Even Watch Dogs reuses AC animations.
[QUOTE=BigFurryHead;45069319]because you have an assassin's creed devkit and know exactly how the engine is so much like source.[/QUOTE]
My point is this: every modern engine out there is far more advanced than Source; Unity and Unreal have easy built-in retargeting for animations, a system where you can use the same sequences on extremely different characters, from dwarves to basketball players. And that's a feature that was showcased at GDC 2012, over two years ago. Retargeting directly at the source (in 3D software such as Maya or Motionbuilder) has existed for far longer. And clearly Ubisoft knows what it is, because they re-use animations from Assassin's Creed in Watch_Dogs.
There is no technical excuse to this omission in this day and age, there is no "workload" excuse either.
It's straight up bullshit.
[editline]11th June 2014[/editline]
Oh hey, here's the cherry on the cake. A tweet from the Assassin's Creed 3 director:
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3797350/hosting/2014-06/2014-06-11_11-34-59.png[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Kwaq;45069400]who cares its a video game
they werent saying this shit about doom 2[/QUOTE]
Clearly the savior of gaming right here.
It's like you are completely ignorant that what people want is an ever changing thing. Can you honestly tell me there is no difference between when Doom 2 came out and now with what people want in games?
Doom 2 was released like 20 years ago, how do you not even consider 20 years as enough time for attitudes towards games changing and then make this awful comparison?
[QUOTE=Tomo Takino;45070542]Clearly the savior of gaming right here.
It's like you are completely ignorant that what people want is an ever changing thing. Can you honestly tell me there is no difference between when Doom 2 came out and now with what people want in games?
Doom 2 was released like 10 years ago, how do you not even consider 10 years as enough time for attitudes towards games changing and then make this awful comparison?[/QUOTE]doom 2 came out in 1994, for the record
and his attitude is one of the most common - "IT'S JUST VIDEO GAMES WHY IS EVERYBODY TAKING IT SO SERIOUSLY." or "WELL NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT X" as if these are valid arguments
[QUOTE=Combineguy;45070554]doom 2 came out in 1994, for the record[/QUOTE]
Thanks, I wasn't thinking properly. If anything that makes my point more valid.
[QUOTE]and his attitude is one of the most common - "IT'S JUST VIDEO GAMES WHY IS EVERYBODY TAKING IT SO SERIOUSLY." or "WELL NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT X" as if these are valid arguments[/QUOTE]
It's a stupid attitude really.
[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45069309]Making women playable is never straight up twice the resources because you can reuse stuff such as code and animations. I doubt they have never heard of retargeting, something done by lots of other games... such as Torchlight 2.
Hell, I even did it for Garry's Mod back when I was working at Facepunch because I wanted the female playermodels to have animations just as good as the male ones, while sourcing the same animations file. In the end I made a system where if I retarget a male animation and the retarget doesn't look good, I wrote a macro that can plug in an adjustment in literally 60 seconds.
And that was on Source, which is outdated as hell. These guys have cutting edge technology and engines, so when they say they have to make twice the animations, it's straight up bullshit.
The only thing you need is new models, but hey, they have 4 dudes playable, if they had done 50/50, it would have taken the same time).
As for the voice actors, it's handled by different people and I really doubt scheduling two women to voice the character would be a huge work load.
Considering the army of developers Ubisoft has, literally thousands of people, they don't really have any excuse[/QUOTE]
For a game studio that goes to great extend to get absolutely perfect animations, i don't expect them to consider a re-targeted animation good-enough.
[QUOTE=Cold;45070625]For a game studio that goes to great extend to get absolutely perfect animations, i don't expect them to consider a re-targeted animation good-enough.[/QUOTE]
When you do motion capture (which is pretty much the major source of human animation in AAA games), what you are doing is literally retargeting
Not to mention this:
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3797350/hosting/2014-06/2014-06-11_12-53-56.png[/IMG]
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
