What´s the deal with Ubisoft and the lack of females in their games?

Ubisoft has upset many Assassin's Creed fans by saying that it has abandoned its plan to have female characters in its new game's co-op multiplayer mode. The company provided a very controversial explanation about the absence of a female presence in its games. Ubisoft has never really had a female lead, and Aveline De Gran’pre apparently  doesn’t count, as she is just a chapter in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.


Our history are full of brave, smart and talented women.

However her PS Vita title, and the adaptation for Assassins Creed 4 featuring Aveline De Gran'pre did sell more than Assassins Creed lll by a very wide margin. This was due to the long and drawn out campaign, and the introduction of the American Revolution being completely pasted, and taped in what was hailed as "Sheer disappointment," by some critics.

In an interview with Polygon, Alex Hutchinson, the game's director, explained  that the developers were "inches away" from allowing players to choose between a man or woman as a co-op buddy in the upcoming First person shooter’s multiplayer, but ultimately opted out.

He was even so bold to say that "in the future, moving forward, this sort of stuff will go away" once developers settle into the new and improved technology. Does he mean to suggest we will not have the problem of having to worry about modeling women? I do wonder why Ubisoft didn’t have women models saved from previous games that they could simply create a graphic for, or voice demos to use?

"We did our best," Hutchinson concluded. "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."

Ubisoft's best wasn't good enough for some fans, however. Before Hutchinson's comments were  published, many gamers disappointed with the company's earlier statements about Assassin's Creed: Unity had already taken to Twitter with the hashtag #womenaretoohardtoanimate in a widespread effort to call them out on the reasoning behind leaving female characters out of that game.

What made them change their mind? Hutchinson went on to say it was "purely a workload issue." The team didn't have a "female reader for the character" at its disposal, nor did it have "all the animations in place."

I find this particularly amusing, as how hard is it to find a female voice actor for a shooter? It would only take about 1 hour to do the voice work, and there were plenty of female characters and voice actresses in Far Cry 3, were there not?

Let’s take a look at what some others had to say about Alex’s statements shall we?

https://twitter.com/GameAnim/status/476749073928560640

https://twitter.com/Anim8der/status/476558327741050880

https://twitter.com/LitheraPrime/status/476760617496244224

Historical facts about the French Revolution:
It's actually amusing how much the French revolution did have women's influence during the war, and how without it they would have never reached independence. Women participated in virtually every aspect of the French Revolution, but their participation almost always proved controversial due to their social status. Women's status in the family, society, and politics had always been solidified "as it was." 

However, In France in the eighteenth century, those who favored improving the status of women insisted primarily on women's right to an education (rather than on the right to vote, which by the way very few men enjoyed).

The writers of the Enlightenment mostly took a traditional stance on "the women question"; they viewed women as biologically different from men, and determined that they should be socially as well. The believed that women were destined to play domestic roles inside the family rather than public, political ones.

The famous French writer Jean-Jacques Rosseau stated in his book:
Women should take an active role in the family, by breast-feeding and educating their children, but they should not venture to take active positions outside the home. Rousseau's writings on education stirred his audience, both male and female.

He advocated greater independence and autonomy for male children, and emphasized the importance of young mothers in raising children, and tending to the family. But many women objected to his insistence that women did not need serious intellectual preparation for life. Some women took their pleas for education into the press.

Even though women's property rights and financial independence met with many restrictions under French law and custom, most men and women agreed with Rousseau and other Enlightenment thinkers that women belonged in the private sphere of the home and therefore had no role, if any at all, to play in public affairs.

Most of France's female population worked as peasants, shopkeepers, laundresses, and even courtesans (If you played Assassins Creed ll you know what these are), yet women were defined primarily by their sex, and role in marriage, not by their own occupations or contributions to the government or society.

Women Make the King listen:
After the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, politics became the topic of the day, by newspaper, and book. The attack on the Bastille showed how popular political intervention could change the course of events. When the people of Paris decided action was needed, they armed themselves, and assaulted the royal fortress-prison in the center of Paris.

The government ceased any royal or aristocratic plans to stop the Revolution in its tracks, by arresting the deputies or closing the new National Assembly. In October of 1789 the Revolution seemed to hang in the balance once again. In the midst of a continuing shortage of bread, rumors circulated that the royal guards at Versailles, the palace where the King and his family resided, had trampled on the revolutionary colors (red, white, and blue) and plotted counter-revolution.

In response, to the atrocious protest, a crowd of women in Paris gathered to march to Versailles to demand an accounting from the King.They trudged the twelve miles from Paris in the rain, arriving soaked and tired. At the end of the day, and during the night, the women were joined by thousands of men who had marched from Paris to join them. The next day the crowd grew more turbulent and eventually broke into the royal apartments, killing two of the King's bodyguards. To prevent further bloodshed, the King agreed to move his family back to Paris.

Womens Support roles:
Women participated in the French Revolution in many ways: they demonstrated at crucial political moments, stood in interminable bread lines, made bandages for the war effort, visited their relatives in jail, supported their government-approved clergyman (or hid one of those who refused to take the loyalty oath), and wrote all manner of letters and petitions about government policies.

As symbols, however, they did not appear in their normal guise in ordinary life at the end of the eighteenth century. To take but one example, an early allegorical painting by the artist Colinart of a woman dressed like a Roman goddess is a far cry from the actual mother of 1790 wearing ordinary clothes and depicted with her children in another painting.

The statue of Liberty originated in France:
Although no one has completed a statistical study of female figures in revolutionary art, even a cursory review shows many more depictions of women as allegorical figures than of women in their actual roles of the time. The most popular figure was Liberty, who became, as a result , the preferred symbol of the French Revolution.

Regarded as Marianne by her detractors to signal that she was nothing but a common woman (perhaps even a prostitute), Liberty became indelibly associated with the French Revolution, so  much, that she still appeared on French money (Before the halting of the Franc, and the introduction of the Euro), and in patriotic paintings and statuary.

Liberty usually appears in Roman dress, often in a toga, holding a pike, the people's instrument for taking back their liberty, with a red liberty cap perched on its tip, the cap was supposedly worn by recently freed roman slaves. Dedicated on November 15, 1889, to the United States of America, it looks towards the Atlantic Ocean towards its "larger sister" in New York Harbor, which had been erected in 1886.

The original giant statue was designed by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi - the construction of the statue was completed in France in July 1884, in 1885-1886 reassembling in the USA was done, and on October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled. It stands as a symbol of freedom, democracy, and equality for all who view it.

While some women chose a militant, and often violent, path, others chose to influence events through writing, publications, and meetings. Olympe de Gouges wrote a number of plays, short stories, and novels. Her publications emphasized that women and men are different, but this shouldn’t stop them from equality under the law.

In her "Declaration on the Rights of Woman" she insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children.

- Wikipedia: French Revolution
This serves particular excerpt from Wikipedia proves that Ubisoft is wrong in their decision to exclude women from a game who's very history had women as the backbone of the war.

In fact every war that ANY country has ever fought in including the United States of America has always had strong political, and supportive influence from women. World War l, World War ll and even modern warfare.

For Ubisoft to say at the beginning of each Assassins Creed: “This game was developed by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs.” We now know that this is false, and must rise up against this in protest. The simple truth is, Ubisoft doesn't seem to understand the dynamic they are creating due to their decision.

As Napoleon Bonaparte said once:
“This year has begun hopefully for right thinkers. After all these centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is surprising to see how the word of ‘liberty’ sets minds on fire.” - Napoleon Bonaparte in 1789

What do you think of Ubisofts decision? Let us know in the comments below, and check out the #womenaretoohardtoanimate movement on Twitter if you believe this is wrong.

/Kenay Peterson
The Gaming Ground