Caught up with Planet zoo DLC while most was 30-70% off. I remember feeling like the animal selection was a bit lacking when released. It looks like they have made up for that by adding literally all the animals.
Edit; though I wouldn’t mind some more domestics that you could do walkthrough exibits with like the lamas are now. Highland cattle, Ankole/Watusi, Zebu, Nubian goats, full size horses.
Extraction shooters seem to be all the rage currently. Have any of you come across an 'extraction shooter' but in a turn-based, pve, fantasy setting instead? I think that might be fun. Run a short mission, get some loot and get out again.
Dark and Darker does it in first person and it looks promising, but that's still a ways off.
Are you the person who wrote into the Jeff Gerstmann Show about this? The argument is that they're only as competitive as you make it, and that they're really PvPvE, fun to watch as a stream game, etc. The email suggested they could be the trend of the future, but Jeff was skeptical.
No that wasen't me.
0
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
I think it's presumptuous to assume that they didn't.
The whole team really wanted a female lead for Oddessy, execs shut it down because they got to be execs. They don't care about artistic vision or integrity, just projections of dollar returns based on sexist/racist assumptions.
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
I don’t know if I buy that all that much. Did Tomb Raider do terrible? Horizon? Metroid? All those games got tons of sequels so I’m guessing they did fine. Square is coming out with an action game this month with a female POC lead and if it fails I doubt it’ll be because of that.
I know from an executive point of view if a game with a female lead gets x$ and a male lead gets x+1$ that makes it worth having a male but all these other publishers and studios are making AAA games with female leads and have been for decades and the sky hasn’t fallen yet.
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
I don't have any research or anything, but don't games like Tomb Raider, Horizon, Bayonetta, Portal, and The Last of Us Part II sell well?
Hell, when I have a choice I usually play as a female character because the female voice acting is almost always better.
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
I don't have any research or anything, but don't games like Tomb Raider, Horizon, Bayonetta, Portal, and The Last of Us Part II sell well?
Hell, when I have a choice I usually play as a female character because the female voice acting is almost always better.
So do I. I skipped Valhalla mainly because I'm just done with Ubi's formulaic gameplay and mostly mediocre writing (at best). Kassandra was elevated by the performance, and ancient Greece rules, but the game imo still had the glaring issues I don't lkike that only seem to get worse.
I think the execs look at player data who chose what gender to justify their decision, while ignoring that if they did not have that choice, they very likely would have played the game anyway.
But afair the whole bullshit about female animations being the reason when Unity came out came from animators and devs at the time, so I don't think the execs carry the full blame for this shit
I think everyone has good points, but Tomb Raider and Metroid are maybe bad examples. Lara Croft was an extremely sexualized video game character and a lot of people had no idea that the Metroid main character's name is Samus, much less that the person in that suit is a woman.
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
I don't have any research or anything, but don't games like Tomb Raider, Horizon, Bayonetta, Portal, and The Last of Us Part II sell well?
Hell, when I have a choice I usually play as a female character because the female voice acting is almost always better.
I don’t think a real fear of female oriented material failing in the market is usually the problem but is more of an excuse for someone to meddle who has, lets say, certain cultural opinions on things.
Its like I was listening to some interview with music exec talking about how hard it was for female country musicians to get radio play now after being so popular in the 90s and 00s and the guy basically said “the market is conservative and risk averse now and we don’t see female artists as being as safe an investment as male ones in the current environment”.
And its like man, bullshit, the market was much more conservative 50 years ago than today and Dolly Parton made enough money to build a fucking amusement park.
And yeah thats just bad design, though with it being Ubisoft it’s not unexpected.
Its been a lot longer IIRC it goes all the way back to Unity. Every game since then was proposed with a larger female role and the execs changed to to a male protagonist or mandated a gender choice. Though if they had a female protag for unity they probably wouldn’t have had 4 more female games, its more the devs kept saying “we want to do this” and ubisoft kept saying “you can’t do that” then the next game the devs would say “we still want to do this” over and over until they finally figured out they could have an actor do some extra voicework and reuse another character from the game in Alexios and Havi as a male protagonist option just to make the execs happy.
I'm honestly annoyed that they didn't just tell the execs (for Valhalla):
"this is the creative decision that, if we give the players a choice, will negatively impact the narrative twist of the game, and we can't "just make them a dude" because that's part of the goddamn twist. This character, the main character of one of our flagship games, must be a woman (primarily) throughout the game or we're making a worse game overall. So if you want a worse game, then that's what you're getting, and that's what you're choosing. A worse game."
That said, yeah, I really need whoever is making those decisions over at that Ubisoft to just . . . walk off into the ether and never give their opinions ever again? That would help so much.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
I don't have any research or anything, but don't games like Tomb Raider, Horizon, Bayonetta, Portal, and The Last of Us Part II sell well?
Hell, when I have a choice I usually play as a female character because the female voice acting is almost always better.
I don’t think a real fear of female oriented material failing in the market is usually the problem but is more of an excuse for someone to meddle who has, lets say, certain cultural opinions on things.
Its like I was listening to some interview with music exec talking about how hard it was for female country musicians to get radio play now after being so popular in the 90s and 00s and the guy basically said “the market is conservative and risk averse now and we don’t see female artists as being as safe an investment as male ones in the current environment”.
And its like man, bullshit, the market was much more conservative 50 years ago than today and Dolly Parton made enough money to build a fucking amusement park.
Dig deep enough (not all that deep far too often) and it's all fig leaves for some flavor of bigotry from the people in-charge.
Also Metroid is very unsuccessful compared to other Nintendo mega hits.
If you just pretended that Japan gave a shit and hypothetically doubled their sales, they would be more up there.
I doubt the Japan failure is that much on their sex (the country that gave us Ninja Princess, which was masculinized for Western release). Probably more on the whole Aliens vibe not translating well.
Also Metroid is very unsuccessful compared to other Nintendo mega hits.
If you just pretended that Japan gave a shit and hypothetically doubled their sales, they would be more up there.
I doubt the Japan failure is that much on their sex (the country that gave us Ninja Princess, which was masculinized for Western release). Probably more on the whole Aliens vibe not translating well.
That and that metroidvanias and especially first person shooters aren’t nearly as big in Japan as the US as genres. IIRC metroid has always done well in the west.
And as far as not knowing who is in the armor that may have been a thing in the 80s but IIRC every game from Fusion on has made it pretty clear Samus was female.
Edit: actually she was clearly female behind the visor in Super Metroid cut scenes as well.
It's not "bigotry", it's revenue projections. The answer to every single "why did [game developer] do/not do [thing]?" question is almost always "money". AAA publishers are not artists or storytellers, they're ruthless corporate slugs who have made it their mission to syphon as many dollars out of your bank account as possible. When it comes to the skin of videogame protagonists the only color they care about is green.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
It's not "bigotry", it's revenue projections. The answer to every single "why did [game developer] do/not do [thing]?" question is almost always "money". AAA publishers are not artists or storytellers, they're ruthless corporate slugs who have made it their mission to syphon as many dollars out of your bank account as possible. When it comes to the skin of videogame protagonists the only color they care about is green.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
If that were the case these other games wouldn’t exist though. Again square is literally putting out a game with a black female lead this month!
And if it were purely white guys sell more Ubisoft wouldn’t make Bayek the face of an AAA game, or Giancarlo Esposito’s character the face of an AAA game, or Basim the face of an AAA game, etc. It really just seems like Ubisoft has a thing against women.
Gifted - Nothing
Traded - Some cards to Talus
Bought - Vermintide 2 DLC, Syberia 3, Orcs Must Die 3
Backlog - Due to DoTA2 having The International and making it an actual decent value even though I got in late, I still got almost everything in the Battlepass and I'll have over 30 Immortals to sell down the line to make a bit of the money I spent back, plus overall the event got me 2 free Arcana, 1 for having the Battleppass, and another Arcana for leveling up the pass.
Having said all that I only got Syberia 3 off the backlog.
I tried Shadow Warrior but it kept glitching out around Chapter 4-5 so I gave up and just watched a playthrough.
Shadow Warrior 2 is pretty great and working fine so far. After that I plan to watch playthrough of 3 because apparently that was pretty bad.
Next on the playlist - All 3 Orcs Must Die games in a row. I got part of the way through 1 but was having trouble perfecting a level and decided to come back. That was probably almost 10 years ago, so now that I don't care about achievements, I should breeze through them (I hope).
I hope you all had a great Christmas and your New Year's have had a good start. Even during my time off I've been busy so I don't have much to say outside of Agrees and Awesomes. Oh I finally upgraded my PC with the parts sitting around for over a year except the CPU since I don't have GPU to go with it still. So the fact my PC worked on the first power up was nice, I haven't lost my touch.....yet.
If that were the case these other games wouldn’t exist though. Again square is literally putting out a game with a black female lead this month!
And if it sells well I'm sure we'll see more of them. If it doesn't, we won't, at least for a while. Eventually another dev will try again to see if the market is more receptive.
We've been talking about this off and on ever since 2013 when one of the devs for that game I forget the name of talked about how hard they had to push to get their game made with a female minority protag (as well as putting her on the box art).
It's not "bigotry", it's revenue projections. The answer to every single "why did [game developer] do/not do [thing]?" question is almost always "money". AAA publishers are not artists or storytellers, they're ruthless corporate slugs who have made it their mission to syphon as many dollars out of your bank account as possible. When it comes to the skin of videogame protagonists the only color they care about is green.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
Ok, granted. Sure. But you do understand that that's not any better? If the idea is that the companies aren't putting inclusion in as a big goal because it won't sell as much, isn't that just like saying they want money from bigots and will not challenge bigotry? Perhaps even from within their own ranks?
Like, at the end of the day, the best faith reading I can have of a message from companies when pulling shit like this is: "We say we don't approve of bigotry and are being more inclusive. But not too inclusive because we want money from bigots too." And that's a really shitty message to get in 2023 or any year.
Like, at the end of the day, the best faith reading I can have of a message from companies when pulling shit like this is: "We say we don't approve of bigotry and are being more inclusive. But not too inclusive because we want money from bigots too." And that's a really shitty message to get in 2023 or any year.
I could be wrong, and they could just be a cabal of good ol' boys, but honestly I think you're looking too deep into it. To borrow an old saying, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by good old fashioned corporate greed".
+2
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
It's not "bigotry", it's revenue projections. The answer to every single "why did [game developer] do/not do [thing]?" question is almost always "money". AAA publishers are not artists or storytellers, they're ruthless corporate slugs who have made it their mission to syphon as many dollars out of your bank account as possible. When it comes to the skin of videogame protagonists the only color they care about is green.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
It's not "bigotry", it's revenue projections. The answer to every single "why did [game developer] do/not do [thing]?" question is almost always "money". AAA publishers are not artists or storytellers, they're ruthless corporate slugs who have made it their mission to syphon as many dollars out of your bank account as possible. When it comes to the skin of videogame protagonists the only color they care about is green.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
Ok, granted. Sure. But you do understand that that's not any better? If the idea is that the companies aren't putting inclusion in as a big goal because it won't sell as much, isn't that just like saying they want money from bigots and will not challenge bigotry? Perhaps even from within their own ranks?
Like, at the end of the day, the best faith reading I can have of a message from companies when pulling shit like this is: "We say we don't approve of bigotry and are being more inclusive. But not too inclusive because we want money from bigots too." And that's a really shitty message to get in 2023 or any year.
That's generally a given regardless of what protagonist they use. The whole basis of not being "divisive" or "overtly political."
Honestly I don’t feel like every game protagonist has to be female or whatever. I have no problem with your Kratos, Cal Kestis, whoever. I’m not criticizing Ubisoft for putting Bayek or Basim in as main characters, that’s great that POC (or at least non-Europeans) are getting included. I have no problem with games like Mass effect that let you create a character’s looks from ground up. But I do have a problem with a company policy that says “female protagonists must share time with male co-protagonists or have a male gender option.”
I mean going back to Basim and Bayek, does anyone not think ubisoft would justifiably be given hell if the games featuring them had an option at the beginning that kept their origins and story the same but let you cosmetically replace them with a generic white guy, and the justification was “we don’t want to lose money from white players that don’t want to play as a middle easterner and might prefer to play as a white person”?
It's not "bigotry", it's revenue projections. The answer to every single "why did [game developer] do/not do [thing]?" question is almost always "money". AAA publishers are not artists or storytellers, they're ruthless corporate slugs who have made it their mission to syphon as many dollars out of your bank account as possible. When it comes to the skin of videogame protagonists the only color they care about is green.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
Ok, granted. Sure. But you do understand that that's not any better? If the idea is that the companies aren't putting inclusion in as a big goal because it won't sell as much, isn't that just like saying they want money from bigots and will not challenge bigotry? Perhaps even from within their own ranks?
Like, at the end of the day, the best faith reading I can have of a message from companies when pulling shit like this is: "We say we don't approve of bigotry and are being more inclusive. But not too inclusive because we want money from bigots too." And that's a really shitty message to get in 2023 or any year.
Also, like, the idea of execs as perfectly sperical revenue seekers that always just Do What Ontologically Works instead of random normal people who do what they believe should work is... kind of silly? Execs are people, people are biased, and people in extremely closed circles such as the kind of people that take these business decisions are extremely and particularly prone to confirmation bias and following received wisdom over actual facts. This is an amply documented phenomenon. Execs make decisions that demonstrably hurt their bottom line, like, all the time, and decisions that are just arguable ten times as often.
Also Metroid is very unsuccessful compared to other Nintendo mega hits.
Related to that, modern Tomb Raider isn't exactly a mega hit either even ignoring the ludicrous expectations that Square had as a publisher. They do sell, but the numbers are dwarfed by many other releases. The series doesn't have the same kind of recognition it did in the 90s and it nosedived pretty hard after a while. And as fun as the modern series can be, it didn't exactly do a ton to stand out from its competitors.
Also Metroid is very unsuccessful compared to other Nintendo mega hits.
Related to that, modern Tomb Raider isn't exactly a mega hit either even ignoring the ludicrous expectations that Square had as a publisher. They do sell, but the numbers are dwarfed by many other releases. The series doesn't have the same kind of recognition it did in the 90s and it nosedived pretty hard after a while. And as fun as the modern series can be, it didn't exactly do a ton to stand out from its competitors.
That's a bummer, because those are really good games (especially the second and third one)
Going back to that word salad theoretical protagonist, I've played games with characters that fit almost every descriptor except someone in a wheelchair.
Outside of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (a joke character) and a certain action game (that I won't spoil the name of because its a cool reveal, and its only for a couple of minutes in the beginning of the game anyway) I can't think of any other games with a wheelchair bound player character.
Like, at the end of the day, the best faith reading I can have of a message from companies when pulling shit like this is: "We say we don't approve of bigotry and are being more inclusive. But not too inclusive because we want money from bigots too." And that's a really shitty message to get in 2023 or any year.
I could be wrong, and they could just be a cabal of good ol' boys, but honestly I think you're looking too deep into it. To borrow an old saying, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by good old fashioned corporate greed".
Executives and upper management of major companies are like, the definition of a good ol' boys club, yes.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I mean, there's always the issue of inertia as well; it's a big thing in the toy industry, for example. The assumption that "well, folks do this when we put out this, but on the rare occasion that anyone tries to challenge the mold it doesn't do gangbusters, so we'll just stay where we are" is pretty much exactly how this kind of thing goes with, say, Star Wars toys. It's also how, when the toys were being made for The Force Awakens, all the Kylo Ren toys outnumbered the toys of the female protagonist of the film, specifically because they assumed that they wouldn't sell, so when the demand suddenly skyrocketed, in that one instance, they decided to make more.
But otherwise, nothing short of an entire sea change would alter the way they do business, and it's less "that won't sell well" and more "the way we've done it has worked up until now, so why change" with a slight side-dose of "these ill-conceived attempts to change things have failed so we just won't change". Tradition! That's more or less what this is all competing against. And because things don't change, the numbers don't change, so they assume they're "doing it right".
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Also Metroid is very unsuccessful compared to other Nintendo mega hits.
Related to that, modern Tomb Raider isn't exactly a mega hit either even ignoring the ludicrous expectations that Square had as a publisher. They do sell, but the numbers are dwarfed by many other releases. The series doesn't have the same kind of recognition it did in the 90s and it nosedived pretty hard after a while. And as fun as the modern series can be, it didn't exactly do a ton to stand out from its competitors.
That's a bummer, because those are really good games (especially the second and third one)
Yeah, three of my favourite games of the last decade. The first may be my fave but they're all really good.
Going back to that word salad theoretical protagonist, I've played games with characters that fit almost every descriptor except someone in a wheelchair.
Outside of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (a joke character) and a certain action game (that I won't spoil the name of because its a cool reveal, and its only for a couple of minutes in the beginning of the game anyway) I can't think of any other games with a wheelchair bound player character.
Going back to that word salad theoretical protagonist, I've played games with characters that fit almost every descriptor except someone in a wheelchair.
Outside of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (a joke character) and a certain action game (that I won't spoil the name of because its a cool reveal, and its only for a couple of minutes in the beginning of the game anyway) I can't think of any other games with a wheelchair bound player character.
I think what was going on within the actual corporation points to Ubisoft corporate absolutely having a problem with women
Yeah, even if a random evil corporation might make uninclusive decisions out of some kind of utility calculation, we know pretty well that Ubisoft was deciding things because their higher ups were sex pests and criminals of various kinds.
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Edit; though I wouldn’t mind some more domestics that you could do walkthrough exibits with like the lamas are now. Highland cattle, Ankole/Watusi, Zebu, Nubian goats, full size horses.
I did?
I think Squadrons is the only one I've played on mine so far. Runs great on it though.
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No that wasen't me.
I simply couldn't play Squadrons on even the deck after experiencing it with a HOTAS. That is definitely the ideal way to play that game.
Also I picked up Void Bastards during the sale and it is fantastic. It's like a comic book come to life.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
Except the higher ups would say "Okay, make it male PC only" because they are under the impression, and perhaps rightfully so, that a game with a male protagonist appeals more/sells more. It's the same reason games have a white dude on the cover holding a gun, because that's what sells and appeals to their focus groups.
It'd be a worse game that sells more. That's what Ubisoft would care about. You cannot appeal to their sense of taste because their taste is money.
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But, but female animations!
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I think it's presumptuous to assume that they didn't.
The whole team really wanted a female lead for Oddessy, execs shut it down because they got to be execs. They don't care about artistic vision or integrity, just projections of dollar returns based on sexist/racist assumptions.
Thank you corgo brother!
I don’t know if I buy that all that much. Did Tomb Raider do terrible? Horizon? Metroid? All those games got tons of sequels so I’m guessing they did fine. Square is coming out with an action game this month with a female POC lead and if it fails I doubt it’ll be because of that.
I know from an executive point of view if a game with a female lead gets x$ and a male lead gets x+1$ that makes it worth having a male but all these other publishers and studios are making AAA games with female leads and have been for decades and the sky hasn’t fallen yet.
I don't have any research or anything, but don't games like Tomb Raider, Horizon, Bayonetta, Portal, and The Last of Us Part II sell well?
Hell, when I have a choice I usually play as a female character because the female voice acting is almost always better.
So do I. I skipped Valhalla mainly because I'm just done with Ubi's formulaic gameplay and mostly mediocre writing (at best). Kassandra was elevated by the performance, and ancient Greece rules, but the game imo still had the glaring issues I don't lkike that only seem to get worse.
I think the execs look at player data who chose what gender to justify their decision, while ignoring that if they did not have that choice, they very likely would have played the game anyway.
But afair the whole bullshit about female animations being the reason when Unity came out came from animators and devs at the time, so I don't think the execs carry the full blame for this shit
I don’t think a real fear of female oriented material failing in the market is usually the problem but is more of an excuse for someone to meddle who has, lets say, certain cultural opinions on things.
Its like I was listening to some interview with music exec talking about how hard it was for female country musicians to get radio play now after being so popular in the 90s and 00s and the guy basically said “the market is conservative and risk averse now and we don’t see female artists as being as safe an investment as male ones in the current environment”.
And its like man, bullshit, the market was much more conservative 50 years ago than today and Dolly Parton made enough money to build a fucking amusement park.
Dig deep enough (not all that deep far too often) and it's all fig leaves for some flavor of bigotry from the people in-charge.
It's exhausting.
If you just pretended that Japan gave a shit and hypothetically doubled their sales, they would be more up there.
I doubt the Japan failure is that much on their sex (the country that gave us Ninja Princess, which was masculinized for Western release). Probably more on the whole Aliens vibe not translating well.
That and that metroidvanias and especially first person shooters aren’t nearly as big in Japan as the US as genres. IIRC metroid has always done well in the west.
And as far as not knowing who is in the armor that may have been a thing in the 80s but IIRC every game from Fusion on has made it pretty clear Samus was female.
Edit: actually she was clearly female behind the visor in Super Metroid cut scenes as well.
Ubisoft would make a game with a protagonist that was a black female bisexual dyslexic muslimah in a wheelchair if the bean counters thought it would sell more copies than brown haired iron jawed face stubbled tight t-shirt white dude with a gun #4576120
If that were the case these other games wouldn’t exist though. Again square is literally putting out a game with a black female lead this month!
And if it were purely white guys sell more Ubisoft wouldn’t make Bayek the face of an AAA game, or Giancarlo Esposito’s character the face of an AAA game, or Basim the face of an AAA game, etc. It really just seems like Ubisoft has a thing against women.
Gifted - Nothing
Traded - Some cards to Talus
Bought - Vermintide 2 DLC, Syberia 3, Orcs Must Die 3
Backlog - Due to DoTA2 having The International and making it an actual decent value even though I got in late, I still got almost everything in the Battlepass and I'll have over 30 Immortals to sell down the line to make a bit of the money I spent back, plus overall the event got me 2 free Arcana, 1 for having the Battleppass, and another Arcana for leveling up the pass.
Having said all that I only got Syberia 3 off the backlog.
I tried Shadow Warrior but it kept glitching out around Chapter 4-5 so I gave up and just watched a playthrough.
Shadow Warrior 2 is pretty great and working fine so far. After that I plan to watch playthrough of 3 because apparently that was pretty bad.
Next on the playlist - All 3 Orcs Must Die games in a row. I got part of the way through 1 but was having trouble perfecting a level and decided to come back. That was probably almost 10 years ago, so now that I don't care about achievements, I should breeze through them (I hope).
I hope you all had a great Christmas and your New Year's have had a good start. Even during my time off I've been busy so I don't have much to say outside of Agrees and Awesomes. Oh I finally upgraded my PC with the parts sitting around for over a year except the CPU since I don't have GPU to go with it still. So the fact my PC worked on the first power up was nice, I haven't lost my touch.....yet.
And if it sells well I'm sure we'll see more of them. If it doesn't, we won't, at least for a while. Eventually another dev will try again to see if the market is more receptive.
We've been talking about this off and on ever since 2013 when one of the devs for that game I forget the name of talked about how hard they had to push to get their game made with a female minority protag (as well as putting her on the box art).
Ok, granted. Sure. But you do understand that that's not any better? If the idea is that the companies aren't putting inclusion in as a big goal because it won't sell as much, isn't that just like saying they want money from bigots and will not challenge bigotry? Perhaps even from within their own ranks?
Like, at the end of the day, the best faith reading I can have of a message from companies when pulling shit like this is: "We say we don't approve of bigotry and are being more inclusive. But not too inclusive because we want money from bigots too." And that's a really shitty message to get in 2023 or any year.
I could be wrong, and they could just be a cabal of good ol' boys, but honestly I think you're looking too deep into it. To borrow an old saying, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by good old fashioned corporate greed".
Yeah uhh, no. You are wrong.
That's generally a given regardless of what protagonist they use. The whole basis of not being "divisive" or "overtly political."
I mean going back to Basim and Bayek, does anyone not think ubisoft would justifiably be given hell if the games featuring them had an option at the beginning that kept their origins and story the same but let you cosmetically replace them with a generic white guy, and the justification was “we don’t want to lose money from white players that don’t want to play as a middle easterner and might prefer to play as a white person”?
Also, like, the idea of execs as perfectly sperical revenue seekers that always just Do What Ontologically Works instead of random normal people who do what they believe should work is... kind of silly? Execs are people, people are biased, and people in extremely closed circles such as the kind of people that take these business decisions are extremely and particularly prone to confirmation bias and following received wisdom over actual facts. This is an amply documented phenomenon. Execs make decisions that demonstrably hurt their bottom line, like, all the time, and decisions that are just arguable ten times as often.
Related to that, modern Tomb Raider isn't exactly a mega hit either even ignoring the ludicrous expectations that Square had as a publisher. They do sell, but the numbers are dwarfed by many other releases. The series doesn't have the same kind of recognition it did in the 90s and it nosedived pretty hard after a while. And as fun as the modern series can be, it didn't exactly do a ton to stand out from its competitors.
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That's a bummer, because those are really good games (especially the second and third one)
Outside of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (a joke character) and a certain action game (that I won't spoil the name of because its a cool reveal, and its only for a couple of minutes in the beginning of the game anyway) I can't think of any other games with a wheelchair bound player character.
Executives and upper management of major companies are like, the definition of a good ol' boys club, yes.
But otherwise, nothing short of an entire sea change would alter the way they do business, and it's less "that won't sell well" and more "the way we've done it has worked up until now, so why change" with a slight side-dose of "these ill-conceived attempts to change things have failed so we just won't change". Tradition! That's more or less what this is all competing against. And because things don't change, the numbers don't change, so they assume they're "doing it right".
Yeah, three of my favourite games of the last decade. The first may be my fave but they're all really good.
Steam | XBL
Very underrated game, that. I liked it.
Steam | XBL
Yeah, even if a random evil corporation might make uninclusive decisions out of some kind of utility calculation, we know pretty well that Ubisoft was deciding things because their higher ups were sex pests and criminals of various kinds.