WEBVTT 00:00:27.028 --> 00:00:29.211 At the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, 00:00:29.211 --> 00:00:30.804 the game development company Ubisoft 00:00:30.804 --> 00:00:32.838 debuted a trailer showcasing the cooperative mode 00:00:32.838 --> 00:00:34.368 in their upcoming game Assassin’s Creed Unity. 00:00:35.168 --> 00:00:36.570 One thing viewers quickly noticed 00:00:36.570 --> 00:00:39.382 about the trailer was that all the assassins in it were male. 00:00:42.602 --> 00:00:45.179 When questioned about why female characters 00:00:45.179 --> 00:00:46.827 weren’t an option in this mode, 00:00:46.827 --> 00:00:48.455 the game’s creative director said that 00:00:48.455 --> 00:00:50.404 although there were originally plans to allow for female assassins, 00:00:50.404 --> 00:00:52.208 the development team couldn’t add them 00:00:52.208 --> 00:00:54.378 because it would require “double the animations, 00:00:54.378 --> 00:00:57.562 double the voices, and double the visual assets.” 00:00:57.562 --> 00:00:59.711 Meanwhile, a level designer on the game 00:00:59.711 --> 00:01:01.771 stated that including female assassins would have meant 00:01:01.771 --> 00:01:05.130 recreating 8000 animations on a new skeleton. 00:01:05.130 --> 00:01:07.766 These comments led to an explosion of controversy 00:01:07.766 --> 00:01:10.063 and criticism on Twitter, with many people using 00:01:10.063 --> 00:01:13.011 the sarcastic hashtag “women are too hard to animate.” 00:01:13.801 --> 00:01:15.551 A number of experienced game developers 00:01:15.551 --> 00:01:16.888 joined the chorus of voices 00:01:16.888 --> 00:01:19.038 calling out the absurdity of Ubisoft’s claims. 00:01:19.038 --> 00:01:20.678 Animator Jonathan Cooper, 00:01:20.678 --> 00:01:22.647 who had previously worked on Assassin’s Creed III 00:01:22.647 --> 00:01:23.963 for Ubisoft, tweeted, 00:01:23.963 --> 00:01:26.210 “I would estimate this to be a day or two’s work. 00:01:26.210 --> 00:01:28.557 Not a replacement of 8000 animations.” 00:01:28.557 --> 00:01:30.830 And Manveer Heir of Bioware summed up 00:01:30.830 --> 00:01:32.636 what Ubisoft was actually saying: 00:01:32.636 --> 00:01:35.795 “We don’t really care to put the effort in to make a woman assassin.” 00:01:36.525 --> 00:01:38.632 Ubisoft’s disregard for female character options 00:01:38.632 --> 00:01:40.117 didn’t stop with Unity. 00:01:40.117 --> 00:01:42.945 Also at E3 2014, the director of Far Cry 4 00:01:42.945 --> 00:01:45.865 admitted to a similar issue with that game’s online co-op mode, 00:01:45.865 --> 00:01:48.184 saying, “We were inches away from having you be able 00:01:48.184 --> 00:01:50.361 to select a girl or a guy as your co-op buddy.” 00:01:50.361 --> 00:01:53.006 Again, the excuse for why this option wasn’t available 00:01:53.006 --> 00:01:55.042 was that it would just be too much work. 00:01:55.042 --> 00:01:57.227 And yet again, what they were really saying 00:01:57.227 --> 00:01:59.708 was that they just couldn’t be bothered to do the work 00:01:59.708 --> 00:02:01.528 it would have taken to provide that option. 00:02:01.528 --> 00:02:03.926 Though it’s worth pointing out that in the two years 00:02:03.926 --> 00:02:06.370 since this controversy, Ubisoft has made clear efforts 00:02:06.370 --> 00:02:08.280 to improve the representation of women 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:09.879 in the core Assassin’s Creed games, 00:02:09.879 --> 00:02:12.160 with the most recent entry, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:13.988 giving the option to play as Evie Frye 00:02:13.988 --> 00:02:15.972 through much of the campaign. 00:02:15.972 --> 00:02:18.835 Of course, Ubisoft weren’t and aren’t the only ones 00:02:18.835 --> 00:02:21.190 with this apathetic attitude toward female inclusion. 00:02:21.190 --> 00:02:23.959 In fact, not doing the necessary work to include women 00:02:23.959 --> 00:02:26.430 has long been the norm in the video game industry. 00:02:26.430 --> 00:02:28.938 The FIFA soccer game series, which had its first entry 00:02:28.938 --> 00:02:31.041 in 1993, took over 20 years 00:02:31.041 --> 00:02:33.958 before finally introducing female teams in FIFA 16. 00:02:34.978 --> 00:02:36.649 “I’m in the game.” 00:02:39.469 --> 00:02:41.824 And it took ten years for Call of Duty to introduce 00:02:41.824 --> 00:02:43.906 female soldiers into its competitive multiplayer 00:02:43.906 --> 00:02:46.222 with 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts. 00:02:46.903 --> 00:02:48.675 The long-running Battlefield franchise, 00:02:48.675 --> 00:02:50.180 on the other hand, has still never allowed 00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:52.544 for playable female characters in its multiplayer modes. 00:02:52.544 --> 00:02:54.906 There’s an important conversation to be had 00:02:54.906 --> 00:02:56.602 about the ways in which military shooters 00:02:56.602 --> 00:02:58.246 work to glorify violence, 00:02:58.246 --> 00:03:00.134 but as long as we’re going to have such games, 00:03:00.134 --> 00:03:02.851 it’s actually better when they include female combatants in them. 00:03:02.851 --> 00:03:04.399 Now you might be asking yourself, 00:03:04.399 --> 00:03:06.156 “Doesn’t having female enemies in a game 00:03:06.156 --> 00:03:07.931 perpetuate violence against women?” 00:03:07.931 --> 00:03:09.652 And that’s a good, fair question. 00:03:09.652 --> 00:03:11.068 When we refer to depictions 00:03:11.068 --> 00:03:12.284 of violence against women, 00:03:12.284 --> 00:03:14.022 we’re generally discussing situations in which 00:03:14.022 --> 00:03:15.762 women are being attacked or victimized 00:03:15.762 --> 00:03:17.491 specifically because they are women, 00:03:17.491 --> 00:03:19.740 reinforcing a perception of women as victims. 00:03:19.740 --> 00:03:22.316 Such scenarios are very different from those in which 00:03:22.316 --> 00:03:24.223 women are presented as active participants. 00:03:24.223 --> 00:03:26.216 In the Street Fighter games, for instance, 00:03:26.216 --> 00:03:28.403 when Chun-Li and Ryu fight each other, 00:03:28.403 --> 00:03:30.200 this isn’t considered violence against women, 00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:32.377 because the two characters are presented as being on 00:03:32.377 --> 00:03:33.859 more or less equal footing, 00:03:33.859 --> 00:03:35.728 and because Chun-Li is an active participant 00:03:35.728 --> 00:03:37.520 who isn’t being targeted or attacked 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:39.071 specifically because she’s a woman. 00:03:40.031 --> 00:03:42.201 Similarly, the waves of male attackers players face 00:03:42.201 --> 00:03:44.543 in so many games are typically not passive victims. 00:03:44.543 --> 00:03:46.666 They are active participants in the conflict, 00:03:46.666 --> 00:03:49.694 and importantly, the violence against them isn’t gendered. 00:03:49.694 --> 00:03:52.430 Players fight with them because they’re on the opposing side, 00:03:52.430 --> 00:03:54.479 not specifically because they are men. 00:03:54.479 --> 00:03:57.572 Unfortunately, when female combatants do appear in games, 00:03:57.572 --> 00:03:59.373 they are often presented in sexualized ways 00:03:59.373 --> 00:04:01.170 which inevitably lend the player’s attacks 00:04:01.170 --> 00:04:02.640 an air of gendered violence. 00:04:02.640 --> 00:04:04.438 In Saints Row The Third’s so-called 00:04:04.438 --> 00:04:05.789 “Whored Mode,” for instance, 00:04:05.789 --> 00:04:08.070 players must defeat waves of sexualized women, 00:04:08.070 --> 00:04:09.461 sometimes beating them to death 00:04:09.461 --> 00:04:10.911 with a large purple dildo. 00:04:13.141 --> 00:04:15.276 In the 2009 game Wolfenstein, 00:04:15.276 --> 00:04:17.855 the Elite Guard are a special all-female enemy unit 00:04:17.855 --> 00:04:19.783 whose absurd uniforms sexualize not only 00:04:19.783 --> 00:04:21.424 the female characters themselves 00:04:21.424 --> 00:04:23.747 but also player’s acts of violence against them. 00:04:26.017 --> 00:04:28.112 Similarly, in 2012’s Hitman Absolution, 00:04:28.112 --> 00:04:30.329 the Saints are a special unit of female assassins 00:04:30.329 --> 00:04:33.001 who wear latex fetish gear underneath nun’s habits. 00:04:33.001 --> 00:04:35.058 It’s a ludicrous design choice that is 00:04:35.058 --> 00:04:37.919 transparently intended to sexualize these enemies. 00:04:37.919 --> 00:04:40.801 And in Metal Gear Solid 4, 00:04:40.801 --> 00:04:42.969 the Beauty & the Beast unit is an enemy group 00:04:42.969 --> 00:04:44.611 made up of five female soldiers 00:04:44.611 --> 00:04:46.540 that players fight over the course of the game. 00:04:46.540 --> 00:04:48.696 At a certain point during these encounters, 00:04:48.696 --> 00:04:50.596 each boss sheds her armor and appears 00:04:50.596 --> 00:04:52.457 as a woman in form-fitting attire. 00:04:52.457 --> 00:04:54.581 “It’s all so funny.” 00:04:55.661 --> 00:04:58.331 If players then avoid the Beauty’s deadly embrace 00:04:58.331 --> 00:05:00.814 for several minutes without killing or neutralizing her, 00:05:00.814 --> 00:05:02.734 the game transports them to a white room 00:05:02.734 --> 00:05:04.219 where equipping the camera results 00:05:04.219 --> 00:05:06.001 in the character making sultry poses. 00:05:09.171 --> 00:05:10.787 Funny how that doesn’t happen 00:05:10.787 --> 00:05:12.914 with the male bosses in the game. 00:05:12.914 --> 00:05:14.465 Whenever female combatants are dressed 00:05:14.465 --> 00:05:17.201 in sexualizing attire, it sets them noticeably apart 00:05:17.201 --> 00:05:18.885 from other enemy units. 00:05:18.885 --> 00:05:20.364 It’s intended to make the player’s 00:05:20.364 --> 00:05:22.216 encounters with them sexually titillating 00:05:22.216 --> 00:05:24.160 and that’s particularly troubling considering 00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:25.981 that those encounters often involve fighting 00:05:25.981 --> 00:05:27.705 and killing those characters. 00:05:27.705 --> 00:05:29.320 Violence against female characters 00:05:29.320 --> 00:05:31.280 should never be presented as “sexy”. 00:05:31.280 --> 00:05:33.523 The way for games to handle female combatants 00:05:33.523 --> 00:05:35.336 is not to present them as sexualized treats 00:05:35.336 --> 00:05:36.404 for the player. 00:05:36.404 --> 00:05:38.316 Rather, it’s to present them simply as combatants 00:05:38.316 --> 00:05:40.098 who happen to be women fighting alongside 00:05:40.098 --> 00:05:41.866 their male counterparts on equal footing. 00:05:41.866 --> 00:05:44.675 For all of its many, many problems 00:05:44.675 --> 00:05:47.800 one thing Bioshock Infinite did right was to include 00:05:47.800 --> 00:05:50.498 non-sexualized female officers on Columbia’s police force. 00:05:53.148 --> 00:05:55.238 And in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, 00:05:55.238 --> 00:05:57.264 both the player’s gang and the enemy gang 00:05:57.264 --> 00:05:58.999 have rank-and-file female members 00:05:58.999 --> 00:06:01.136 who fight alongside the men. 00:06:01.136 --> 00:06:03.646 Despite the presence of female combatants 00:06:03.646 --> 00:06:05.426 in games like these, there is still a tendency 00:06:05.426 --> 00:06:07.596 for game studios to treat female representation 00:06:07.596 --> 00:06:09.195 as some kind of extravagant goal, 00:06:09.195 --> 00:06:11.433 rather than simply treating it as standard 00:06:11.433 --> 00:06:13.622 in the same way they handle male representation. 00:06:13.622 --> 00:06:15.688 The excuse that I hear most often for the absence 00:06:15.688 --> 00:06:18.567 of female combatants in games is that players wouldn’t believe it. 00:06:18.567 --> 00:06:22.035 But games, even ones that draw on historical locations 00:06:22.035 --> 00:06:24.101 or events like the Assassin’s Creed series, 00:06:24.101 --> 00:06:26.270 create their own worlds and set the tone 00:06:26.270 --> 00:06:28.206 for what we will or won’t believe. 00:06:28.206 --> 00:06:30.503 To participate in the worlds games create, 00:06:30.503 --> 00:06:33.763 we happily accept time travel, superpowers, 00:06:33.763 --> 00:06:36.003 ancient alien civilizations, 00:06:36.003 --> 00:06:38.498 the ability to carry infinite items, 00:06:38.498 --> 00:06:41.179 the idea that eating a hot dog can instantly 00:06:41.179 --> 00:06:44.051 heal your wounds, and a million other fictions. 00:06:44.051 --> 00:06:46.466 It’s certainly not too much to ask that these 00:06:46.466 --> 00:06:49.176 fictional worlds give us believable female combatants too. 00:06:49.176 --> 00:06:51.971 The media we engage with has a powerful impact 00:06:51.971 --> 00:06:54.205 on our ideas of what’s believable and what’s not. 00:06:54.205 --> 00:06:56.190 Games like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate 00:06:56.190 --> 00:06:58.394 demonstrate that when the existence of female combatants 00:06:58.394 --> 00:07:00.965 is presented as straightforward, normal and believable, 00:07:00.965 --> 00:07:03.383 players have no problem believing it. 00:07:03.383 --> 00:07:04.770 And they shouldn’t, since, 00:07:04.770 --> 00:07:07.168 unlike those magical healing hot dogs I mentioned, 00:07:07.168 --> 00:07:09.275 female combatants actually exist.