The Hypocritical Wokeness Of Ubisoft (The Jimquisition)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- / jimquisition
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For years, Ubisoft performed a progressive lie, broadcasting its "wokeness" while abusive predatory executives claimed women can't sell.
Today's video looks at that hypocrisy, the hypocrisy that Ubisoft has indulged in for perhaps its entire existence. A public pantomime of inclusivity, and a private culture of hate, harassment, and outright assault.
#Ubisoft #YvesGuillemot #Woke #Diversity #AssassinsCreed #FarCry #HyperScape #WatchDogs #Games #Game #Gaming #Videogames #JimSterling #Jimquisition
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Twitter: / jimsterling
Facebook: / jimsterling0
Bandcamp of the Sax Dragon - carlcatron.ban...
Nathan Hanover - / @nhsynthonicorchestra
"This game was made by people with a variety of sexual allegations"
Great
LOL. That’s funny but true too.
And the people they targeted....
Omgosh how diverse!
Alternatively this game was managed by people who think they’re the protagonist of far cry 3
I'm starting to think Jim retired the 'Oh Ubisoft' thing because the company's actions had gone from eye-rolling to stomach churning.
It's a bit hard to use the 'Allo Allo' theme now.
Nows its more
"* Gagging * Ubisoft!"
Yeah, "Oh Ubisoft" doesn't even come close to covering this.
Agreed. It was good move too because there's nothing lighthearted or laughably bad about their actions anymore.
I honestly want to kill those who are guilty. Shame the law prohibits murder
Ubisoft went from a joke to genuinely disgusting.
The more disgusting people are those that continue to buy their products
@@aceclover758 That makes no sense but sure
@@Dazen101 Actually it does.
You know about this and still pre order their next games.
Reward the behavior.
And people blame the “free market” when no one is forcing you to line these executive s pockets
@@aceclover758 Ummm. I'm pretty sure the more disgusting people were the rapists, dude. Like, I appreciate what you were trying to do there but no. In the words of Norm McDonald "I think the worst part was the raping"
@@aceclover758 While i cannot disagree that boycott can be a powerful way to straighten out businesses, i don't think it's completely fair to put the burden of guilt on the consumers for buying a product from the company. One could equally say that everyone who works for Ubisoft are just as bad as some members of the company who are the problem. Kind of a stupid remark to be honest. There are plenty of business owners who could hardly be called 'human' but people still use them. Look at Amazon for example. It's hard to say for sure if we can truly say that buying a product from a business is 'rewarding' the behavior when literally everyone is actually contributing to it whether they know it or not; and whether they want to or not. Not much escaping it, but bringing these specific people in the limelight is a good start to addressing the issues those specific people bring.
"Women don't sale."
*Holds meetings at strip clubs*
If you're gonna lie you better be good at it.
Right?! That's hypocrisy on display, one lap dance at a time
Are you, and Jim since he always was sarcastic about this, suggesting that naked women be plastered all over video games? Because using strip clubs and porn to prove your point only works when you talk about the fact that said women that sell are naked. Cool argument in favour of objectification. I approve.
@@Northwite Hahah, yes, I'm being sarcastic. I'm down for strip clubs when I was single and had the cash.
@@Northwite Not saying that, but there's plenty of cases where women willingly use sex appeal to their advantage be it financially or otherwise. I don't give a fuck about the "issue" of objectifying because in reality it comes down to sex sells (For men AND Women),deal with it.
@@Northwite Jesus. Gotta make everything people say into a sexistic accusation, eh?
I used to think it would be hard to not buy Ubisoft and EA games anymore, but everything they produce lately is shit, so it's been pretty easy
Well I kind of feel like everything is shit lately and that's not related to bad human resource departments so much as... bad gaming trends...
Honestly I haven't bought a ubisoft or EA game in about 7-8 years now and I am happier for it.
@GiRayne Well if you'd like to change my mind you could send me a review of each game from a source you feel highlights their best features.
Man ive completely stopped buy new games. I have more then i would need for the rest of my life and the new ones are all full of in your face woke bs or monetized to the extreme. They can't take the old ones from me though so it is where i will "live"
@GiRayne I did play Odyssey for around 60 hours on a lent copy, on all that time the story went nowhere and the copy pasted content was never ending. Also the progression was terrible, and I dreaded leveling up because without the "time savers", it would mean I would have to go grind to get my gear back up to speed every time. We may not agree, but me calling the game shit is not misinformed.
"Women don't sell"... says the Ubisoft executive having a business meeting in a strip club.
Tomb Raider
Resident Evil
Dino Crisis
Valkyrie Profile
Parasite Eve
Bayonetta
Metroid
_Dead or Alive_
_Senran Kagura_
_Hyperdimension Neptunia_
@@trollconfiavel I miss Parasite Eve.
Selling on the basis of sexual appeal and selling on the basis of identity are two different things. If Ubisoft could've sold multi-million units based on the former like Team Ninja does with Dead Or Alive without the social stigma, I'm sure they would've done it. But they had no interest in the latter, because the higher ups have no experience treating women as people with identities it seems.
*Troll confiável* Fire Emblem (regularly has Female protagonists as well as male and newer games allow the option for both)
@@jackgebhardt2932 as much potential as Metal Gear Solid series
"Employee strangling, food spiking, serial harasser."
Sounds like a legit Ubisoft game antagonist.
Sounds like a legit Ubisoft game protagonist.
so, all far cry antagonists were just autobiographies?
There's the writer's inspiration for you.
...and remember how they gave away watch dogs 2? I remember thinking "...all these is the stuff you guys are doing" while playing the story part of the game, & it was before these news broke out;;;
So either people in charge have such a thick skin that it can deflect a bullet, or this is SOS message from the devs;;; probably both...
That’s more than just sexual harassment that’s felony assault and attempted murder.
"Woke brands" is what happens when capitalism absorbs and co-opts the language of social movements for profits and clout. They have no problems with abuse and bigotry outside of the public eye because their wokeness is a performative marketing gimmick.
@Los Matadorès If those individuals aren't in a position of power and aren't affecting other people, then they're not the ones we need to be as worried about.
Los Matadorès Okay but supporting social justice and doing shittons of cocaine are both not contradictory at all and fun and good
@Los Matadorès Doing lots of coke and also fighting for social justice is extremely cool and good actually
@Los Matadorès The only problem with coke is that it's too expensive, working class people can't afford a proper binge every weekend
@Los Matadorès Gotta correct you there, robbing people is not cool unless they're so rich it's not gonna matter to their quality of life
"Ubisoft likes to pretend it's woke"
That's every single large corporation. Not a single one of them actually cares. Their rainbow flag social media avatars, their woke advertisements, their token donations to charities, their empowering messages... All of it is just marketing, nothing more, nothing less. They're following a trend they think will get them sales.
I was never more disgusted than the last few months when people were demanding Brands "comment on social issues" like any of them actually cared, like any of them would actually do more than token gestures. Brands and corporations are not your friends, your allies, your supporters. They cannot be. They aren't people, no matter what the law says.
If they're listed on the stock market, the only thing they can do is try to make as much money as possible, because that is what the investors demand. And we are the investors.
To kind of play the Devil's Advocat here, the flip side of it is that companies are realizing that it IS more profitable and a good image to play to that social image. This is a good thing, because the more that image is presented, the more that racists, homophobes, misogynist etc... get the message that they are not wanted, and that companies are fine not taking their money. Plus the more that this stuff like this comes to light and the more that it contradicts what they've been saying, that company will have to either put their money where their mouth is, or be shown as liars and lose all that marketing money that they're trying to bank on (or they'll just try to ignore the problem as they are doing now).
Basically I would prefer a company who pretends to be woke cause it makes them money over a company who doesn't care if it seems un-woke.
They are all populated by white men each with enough of a void inside their chest that they want to keep fighting for their life to remain king of the hill, yeah.
That said, doing grassroots stuff demanding that they comment on issues can be a powerful activism tool because of their power and influence. A few people can start a lot of discourse if they can convince a few companies to make some good PR moves for a change.
Literally every single choice ever is done as marketing that's not some grand statement you're making you're not some intelligent dude for saying this
@@LevelUpLeo Of course there's a correlation between embracing current left politics and good PR but if the cultural zeitgeist were to ever shift again you know these game devs wouldn't give half a shit
As Sterling himself said, corporations are wilds animals and should be treated as such.
Never stop hounding these criminals, Jim.
@slapypenguins101 You believe rich white people that do bad things go to jail. How adorable.
And more seriously? In order for them to be prosecuted, their victims would have to go on a several-year-long ardurous legal battle against the best and most expensive lawyers those omega males can buy.
@slapypenguins101 Call me back when you start making sense.
@slapypenguins101 You're a naive fella, aren't you? It wasn't until a mob backlash that Weinstein's allegations got taken to fucking court
@@sir.williamii5289 Naw, he ain't naive. He's just a corporate mouthpiece.
@@BrotherRoga You're probably right.
Replace Yves Guillemot with three Rabbids in a trenchcoat
Replace him with what he already is? I don't understand.
A half-eaten breakfast would do a better fucking job
Rabbids would be better
Ubisoft Studios: BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
While that would definitely be great, I'd also settle for someone who just isn't an abuser.
I can't believe people use the term, "alpha male" unironically. It reeks of desperation and insecurity.
"Any man who has to proclaim I Am The King, is no true King." - Tywin Lannister
According to business insider 70% (nice round percentile divisible by 5... Hmm) of successful executives are 'alpha' males. Ew.
@@brianjensen5661 Self identify as Alpha Males, I'm willing to bet.
sociopaths are overrepresented among corporate executives (sociopathy is diagnosable and well-defined, w.r.t. psychology); "alpha males" neither are nor aren't, since "being alpha" is very ill-defined.
That is a exactly why
"Women Don't sell" does Ubisoft know that their female Templars were the most popular characters in their now dead online mode for AC?
@Jordan B. Peterson's Pet Communist Lobster that may be a huge factor but I always thought it was Ubisoft's shit record with online games and hackers/breaking their online after fixing it. like R6 siege which could be great but jumps around from being a fair and fun game to broken and filled with hackers to fun again with good hitboxes to shit with broken hitboxes and OP characters. I think the division speaks for itself and Far Cry has always been a mess but still fun just 100 times more broken with a friend.
Or that Horizon Zero Dawn exists? And sold 10 million long before it came to PC?
In a way(and Im not trying to make up excuses, just trying to explain what I want to point out), most people in the gaming community are in fact, male. It is not a crazy thing to say that it is easier to just do male characters in videogames. We, males are the bigger audience after all.
In the other hand? Who cares? I didn't care about it when I played the RE games, or Tomb Raider... And sure there aren't many( I know there are more games female protagonists but nowhere near as with male characters) but is it really necessary to make everything 50-50% for the sake of it? In 30 years it could be the other way around and games have more females characters instead but you won't see us complaining... The only ones that would are the few anti-social mysoginists kids that can't talk to women irl.
The real issue is not even whether female character sell or not... cause it's not even relevant. No game sells because of the main protagonist's gender. It's the fact that they are not able to realize that anyone who actually loves playing video games won't even care whether a game has a female or a male in.
Other than that, yeah... shame on Ubisoft. Next time they should do some research, use statistics instead, but they had to say something really, really dumb.
@@tarnishedpose I mean most gamers are male due to companies in the 80s to 90s deciding they were the primary demographic and most focusing on us the the exclusion of anyone outside that demographic. Then it became reinforced with dudes becoming gatekeepy and not trusting women who wanted to joined. Then dudes raised believing gaming was exclusively for them kept spreading the message to the point of becoming hostile to anyone that wanted any expanding of the demographic and thinking that any attempt was gonna be a takeover that would end videogames.
@@coldfrost3 you're taking a lot of autonomy away from women with that bs narrative. women can do what they want, and overwhelmingly they're not interested in playing video games, in making video games, in video game technology, and so on. Any girl who calls herself a gamer could tell you how she has trouble making female friends with shared interests. Hi.
Virtue signaling is like when Bethesda changed their twitter icon to gay everywhere but the middle east and Russia.
Or companies that talk about racism while supporting the Chinese Communist Party, who's busy running concentration camps with forced labor.
And like them all, the icons reverted at the stroke of midnight when the month ended.
U mean they changed it to rainbow colours. I don't think u can make a JPEG gay.
Bibis Product Placements I am pretty sure we can make jpeg gay.
michimatsch Thus, GayPEG was born
"Women don't sell" does a lot of explaining as to why Beyond Good and Evil 2 is taking so long to get made!
And also they're not making the game about her.
@@davidspring4003 I was so disappointed by the trailer for BGE2 because of that. From what I saw, it looked more like a game dressed up like BGE than a sequel.
Also why they’re turning it into another Ubisoft open world game as a service with RPG elements like every other Ubisoft game out there. They all look alike because they’re all green lighted by the same person who’s now not in the company anymore.
"Women don't sell"
Errr, have you seen any kind of advertisement lately for ... basically, ANY product?
I'd argue that's less about buying a product that features a woman and more about selling the idea to men that buying said product would help you obtain a woman.
@@bmw126p But a lot of action games feature female protagonists or have done so. Some of them ONLY feature female protagonists. The only reason theres been a relative difficulty selling female protagonists in action series is because the AAA action scene has been carefully marketed towards men for so long that few people interested primarily in games with female protagonists are not looking towards American videogame companies for action titles.
This is a case of Ubisoft and company letting a field go fallow and then somehow thinking it can't be cultivated, even though Nintendo and other Japanese companies make plenty of *action* titles with female leads that sell quite well.
And part of the proof of this is that american made actions giggles that featured female leads used to sell quite well. A lot of people have said they were interested in Lara Croft initially specifically because she was a female character, and many of these people were not present for the fanservice, either. But these customers have turned to Japanese games for relatable protagonists in action titles. This is part of what fueled the market of Japanese cultural imports in the first place. Its arguably not the only, or even the first, Japanese submarket to attract an audience, and thus, not the ultimate cause of that, but it definitely helped.
Today, me and my sisters play a *lot* of titles that feature female protagonists heavily. Some of these games are action, (and I can name one that's American, even,) and arguably *most* are. That's a small sampling size, but we're in good company. And its thanks to final fantasy in particular that we ever became interested in Japanese fiction at all.
@Unknown Error You think people aren't aware of the context he said it in? We know what topic he said it on, that's why Jim called him an incompetent prick. Abusive morons make up reasons why they don't want women leads in their games, winners make TLOU2 and break all sales records.
@@bmw126p Yes because Horizon was such a flop for Sony and Aloy hasn't gone on to become one of the iconic new characters this Gen.
I would have enjoyed Odyssey way less, maybe even not slogged through the 140 hrs if it wasn't for Kassandra.
All I'm saying is Assassin's Creed: Black Flag taught me how fun being a pirate is so I'm going to use that lesson for future consideration when looking at Ubisoft games.
it's not piracy. It's SURPRISE USER DISCOUNTS.
No, don't even pirate the games. Leave it totally dead and unplayed.
What are you talking about, "All I'm saying?" You didn't babble beforehand; you missed a step.
At this point, pirating Ubisoft games isn’t even worth it (time is money and all that). It’s easy to boycott a company if you don’t even like their products. Almost as easy as boycotting Facebook.
Any company that claims something done in Fallout 3 is too hard or expensive should show some dignity by shutting down on the spot.
Ubisoft is genuinely repulsive. I'm glad you're talking about these things Jim. I hope your mental health is doing okay. Stay safe.
I'm sure the other slimy AAA publishers are just as bad if not worse. The only thing separating them from Ubisoft is that Ubisoft got caught. If they have to preach how "virtuous and progressive" they are, they probably have skeletons in their closets they don't want exposed.
I'm getting kinda worried about Jim. He's not wrong about Ubisoft, but he's getting so... not sure the word but he needs a vacation
@@GamaScythe "Burned out" is the concept you're looking for, but I think at this point, anyone paying attention has gone a bit past that point. ._.
@@DetectiveBarricade nice whataboutism. That's very productive and helpful.
@@Tquintv I'm not defending Ubisoft. I'm merely saying we shouldn't ignore the likes of EA and Activision Blizzard while condemning Ubisoft for their disgusting practices of shielding abusers.
Remember assassin‘s creed liberation? that AC game that stared a woman and was only available on handheld with no advertisement? That game was a part of their self fulfilling prophecy of “Women don’t sell”
Evie Frye in Syndicate was also going to have more mandatory missions the story was going to be 50/50 between her and her brother but Jacob ended up taking up the spotlight.
AC Origins, Aya was also meant to be the main character of that game which is why the ending of the game was about her. But you spend the majority playing as her husband.
Evie was awsome i finished the stuff with Jacob fast so i could finish the rest with Evie and i loved every second of it.
🤣
AC Unity, Elise wasn't playable because they claimed it would take a long time to animate her. Came out recently that the animation team was able to make her playable within an hour and management lied.
Liberation is my favorite, and solely bought AC3 on PS4 just so I can play it again
@@personalspace6270 I played all of the open-world stuff with Evie. It's a shame half of her story missions revolved around cleaning up Jacob's mess. At least she got the spotlight in the Jack the Ripper DLC.
Watching videos like this make me wonder:
Is it really *that* hard to be simply a decent f*cking human being?
Nope, but it is hard to be a decent human being *and* rise to the tippy-top ranks of a company. Business tends favor a very particular breed of obnoxious arrogant heartless b*stard who believes treading on underlings and squeezing them till their pips squeak equals "power."
@@blatherskite3009 history has shown that kind of does equal power lol
I think the reason all the rich superheroes inherited their money is because no one can accumulate that kind of wealth without being unethical to a concerning degree.
@@StupidCommentaryChannel which history?
@@MrZerothejedi Human history. Especially once a group accrues a certain amount of power. They tend to get more and more sadistic about keeping it.
"Women don't sell"
* Laughs in Lara Croft, Samus Aran, Bayonetta, Shantae, Céleste, Aloy, Rayne, Heather Mason, Miku Hinasaki, Aya Brea, Jill Valentine, etc, etc... *
I just pictured all of those characters giving Ubisoft the middle finger as a response to that BS.
@@CyberAnko can we add Witcher Ciri drawing a silver sword to the mix ?
Women have been selling for YEARS. Ubisoft saying dumb shit like that makes no sense because they obviously haven’t been paying attention.
you just named a bunch of women that don't sell, the most famous is lara croft and the sales for the recent tomb raider games were disappointing
jill valentine is just one character in resident evil and she is in like 2 of the mainline games
@@pegamais1282 is it the silver one because they're monsters?
"Passive progressive" is a good way to describe these companies.
'what can we say to appeal to a wider audience'
"Women Don't Sell"
This, again, is why DontnoD had difficulty getting Remember Me published. They moved that game from company to company and the response was always the same. "Make the protagonist male, or at least remove the romance scene because boys don't want to play as a woman kissing a man."
Thank goodness Capcom, for all their faults at the time, weren't so cretinous as to push that BS and published the game for them.
Someone tell them that WOMEN HAVE MONEY TOO.
Well the game also flew under the radar and got forgotten pretty quickly too so the name was a bit ironic.
still bitter we never got to see the romance Nilin should have had.
*Tomb Raider, Metroid, Telltale's The Walking Dead, Bayonetta and Okami developers would like to know your location*
@@caldw615 Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier Automatica, Life is Strange, etc.
You are missing the important point - they see this toxicity as beneficial, since it filters out anyone who would ever speak up about anything else. They want employees who are too cowed or terrified to threaten them within the company hierarchy, to ensure that they - the abusers - remain 'indispensable'. It is a deliberate move on Guillemot's part to build a cult of personality within the corporation, and he is far from the only business head (in the gaming industry and elsewhere) who does this.
Well, it's not fucking beneficial anymore is it!?!
The cats out of the bag for Mr. Throatclearer and his cronies!
Everyone knows UBISOFT has been full of and ran by a clusterfuck of trash cans!
The problem is these abuses STILL go unprosecuted by authorities and the gaming community STILL will not hold UBISOFT to account for the pervasive culture of abuse.
Far Cry will sell
Valhalla will sell
Gamers continue to turn a blind eye
And round and round we go
Circling the drain
Ever closer to the oblivion we so thoroughly deserve
Important note of personal virtue signaling:
I bought AC Odyssey a couple of months ago when it was on sale and before I knew about any of this shit.
I played as Kassandra because I wanted to play as Aya in Origins, a game I also got on sale. I did get to play as Aya...for about 5 minutes total and that pissed me the fuck off! Why would you tease me like that? I wanted to be a female assassin in Egypt!!! That would have been fucking righteous!!!
So, I jumped at the opportunity to play as Kassandra and frankly, I don't know how the game even looks playing as Alexios!
To be fair, I did NOT buy the game for Kassandra! But being a female demigod was awesome!
Post script
I didn't buy any of the ridiculous microtransaction cancer from either game because...
YUCK!
he's not missing that point, that is Jim's literal point, and he finds it repugnant.
it's called "Narcissistic management"
Oh gosh, you're right
Idk if anyone else already made this joke, but: Abusisoft™
Pretty clever, although "Abusoft" rolls somewhat better off the tongue (and "abus" is how "abuse" is spelled in French, which is apt given the company we're talking about)
@@Riboshom Even without french, it just sounds like "abuse soft"
Aurevoirisoft
Rapeisoft
A long time ago I was the sole employee of a car detailing business. My boss used to drag me to a strip club for lunch. I hated it. Sitting there, eating lunch while naked women shake their shit in your face is amazingly uncomfortable.
Gross, really.
Also, corporate culture is indeed designed to promote the sociopath and punish the humanist.
"promote the sociopath and punish the humanist" boy that makes me lose hope.
@@33melonpaws77 Sorry friend.
Just remember that in the past when things were worse everything seemed even more hopeless.
@@junkandcrapamen *waves the not-giving-up flag*
@@33melonpaws77 My favorite flag!
See what's interesting is I never took the 'inclusiveness' warning at the start of Ubisoft games to be one of stating diversity of the workplace, but more of a preemptive trigger warning response from those that would be knee jerked offended by the content of their games, as they often do a bit of whitewashing, historical 'smoothing' of some figure's edges (Assassin's Creed III has *loads* of this) and conversely, occasional character assassination (No pun intended) that is undeserved. I took this always to basically be a, "Hey we don't hate Christians/Muslims/Africans/Slaves/Germans/British/whoever else is the 'bad' guys this time, we had those same people on the design staff!" And to me, this was always more cynical than what it sounds like was the actual reason.
Also the x doesn't sell excuse is born of something, I feel, that is much more subversive and sad: they think it doesn't sell and needs to be abandoned because *they* can't sell it. EA doesn't think horror doesn't sell, not because people don't like horror games, but because EA games makes shitty horror games. But they can't say that, they can't admit that, so it must be the genre. The film industry does the same thing: No one likes Sword and Sandals movies, that was the voice for almost 30 years, then Gladiator blew the doors off. Pirate Movies don't sell, and then Disney made all the money with Pirates of the Caribbean. *CRAPPY* Swords and Sandals movies don't sell. Crappy Pirate movies don't sell. People *tend* to respond to quality though. Single player games overall outsell Multiplayer games: the most 'iconic' series of video games across the board are either primarily, or solely, Single Player experiences or lean heavily thereon. But they are easy to fuck up and then its easier to blame that, then bad leadership.
That, I believe, was exactly what it was for originally. Assassins Creed 1 was already hotly debated before it came out as to whether it was okay for a team of white people to be dictating the history of Muslims and the cruisades. So that was added to basically say "It's okay. No politics here, guys!"
As for your other point, super hero movies fought against the stigma of "Women don't sell" for decades because Elektra and Cat woman were box office bombs (Cat Woman having the double whammy of also being a non-white lead). And yet, movies like Steel or Daredevil or even MCU flops like Iron Man 2 or Incredible Hulk never "proved" that white male lead super hero movies don't sell. It took a long, long time before they could convince the nasty little bigots in Disney to make a super hero movie starring a black person. And further pushing to get one of the WOMZ as a lead.
Now that Kevin Feige has assumed direct control, suddenly all of these diverse characters he'd always wanted to use are getting their time in the spotlight.
@@DragonNexus Every time someone complains about politics being used, you can be sure this person is against people's rights for minorities. It's a way liberal d*cks use to make these discussions hollow so they can fill it with whatever they want.
TLDR
Its certainly true that some of it is "we don't know how to make it" but its also a lot of it is "its easier to make what we already make, again, and again" so they try to convince people that what they really want is what they're getting.
@@nathaniliescu4597 Admitting one can't read long texts by using an abbreviation. I'm guessing American.
I've argued with people before about how companies like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision only pretend to care about being "woke" and "inclusive" when they think it is profitable. None of them care one bit about these causes, they only say they do because the PR department told them that "Caring sells"
It's wild to see right-ringers turn this around on its head, and argue big companies are pushing a sinister woke agenda to destroy conservatism or whatever. When in reality, yeah, it's just a hollow nothing-gesture to try and fend off revolution. If anything, smart right-wingers should, and often do, embrace superficial reformism.
Like when a giant mega-corporation gives money to charity, the only reasons they are doing it are 1.) the money doesn't mean much to them in the first place since they have billions, 2.) it makes them look good to do it, and 3.) doing it usually qualifies them for a tax break.
Get woke get broke or something like that XD
So it's a good thing then? since gamers seems to hate "woke" companies 🙄
"Women Don't Sell" So why are you going to strip clubs then?
and watching porn at the office
of the game company they run
where women in media don't seem to sell?
*confused Pikachu is confused*
But making fictional females be hot is misogynistic because they don't have a choice to not be hot, haven't you been keeping up with Resetera, Kotaku, Polygon and ex-tumblr-now-twitter crowd?
And why did tomb raider sell well?
@@rodrigo2430 ...except that saying "Almost every single female character in videogames being designed to be hot before anything else is sexist" is not the same as saying "fictional females being hot is misogynistic". Lay off the KotakuInAction, mate.
People go to strip clubs to see, and interact with, female bodies in a sexual context. The actual women underneath the skin are completely irrelevant.
God I hate companies pretending they are "woke" while being some of the worst enablers of the toxic behavior they pretend to dislike. Thank you for putting more eyes on stuff like this Jim, as an actual leftist it hurts our message is diluted by trash like Ubisoft.
They only have to cater to the faux-left. Once Ubisoft gets those people to shut up it's smooth sailing from there. Easier to just please those people who will either move onto the next problem next week or blindly look at the the "wokeness" and be okay with that.
It's okay to be white - Sincerely from a real 100% Asian
Corporatize the message so you can look like the good guy. It's the same way billionaires buy publicity by donating to charity and having it publicized by the media. Karma whoring is a game for the rich to cover up the skullduggery, since most people are complacent enough to let it slide. We won't fight back against a broken system.
No company of a "decent" seize is "woke". They just create the Brand that seems most profitable to the marketing department. The only good thing about "woke" companies is that they think portraying decent human behavior is more profitable than being an asshole. Ergo more people like decent humans over assholes. (hopefully) (go away "cynical me" pls...)
If you see a company broadcasting a "woke" message, treat them with suspicion and mistrust. Anything a company puts out is intended SOLELY to part you from your money. This is why I scoffed at all those black squares of solidarity while those same companies were silent on the human rights crisis in Hong Kong.
For a second there, I honestly couldn't figure out what was wrong with "dogfighting minigames." Then I realized you weren't talking about airplanes.
Warp Zone Wait then what are... oh... yikes.
Same here. I was scratching my head going, "But dogfighting would be a great part of aerial...oh shit, no."
That brought back memories of the varren fighting ring in me2
It hadn't clicked for me before I read this comment. I also was wondering what was wrong with areal combat. That often tends to be rather boring, though.
@@kurgo_ I hated that minigame. Even though I love ME2.
It's wild how childish behavior is often propped up as "incredibly manly" by a certain subset of people. I'm sure there are essays and rants being written about how Sergei's pounding his head because he's bored is a sign of "alpha energy" and he's not "evolved for office work" and "forcing a lion into a cage might get you slashed."
All to justify an overgrown manbaby with poor impulse control. JoJo Rabbit had it right.
My experience, even speaking as a male, has thus been that the term "Being A Man" doesn't mean what people (namely, men) think it means. Or rather, it means the OPPOSITE of what people (namely, men) think it means.
People (namely, men) think it means something like being responsible, strong, confident and above all, masculine. Instead, what qualifies as "Being A Man" seems to be behaving like a belligerent, drunk toddler who screams and stamps whenever someone (namely, women) try to get them to be responsible for literally anything. It seems to be about pretending the world will either laugh off or ignore repulsive behavior because "Fuck you, I'm a man!".
So like other things in life I have become disillusioned by, I've stopped trying to be a "Man" and have instead decided to be an adult, because "Being An Adult" actually implies responsibility and discipline. "Being An Adult" means being able to behave in a sociably acceptable manner.
So if you see someone (namely, men) trying to "Be A Man", tell them to grow up.
I've had male friends that act like this. It took me years to realise that i can't stand their behavior, their high school level understanding of "maleness" or the insults disguised as jokes that everyone was supposed to put up with. Suffice to say my life is much better without them. It boggles the mind that some people never grow beyond this and end up being 50 and still acting like stupid children.
What the hell are you talking about, who's propping up his baby like behaviour as "incredibly manly"?
@@MrCrunchytime What if they're "being a man" in terms of the first way you described?
@@ShockedBones then they're not being a man. They're being mature human beings.
Saying that "being a man" means to be responsible, strong and confident, it indirectly implies that it is a exclusive to us, men.
And its not... Women can be those things too... And you wouldnt be saying they're "being a man", wouldnt ya? That proves the point.
Also, that being manly has been mistaken by acting as brain dead narcissist asshole in many cases. Thus, the idea itself that this is how men are(used to as it came from older generations of our society) lead to many men to justify that kind of behavior under the "being a man".
I start to miss the good old "Bethesda bad" times. These were quite funny... this is just fu*ed up.
Who knows? Maybe Bethesda might have some corpses in their closets
@@CBRN-115
I am quite convinced almost every Triple-A publisher has a ton of shit underneath their facades. Like every publisher happily defines crushing as a "necessary evil" while demanding absurd release dates and never voluntarily taking a step back, I don't find it hard to imagine that other publishers are also all too familiar with abuse culture in their studios. I'm glad people like Jim Sterling shine some light on Ubisoft's affairs and I hope they are by far the worst, but I really wouldn't be suprised if we will hear about abuse at Activision Blizzard, 2K, Take 2 and the likes in a matter of time.
@@jayhill2193 Honestly Jim Sterling should rank the morality of all the Triple AAA publishers on a list ala WickedBinge. If Jim sees at least one of them as not evil, the video would be called Triple AAA Publishers Good to Evil. If Jim sees all of them as evil, the video would be called Triple AAA Publishers Evil to Most Evil. I predict the more likely outcome of the two is the latter.
@@jayhill2193 A wise assessment. I imagine it's because this behavior is not a function of the culture specific to this industry, but rather a function of corporate culture in general. Gaming just hasn't had MeToo or PayUp hit it like they've hit film & TV. A reckoning is upon these corporate giants, and it is long overdue.
You mean BUGTHESDA 😏
"Adding optional female characters would be too difficult."
Funny, the endless list of games where you get to create your character, and even change their height or body type, don't seem to have any problem doing just that. In some of them you can even change them on the fly! Like in the Saints Row sequels or the 3D Fallout games.
Or, I dunno, the previous game they copied the code from... It's pathetic how stupid they think we are, and it's worse how often they get away with it.
Edit: for clarity, I'm referring to how the first time they made a big deal of this, to my knowledge, was when they removed playable women from the copy pasted multiplayer despite the previous one having them, because "it's too hard".
AC 3 Liberation even had most of the animations for Aveline pulled straight from Connor. Or at least they shared a lot of animations, so it isn't that hard, they should already know that
With most of these games women would have a less playboy model figure and one not far off from the men because the environment and circumstances of their lives would lead them to have an extremely low body fat ratio. So were they really complaining because they couldn't justify jiggle physics to the share holders or because they didn't want digital girl cooties in their clubhouse. (betting it's the latter the fucking wankers)
They don't seem to have but they do. Character customization multiplies the amount of work that needs to be done.
LOL i remember the exact time they said this meme. It was assassins creed odyssey Q&A about how does the animus read 2 peoples D.N.A at once. Also why was Alexios marketed and on the cover, but not kassandra. Kassandra was only introduced during the games official game play showing lol. After running out of contradictional lame excuses. They gave us this glorious meme. They erased so many comments after everybody went in lol. One of the main reactions is what you just wrote. E.A made a similar statement during a controversy with that star wars game. Then some hackers dug into the game and discovered they were lying lol.
I honestly think the crazy idea of “women don’t sell” for Ubisoft is still a hangover from Beyond Good And Evil not selling like craZy about a zillion years ago.
It's not an idea unique to Ubisoft though, not by a long-shot. Maybe they'll point at it, but that's disingenuous at best.
I think it only sold as it did because it was for Xbox.
Honestly when that console started most I saw on forums at the time was mockery, gaming pretty much only started accepting Microsoft until after Halo 2, sometimes even til the 360.
And yet a sequel to it remains one of their most out spoken requests among the community LOL. Seriously haven't given a single shit about any Ubisoft game since that one, and was super excited when finally they announced BG&E2 but now? Only crickets and a whole lot of nothing from them...SMH
I didn't help that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time had all of their marketing dollars at the time either.
@@Alice89chan Nah it was a PS2 game too, and I think the poor sales may have been to do with BG+E coming out around the same time as two big sequels
Let's be honest here: they think women would take too much time & effort to integrate because they believe they'd have to integrate a DOA-style jiggle physics system and seductive mo-cap, not because of any legit scalability issues.
“This product was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities.”
This doesn't mean anything.
You can put that statement on cotton produced in the CSA, and it would still be true.
It's basically the corporate business equivalent of the "some of my best friends are black" defense that racist assholes use.
That's like a prison guard putting prisoners in charge of violently beating other prisoners.
Yeah, when they have a team of a thousand people, there's obviously gonna be people of every type. I mean come the fuck on. That is the most hollow statement Ive seen.
When that message popped on the start of AC Odyssey (and i do admit i rant a lot about it, mostly cuz i got disapointed), the first thing that came to my head was "...well, fuck...".
That statement is where diversity starts and ends.
That cough is more truthful than any post the company has made.
"Straight, white, alpha males." Sounds like Ubi was going to branch into the erotic book market.
You know, with the decision to place the most recent Assassin's Creed in Ancient Greece you might be onto something
"Which one of us would you like to bang you"
Assassin's Creed: Wham!halla
@@dyldragon1 Right? I mean, ancient Greece definitely had misogyny and the letter "alpha", but they were VERY gay tho.
@@wl9162 Only the warrior aristoc... Oh, wait...
I'm not sure where the "women don't sell" idea comes from.
Especially since "sex sells" is one of the oldest marketing philosophies out there.
Hm, I don't wanna go there. We need to get away from the 'women = inherently sexual' and equating women/female bodies with sex. Time to go back and watch some oldie Jimquisitions 'Objectification and men' and ' the creepy cull of the female protagonists'.
There are many reasons, two of which are:
Alpha males are supposed to be what we strive to be, and women are the "prizes" for achieving this. Giving a female agency over a male is not the "natural" way of things.
Men only want to play as men. Playing as a woman is far too much to handle. Playing as an Assassin in a simulation to get information about a race of beings that predate humanity? That makes total sense! Playing as a woman when I'm a man? You've gone too far, I can't believe that!
To me, both arguments are attempting to hide massive insecurities.
V V this specific conversation is not the appropriate time to bring this up.
Wow this went on a tangent, my point was that you can't use the women don't sell argument, while using the sex sells philosophy.
There will always be fanservice, it exists in all mediums. As women make up more of the gaming public you will start to see fan service aimed at them.
I happen to like having strong female leads, you just don't see them too often in video games.
@@AethersPhil Most men i know play as women if the game give an option. Explanation for this is as follows: If i have to stare at an ass for hours when playing may as well make it a sexy one.
As far as AC goes their in-universe explanation on how it works would actually mean women protagnists are impossible due to how reproduction genetic transference works. (women produce eggs when their are teens that last them their lifetime. They dont produce more later meaning later experiences could not be genetically trasnfered to children).
Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice is another great game with a female lead.
Because it didn't shove it down your throat. Same with Horizon Zero Dawn.
@@BigDaddyDeepDish What does that mean though, "shove it down your throat?" Nobody is forcing you to buy any game.
Adam 🤘🏻 Exactly, games should shove characters down our throats less, like when a Ubisoft exec shoves a male lead down our throat for ten games because the developers wanted to have a female lead but he wouldn't let them.
@Veronique Benoit But that literally happened with every male AC protagonist. It's just posed to us as the "standard". Power fantasy games with male protagonist have always had writing like this. It's only when the protagonist in the power fantasy is a woman that a small but very vocal group of jerks complain. It's hypocritical.
@Veronique Benoit Fair enough. I just think, that since this medium is video games, that gameplay should be the main focus. The super-powerful protagonist trope (for all genders) is a thing that works really well in this medium, given its nature. If the writing is amazing that's a bonus.
The “women are difficult to animate” line wasn’t about protagonists, it was their stupid answer to why Unity’s multiplayer didn’t have female customization. I say “stupid,” because they had a valid, if lazy, excuse already. All players control Arno in the multiplayer. They were trying invoke a Brotherhood vibe with the marketing, of many Assassins working together in co-op. And instead, everyone is just Arno. They could have avoided that whole controversy by just being honest.
“Why are there no women in co-op?”
“Because there’s no character customization at all, everyone plays the same character.”
Of course, new context puts all that in a new light. Their response now appears to be a baked in attitude, and not a failed attempt at PR to a question they weren’t ready for. And thinking about it, not being ready for that question is indicative of the attitude, too. Since the previous games had male and female characters in multiplayer, they should have been ready to respond to their absence. But they weren’t.
@@arellajardin8188 if they had female characters in their previous games already then they probably had perfectly usable animations already. Really highlights how fucking shitty their views are.
I heard a story recently that the developers actually wanted Elise to have playable sections in the game but that Serge dude aka Mr Sexual Assaulter forced them to cut it
@mayrana2 yup, also the recent successes of games with female leads, TLOU 2, Horizon zero dawn, Tomb raider etc just shows that it really was due to sexism rather than any sort of financial concerns
@mayrana2 I'm a dude but I almost always use female characters in games when given the option especially if there's character customization since I find female characters more visually interesting if for no other reason
I like the use of "Status-quo warriors". Might as well use "Vice signalling" to what they do, in counterpoint to "Virtue signalling", that they pride themselves so much of accusing others.
"Women don't sell"
Yeah, that's why nobody ever played the unknown PS1 release Tomb Raider and that series never had another release ever again, several of which were definitely not part of the series' successful reboot twenty years later.
Honestly, I think we can chalk this down as the primary reason Beyond Good & Evil 2 never got a sequel. And the only way it did was to give you a customisable main character and not have you play as Jade.
I was 13 in 1996. Believe me there was nothing feminist in my looking at and controlling the movement and poses of that character. And yes, that amount of polygons were enough back then.
Because Angelina Jolie LOVES to star in franchises that don't sell, right Ubisoft? Ya tit!
@@terminationshock1356 Sure. But a lot of women have said since then that the first game they bought because it had a female lead that they could thus more easily relate to.
4 movies too
Can we add roles like "Chief Abuse Camouflager" and "Accosting Assistant" to credit crawls since a large part of the budget seems to go to that field. That's the real reason for 70$ games, don't you know!?
Director of Harassment
Ubisoft is like this guy I used to know. Claimed up and down to be the most woke guy in the room.
He dropped the N-bomb more frequently than all the black people I know combined. But its cool because he was just sooooo woke.
Ubisoft be like: guys, its fine! I can say it because Im woke!
yeah im sure you know SO many black people that use the N word freely. get real
@@Letiferify Uhhh that's the point of his comment? Regardless of how frequently the black people he knows are using the N-word, the "woke" guy was still using it more than them!
@THEGAMEGOD7777
@@Letiferify What's with the attitude, and what are you trying to imply?
Maybe it's small in the grand scheme of things, it only got like two seconds of background mentioning after all, but I'd like to bring attention to the enforcement of alcohol consumption.
That's not only abusive in its own right, and people who refuse to drink are very attractive targets for abuse down the line for whatever stupid reason, but it also fosters the sort of environment where people feel like they're complicit and need to keep up the hush, since alcohol and good decisions don't go together, and forces people into feeling like they're in the same boat as the people pressuring them.
I feel like it doesn't get enough attention, as it is both a weapon of abuse itself, but also facilitates abusive environments, and its role in these things tends to get swept under the rug.
Being totally non-alcoholic is hard.
Not to mention people who avoid alcohol for religious or medical reasons.
The reason why, look at what happened during prohibition and the current "War on Drugs" telling people no makes people want it more. YES people are gonna fuck up that's half the point of drinking. Yet to tell people no they can't do something because others don't like something isn't fair.
ExeErdna What on *earth* are you talking about. Please re-read the post you're replying to.
@@gl15col As both a vegetarian and a complete non-drinker of alcohol, I can confirm people get weirdly hostile about it... No one can just take "no, I'm not into that" as an answer, they always demand I explain why, or tell me I can "cheat just this once." Like bruh, it's not that complicated to just let me eat and drink what I want.
@@littlekitsune1 That's America for you. You are free to follow whatever culture consider Normal, but if decide to do something hat is not normal, well then you must be a freedom hating anti American. Free to be a blind follower.
The "X doesn't sell" argument is so weak. ANYTHING will sell if it's ACTUALLY GOOD, because, surprise surprise, people like quality products.
"X doesn't sell" is the same as "the people don't want that" in the restaurant trade. it's a cheap excuse made by people that either refuse to compromise/try something new, or don't want to be bothered.
Sadly, this is not true. Bad things sell a lot of the time, while good things languish. Games, music, movies, books, etc. Most things.
"Appealing to a wider audience" i find often doesn't fucking sell, especially for established franchises. Turning everything into COD sucks.
@Kathy Kat If anything. I'd argue that one of the reasons Ubisoft's games got so popular in the first place, is precisely because they attempted something new. In a world of modern military/sci fi/fantasy games, Assassin's Creed started doing historical fiction and relatively original settings for the medium. In a world of grey/brown shooters, Far Cry games went for sunny and colourful. It took a while for the main characters to be more diverse, but they went there as well. So if anything, the company should have been embracing their uniqueness and willingness to be more diverse and different.
The fact that these execs and project leads failed to recognise these strengths as their biggest selling point, and pushed for more generic lead characters and more generic stories. Just shows that these blokes in leadership positions were anything but creative. And instead makes them look like immature, unwilling to step outside their tiny comfort zone and just generally dull and uncreative. While a lot of the actual creative force of the company has been desperately trying to push their games in more interesting directions for over a decade now.
This is just not true with videogames. the most popular games are often objectively not the best games. plenty of good games dont sell simply because they dont get the marketing to right people and steams being qa trasheap doesnt help.
The "most powerful creative force" has kept making the same games for 10 years. If that's their best man, I'm scared to see the level of their second best one.
He literally throws shit at the walls to see what sticks.
"Women don't sell" *has a board meeting at a strip club* OBJECTION
maybe it was a gay strip club and they were there to make scummy, homophobic comments towards both the patrons and the workers?
@@Veolynn13 Only alpha males go to all male strip clubs.
I hate how many likes these stupid jokes got.
If you frame the "XYZ doesn't sell" or "XYZ is dead" claims as really being "We don't want to sell XYZ and here's why YOU are the reason for it" then it's clear how they are literally gaslighting in an attempt to justify their actions without claiming culpability.
It's trying to usurp the customer's sense of community (trying to make it seem like they're only part of a few who like a given genre of game or having female or minority leads worth a damn) and thus implicitly trying to undermine their purchasing power by making them think they are marginalised and so do not have the combined financial weight to ensure the kinds of games you like get made.
So there's another stomach turning business practice that these companies are actively engaging in with their CUSTOMERS, let alone the kinds of horrors I do not want to have to imagine they are inflicting upon their own staff.
If a company says "xyz doesn't sell", it usually means their sales department is shit.
"Women don't sell" has already been proven wrong so many times in the gaming industry, that anyone who says that as an excuse, should be fired on the spot for being an incompetent manager and salesman.
Remember the couple of years when the industry claimed that single player was dead and that everyone wanted multi-player. They'll always lie to change the market.
Industry: "XYZ doesn't sell"
IGA: *throws glass on the ground*
(btw, curse of the moon 2 is awesome)
"Literally Gaslighting" No, literal gaslight would be if they created a source of light, fuel by a gas form of combustible gas of some sort.
nikolaast stfu
Wait that "argument" is still a thing..? I thought the "women don't sell" thing died 19 (holy sh!t that's long ago) years with Tomb Raider?
Also, not sure it's because of the current information but god do a lot of those accused Ubi employees actually look like I imagine sexual predators...
I can´t put into words how tired I am of the "straight white alpha male" thing. I know, it is derived from wolves but even there that is not even true!
Those people really seem to be stuck ten years ago. Any game that has some snarling bald headed, face scarred, glum looking dude on the cover looking vaguely badass gets not much more than a groan from me. We want interesting characters, characters that are quirky and unique and don´t look like the cover of every military shooter game ever. You can tell that the guy in AC: Oddissey was pretty much tacked on by mandate because Kassandra is the actual canon one.
More people played as elexios so in a way they were proved right.
You don't think that those numbers were made up by the same people that defend their "Women don't sell" policy? The point is, I only ever see Alexios in review videos where they show footage of boh choices. LPers I watch, friends and myself only ever play as Kassandra. That is not even necessarily a general preference, but the generic male (or white male hetero alpha?) is so overdone that many are happy for a change.
Yup. Also notice how it's not people who are actually in control of society who call themselves 'alpha males'. Bill gates does not, warren buffet does not, and so on. It's pathetic internet fuqbois who do.
as a woman playing videogames since the 90', i couldn't agree more. So very very very very tired of this shit (that has survived from the age where i started to play)
@@alexsmith2910 In my experience, anybody that is not comfortable in their masculinity are the ones that try way too hard to be “alpha.” True alphas/chads would not have a temper tantrum if their girlfriend made them wear a pink shirt, for instance.
The same goes for the Trumpers at my store wearing increasingly loud Trump 2020 memorabilia with screeching bald eagles and ultra-muscular paintings of Donald Trump standing tall against “communists.” Not only is it pathetic, but it makes me wonder if deep down, these people genuinely doubt if everything they stand for is really putting “America First” and instead of reviewing the Constitution or actually fighting for true freedom and democracy Captain America-style, act as stereotypically ‘Murican as possible. They also tend to only come out of the woodwork whenever Donald Trump has a particularly bad day or a poll that scares them comes out...
Remember when the most controversial thing about Ubisoft was when they overused the word 'iconic'?
Yeah. Mario's hat is iconic. Aiden Pearce's hat is not. "Signature" is not necessarily iconic.
Maybe I don't, because according to the Jim Sterling timeline, the abuse was known about even during the "ironic iconic" word play.
as an ADHD person with the memory capacity of a goldfish, these periodical reminders of wich companies to give the middle finger to are very welcome. It's genuinely easy to just forget entirely about it whenever the hype machine gets going.
Lol, my ADHD is the complete opposite side of that coin. I'll hear about a very hyped game & go "oh wow cool", but then proceed to completely forget about its existence/any desire I had to buy it. Saves me a lot of money, at least...
Ugh. That whole female character thing still drives me nuts.
I've genuinely listened to developers go on about animation and workload and I'm just here thinking...
You know what? Personally I'd happily take the option of using a female character in a game even if it amounted to a minimum effort reskin where in effect the character is designed to use as many of the assets of the male avatar as possible (animations, clothing, etc.)
I mean, it reminds me of some MMO's which - and this has other benefits by the way. - have made a lot of their character assets as neutral as possible.
by which I mean, not that you don't have distinct clothing and animations, but that these aren't baked into any given avatar.
You wanna have a large male character using an animation set and emotes that's generally regarded as feminine, why shouldn't you be able to?
Some things are for technical reasons; A female avatar is likely to require altered clothing, due to different body proportions. (not different size; Different proportions. A character that's 1.4 metres tall can share the EXACT same assets as one that's 2.5 metres tall IF the proportions are the same. Uniform scaling is cheap. Complex alterations to proportions are not.)
Sure. That's true.
But if you have elaborate character customisation this isn't really relevant.
A halfling type character is going to have radically different proportions to an orc as well.
For that matter, a somewhat skinny male character is going to have notably different proportions to a very muscular male character...
And those differences are on the same order of complexity as male/female differences.
Frankly the whole thing is kinda ludicrous as a justification...
It wouldn't have been any more work if the main character was a woman and there was no male option, saving the devs from the crushing, soul-shattering work of creating two models and two animation skeletons. The poor dears.
But as I said, it could have been only one gender. Just like in the *five billion* other games Ubisoft released in the last ten years. The real message was of course 'giving the players a choice is harder, and we sure as shit aren't removing the Dude Option'. And now we know that the guy in charge at Ubisoft in fact did say literally that, and was as much of a massive prick as we all expected.
@@KillahMate Hell, I could make them two models and two animation skeletons. For free. Just so they don't have a goddamn excuse lmao. Blender has made doing so easy.
That being said, they'll need to find someone else to actually rig the model to the skeleton, because fuck vertex weight painting!
Meanwhile fan animators and people using assets say it's way quicker and easier to animate women because there's an abundance of free assets for them online.
Honestly I think my favorite approach is the SoulsBorne games, where you can customize your character and all, but 90% of the time you won't be able to instantly tell that they or any NPCs are female or male at a glance because everyone wears armor. I just personally think it's a cool aesthetic, but I also imagine it could help cut costs on differentiating animations and such if needed.
The thing about MMOs are, these animations often dont work with those characters. Not as in you cnat use them, but as in they clip through cloth/bodies etc. Thats ok in an MMO because people consider that quality acceptable, but in a game where such clipping would result in articles laughing at how badly the game is done and claiming that "its an easy fix" (its not) its best to just avoid them. They got enough shit for a fucking cape clipping into a neck in some animations because they didnt account for the size of the cape when designing it.
AC games have no character customization. Your protagonist is a single build so no scaling is ever needed for this. The customuzation starts and ends with clothing you wear and weapons you carry i guess but i dont think that needs much extra coding especially since large weapons often clip into the character showing they didnt actually account for that.
No, they are not. A skinny man still moves the same basic way, and still has the same basic proportions, just with less muscle. Just make the clothing smaller, done. A male and female character require completely separate animation sets, and completely separate models for the clothing.
"Women Don't Sell" sounds like something Vince McMahon firmly believes. Then again it also sounds like an actually pretty awesome title for an all female wrestling ppv.
That wrestling gimmick would be badass in the right hands.
Yes, Ubisoft. Tell us more about how woke you are after spending years covering for abusers.
Its always the ones that act all woke and virtue signal non stop..
Ubisoft:B,but we support black lives matter! We are the paragons of virtue! Please buy out microtransactions
@@CBRN-115 we put gay vikings to our new game we support lgbqt!!
Fourthspartan56 I’m sure the hundred of testimonies are all made up
@Fourthspartan56 Jim's audience are highly volatile people. Shouldn't expect too much here tbh
Blizzard's no stranger to this either.
Companies pandering to the woke crowd for political brownie points, but then continuing to do their scummy thing in ways that contradict that false narrative, is one of the more annoying things to see go by the news cycle without a whimper.
A lot of their female monster designs are just skinny women with different skin colours. external-preview.redd.it/C3gouFaG8zr6Lrbeo28mAKRbZ7h6JvTlPH3DMuNg4rY.jpg?auto=webp&s=791c964a86cf13fe68efa5bd5ebed44a542d3130
How many companies had their Twitter Icons changed to pride flags during Pride month, but then continued to appease countries like Saudi Arabia and China by cutting any mention of same-sex relationships out of their products because they wanted to market their stuff there? Statements do nothing if they are not stated to people who need to hear them.
Ah, remember when AC: Odyssey's first DLC, despite the main game being promoted on allowing you whatever relationship choices you wanted, forced you into a straight relationship and having a baby and called the achievment "growing up"... yeah that makes A LOT more sense now in several ways...
Didn't ubisoft get a shit load of backlash for that as well? You'd think the higher ups would've learnt from that but NOPE!
Jim had a great word for that. Hetconning. The Ubifuckers hetconned the protagonists (both of them, because both had same-sex love interest options).
I mean this would just make them bi-sexual surely?
@@extermin8or3 For some players, yeah, the protagonists can be bisexual. Some players play them fully gay, others fully straight. Depends on the players. For the players who went full gay, they got screwed by Ubisoft. And the "growing up" achievement was just absolutely condescending (evidently, considering they changed it).
@@extermin8or3 There's also the matter of player choice. They advertised the game as having the romantic aspect (and the love interest) be the players choice, engage in it or not (for those who want to play ace). That choice was completely removed when players finished the dlc story and found they had to go along no matter what with an endgame romance that they were never told about during the advertising stage.
"Crushing leadership style."
No, that's not leadership. That might be management, but a leader doesn't crush their personnel. Leaders stand in the fire so that their subordinates don't have to. Honestly, I don't think there's more than a token handful of true leaders in every business on Earth combined.
These people have never experienced leadership. I have. I had the opportunities to serve under great leaders and shitty managers both in my time in the Navy. My leaders didn't need to beat us down. We felt bad enough just seeing disappointment in their eyes to know we fucked up and had to try harder. Those Officers who were more managers got the bare minimum out of the crew. The entire crew was happy when those guys PCS'ed off the ship.
I honestly feel like throat-punching every executive who talks about leadership. Or when they use military jargon that doesn't mean anything close to what they think it does.
Hearing people describe their actions using military terms is really cringe-inducing. I just imagine them having a huge self-congratulatory erection.
@@Horatio787 I worked in manufacturing for a little while after I got out of the Navy. I'm pretty sure my eye-rolls were audible at most of the management meetings I say through.
You know what made a king look good back then?
Fighting in the front line.
@@SephonDK a true leader never orders their personnel into a situation they are unwilling to face themselves. That's precisely why Mattis was so widely respected as an Officer and as SECDEF. And it's also why bone spurs doesn't have a fraction of the support of anyone older than 20 in the services that other Presidents have enjoyed, regardless of party.
@@edbangor9163 o I agree. I realize I may have sounded snide but I was dead serious.
Friend of mine did some consulting (well knowing her it was probably spin doctoring) for ubisoft a couple a years ago on behalf of vivendi and to quote her: "I never had so much tiny dick energy in a room." She also told me that 2 of there upper management talked to her in a way that quote "would justify a sexual harassment lawsuit". I mean she's the kind of person corporate sends if someone royally shits the bed. Of course she couldn't go into details because of NDAs etc. but she predicted that something like we have now would happen as this company wasn't willing to change its "culture" or even acknowledge that they have a problem.
I've always wondered if calling it 'tiny dick' problem is sexist in a way. It's kind of insulting to suggest those with a small penis are somehow acting a certain way.
Not trying to start a fight, I'm just genuinely curious.
@@Here_is_Waldo I mean it does seem like body shaming
@@Here_is_Waldo not fully English native, but I believe it's more of a metaphorical sense. Like "small dick so big car to compensate" saying. Insecure men.
Tho to discuss about insecurity from dick size is sort of a different matter I guess if that's what you meant (like, why shame small dicks in the first place)
@@andysabur4966 Insecure, immature people mostly and then you have the "size queens".
@@Here_is_Waldo It's not actually a statement of actual genital size, it speaks of their emotional stability regarding their sexual identity, genital features, and sexual prowess and the machismo attitude they exude as a form of compensation. It doesn't necessarily mean they do have small genitals but that their self image perceives them to be subpar in some form compared to what they think it should be.
We see the same thing in other great apes and there is a traceable correlation between how loud the ape is to how large/small their genitals are for their species. They don't have the benefits of clothing to disguise their features though and suffice to say the louder the howler the smaller the equipment.
*meanwhile everyone playing RPGs with women avatars
Tomb Raider, Life Is Strange, Jim's own examples of Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us... The claim that women supposedly don't sell isn't even the slightest bit defendable.
G.I.R.L. Gamers = Guy In Real Life... are just dudes who were never allowed to play with Barbie (but wanted to).
@GiRayne Yeah, I was surprised Alexios was picked more than Kassandra. No offense to the voice actor, I think they did a rush job with him, but Kassandra’s line reads just have so much more nuance and range to them. I get the impression they picked the actor to play the villain half of the story, but then had to also make him do the protagonist script as well.
At least the two Eivor actors seem more balanced in Valhalla, at least from the gameplay preview they had last month.
@@ZeroB4NG most men play with female characters because we'd rather watch a woman for hours than a muscular man in the 1st place lol seems you like JDM cars so here's one of the best video on the web, I had to reupload it since it disappeared it's an old hillclimb from 2011 super cool Mitsubshi Lancer Evo cars there th-cam.com/video/PLY_n2jC7Ss/w-d-xo.html I had one and loved it sadly Mitsubishi was using bad quality materials (there was a scandal google : Mitsubishi Materials’ Quality Scandal Kept Quiet for Months) and they all rust super quickly
I'm a dude, and love my Viera in Final Fantasy XIV, a race that can *only* be Female.
"Women don't sell". You're right, there's no such thing as a "Lara Croft" or anything like that or something. Naaaah!
So many TH-camrs who have made it a career are skating around this, trying their hardest not to be blacklisted.
I'm getting this feeling that even though Jim got blacklisted like a decade ago, it wasn't until now that it really set in how much he should hate parts of the industry for that behavior.
So many TH-camrs are just an unofficial arm of marketing these days. It's so cringe when some of them give their "honest opinion" while also pushing referral codes for that game in the same breath.
@@Lazirus951 I'd say Gmanlives is able to get early access to games without getting swept up in blind praise. He famously reviewed Anthem super harshly and EA tried to censor him because they'd provided a review copy or something.
"women don't sell" - Tomb Raider from the 90s would like a word
The Tomb Raider Reboot Trilogy would like a word. Do you know just how well those games have sold? These clowns are running around saying this shit while their competitors are making bank with fully realized women as their player characters.
@@LicoriceLain Pretty much the case. If you don't like Tomb Raider go look at Metroid considerin Samus is a woman lol. This "Women don't sell" shit has been played out before I was born (i'm 31)
Erm... TR especially in the 90's sold on sex appeal. I feel like those dont really count. The reboot however, different story. Also, there were some criticism surrounding the fact that the reboot made the attempt to tone down the sex appeal. Makes one wonder how much of the reboot was sold on its brand name alone.
@@Hillthugsta Tomb Raider sold in the '90s because it was a good game with a badass protagonist who also happened to be sexy, and I don't see why we should not count them because of that.
@@SeasoningTheObese actually, alot of people liked it
HAH! Some coward deleted a comment that Jim pinned that told him to "Get Over It".
@@SuperG3X If calling someone out for their lack of empathy is "bullying".
@@SuperG3X Oh no poor baby getting bullied for telling people to get over sexual harassment. What ever will they do.
@@SuperG3X Oh cool, a lot of people who would say that bullying is wrong are now justifying bullying to you because it's "against the right people." Don't you love moral consistency?
@@Northwite oh god... really? Dude, someone thought that saying "get over it" to a response in a video discussing awful practises from a company that affected real people in real life. And people called him out for it. And now you are trying to paint him as a victim?
@@jowysw "People called him out for it."
A dogpile isn't "calling someone out." Calling someone out is something along the lines of "dude that isn't cool and you should reconsider."
So tell me. Is bullying the "right" people not bullying anymore?
I love how your badges seem to be multiplying every single week. By this time next year you'll be more badge and boglin than man.
Sort of like Robocop, but with boglins and badges rather than guns and metal?
Jim Sterling is the General Zhukov of video games.
Well lets be real, the "most powerful creative force" in a company, that has been bringing out literally nothing but carbon copies of the same game concept, cant be too creative now, can it?
7:04
"Yves [Guillemot] is ok with toxic management as long as these *managers' results* exceeds their toxicity level."
"[Ubisoft] gives a 2nd chance, or a 3rd chance, or more if necessary to it's key employees, the one that *prove themselves*."
If you are a manager, 'getting results' and 'proving themselves' means getting other people to produce more. A good manager does this by ensuring good communication channels, access to efficient tools, coordination of different tasks, promoting employee moral/health/safety, and any number of other positive action. However, given the company involved, I would not be surprised if these harassing managers 'redeemed themselves' by dumping even more shit on the employees they harassed in the first place. Squeezing out that little extra bit of productivity through intimidation, threats, and a "crushing leadership style".
It also completely ignores that when minorities are harassed out of growth or even out of the industry they never get the same chance to "prove themselves" in turn. It's a disgusting loop.
The "women don't sell" argument is a holdover from the very early years of the industry where the only demographic was young boys and the theory that they wanted avatars they could directly relate to (ie. pre-tomb raider era). It only makes sense when you ignore decades of evidence about the games industry.
What we have here are execs who did not actually research or stay current on their own market but were continually rewarded for making bad calls because the product managed to be successful anyway.
If those early AC games had a female protag it may or may not have sold better, but no way to prove a negative. Since it made a profit without one, they can keep pointing to that as justification for not changing it. Confirmation bias, and evidence the foundations of the company have always been rather weak.
The demographic was never only young boys.
I'd argue that it can go either way, and it's been done wrong too often. Bolting ladies or a POC into the spot of an established character is recipe for disaster; ask the comics industry or the movie industry. Organic diversity and a series that is built around a good new character can work. However, show me a new game or movie sequel where an established male character or group is changed for obviously cynical woke points, accompanied by attacks on fans, I'm not giving it the time of day.
@@AbteilungsleiterinBeiAntifaEV true, but we're talking about an era when boys had GIJoe & girls had Barbie. Video games were made and marketed primarily to boys at the beginning. The market has evolved drastically since then, but for many years girl gamers were rare to the point of non-existence.
@@kaleiohu Games were only marketed to boys exclusively after the video game crash as far as I know.
@@Andrew_TS I don't think anyone is arguing against the point you make, or even was talking about it at all.
Change a character from white to black or male to female(or vice versa), or straight to gay for the sake of trends is obviously going to be have a negative reception from those who do not want to take part in the political bs or simply are used to source/original material.
Now, is that a reason to justify the devs mentality?
It's not like people are asking for Ubisoft to remake the old AC games but this time play as Ezio Auditore's sister because "it's girls time yey".
If anything, I would hate it because it would be forced and feel like something shoved in the face.. but I also would hate it if they kept thinking this way... as if "female characters don't sell". Gender itself don't sell.
Cause anyone who's actually interested in playing videogames and have fun with it, won't give a shit whether the game they're playing has a female or a male protagonist. In fact, if possible(and doesn't affect the story itself) having both options is fine. Whether both are equally used shouldn't actually be relelevant.
Most gamers happen to be male so it is obvious male characters would be used the most. But some people will choose female characters anyway... cause why not? Other than a few who got a thing for pixelated female body but to each their own, right? And then any female gamers that in fact play said game will have the option to play with a character of their own gender aswell, whether that is a reason to play a game or not for them, is also irrelevant.
Tl Dr: Gender is not a selling point in itself. Most players will play any game regardless of a character's gender as long as the game itself provides some quality experience... Unless you're some awful misogynist/misandrist person.
wOmEn DoN’T sElL
Yeah Ubisoft? Tomb Raider and Horizon Zero Dawn would like a word
@Alex Arviso nothing is ever enough for the "trrrripil aaaayyee" industry.
@Danielle Jones Oof, a true NPC dialog...sigh.
Abby from TLOU2 is an example of that
However Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Samus Aran, the Hat Girl and more characters are successful af
Tekken, Dynasty Warriors, SoulCalibur, Devil May Cry (Lucia, Trish and Lady), Final Fantasy, etc.
@@CBRN-115 I'm pretty sure tlou2 sold well regardless of if it's good or not
When you got to the part about Ubisoft complaining about the "extra work" that goes into making a female avatar, I couldn't help thinking of Saints Row 2-4, which not only have a male and female options, but several different skin colors, voice actors, fully customizable body types _and_ hair styles, and even different in-game dialogue for each voice.
the sheer misogynistic depravity of ubisofts management and the hubris of thinking they could keep the lid on this both aren't the exception and an outlier. They're the status quo of the game industry and the industry needs to clean house.
face facts... most gamers don't want to play as females
facts don't care about your feelings
There’s a difference between genuinely trying to be representative and holding up a sign saying “WE ARE INCLUSIVE! PLEASE BUY OUR VIDEO GAME!”
Jim, thanks for continuing to shine a searchlight on this entirely disgusting situation. For those folks who still don't get it, though - it may be worth releasing a video (slapped with a whole bunch of content warnings) where you don't keep it light for the audience's comfort. Sometimes some people need to be jarred out of their comfort zone for change to happen, especially with something that should be so inherently upsetting.
While I do agree I fear that the ones who should watch it the most aren't even here. They see it's a Jim Sterling video and scroll on because the mere thought of watching something that challenges their view of the world hurts. I've tried to share the videos in gaming groups where people were celebrating the newest Ubisoft reveals like nothing happened and the only ones who reacted in any way were the few who did not participate in the Ubi hype in the first place.
@@Itri_Vega Sorry to say but male gamers aren't likely to care unless it directly affects them.
Since the victims are almost (likely) entirely female, this is even more so the case...
Every “woke” company is incredibly hypocritical and don’t care about these issues. It’s not just Ubisoft
EA comes to mind.
Yeah but we can get back to Blizzard Bethesda Rockstar EA later
RT comes to mind.
In theory, they don't have to be.
In practice, I haven't seen a big company that doesn't remove controversial content from countries where the stances would be less profitable (e g Blizzard het-washing gay characters in Russia, Disney removing 1 second blink-and-you'll-miss-it lesbian kiss from Skywalker in select countries)
HBomberGuy did a great video a few years ago on this exact issue.
Pushing their wokeness to score lib points and getting the right to give free advertising through their rage...all the while still maintaining assault and sexual assault culture in their offices. Or hiring child labour. Or pillaging areas for resources and all but enslaving the local population.
“They’re more like guidelines rather than rules” is all I can hear when they bring up “women don’t sell” for video games. I remember Dontnod refusing to back down for Remember Me and its female lead, but until Capcom took a chance on them they weren’t getting the opportunity to develop their game. It’s insane how engrained into Ubisoft’s culture this mentality is, and how undoubtedly spread through the industry this mentality is. It is especially weird since the Japanese game market relies on female characters (not for the diverse reasons that they are requested in the west) and sell gangbusters among the otaku crowd, but also frequently more general crowds. I would be very interested to see how the statistics that Ubisoft and BioWare hold up for the preference for male characters would pan out when looking into titles like Dragon’s Dogma, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Code Vein, Fire Emblem, etc.
Pretty sure they use their own statistics. IIRC around 60% of AC Odyssey players went with the male character, despite Kassandra canonically being the lead. Thing is, none of the publishers really understand the market as a whole, they understand 'their' market and they usually focus entirely on that. To Ubisoft women don't sell because they're comparing the sales of female led titles (Beyond Good and Evil being the only one that springs to mind to be honest) to their Tom Clancy tie-ins. They'll ignore the obvious counterpoints to that such as Tomb Raider, because to them that's something that sells in the 'Eidos / Squeenix' market and is therefore an entirely different (and incomprehensible) beast.
Similar to Hollywood, the problem really stems from the industry being dependent on investment (and ultimately how the modern stock market functions). Most people intuitively understand that trying to grow into a new market means starting small and building up, but when the company is ultimately controlled by shareholders who only understand the bottom line the expectation is that if your last product sold six million, your next one must equal or exceed that.
Dontnod dealt with the same shit for Life is Strange too, where publishers only wanted to publish the game if they changed the PC to a boy which Dontnod refused. Only Square Enix agreed to publish the game as it was and LiS actually sold pretty well, so clearly the market for videogames with female protagonists isn't completely non-existent.
@@markwatson8714 I totally understand what you're getting at. It is easy to keep market information totally wrapped up in "your niche" without acknowledging the competition and using that to justify the decisions made. It makes limited sense in the grand scheme to those of us on the outside looking in, but to the corporate bigwigs, this must be something that keeps them printing money. It's very similar to Ubisoft's desperation to remain apolitical, despite that making them inadvertently quite politicized.
@@Khenfu_Cake Didn't know that they had the same struggle with Life is Strange, but it is also very interesting that it was Japanese companies that picked up their female led titles, while Vampyr, with a male lead, is the only one to be published by a western company.
@@RedRobinTitan Well, both Capcom and Square Enix have had decades of experience with releasing videogames with female protagonists or as optional protagonists, so in their case it might simply not have been out of the ordinary for them.
It does seem like however that Japanese game studios and publishers have more of a long standing tradition of releasing games with female protagonists and also releasing games with a broader gender appeal than their Western counterparts.
"women don't sell" is an argument I have never understood. I always was reminded of the fact that I had played many great games where the playable characters just happened to be women. Then there are all the games with character creations that just had this choice for ages with enough evidence that many players would pick female avatars.
That's easy to explain, Jim already mentioned it. ITS NOT AN ARGUMENT. They all know it's not an argument. It's just PR having to say anything to not just come out and say that the best rapist in the room said that the MC needs to be a straight white alpha male.
Imo people get way too caught up trying to prove these inane statements wrong when they are so blatantly lies. If anything it's just as bad to go full 'smart-signaling' and play into the distraction just to show how smart you are to catch that a completely ridiculous sentence like that is a lie.
Instead anytime a company says something this bad we should start hiring the trans black pan spies to go get hired and touted as an example of how woke the company is and use that employment/internship to snoop at what is actually going on.
(This is a hyperbolic joke)
The argument itself is bullshit but there are exceptions. When you have WOKE Mary Sues only then women don't sell . Anime , porn, gatcha games all have women that are eye candy so they sell like hotcakes. Ubisoft is lazy always have been that way
What they really mean is that on average, games with female protagonists sell less, simply because the target of these games are men, not women. And since they want all the money in the world "selling less" is not acceptable.
My friends say "You like computer games, why not go into that field?"
This is why.
Make indie games my dude. Start on your own, make small games, then eventually you could recruit people and get bigger from there (if you want).
It's literally nothing at all like it gets presented here. I'll be frank: The people who keep complaining about the 'psychological torture' of big developers can't handle long hours in a working environment that caters to your every whim and does everything it can to keep morale up. Also you know, people make friends in these companies and if you have a group of guys that are friends, they might go *gasp* someplace not everyone wants to go after work. The real problem are these ultra thin skinned criers that took the job and then can't handle it, then instead of realizing that, want it to change for everyone. It'd be like joining the Marines, then complaining bitterly if you got an extended deployment.
@@BlazingOwnager spoken like a true frat boy
@@badflamer No, spoken like someone who has actually been there. You don't become a firefighter if you don't like fire, and you don't become a developer if you don't like long hours.
@@BlazingOwnager _you don't become a developer if you don't like long hours._
Fire is a necessary hazard of _firefighting_ . There's no reason why "long hours" should be a regular part of developing software (which is what games ultimately are). I say this as a software developer in a non-gaming IT field, and for whom working long hours is quite rare.
The problem is the gaming industry is not properly unionized, and there are more people looking for game dev jobs than jobs available, which means employers have even more power at the negotiation table.
Ubisoft gets away with so much shit. At least here in Québec, where they get all the tax credits possible and then some.
Extravagant parties, benefits, and then they complain that they don't have enough money.
Also, marketing seems to have a lot of control over a game's direction at this company.
And I doubt that's just Ubisoft. Though they've made themselves an easy target, there's no telling where else this systemic abuse is festering.
@@heroofthewest Well all videogame companies here get tax credits. But Ubisoft being the biggest of them all and with so many jobs involved, they seem to get the preferential treatment. For example, when I think Vivendi was threatening to buy them, there were talks about asking the government to bail them out to avoid Vivendi buying most of their shares. Nice to know what our tax dollars are used for.
@@heroofthewest Lest we forget: th-cam.com/video/4xTDVlNGKng/w-d-xo.html
@mayrana2 Indie devs are no messiahs. That would be grossly inaccurate. But considering the existence of Studio MDHR, Toby Fox, and many others, one really can’t help but think that.
"Dog fighting minigames" sounds awes- oh... they... weren't talking about plane to plane combat, were they?
...
The Hell is wrong with these people!?
Wait they dont? I think i am too naive..
@@evrensaygn1017 Dog fighting can also refer to forcing dogs to fight, usually for betting purposes. Horrific practice, and also illegal in some countries. People suck sometimes....
many dog breeds in US were bread specificalyl for dogfighting. It was very popular.
"Women don't sell", Sounds like a South Park episode waiting to happen. Only they wouldn't go this far.
It’s South Park, do you really think they’re not going to mock Ubisoft at first opportunity
@@DMDarren I hope they do, might draw a bit more media attention
Next week: "Global Human trafficking revenues fall by 50% as _'women don't sell'"_ /s
@@DMDarren Ubisoft makes their games but i don't think that will stop them from doing it
Ubisoft produced both of the South Park games, so I'd be pretty surprised if they bit that hand.
I'm just thinking of nier automata right now and the dev that said 'yeah i like pretty girls' as his reasoning to why you play a young girl as a character or some shit.
'women don't sell'
Bro, go to a restaurant, and see which waiters will get more tip
Go to game reviews and see how they get accused of sexualising women.
I loved the reasoning. It’s like “yeah, I did it because I wanted to” and that’s all the justification needed. Love the game too.
I mean, i prefer playing as a female characters in RPGs for example, since I like women, other genres I don't really care, I just enjoy the stories they tell, but if I can choose i'll mostly choose a female instead of a dude lol
xX Valtiel Xx I remember one of my old friends said when playing WoW “I’d rather be looking at a girl for hours on end than a dude”.
Yoko taro is a special case
Kassandra was cool and probably the best part of "Not Witcher 3". Great VA too. Ubisoft would say something like that because of their paint by numbers approach of taking other game's formulas and using them in their own. They have zero confidence in their own work and employees (See: Timesavers) so of course they're going to be afraid to take a chance on having a woman as their main and only character because they're too afraid of not absolutely maxing any and all potential profit. Really exhausted by everything they're involved with and the employees deserve far better.
Kassandra was the main character at one point. Alexios was literally shoehorned in by Hascoet late in development because he had to have an alpha male in the game which was then used in marketing and Kassandra was pushed to the side.
IMO Alexios was an absolutely dreadful character and I couldn’t take him seriously whenever he opened his stupid mouth.
Fuck Ubisoft.
@@TheEvixy That makes sense. He felt more like "Stock buff Greek dude" instead of an actual character with a personality. Kassandra was great and a lot of the time I spent slogging through the game was only because I wanted to see more of her character. I don't see why he thought that somehow a modern AC game would somehow tank because of a woman lead character in it. On the other hand, if he felt it would have sold so much as one less copy that probably would have been enough. Not surprised that a guy with his view on women characters turned out to be a total piece of shit in his personal and professional life.
Bargain Tuesday I played as Kassandra because I always play female characters if I can and the first time I saw Alexios I literally laughed out loud because he was insanely over the top masculine and ”alpha male” that it became an absolute joke.
In hindsight it makes so much sense that Alexios was the way he was. I wouldn’t be surprised if the voice actor got told by Hascoet or someone under him to do the lines for Alexios as masculine as possible and I bet Hascoet loved that.
”Creative force” my ass...
@@TheEvixy Yeah, same here. I'm a guy but one of the last things I care about is having something as close as possible to my likeness I games (not saying it's not a valid preference, just my preference) and probably about 95%+ of every game I've ever played has a male lead character so I gravitate towards something different. Plus, it's always interesting to see how women main characters are written and who was behind that writing.
Kassandra is (At least comparing her with another female protagonists in the franchise) a very bad character, and the entire AC Odyssey is just a mess of a game trying to pretend to be things that clearly are not. But i cannot complain, Alexios is the same character as Kassandra but male, the same story, the same dialogues, the same threatment. I just want to say that this entire game, next to Ghost Recon Breakpoint, are the most visible examples of the current standarts of Ubisoft the last 2 years, and it isn't only about the misoginist bullshit and the sexual acussations, it was in general a pretty fucked company with high executives actually pushing back the high creativity that they have in their development aparment in favor of profit.
"Women Don't sell" Ubi.... Warmonger is the most hyped character coming to For Honor. And that's a game YOU made. And do we need to talk about BG&E2?
Wouldn't be surprised Ubi being Ubi is exactly why we didn't already have a BG&E2 game, instead of just a title that gets an update video (Duke Nukem Forever-style) every once in a Blue Moon.
I've been waiting for you to bring up the "women are hard to animate" BS because it ties in SO WELL with everything coming out
The real reason that everyone knew at the time and should STILL know isn't some radical hatred of women or it being hard to animate, it was "We don't want to spend the money on a second voice actor, recording alternate lines and motion capturing a different person." It was laziness, not evil, that lead to this.
@@BlazingOwnager No, it was hatred. Try and keep up.
@@WeskAlber lol, no, it really was not. The idiot who thinks women doesn't sell is wrong of course; that's a dumb sentiment held by dumb people. I can think of other industry executives who shat the bed thinking that. But the lack of a female avatar in that game was pure, unadulterated laziness supreme. Also at the very maximum it's "I'm an idiot and I don't think this is profitable" and not "hatred."
@@BlazingOwnager try watching the videos you comment on.
@@wombatkidd I'm talking about the audience, not the video. I do absolutely agree with women not selling being absolutely stupid logic that's objectively untrue. But this is just one video in a much larger fabric of videos on the same genre of subjects.
I was watching the recent Watch_dogs legion event on a live stream, and the chat went toxic screaming about 'propaganda' and 'leftism' when the plot was explained (because apparently 'corporations overthrowing governments and turning them into police states is bad' is a far left idea now I guess).
When they showed off the play as anyone gimmick, the chat started screeching whenever a woman or ethnic NPC was used. And when a level designer came on camera to explain the design choices, some of the chat exploded into white hot rage because the developer was gasp! A woman! And dressed in a little bit hipster style!
These are the people Ubisoft want to market to.
"(because apparently 'corporations overthrowing governments and turning them into police states' is a far left idea now I guess)." Guessing they meant it was propaganda in that it says 'capitalism is bad and leads to corporatism', but that's still kinda dumb.
@@TeleportRush Just noticed I forgot to put 'is bad' on there. Edited it.
And this is why I avoid any live stream chat with gamers in it anymore.... urgh......
@@Tustin2121 Yeah it was Yongyea's stream, who is pretty level headed and has decent commentary on the gaming industry, but the chat was toxic.
@@Keyboardeater1 god damn it, I love Yong. Hearing that he has a noticeable amount of nasty fans makes me ill. Do they not realise how reasonable and thoughful he is? Their type doesn't belong in his channel.
They probably have no self awareness.
This isn't on the topic of Ubisoft specifically but god do I apprciate your support of LGBTQ people especially in an industry so cruel to us. I know you are PAN but its still so incredible that you voice it so much. Yours pins make me feel so good. The T-rex is my favorite because it includes me. Love the content Jim keep fighting the good fight. Call out injustice where ever you can !
“Women are too hard/require too much effort to animate”
Women avatars have been in video games ever since it became a major industry. Lara Croft, for example, is 24 years old. Even Bethesda includes female avatars for the player to control and their animations are usually clunky af
:/. Just sounds like a half-baked excuse to me
It's a wad of crap. Games are easy to make now with all the different libraries and tools available. Hell, I'm sure there is Jiggle Physics put in every game engine for sale now, standard feature.
Typically the female models are modeled after the male ones, even in Bethesda's games. What Ubisoft was referencing was a properly designed female character (even Kassandra is not) would be more work and they aren't wrong. It's the same concept behind the fact that prices for men in dry cleaning are cheaper than women because men have a more uniform shape while women do not and therefore men's clothing can be done on a machine while women's have to be hand done and thus cost more money. Obsidian made the female characters of The Outer World's all have that same ridiculous pixie or bob cut hairstyle because long hair is more difficult to model and animate. Even outside of gaming, in hand drawn animations women are harder to draw than men. That's just a fact.
NorthernDragon sure, though more work does not automatically Translate to “too hard” or “too much work” unless they were stripped for time or resources. Ubisoft is stripped of neither
@@codysellers4151 You don't know that they weren't stripped for time or resources. You can't make a judgement like that based on size. Neither can Jim quite frankly. None of us are privy to their financial records or their timetables and budgets.
NorthernDragon we don’t have direct access to their records no, but Ubisoft is a AAA game studio. Being able to make female avatars and animations should be well within their capabilities. That is indeed a claim I can reasonably make; one that I don’t need direct access to their accounts to claim. It’s more a matter of putting in the effort in their case rather than just not being able to.
Assassin’s creed is a game with a AAA budget, Outer Worlds has a AA budget. Outer Worlds can use the resource excuse. Assassins creed though, is not allowed to get off that easily. Making female avatars should not be stretching them to the brink, and even if it is, that’s more an issue with Ubisoft than the concept itself of female avatars
Ubisoft does not need you to defend it; it’s a wealthy video game corporation with offices in many parts of the world; if one of its execs wants to say things like “women don’t sell” or that it would be too much work to make female characters, then it will receive due backlash for doing so. However, Ubisoft will be more than fine. Other causes are more worth your energy than defending a wealthy corporation who will have to pretty much murder someone to lose any serious clout with its fanbase
Yeah! get em jimbo.
I'm sure Blizzard would call this a "tough e-sports moment"
As a woman (that has been gaming/watching my Dad game since i was in diapers), hearing "Women don't sell" infuriates me in a way that I don''t think I could explain.
Society sexualizes women and puts so much on our physical appearance and ability to make babies, but already treats us like we're less for having different organs.
Men (and other women) prey on us our whole lives (the statistic of sexually abused/assaulted women is staggering. 1 in 5. One. in. Five.)
Hearing this made me so unbelievably angry. So furious that I want to scream.
Jim, I honestly adore you shining a light on these unsavory things people tend to look away from. Keep being real, and ripping the corporate gaming world a new one for every time it fucks up.
>women don't sell
>the vast majority of people in sexual slavery are women
Bruh
Yes and that one and five statistic is absolute horseshit unless you can actually back it up with real statistics which you can’t
@@FishDinners I don’t know whether you’re actually offended by this or are making a really funny joke
@@charlottewalnut3118 it's an edgy joke (since women are being sold)
"status-quo warrior" thank you for that term ^^
Congratulations, Ubisoft! You've managed to overtake EA, Activision, and Konami as the most hated gaming publisher.
According to you
@@Brunolauri well yeah, he was the one who said it. Great observation
That is either a accomplishment or a mark of shame, knowing how flat out braindead Ubisoft is, they see it as the former
Mhm, though it happens in ALL places :(
Don't hold your breath on that. Don't think for even a second that they're any different than Ubisoft.
Besides, they all seem to be in a race to the bottom.
The part about HR helping to bury this should surprise me, but I've had enough experience with HR outside the game industry for it not do to that.
People who work in HR are just corporate cops, and like cops they protect the already rich and powerful
Yep this is typical of most corporate HRs. If you are a peon who complains, they ignore you because often you are complaining about someone with more power (thus viewed as more important) than you. In their eyes, you are more easily replaced than someone whose been promoted a couple times. They don't care who is morally at fault, just how they can sweep the shit under the rug as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
@@coreyander286, isn't it amazing how often right wingers scream, "Everything I don't like is communism or Marxism!" It has gotten so tiresome and pathetic how they throw around words they never bothered to learn the correct meanings of!
@@archelonprime It’s almost like they’re hypocrites for calling everyone that disagrees with them “special snowflakes”...
HR doesn't exist to protect the employees from the company, HR exists to protect the company from the employees... This is the sad truth of HR, especially in large companies
Correction; it's been too long since we covered Ubisoft covering for abusers. Because even 1 day is too long to not talk about it
I’d say we should have a constant loop reminding us of these types of abusive practices through out not just the game industry, but throughout all major companies; even with "Motormouth" John Moschitta 24/7 giving just the name of abuser and their abuse, we wouldn’t get to restart the loop till late next year. And that’s assuming we cut off the list from January 1st to January 3rd of this year!
My dad says "I hear you" but that means "I know you're saying something but your words are utterly irrelevant and now I've acknowledged the sound I can ignore the content". "Your voice, heard" is exactly the same thing.
Ugh yeah I hate that.
I could only hear the first bit of this vid and honestly thought the guy in the opening was Jim doing a snooty AAA publisher voice. 😂
Wait it isn't???
*clears throat in Québécoise*
I thought it was too! Jim actually has nailed what AAA game people sound like.