Ubisoft's recent confirmation that Assassin's Creed: Unity won't feature playable female avatars caused quite a stir in the gaming press, and the company appears to have stumbled headlong into another gender controversy, this time relating to FPS title Rainbow Six: Siege.
The recent demo of the game at E3 was populated entirely by female hostages, which led PC site Rock, Paper, Shotgun to question if any males would find themselves in need of aid. While technical artist Oliver Couture confirmed that hostages of both sexes would be in the final game, his explanation regarding the E3 demo has raised a few eyebrows:
I mean, when we did that design we felt a lot of empathy with the hostage. We wanted people to want to protect her. If the hostage gets killed a team loses the game, so we wanted players to care about the hostage so that's the design we chose.
Ubisoft has stated that it has nothing to add to Couture's comments.
[source rockpapershotgun.com]
Comments 4
Oh my gosh, can we stop already. Why are we trying to find problems where there are none. They show a woman in the demo so they think there won't any male hostages. Of course they're will be, it doesn't take much to figure the entire game will.
Oh wow, that quote is terrible. I sincerely believe Ubisoft is in no way conciously misogynist or anything close, but they're really bad at their marketing in that aspect. They're pretty much implying you're caring more for a female hostage, because she's helpless. Quotes like "We wanted people to want to protect her." is going to offend every feminist around the world. Even me.
I agree with you, Jaz, that the girl being a hostage, shouldn't really need to be a problem, but the explanation behind it... is pretty bad.
That said: these things aren't the end of the world or anything. I love Ubisoft and it's products. There's nothing wrong with their games either, but I do think it's a pity that the way they present it is so terrible.
As soon as I saw the live gameplay demo during E3, I knew people were going to flip out over this non issue.
Empathy hardly exists in games these days and these guys are going to be raked over the coals for trying to create it in gamers? News flash: Men are supposed to feel good about protecting women and children. They are supposed to want that, not treat them poorly. Not every women is Lara Croft. Some women actually like men, and are fine with men protecting them. Why are people shouting for diversity/reality of characters when really they want to say "only strong characters are allowed to be created"? This female hostage doesn't represent every women in the world. And it's foolish to think just because a women wants/needs to be protected by/cared for/provided for by a man that she isn't a strong women.
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