{"id":23364,"date":"2014-06-17T14:51:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T19:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=23364"},"modified":"2014-06-17T14:57:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T19:57:46","slug":"experienced-points-ubisoft-straighter-whiter-duder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=23364","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: Ubisoft: Straighter. Whiter. Duder."},"content":{"rendered":"

My column this week<\/a> is about how the Ubisoft excuse<\/a> of “It would cost more to add playable female characters to the game” isn’t as absurd as it sounds. And then I follow up by pointing out there are much better reasons to be mad at them. And I didn’t even bring up Uplay. I hope you appreciate my self-control.<\/p>\n

Is it just me, or does it feel like Ubisoft has their developers doing PR and their PR people designing games? The devs are out in front facing the public, and yet their games seem to be ultra-safe, ultra-targeted products where anything resembling a personal touch or a creative spark has been worn away. I’m still working my way up to my big Watch_Dogs rant – and I’ll admit that game probably impacted this column more than it should have – but if I had to sum up the game in one word it would be “sterile”. <\/p>\n

I want to stress that I’m not coming at this from a social justice angle. This is about business and creativity. If Straight White Dudegames are really where the safe money is at (and I’m extremely<\/em> skeptical on this point) then I’m really not going to demand a corporation like Ubisoft to deliberately make less<\/em> money in order to make things more “fair”. I know some people do. That’s fine. This social justice stuff gets touchy, and in the end we’re all just trying to make the hobby the best it can be. <\/p>\n

But like I said in the column, this is a hard thing to test and Ubisoft hasn’t even tried. (Read the article before nitpicking this.) And no matter which way the money goes, Ubisoft is still creatively impotent. Like, even if you can prove that games won’t sell unless the protagonist is a straight white dude, there’s still<\/em> no excuse for Adrian Pearce, who has less personality than Gordon Freeman’s crowbar and less depth than the Adventure<\/a> rectangle. <\/p>\n

Also, if you don’t read my byline, the title of the article come from this Lost Levels<\/a> presentation “10 Responsibilities of a Game Developer” by Ric Chivo:<\/p>\n