Last week a controversy arose pertaining to the lack of female playable characters in Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Far Cry IV saying that it “can’t be done” because it would be too much work.
However, it seems like there may be a new controversy on the rise associated with the game: Rust developer Garry Newman speaking out against the “self elected video gamer feminists.”
His intentions, saying that Ubisoft is unfairly receiving all the blame for a problem that is prevalent all over the gaming industry “as if they invented sexism“, are good. But the way that he went about it, arguing over Twitter has not only made the problem worse but lost him followers of his game, some even requesting a refund for the money that they spent on Rust.
@garrynewman I wasn’t joking when I said I wanted a refund for Rust. Or at least the money that went directly to you
— Tom Crosher (@TomTheTrivial) June 19, 2014
Newman seemed to try and backtrack later on by posting a tweet clarifying his original intentions, saying “It would undoubtedly be good if there were more female protagonists in games, but rallying against games for not having any is insane, in my own personal opinion,” but it wasn’t nearly as well met as some of his other tweets. All of this craziness comes after last week’s announcement from Ubisoft that says we can expect to encounter some strong female characters in Assassin’s Creed: Unity.
I’m sure when Ubisoft decided to address the issue of the lack of female playable characters it was not with the intentions to make the gaming world upset or to provoke a twitter battle that has quite possibly lost business for a different game developer. Assassin’s Creed Unity director Alex Amancio claimed that it would take a lot of extra work– an estimated 8,000 extra animations– for the female character alone, which if they took the time to do may possibly impact the game’s release date. From a business standpoint, it makes sense.
However, the way that the issue has been handled has caused nothing but more problems. Perhaps everyone involved (or those with a strong opinion that have been involving themselves) should just stay quiet for a while to assure that an already negative thing doesn’t grow worse, into something that may be unable to be resolved.
