Last Friday, I wrote about the colossal lack of diversity among protagonists in 40 upcoming video games announced at E3. Among those games is the newest entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise, which was reportedly supposed to include a female assassin, but "game developers nixed it because adding a female lead to the mix was too laborious."
Ubisoft's technical director James Therien offered this amazing explanation:
"It was on our feature list until not too long ago, but it's a question of focus and production," Therien explained. "So we wanted to make sure we had the best experience for the character. A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation, a lot of costumes [inaudible]. It would have doubled the work on those things. And I mean it's something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision... It's unfortunate, but it's a reality of game development."Boobs are hard, or something.
When pressed on the issue, specifically that we didn't think his excuse would wash with the community given the amount of resources at the studio's disposal, Therien continued:
"Again, it's not a question of philosophy or choice in this case at all I don't really [inaudible] it was a question of focus and a question of production. Yes, we have tonnes of resources, but we're putting them into this game, and we have huge teams, nine studios working on this game and we need all of these people to make what we are doing here."
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