Looking at the evolution of the protagonists in the Assassin’s Creed games is quite interesting, especially while considering the perspective of A. Salter and B. Blodgett’s Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media. The older games especially fit many of their descriptions to a T. Looking specifically at Ezio Auditore, the protagonist in the most individual games of the series, is a womanizer who is defending his family, and the world, from the far-reaching secret society of the Templars. The fact that he does this by joining a similar secret society is rarely touched on. In some ways, this game at least avoids the “worst” of the issues. There are women characters who are portrayed as competent and effective, but they are frequently regulated to roles such as running brothels (as spies, but still), and very rarely do their actions affect the plot as a whole. Both of Ezio’s main love interests are placed in the Damsel in Distress role at least once, and neither are much in the way of characterization or meaning outside of “main character’s love interest”.
Their next game, admittedly, was not a white protagonist. Connor, or Ratonhnhaké:ton, is half British and half Kanien’keha:ka (commonly known as Mohawk), and grew up with his mother’s tribe fully. Ubisoft did seem to do their research on the topic, hiring a full time cultural consultant, and working with a local community in order to be respectful. In terms of female characters with agency, however, AC 3 is few and far between, and while a spin off game did come out not long after it with a female protagonist, it would take another few years before this happened in the main game.
From here, things did seem to slowly improve. Much of AC Unity focuses on the character Elise, and while she is the main character’s love interest, she is shown as her own character, with her own influences on the plot. AC Syndicate gave two alternating playable protagonists, a brother and sister, and finally AC Odyssey and Valhalla have given the option of having a sole woman protagonist.
However, it seems that none of these were easy won battles. From the controversy with AC Unity where Ubisoft said its multiplayer would have no female characters because it was “a lot of extra production work”, to the fact that the sister in Syndicate seems to have less play time to her male counterpart, to the fact that Odyssey was originally slated to have only the female protagonist, Kassandra, it seems Ubisoft was, and is, still struggling with escaping the default protagonist. Indeed, a report by Jason Schreier revealed that executives cut female roles for years, saying that “women don’t sell”. For obvious reasons, it’s difficult to know exactly how widespread this order went, but we know that it affected Syndicate, Origins, and Odyssey for sure. One of the execs who ordered this, the chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, has since left the company after the large amount of sexual abuse and harassment allegations about Ubisoft in 2020.
So, is the problem fixed now? Is having the choice between protagonists fix the issue of the “default” protagonist? I would argue it doesn’t, especially in a game that in theory cares about historical accuracy. Obviously, Assassin’s Creed is not truly historically accurate, it has mind control, aliens, Atlantis, and various other things of myth and legend included throughout. However, they do try and use historical figures and events in their stories, and many fans have tried to use the argument of “well, women weren’t warriors back then anyway so why should we have a woman protagonist?” So let’s look at that argument. I particularly like something Sam Greer at the Gaming Bible looked at, “None of the gendered expectations placed upon almost every other woman in [Assassin’s Creed Odyssey] seems to apply to Kassandra… By showing us a version of history where these problems don’t exist, Assassin’s Creed… [is] at risk of historical revisionism… It’s as if the developers are tying to present to us pieces of history in a vacuum, sperate from context with only the parts deemed inoffensive left in.” For a series that focuses so much on historical accuracy, it seems to want to ignore many things that are uncomfortable in order to make the story for anyone.
I am absolutely not arguing that games should just include casual misogyny just for “historical accuracy”, but as Greer points out herself, “acknowledgement is important”. A common thing in video games is an expansion of character creation systems, including skin tone, gender, even sometimes pronouns and gender identity options. However, many developers point at this as a sign that they are making diverse games, missing the point that diversity isn’t just about looks. Many of these games give very little acknowledgement of the traits that you have picked, essentially keeping the same blank slate anyway. They refer to you only with genderless terms, they ignore any visual or personal traits you gave your character, telling the same story regardless. Is the character more “diverse”? Sure, I guess, but the story you’re telling is the same regardless. Look at the surrounding characters, are there women characters, characters of color, disabled characters, queer characters? Do they have an impact on the plot, do they matter? In order to tell “diverse” stories, creators often make them bland, able to fit anyone.
Looking at Greer’s example of AC Odyssey, the story does not change if you are Alexios or Kassandra, who are Spartans, and for all of the freedoms women may have had compared to other women in Greece, they were not traditionally warriors. Kassandra being a warrior would have been unusual compared to Alexios, there were heavy gender roles there. However, this is never acknowledged by the world, they are treated identically. There are certainly advantages to this, but it should not be viewed as the end all be all of representation. If a character can just be swapped out for a straight white male, I would argue that that story isn’t necessarily a diverse story, that it doesn’t truly escape the idea of the default protagonist.
1. Duckworth, J., & Joshua Duckworth (2754
Articles Published) When Joshua Duckworth received Pokemon Yellow for Christmas
at 5-years-old. (2020, July 23). Assassin's Creed Unity Could Have Had Playable
Elise. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://gamerant.com/assassins-creed-unity-multiplayer-playable-elise/
2. Greer, S. (2020, July 24). Actually, Assassin's
Creed, Gender Matters A Lot In Your Viking Adventure. Retrieved October 17,
2021, from https://www.gamingbible.co.uk/features/games-actually-assassins-creed-gender-matters-in-your-viking-adventure-20200724
3. Meer, A. (2014, June 12). Yes All Men:
Assassin's Creed Bro-op Controversy Escalates. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/assassins-creed-unity-characters
4. Meer, A. (2014, June 11). Assassin's Disunity:
Ubi's Excuse For No Female Character. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/assassins-creed-unity-no-women
5. Moyse, C. (2020, July 22). Ubisoft execs
reportedly vetoed plans for Kassandra to be the sole hero of Assassin's Creed
Odyssey. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.destructoid.com/ubisoft-execs-reportedly-vetoed-plans-for-kassandra-to-be-the-sole-hero-of-assassins-creed-odyssey/
6. Newman, J. (2012, September 05). Assassin's
Creed III's Connor: How Ubisoft Avoided Stereotypes and Made a Real Character.
Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://techland.time.com/2012/09/05/assassins-creed-iiis-connor-how-ubisoft-avoided-stereotypes-and-made-a-real-character/
7. Parlock, J. (2020, July 21). New report claims
Assassin's Creed developers were pressured into minimising female protagonists.
Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.pcgamer.com/new-report-claims-assassins-creed-developers-were-pressured-into-minimising-female-protagonists/
8. Vincent, B. (2014, June 11). Assassin's Creed:
Unity won't have female co-op avatars, and here's why. Retrieved October 17,
2021, from https://www.destructoid.com/assassins-creed-unity-wont-have-female-co-op-avatars-and-heres-why/
Hello anonymous poster, I agree that the example you chose is very representative of how large game companies are implementing gender representations in their games. Indeed, Ubisoft has been making efforts to shift their narratives away from the one-dimensional stories about straight white males, but equality, as you said, cannot be achieved merely through having customizable characters without having their gender, racial identity or sexuality impacting the story. Besides, despite the efforts to be "diverse," the stories over the years are still essentially about male-dominated combats, which are marginally misogynist by nature. I think this failure to achieve true identity even despite the efforts over the years can be linked to our discussion during the disability conference that the idea of diversity and inclusion is not really channeled to those who make decisions, especially those who are at the top of the triple A game companies whose primary interests is to shrink the cost for making games that are essentially uniform. Take Ubisoft as an example, the trend of writing a male-centered story and packaging it with an arbitrary open-world gameplay has been the standard for a long while, including the recent Farcry 6, which includes selectable protagonist as female or male, but, along with a lot of other Ubisoft games, does not provide any narrative change according to the gender of the protagonist. Therefore, I assume that the issue is not that there's not enough discussion (basically there is), but how do we direct these discussions to those who are in charge (investors, CEOs, project managers, etc.) and change their concern from primarily to profit (with the standardized procedure) to promote diversity in a more meaningful way (by modifying the ways in which decisions are made in large game companies as well as in the economic system in general).
ReplyDelete