- Joined
- Nov 23, 2009
I just found this article
I think the writer of the article does a good job of explaining why their thought process of how games with female leads don't do well financially is a load of shit.
Code:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29719/InDepth_No_Female_Heroes_At_Activision.php
The article is about how the next game in the True Crime series was originally supposed to be a standalone game called Black Lotus with a Lucy Liu-ish assassin protagonist until Activision told the developers to ditch her and reform the project."Activision gave us specific direction to lose the chick," says the other source plainly.
I think the writer of the article does a good job of explaining why their thought process of how games with female leads don't do well financially is a load of shit.
What do you guys think of this? Obviously I disagree with Activision and any other game publisher that forces developers to take playable female characters out of a game. They're ruining our potential ryona damnit. >:oIt's important to stress that many publishers use focus testing and market trends to try to predict what will sell, and to some extent the design follows.
However, our sources contend that Activision corporate routinely takes this methodology to extremes, making the pioneering of new ideas difficult -- and, some believe, at the expense of not only innovation, but overall quality, as developers get instructions to re-work projects mid-stream to keep pace with checklists of gameplay trends, even against the better judgment of the design teams.
We're told to credit Singularity's mixed critical reception in part to such challenges, for example. And when it comes to Black Lotus, the sources say the decision to re-brand the concept as the next True Crime franchise title was "pushed" on the team, which was not eager to follow up the unsuccessful True Crime: New York.
"Activision has no room for 'we are making an open-world game with a Hong Kong action movie feel with a female lead,' because that game doesn't exist right now," says one source. "What they do have room for is, 'we are making an open-world game with a gangster main character who can steal cars and shoot people, but it will be in Hong Kong instead of Liberty City. And then they go, 'Hey, GTA IV sold 10 million copies, so that's what we expect from you.'"
Look to that methodology to explain why all of Activision's flagship properties are male-led, says the source: "If Activision does not see a female lead in the top five games that year, they will not have a female lead," says the other source. "And the people that don't want a female lead will look at games like Wet and Bayonetta and use them as 'statistics' to 'prove' that female leads don't move mass units."