-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
That Time Activision Cancelled a Game Because it Starred a Woman [Video] (Larry Bundy Jr.)
- Thread starter Blue Lou
- Start date
If anyone wants to read the story from 2010 which the YouTuber referenced but hasn't linked to of course.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29719/InDepth_No_Female_Heroes_At_Activision.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29719/InDepth_No_Female_Heroes_At_Activision.php
I was going to say I remembered this story from an old article. Saves giving a click to the GG shithead.
So you are telling me we could have had a Sleeping Dogs with a badass female protagonist?
Would have been awesome to see it even though I loved Wei.
Yeah he is. I stopped watching his videos a while back when I found out.
Yeah I, mean, I don't frequent his channel but this is news to me.
yeah. im the channel awesome drama thread in OT i thinl he even showed up and talked about it IIRC
Digging around I found this:
Maybe he changed but I haven't watched anything of his after the GG stuff so I do not know.
Maybe he changed but I haven't watched anything of his after the GG stuff so I do not know.
I think this was the era that activision just started cancelling everything that wasn't gonna do insane numbers.
True crime, prototype, singularity, all ended as franchises. Stuff like Deadpool and wolverine were just crapped out and left to die, that X-men game too. COD really ruined them as a creative publisher, it's why them publishing sekiro was a surprise.
True crime, prototype, singularity, all ended as franchises. Stuff like Deadpool and wolverine were just crapped out and left to die, that X-men game too. COD really ruined them as a creative publisher, it's why them publishing sekiro was a surprise.
Good to know he has opened his eyes a bit. What's the date on this? I dug out this from 2014, and apparently he was doing KotakuInAction stuff in 2016Digging around I found this:
Maybe he changed but I haven't watched anything of his after the GG stuff so I do not know.
https://archive.fo/hsFqs
Thanks, would rather read about this than listen to this asshole.
I think this is from Gaf right after Gamer Gate begun. Will look into it more.
OK, this seems like he saw the light (or got his ass lit up, either/or). Sorry to derail the thread, I enjoy his videos and this was a surprise to me. Carry onDigging around I found this:
Maybe he changed but I haven't watched anything of his after the GG stuff so I do not know.
Digging around I found this:
Maybe he changed but I haven't watched anything of his after the GG stuff so I do not know.
While he may not be a GGer, he does certainly associate with many of them. However, in regards to the topic at hand, I assume that if this happened once, it has happened other times as well. I wonder how many games were switched from a female protagonist to a male protagonist because of higher-ups demanding it.
He is actually trying to change too, I believe. He follows the likes of Shaun, Hbomberguy and other similar youtubers and comments on them (good comments, mind you).
So yeah, people can change.
Oh, that's good to hear. But mind you, he comments on literally every video under the sun, he's everywhere.
Great video, though the part of united front games only having done modnation racers by that time was a little bit wrong. He should have specified ufg was made by a huge part of the old rockstar team that made the warriors and bully.
Didnt know about kotick sexual harrasment, before i just he was a fucking idiot ceo that killed any creativitu at the company if if it didnt bring the big bucks, but with this he is also a piece of shit.
Didnt know about kotick sexual harrasment, before i just he was a fucking idiot ceo that killed any creativitu at the company if if it didnt bring the big bucks, but with this he is also a piece of shit.
And wow, I start the video up and a few seconds in there's already an error. Spider-Man 2 was 2004, not 2005.
I still think he changed a lot within the last few years. Especially nowadays his content doesn't have that toxicity compared to what he used to do (like that silly Peter Molyneux stuff). It really becomes apparent if you compare his old stuff to the current output.
If i'm not wrong, it's from the Channel Not So Awesome thread in April 2018 from this forum.
This industry has gotten so much better with representation in the past decade, particularly for women. Like, as bad as things still very much are, it's incredible to look back on how much worse it was even just 10 years ago.
Stuff like Aloy and Ellie does not happen in the macho, misogynist gaming world of 2007. This was back when companies literally hired "booth babes" for E3. Unfortunately I'm not at all surprised to hear this kind of story from back then. The concept sounds like it could've been cool too.
Stuff like Aloy and Ellie does not happen in the macho, misogynist gaming world of 2007. This was back when companies literally hired "booth babes" for E3. Unfortunately I'm not at all surprised to hear this kind of story from back then. The concept sounds like it could've been cool too.
Wow, really? That's a shame. I wonder how many stories like this there are from last gen...
Last edited:
It's interesting that this concerns True Crime 3 (which later turned into Sleeping Dogs under Square Enix), when you reflect that Deadly Premonition was supposed to star a female detective, but Swery was told by American production people that audiences in America wouldn't be interested in the game unless it starred a man.
Digging around I found this:
Maybe he changed but I haven't watched anything of his after the GG stuff so I do not know.
Eh, when people started questioning him further, he pretty much bounced from the thread and disappeared, so I wouldn't read too much into his statement.
The "must have a male protagonist" thing is to some degree a recent phenomenon. Before the "10 year old screaming on Xbox Live" demographic became a thing, gaming was in a pretty different headspace.
In the year 2000, we had five different FPS games that either starred (Perfect Dark, Medal of Honor: Underground, No-One Lives Forever, Alien: Resurrection) or co-starred (Turok 3) women. In the late 90s, games like Delta Force and Rainbow 6 featured playable female operatives alongside the male ones.
Medal of Honor had no issue making an entire game about a female protagonist. But Call of Duty, its successor, was increasingly aimed at teenage American males, so not only did Call of Duty increasingly become 'MURICA focused, but the series had a playable (male) dog character 4 years before it finally featured a playable female character for a single mission (Call of Duty: WWII in 2017). When Medal of Honor was eventually rebooted, it was in a super gruff manly bearded form.
One game series that strongly demonstrates this rather drastic shift in priorities was Deus Ex. The original Deus Ex was supposed to offer a choice between a male and female lead. (JC Denton was chosen in part because it was gender neutral.) This didn't make the cut for a few reasons. But Deus Ex: Invisible War lefts you choose between male and female Alex Denton.
But then Eidos Montreal rebooted Deus Ex with Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, and the option to play as a female character (with skin tone adjustment) mysteriously evaporated in order to push Adam Jensen as the protagonist.
Look at what happened to Epic. In the original Unreal, the protagonist is female by default, with the option to change it. By the time Gears of War came along, Epic had ended up entangled in a huge amount of dudebro, "no girls allowed" baggage courtesy of their fanbase. 90s Epic would have thought nothing of making a woman the lead character of a Gears of War game. But by the time they were making Gears of War sequels, they were admitting that it was "tough to justify" a female lead. (Which makes The Coalition's choice to pursue a female lead in Gears 5 interesting.)
Similarly, the Alone in the Dark series started out with a male and female lead. The lead developer wanted to try and attract female gamers. He admitted this wasn't particularly successful, granted. However, as the years went on, Alone in the Dark rapidly gravitated towards dark and broody gruff man protagonist tropes. This happened to a lot of series.
As I mentioned, the hottest tactical shooters in the late 90s tended to offer playable female characters. But then something changed and we got a lot of (heavily simplified) games with all-male casts. In the original Crysis, you could choose a female nanosuit voice. You were still a male protagonist, but you'd have a female voice for the suit saying, "Maximum strength" and so on. Yet with the Crysis sequels, that suddenly disappeared.
TimeSplitters 2 (2002) featured the (male) protagonist time jumping into the bodies of various male and female characters throughout history. But TImeSplitters 3 (2005) made him the sole protagonist. Across the board there was this shift in gaming away from female characters or even the option to play as female characters, and towards male characters in general. To the point that having a female protagonist was suddenly considered some kind of revolutionary idea by the early 2010s.
Last edited:
The "must have a male protagonist" thing is to some degree a recent phenomenon. Before the "10 year old screaming on Xbox Live" demographic became a thing, gaming was in a pretty different headspace.
In the year 2000, we had five different FPS games that either starred (Perfect Dark, Medal of Honor: Underground, No-One Lives Forever, Alien: Resurrection) or co-starred (Turok 3) women. In the late 90s, games like Delta Force and Rainbow 6 featured playable female operatives alongside the male ones.
Medal of Honor had no issue making an entire game about a female protagonist. But Call of Duty, its successor, was increasingly aimed at teenage American males, so not only did Call of Duty increasingly become 'MURICA focused, but the series had a playable (male) dog character 4 years before it finally featured a playable female character for a single mission (Call of Duty: WWII in 2017). When Medal of Honor was eventually rebooted, it was in a super gruff manly bearded form.
One game series that strongly demonstrates this rather drastic shift in priorities was Deus Ex. The original Deus Ex was supposed to offer a choice between a male and female lead. (JC Denton was chosen in part because it was gender neutral.) This didn't make the cut for a few reasons. But Deus Ex: Invisible War lefts you choose between male and female Alex Denton.
But then Eidos Montreal rebooted Deus Ex with Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, and the option to play as a female character (with skin tone adjustment) mysteriously evaporated in order to push Adam Jensen as the protagonist.
Look at what happened to Epic. In the original Unreal, the protagonist is female by default, with the option to change it. By the time Gears of War came along, Epic had ended up entangled in a huge amount of dudebro, "no girls allowed" baggage courtesy of their fanbase. 90s Epic would have thought nothing of making a woman the lead character of a Gears of War game. But by the time they were making Gears of War sequels, they were admitting that it was "tough to justify" a female lead. (Which makes The Coalition's choice to pursue a female lead in Gears 5 interesting.)
Similarly, the Alone in the Dark series started out with a male and female lead. The lead developer wanted to try and attract female gamers. He admitted this wasn't particularly successful, granted. However, as the years went on, Alone in the Dark rapidly gravitated towards dark and broody gruff man protagonist tropes. This happened to a lot of series.
As I mentioned, the hottest tactical shooters in the late 90s tended to offer playable female characters. But then something changed and we got a lot of (heavily simplified) games with all-male casts. I always thought it was bizarre how in the original Crysis, you could choose a female nanosuit voice. You were still a male protagonist, but you'd have a female voice for the suit saying, "Maximum strength" and so on. Yet with the Crysis sequels, that suddenly disappeared.
TimeSplitters 2 (2002) featured the (male) protagonist time jumping into the bodies of various male and female characters throughout history. But TImeSplitters 3 (2005) made him the sole protagonist. Across the board there was this shift in gaming away from female characters or even the option to play as female characters, and towards male characters in general. To the point that having a female protagonist was suddenly considered some kind of revolutionary idea by the early 2010s.
So, when Lara Croft made her debut in 1996, there was no noise over how she was a female lead character, and a successful one at that? Let's name all those 80s/90s female videogame protagonists :)
Oof, yeah. When Larry refers to GG as 'legitimate campaigns' within the last twelve months I think it's time to nope-out on his work.
As for his videos, I simply don't believe he's interested in doing the legwork necessary to back up his claims, and I'm disappointed that he's unwilling to give credit where it's due.
Lara Croft was probably the first time many console gamers had played a videogame with a female protagonist, I imagine. The PS1 marked a point of mainstreaming of console gaming. Also, console gaming had been marketed HARDCORE at boys ever since the NES.
If you were a PC gamer, you were more likely to encounter stuff like the Jill of the Jungle trilogy (1992), which was the game that put Epic Games on the map. You also had Alone in the Dark (1992) with its choice between a male or female (Emily Hartwood) protagonist. Note the connection to the choice between Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine in Resident Evil (1996). A lot of horror games had female leads. Clock Tower comes to mind. In the 1980s you had games like The Great Giana Sisters, Phantasy Star, and others. Including Metroid.
It was very common for PC RPGs to feature a choice between male and female protagonists. Wasteland, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, The Elder Scrolls etc. The first seven Ultima games (as well as Ultima Underworld) let you choose between a male and female Avatar when playing on PC. (The console ports were kinda butchered.) It was also very common for point and click adventure games to at least feature playable female characters in some capacity.
In the 80s and 90s, if developers wanted to make an Alien game, they often thought, "Oh, yea, it'll star Ellen Ripley." They didn't feel obliged to insert a male space marine into the lead role for players to have someone to "relate" to. There were games, such as AvP that starred male space marines (sometimes with expansion packs where you played as female space marines). But the point was that it was considered fairly normal to have female characters in the 90s and even the 80s. Games had much smaller budgets. There was way less pressure to conform to imagined market tastes and demographics. By 2000, female leads were comprehensively normalized. Particularly in the FPS genre. But after Halo in 2001, and Call of Duty, and other games that attracted a "dudebro" audience, things began to shift very dramatically. Combined with increasing game budgets, we reached a point where developers were put in a position where having a female protagonist was not tenable.
Ubisoft's first game was Zombi.
There were four playable main characters. Three men. One woman. You saw this kind of thing quite often. Instead of having an all male cast, something that became really common once the dudebro stuff took root, developers often had some diversity. Originally, Doom was supposed to have a selection of male and female protagonists. After Tom Hall was kicked out, this changed to Doom Guy. But Hall then made Rise of the Triad, which had male and female leads. That was how developed rolled back in the 90s. Why not add a female character? It didn't become a problem to do that until the mid-2000s for the most part. That was when you started getting noticeable examples of games being molded to better fit a certain narrow demographic.
Happy that WET got a mention, although I'm shaking my head at the concept that Mirror's Edge was just "decent". Anyhow, it's unfortunately a sad reality of things: woman-led games, unless they overly sexualize the characters, have an uphill battle to fight from the getgo. They can be good and successful too, but when that happens it's rather often when it's a game by an already beloved dev, and where the female aspect doesn't make the game that much different (while Mirror's Edge didn't sell that well, the game would have been virtually identical with a male lead, as opposed to something like Bayonetta). Activision's decision wasn't that surprising to be honest.
You have to acknowledge the difference between a woman starring (i.e lead protoganist, the lead in promotional materials) in a game, and being available in a lesser role (as a party member of a group, or as an optional gender). There was some pushback when Lara found success, but it was shortlived. Prior to that? We had the same issue with representation.
Yeah, the blast corps dev interview during agdq 2016 had Martin Wakeley, the lead designer, openly say that diversity was important to the team.
Didn't Naughty Dog have to fight tooth and nail to get Ellie on the cover of TLOU?
What a disaster putting her on the cover turned out to be, the game made no money and Naughty Dog shut down instead of making a highly anticipated sequel, featuring a woman as the lead, the very same character that had to fight to be on the cover.
What a disaster putting her on the cover turned out to be, the game made no money and Naughty Dog shut down instead of making a highly anticipated sequel, featuring a woman as the lead, the very same character that had to fight to be on the cover.
Yeahhhh sorry but Larry is a douche canoe, no thanks. I don't know how he does it but about half the videos I come across I spot him in the comments, usually with questionable to extremely bad takes.
More on-topic, this is unsurprising behaviour from Activision. Less on-topic, were the True Crime games ever any good?
More on-topic, this is unsurprising behaviour from Activision. Less on-topic, were the True Crime games ever any good?
This reminds me, anybody remember Oni? The game that was inspired by Ghost in The Shell anime that was developed by Bungie and published by Rockstar on PS2.
Yes, back in 2001 i think? Every Ghost in the shell fan had high hopes for it. I tried very hard to like it, but the controls were so tanky.
There's also Urban Chaos which was similar of sorts.
I really liked the gameplay of that one, the biggest problem it had for me was the bland levels that are very huge but not interesting enough to be a good thing. Might have to replay it soon.
And yeah Urban Chaos was a game I played. The game had a really cool atomsphere and vibe, it also had a black woman as the protagonist which was rare at the time if I remember correctly. Will have to replay that too and see how it held up.